National Coming Out Day outfit, yo

I mean gurrrl.

Flexinations!

1. I just had my annual physical.
2. It turns out I am NOT—despite physical appearances to the contrary—pregnant.
3. Those of you who decided I was pregnant—even silently to yourselves—are just rude.
4. RUDE.
5. I’ve known my doctor since we were in middle school.
6. He just touched my bits.
7. It wasn’t awkward.
8. Not at all.
9. NOT. AT. ALL.
10. HE. TOUCHED. MY. BITS.
11. But I didn’t get pregnant.
12. It’s already flu-shot season.
13. Seriously.
14. VACCINES CAUSE NOT DYING.
15. So my body is now coursing with flu germs.
16. HE TOUCHED MY BITS.
17. Not awkward.
18. As the flu-shot nurse was setting out her supplies before injecting me with flu germs, I asked if instead of her boring Band-Aid she might have a Superman Band-Aid.
19. I was just being silly.
20. BUT SHE HAD ONE.
21. So now my flu-germy arm is also a flu-germy bird and a flu-germy plane.
22. And it can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
23. Of course I needed to take a picture of it.
24. The flexing was totally accidental.
25. Because I would NEVER do that on purpose.
26. 🙄
27. That’s my favorite emoji!
28. HE TOUCHED MY BITS.

Blerg

I was cozy and comfy in my cozy, comfy bed and dreaming about shopping for baby wipes and Diaper Genies and then my alarm went off and now I’m stretching for a run on my driveway as a bird tries to figure out how to kill and presumably eat a terrified cicada whose frantically fluttering wings are making alarming amounts of scraping noises on the cement.

Same, little cicada. Same.

Flag Day shirt! With smear of peanut butter down the front!

When the blood lady realized she forgot to fill one of her vials after she’d pulled the big scary needle out of one arm

so she had to poke a new needle in the other arm and thankfully the stretchy wrapping tape color she picked now doubly matches my questionable shirt.

Tentative diagnosis: occipital neuralgia. Which in all my discussions with my doctor and in my subsequent googling seems very plausible given the locations of my headache pain. Final diagnosis still pending ...

I managed to wear a pair of gym shorts today that are the exact shade of black polyester to spotlight just how pasty-white-Easter-ham-pink my legs are

Plus I’m wearing a shirt that might as well come with a name tag that says “Hello! My Name is Gay Gayerthanyou!”

Fortunately, there’s all but literally nobody here for me to horrify. Unfortunately, I am NOT in the mood to work out, and being surrounded by tons of other people working out usually keeps me focused and accountable.

So here we are.

Happy birthday, Stephen Sondheim!

Thank you for redefining musical theater. For redefining music. For redefining theater.

Thank you for composing music that's at once asymmetrical and balanced, halting and fluid, atonal and lush, messy and perfect.

Thank you for finding lyrics that explore the outer limits of rhythm and structure and rhyme, that tell a story or define a character or celebrate a moment or break a heart in sometimes just a handful of words, that always seem fresh, that always seem timeless, that always seem effortless.

Thank you for creating an apotheosis of creative and intellectual order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony.

Thank you for inspiring as only you can an enraptured young writer to think outside his own thoughts, to feel outside his own feelings, to never stop searching for the perfect word or the lyrical phrase or the essential defining idea in a universe of creative entropy, to always make sure he's proud of how he creates and proud of what he writes.

And thank you for the phrase that I rely on almost daily to turn an undefined someday into a compelling now ... to pull me out of inertia and propel me sometimes through a bipolar fog and sometimes just through my own complacency to run a marathon, broaden my perspective, take on a challenging writing project, upgrade to a difficult tap class, find a solution, emerge unscathed or at least unbroken, or some days to just show up.

Careful the things you say; children will listen. And sometimes they'll turn your words into kick-ass tattoos.

Feel the flow,
Hear what's happening:
We're what's happening!
Long ago
All we had was that funny feeling,
Saying someday we'd send 'em reeling.
Now it looks like we can!
Someday just began.

