we’ve been treading on the uncomfortable side of the total-mental-breakdown line for a much of the past month; hence the relative silence on slithy tove. but its a compounding problem – the more i put off writing, the more intimidating it is to go back to writing, because there’s things i meant to write about and they just pile up…but really, what’s the point of being intimidated by one’s own blog? so, in place of all the posts i meant to write, a brief summary of the salient moments of the past month:
-waking up at 2am and going to get a drink of water (andy was still out at a late show so i was home alone). while standing at the sink in the dark of my kitchen, i watched someone climb OVER the 10 ft razor wire fence that seals our back porch off from the alley. not certain if i’d dreamed what i’d just seen, i stood paralyzed in the dark of my house, wearing only pjs, as i heard someone climb up the stairs, past our second story porch, and up to the third story porch. thumps and bumps and crashes ensued from upstairs. unwilling to wait and see if he’d break into our dark apartment next, i put on some pants, and ran out the front door and out of my apartment building. to then stand in the pouring rain feeling like a sleepy paranoid jerk without a cell phone with which to call the police. i went into the lobby of the hotel next door, and the very nice night clerk there called our upstairs neighbor to see if she was okay. no answer, even though her lights were blazing, so we called the police. i stood in the rain for another ten minutes till two very burly policewomen arrived and offered to come upstairs with me. embarrassingly, i was most concerned that they’d get upstairs and not find anyone and i’d be the idiot from Rear Window who was always hearing and seeing things. well, as it turns out, someone WAS breaking into the apartment upstairs – it just so happened to be our neighbor’s out of town friend who had gotten separated from her at a bar and wanted to get in out of the rain. the police shook him down for a while but ultimately left him alone. after they left i crept up the back stairs and apologized for calling the cops on him, and he was very nice about the whole thing.
-some buttmunch stole andy’s bike off our back porch by bashing in the wooden railings until the post the bike was chained to broke off. the thief did, however, leave us five pennies in exchange for the bike. andy intends to gamble those five pennies into a new bike at our occasional nickel poker games. it could take a while. for the now the pennies are safely set aside in a plastic baggie on the fridge.
-as many of you who know me already know, i am a clinical emetophobe. that is, i fear vomit in a pathological, compulsive way. so it was two weeks ago that my very worst stage management nightmare came true when i ate a hot turkey sandwich of questionable age and came down with food poisoning and had to barf DURING A SHOW. as in “electrics 243, go. (puke) sound 25B, go (puke).” god, the thought of a job where i can take a sick day seems like an unimaginable luxury. but that’s nothing compared to Alyson, one of the performers in BETTY Rules, who has been performing with pneumonia for the past two weeks, going off stage to cough up a lung and then running back on stage to rock out with her bass guitar. SHE is a rock star (well, i mean that both literally and figuratively).
-i am stupidly pleased with the white lab coat with my name embroidered on it that they gave me at the dentist’s office. unfortunately, it also means that i’ve agreed to work there for another year. a whole ‘nother year of working 3 jobs. i am so TIRED.
-meeting gloria steinem a couple of weeks ago at a benefit show we did for Planned Parenthood. i have a picture of us in matching BETTY t-shirts to prove the event occurred, but i’m not posting it here because the camera revealed my secret double chin.
-not long after the break-in that wasn’t, the bathtub pipes in our upstairs neighbor’s apartment begin to leak and our bathroom ceiling developed a minor waterfall. the walls bulged and slithered, the light fixture filled up with rusty water dripping off the electrical contacts, we lined buckets with towels to drown out the sound of the dripping. it took five days of intermittent dripping to convince the maintenance guy, Manny, that it was NOT because the girl upstairs, Jess, doesn’t use her shower curtain properly, meanwhile we brushed our teeth in the kitchen sink and had to use the toilet by candlelight for fear of an electrical fire. said pipes have now been fixed, and Manny came by and ripped the entire surface of the sheetrock off the wall. he has been less than enthusiastic, however, about finishing the work. on the upside, however, we are now friends with our neighbor – there’s nothing like having someone else’s bathwater dripping on your head to really seal the friendship pact. maybe she will let me borrow her vacuum someday.
-andy and i were looking for a quick bite before going to catch a show at Improv Olympic. we happened upon a cute little cafe in boys town called the Hearty Boys Cafe. the guy at the counter painstakingly prepared our goat cheese and roasted veggie sandwich – which was delicious despite the fact that it took him about 20 minutes to make it. it took so long, in fact, that we were back at the theatre and done with the sandwich before andy said, “wait, did you pay for the sandwich?” “no, didn’t you?” oops. in order to balance out our karma, we went back the next afternoon to pay for the sandwich. the waiter gave me a cookie for being so honest.