that’s it. the monster is born. Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell opened tonight. you know, my grandparents worry about why i’m not having (or making immediate plans to have) chldren of my own. instead of children, i birth plays. it takes the same creative energy that i imagine raising children requires. i know some families where both parents work in theatre, but i can’t imagine it. i couldn’t possibly do both. there’s no money, we both work till midnight. on my day off i go work at my other job (accounting at a dentist’s office). there’s just not enough left of me to go around.

i keep thinking this’ll get better. maybe it doesn’t get better until i figure out how to make changes.      

and another thing, what’s with me not being able to eat a greasy fast food meal if i want to? i remember a time when a cheeseburger, fries and a coke were a balanced meal. i can still metabolize the hell out of a milkshake, but suddenly i realize i’m eating all healthy all the time, noticing grams of trans fats and fiber on the back of the package before i buy it, trying to eat something green every single day, all that boring grownup stuff. and what’s the deal with my ankles aching in the mornings? and not being able to pull all-nighters anymore? i want my invincible 16-year-old body back.

I blame the job.

so i really, really, almost never eat at McDonalds. like basically never except occasionally an egg mcmuffin sans-ham when i’m in an airport. but today I was coming home from working downtown, and pratically everything was closed because of labor day and how only suckers like me have to work, and i don’t know what came over me but I did something I haven’t done in years — consumed a 3-piece chicken strip meal complete with fries and a coke. ugh. the funny thing about fast food is that buyer’s remorse sets in about 30 seconds after you wipe your mouth with the greasy paper napkin. the reinforcement is so immediate that i can’t believe i ever still get tempted into going there. now, nearly six hours later, i’m sitting here still feeling like i ate a wedge of lard for lunch, my stomach rumbling in ominous dissent. gross. i will eat nothing but salad and brown rice until my digestive system has forgiven me this transgression.

i work too much.

there are three non-profit organizations that i make regular donations to: NPR, the Stanford Fund, and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids (come to think of it, I really ought to add Planned Parenthood onto my list as well). i used to feel kinda crappy about the fact that i can only afford to send them each $10 twice a year or so, but then my friend justin, who works in the devo department of a large theatre here in town, explained to me that lots of matching grants depend on the number of individual donors, not just total donations, that a non-profit has, and so the act of sending less money to more groups was actually a good thing.

so Chicago Public Radio started their semi-annual pledge drive this week, and i headed to their website to pledge my usual $10 (i told you, i’m poor). much to my dismay, they’ve changed their online donation system so that the minimum one can pledge is $5/month for 12 months. well, i’m sorry you don’t want my $10, chicago public radio. needless to say, i was feeling somewhat miffed by this minimum donation. i resent the assumption that just because i earn, well, let’s just say almost nothing, busting my butt for my own non-profit organization, that i’m not in their target audience. fine, then, i’ll send that $10 to Planned Parenthood this time. really, i realize that CPR probably doesn’t give a shit about my $10, but that’s sort of my point. you shouldn’t sneer at donations of any size; it’s the act of giving that matters. it’s the same reason i make piddly small payments to my retirement savings every month. it’s not that i think what i’m doing right now will really add up to a house in the bahamas when I’m 65, but it’s about developing the habit. the money will follow.

I can’t take credit for this one, I stole it out of a newspaper years ago. But it’s yummers:

Roasted Asparagus Salad:

+ young (thin!) asparagus stalks
+ goat cheese (don’t skimp on the quality here), at room temperature
+ 1 lemon (juiced, and grate the rind for zest)
+ meaty, thick-cut bacon (optional for the veggie version – otherwise plan on about 1 strip per serving)
+ olive oil, salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to something hot, maybe 400 or so.
2. Cook bacon. Crumble and set aside.
3. Wash asparagus and break off the tough part of the stalks at the bottom. Pat dry and place in a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper generously.
4. Put in the oven to roast until tender-crisp, about 7 minutes (check often)
5. Meanwhile, combine equal parts olive oil and lemon juice. Crumble goat cheese and set aside.
6. When the asparagus comes out, transfer to serving plate, drizzle the lemon/oil mixture over asparagus, top with bacon, goat cheese and lemon zest, and serve promptly.

Try this and you’ll never boil asparagus again.

total number of books i’ve owned: good god. a thousand? two thousand? while the installation of new bookshelves last week did require that we reorganize all of the books currently residing in the apartment, (alphabetize the fiction by author, and develop the jen-and-andy-decimal system for non-fiction and theatre) i don’t have the heart to try and count them now. but baby, i ripped through those babysitters’ club series when i was a kid. i kept a regular pace of 2-3 books a week for all of my grade school and junior high school years, so those must have added up pretty fast.

last book I bought: used copy of reading lolita in tehran. the “i’m a memoir so coherent through-lines don’t’ apply to me” approach is more than a little annoying, but i can’t get over how fascinating the subject matter is.

last book i read: still half-heartedly working through will of the world, a shakespeare biography andy’s dad gave us, and ouch. i didn’t think it possible to write such a boring book about such an interesting person. guess i’ll stick to my glossy full-color shakespeare in love misconceptions instead.

last book i finished: the time traveler’s wife see below.