How fitting that the memory of my TCR shirtless debut pops up during production week for my TCR more-than-shirtless debut

Back then, you had to buy tickets in person or over the phone. Now you just go to theatrecr.org

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whorehouse Edition

What's so funny about this picture? Let me count:
1. I'm playing a football player.
2. I'm playing a football player who utilizes the services of female prostitutes.
3. I'm shirtless on stage for the first time in my life. I know it's hard to believe there was once a time where me taking my shirt off on stage was a novelty, but you have to start somewhere. And I started in 1998, rompin' and stompin' with the Aggie Boys in Theatre Cedar Rapids' The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. This show also predates all my big tattoos, so I look like a pristine little infant in this picture. A pristine little infant who dances around shirtless and goes to whorehouses.

What’s the #1 reason to get a flu shot?

Right: for the flexy band-aid selfie in the car afterward.

Also: to give yourself photographic evidence that you’re overdue to shave the old-man hair off your shoulders. Because gross.

Goodbye, weekend vacation home with the poop-n-greet bathroom and the towering living room and the dearth of pie servers and the peek-up-my-little-black-dress over-the-sofa “art” print and the lovely Chicago friends and the glass table that has Gilloollied all of our shins AND THE AWESOME-ALBEIT-KNOTTY-PINE-APRÈS-SKI-LODGE-ESQUE EVITA BALCONY

I love to brag, but my ridiculously unnecessary impulse shoe purchase is way cooler than your ridiculously unnecessary impulse shoe purchase

It’s not a delicious beach-house-vacation nap unless you have a seashells pillow and moons-and-stars sheets

Please remember to use your inside voices.

This Mickey shirt has been the Virgil to my Dante on three Disney half marathons and more long training runs than I can count

And today is our longest run before the NewBo half in two weeks. I have one Gu for each four miles, so that adds up to lordhelpustwelve miles on yet another morning of perfect running weather.

M-I-C ...

11 miles! I have my badass face on BECAUSE I’M A BADASS so LET’S DO THIS!

YO. You got a problem, four-mile run? Imma KICK YOUR ASS.

I just wanted to show off my Undie Dash—which is exactly what it sounds like it means—T-shirt before the boys get here and make me run. In my clothes.

Flashback Sunday: 13.1 Edition

I apparently ran a half marathon six years ago today wearing tall compression socks that did nothing for me but itch and ruin my finisher photo. I remember the day being oppressively hot, which didn’t help in the please-stop-making-my-shins-itch department. But I also remember it being a pretty awesome run.

We struggled through a ROUGH 3.33 miles this morning

... which my running buddy and I finally admitted—albeit cautiously, so as not to plant the idea of struggling in each others’ heads but mostly just to not look weak and devoid of toxic masculinity—to each other around mile 1.75. But we had beautiful weather and we slogged through our struggles and surprised ourselves with a final pace of 11:12, which is actually a tad faster than where we’ve been clocking in. Then we (masculinely) bro-hugged (again, masculinely) goodbye and parted ways without taking a commemorative photo ... and now I can’t stop sweating and I’m waterfalling so much that I don’t want to go in the house yet so I’m waiting out the deluge on a charming wrought-iron chair by the front door with nothing to do but swat gnats, take selfies and blather on about our rough-but-victorious run on Facebook. Plus use waterfall as a gerund.

#HowToTurn50

Apparently my mini-diatribe against halter necklines over the weekend upset a few of my halter-not-hostile (halter hugging? I’m trying to go for cheap alliteration here) friends

As penance, today I’m wearing to-the-knee orange camo cargo shorts with hangy string things, a Dockers T-shirt featuring a fake-vintage eagle logo of a fake pale ale, and electric-orange-and-electric-green running shoes that don’t go with anything in the known universe—all of which I’m selfie-ing in front of a plaid chair I love that apparently everyone else in the family thinks looks dated and sad.

So have at it, halter-lovers: MOCK ME.

More unrepentant cargo shorts—this time with breezy, sun-faded palm trees on them!