Good times, Piano and Spongebob Art

Annie is going well at the Palace. Ticket sales are good and the audiences are really enjoying the show, no matter which of the three casts they see. I am having a good time playing my two very different parts. And this is my first Palace show in which we have an actual dressing room. Counters with rolly-chairs, mirrors with Hollywood lights, costume racks with character assignments, the whole shebang. The only thing lacking is the monitors in the dressing rooms are not working yet. When those are hooked up we will be able to hear the show in the dressing room so we don't have to guess how much time we have left for a quick-change. It is a nice change from a curtained-off corner of the dirty shed with only a hand mirror for make-up. And clean bathrooms! Need I say more?

There are still tickets for Annie available, especially on the weekday shows. See my last blog entry for my show dates if you want to see me and my "electric smile." Heh, that is what the Williamson County Sun said about me. David laughed and said, "That's code. The reviewer thinks you're hot." Lol, I love my husband.

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I grew up in a home with a piano and while I never became any kind of pianist, I spent countless hours messing around on it. I could read music because I played in the band at school, and I was able to figure out how to play some of the sheet music my mom had hanging around from her youth. I took a few piano lessons as a teenager, but the teacher tough out of a hymnal and I lost interest. But to this day I can plink out virtually any Christmas song you can think of.

I want Jackson to grow up in a house with a piano. He can take lessons to see if he likes it, though it might prove difficult for a left-handed child. But it also would come in handy to plink out our vocal parts when one of us is cast in a musical.


So I mentioned to Dad on Thanksgiving that I was looking for a small used piano. Dad, the master of Craigslist, found this one here in Round Rock. It is a 1938 Kimball that was owned by a 78 year-old woman who got it for her 6th birthday. Her son's job has been transferred to Korea for a number of years and they are selling everything for the move. They were very sad to see it go, but are happy that it goes to a local family who will treasure it. It needs tuned, but other than that it is a real find. I came home from work today to find it sitting in my dining room. My Dad broke into my house (ok, he used the garage code) and brought it in. Jackson has already pounded out a tone-deaf version of jingle bells and I have already fallen in love with having a piano in my own home. Thank you, Dad.

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Jackson took David's IPhone and took a few pictures around the house. When I looked at them all I found these abstract pieces of Spongebob Art. I love it. I should have prints made.

Chemo, Annie and Jackson Spider

Two years ago today was my final round of chemo. You can read about the debut of the Chemo Queen here. Seems so bizarre that I went through all of that and am now living a fairly normal day-to-day life. Preparing to open another show, fixing up my house, thinking about another Christmas.

Of course I become more wistful every day when I see all the families with multiple children. I see the siblings interact at Jackson's school and I really want that for him. And I am beginning to really understand that I may not be able to have another baby and I feel cheated somehow. And it seems like everyone has a new baby when you want one so badly.

But it is two years post-treatment and I am still here to worry about it. That is something. And I had a CT scan this week and got the good news yesterday that all is still clear. NED.

Annie opens on Nov. 20th. Rehearsals are a crazy circus with two of three casts rehearsing each night, one on the stage and another on the rehearsal stage. So many of us are in more than one cast and end up running back and forth all night to determine where we should be and what we should be doing. I don't envy the stage managers their job of working all this out.

I don't think I even blogged that I will be playing Miss Hannigan for 5 shows. But Mary Ellen determined that she needed a third Hannigan to swing a few shows and offered it to me. So I am playing Lily for 14 shows and Hannigan for 5. Here are the dates:

I will be playing Miss Hannigan on Nov 29, Dec 12, 20, 23 & 29. And I will be playing Lily (Rooster's Girlfriend) on Nov 20, 28, Dec 4, 11, 16, 19, 22, 26, & 27.

This will be at the Palace Theatre in Georgetown. www.thegeorgetownpalace.org.If you want to see me, get tickets in advance because this show is going to sell very well. It is Christmas-time and there are so many kids involved so tickets will sell well in advance.



I have had requests for Jackson Halloween pictures. I will confess that I didn't get great pics of him. Cause it was low-light and he wouldn't sit still. But this one at least shows you how cute his spider costume was. He really was adorable, raising his arms and saying "raaarr". I think he must have been one of those rare rain forest roaring spiders. or something.

And here is one of us at Andy & Renee's Halloween party. I am a ghost bride of some sort, David is the Emcee from Cabaret and Jackson is 15 minutes from falling asleep in the guest room.

Talking With...