5 books that mean a lot to me:

zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance i’m especially attached to the particular edition i have, which i inherited from my father and have since loaned out to many friends. there’s something about the physical presence of a book that has been read so many times the cover is falling off that pleases me.

alice in wonderland the alice in wonderland tale is one that is ripe for telling and re-telling, and i’ve loved nearly every version of it i’ve encountered, from jeff noon’s hipster remix alice to the excellently acrobatic lookingglass alice production mounted recently by lookingglass theatre in chicago.

the time traveler’s wife so, so beautiful, in brutal, gritty sort of way.

the hobbit i didn’t grow up with the hobbit and lord of the rings like most kids; but about five years ago (long before the movies) my friend nick discovered that i hadn’t read them and arrived the next day on my doorstep with four much-loved paperback editions and said, “don’t give them back till you’ve read them.” i read them all that summer after college, living on my own up in san francisco, and they were such a treat, i couldn’t believe they’d been waiting for me all these years and i had just finally discovered them. andy and i have since read all of them aloud to one another, and i have pleasant memories of long summer afternoons spent in the park with andy (who does all the voices better than i ever could hear them in my head), but more than anything they recapture for me cool, foggy san francisco days, sitting on the beach at the end of golden gate park, digging my feet into cold sand and sitting on driftwood while strands of summer fog drifted by.

east of the moon and west of the sun specifically, the edition with the kay nielson illustrations (out of print but available from rare-book collectors). it’s this amazing collection of norwegian mythology that we used to read when i was a kid, and the stories and illustrations, although i haven’t read them in years, still haunt me. need an escapist afternoon? look this one up at the public library and find a big, comfy chair in a corner somewhere.

i’ve realized the sad truth: chicago doesn’t have a spring. we leap directly from winter (which lasts until the final week of may) straight into summer. two weeks ago i was still bringing my tomato plants in at night to keep them from freezing; this week the temperatures are hovering around 90 with humidity to spare. mini skirts and tube tops evidently leap from the closet shelves of their own accord; chicago doesn’t know what to do with all the exposed winter-white flesh.

i’m not really filing a complaint, however. summer is here, and that means…free time, and that means…projects! sometime last winter i picked up knitting as a way to keep my hands busy when i’m calling shows, or on the train, and it’s a lovely meditative thing to do when i get home from work before going to bed. i wasn’t quite prepared for the ferocity with which i have taken to the hobby. now i can’t watch television or call a show or really sit still without something to work in my hands. each new project has to be harder than the last, with new tricks – last week it was intarsia and fair isle, this week it was cables. i’m not saying a don’t knit plenty of ugly, mishappen things, mind you, but i am getting better at the tricky stuff.

the difficult thing is that since knitting has long been the domain of the frumpy and has only recently been reclaimed by the crafty, hipster crowd, is that there is a shitload of ugly acrylic yarns and dumpy frumpy sweaters patterns out there. the challenge is finding the cool patterns, or devising them myself. it’s even harder to come up with projects when it’s 90 degrees out – i’m discovering that most knit things go with cold weather. which is okay, really, since chicago is hat-and-mittens weather for 9 months of the year, but does seem a little crazy to be up to my elbows in winter-weight wool right now. on the other hand, i’m just not brave enough to go out in public wearing a bikini knit by these fallible hands. one loose thread, and zip! the project that carried me through the winter was making gifts for my two pregnant co-workers: baby blankets and little hats. there were supposed to be matching booties as well, but my attempts at booties ended with one sock sized for a cat, and a second that would last into the preschool years, so i threw in the towel on that one.

congratulations go out to my mom, who graduated from college today, completing a degree she started when she was 17. she put many of her plans on hold in order to put my dad through law school, to raise three children, to care for her mother-in-law, to pay for her kids’ college educations, and i am so pleased for her that she’s finally had time to devote herself to this accomplishment. some parents spin their wheels when the last child leave home, churning reluctantly toward retirement; my mother reinvented herself as a student, a thinker, a friend and peer in her academic community. she graduated today with Honors (her straight-A GPA puts all her kids to shame) and as English student of the year. we all hope/pretend our moms don’t read our blogs, but if you are reading this, then know that i’m very, very proud of you.

we have reached burn-out for the theatre season, which fortunately ends in another 3 weeks because i no longer have any drive to work at all. serious props go to andy, who went on for the lead in Anarchist last weekend with about 24 hours’ notice when joe tore a ligament in his foot. it probably took a year off his live in nervous anticipation, but he kicked some serious ass. our apartment still hasn’t recovered from the 72-hours of continuous rehearsal/performance; dirty laundry is draped every-which-where, the dining room furniture is still arranged as a model of the set, there are no groceries or clean dishes. this is what happens when we work on the same show, kids.

i also had the good fortune to see andy play aguecheek in twelth night, and romeo in r&j this past week with his educational shakespeare troupe. these roles cause him considerably less duress since he’s been playing them for 9 months now, and he’s excellent in both. about 10 minutes into r&j on tuesday morning, the dimmers (things that make the stage lights go bright and dark) started overheating, causing an unpleasant phenomenon where the lights blink off, and back on and back off with christmas-tree regularity. naturally, 300 high school students were compelled to scream “the lights are off!” every time this happened until i climbed over some kids, went up to the booth where i found their stage manager fretting and repeating “it’s not my fault i don’t know.” nice guy, but not a stage manager. fortunately, he was quite amenable to letting me take over. i won’t bore you all with all the techno-babble, so the succinct version is that we couldn’t cool the overheating equipment sufficiently, and the theatre has no overhead work lights, so we had to stop the show, turn off the malfunctioning equipment entirely, and set up some portable halogens on tripods i found in the loft. the remaining 2/3 of the show was lovely under the stark glow of halogen foot lights – ghostly and timeless.