Talking With opened Friday and it is a good show. I am really enjoying, not only the performance part of it, but the fact that we work as a crew together, changing sets and helping each actor get set for her piece. It is really a lot of fun and very bonding to have my individual monologue, and then change into my black clothes and become a member of the backstage crew. Working with such a talented group of women is not something you get to do all the time. And they are all so much fun and there are no personality issues or egos to contend with. Just cool ladies and a good show. I am going to be sorry to see this one end. It is such a short run. Only 4 more shows. Tomorrow through Sat at 8 p.m. If you are in the Austin area, you should definitely come out and see it. Austin Live Theatre.com reviewed us and seemed to really like it. I was pleased to even get a favorable personal mention! Check it out here. And make reservations to see the show here.

I am still here.

When you don't blog for a little while, it becomes a habit. Do people really want to hear about what I am doing on a daily basis? From the comments of friends and family complaining about my blog silence, I suppose for some reason they do. So here I am. Blogging.

My life at this time is full. I am working on two different shows. Talking With is a monologue show with North by Northwest Theatre company. There are six of us and we each have our own pieces to memorize and perform. Mine is a bizarre and awesome monologue about a baton twirler who finds religious ecstasy through twirling. I have borrowed batons from Andrea who, of course, took twirling lessons as a tween and my flag twirling skills from marching band are coming into play. Baton twirling and flag twirling are not exactly the same, but they translate enough to make me credible enough for the show. And I am hoping not to look too bad (and exposed) in the twirler costume. Dance tights are my friend. Talking With opens October 9th at the City Theatre in Austin and runs for two weeks. Posted is the publicity shot we took. It is missing Jen Coy who was sick the day of the shoot.

I have also been cast in the Palace Christmas Behemoth, otherwise known as the musical Annie. There are 27 scheduled performances which means that Mary Ellen needed almost three full casts to get them all covered without killing her actors at Christmas-time. So I said what the hell and threw my hat in the ring. If I am ever going to get better at musical auditions I will have to keep doing them. I get so nervous and can't sing my best. I did pretty well this time, though and I will be playing Lily, Rooster's girlfriend (the Bernadette Peters part from the movie). So I will be starting rehearsals for that immediately and anytime I am not needed at Talking With Rehearsals. Annie doesn't open til November 20th, so I have plenty of time after Talking With closes to catch up on the rehearsals I will miss while off doing the other show. I think it will be a fun part. It seems the last few shows I have been cast in have been for character roles. I have to shift my thinking some, because I am used to thinking in terms of the ingenue roles. But it seems my skills as I get older are evolving and I am being challenged to do characters that are quirky; different. I think this can only be a good thing and as I get older can only serve me well. So I am tentatively excited to play the trampy, blowzy, over-the-top Lily St. Regis from Jersey City.

So that is what I am up to. David has good theatre news, too. The list of B. Iden Payne nominations came out last week and David's show, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, was nominated for 4 awards including outstanding cast performance and outstanding production of a musical. In addition, the Austin Circle of Theatres folks asked the cast to perform a number at the awards ceremony! I am so excited for him. I was so proud of his performance in the show last year and I wanted to see it way more that the three times I managed to see. And now he is being recognized for it and it is so well deserved.

Enough for now. If I blog to much my first time back I might make myself sick - having lost my blog tolerance and all that.

Floor project!

The last week and a half has been very full of physical labor. We ripped the carpet out of all but the bedrooms in my house and are installing laminate floors. My house is a complete mess and I have been going to bed totally exhausted, but content. David's parents came this weekend to help get the majority of the floor layed. We had the house mostly prepped when they got here - carpet out, baseboards off, furniture out. We worked in the evenings all week last week to get it done.


And while we had the office empty, we took the opportunity to paint the dirty eggshell walls two shades of vibrant blue, which is getting mixed reviews from the peanut gallery. We like it though. If you are going to make the effort to paint, I say paint big. Andrea came over to help with the painting and Jackson enjoyed helping us paint as well. Though I will say that painting a room bright blue with a four-year-old's help is a lot of work. Especially since we were painting two walls darker blue and two walls lighter blue. Making sure he kept the right color on the right wall was tough. He desperately wanted to mix the colors.





He managed to survive the chaos of the weekend with no furniture by carrying around his little folding chair. Unfortunately, he broke out in ugly hives all over. We think he must be allergic to the cement dust and general yuck that we stirred up by tearing out the carpeting. Benadryl cleared them up mostly but we are keeping an eye on him since the floor isn't quite done and we still have a hallway of cement till the weekend.


The cats wandered around all week wondering what the hell was going on and why we were moving all the furniture they like to sleep on. They were so bewildered and funny. Of course as soon as the first boards in the living room were installed, Sarah cat took up residence on them and stayed there all afternoon as the work progressed.


While David and his parents worked on laying the floor Elaine and I prepped and repainted all the trim baseboards. I had no idea how nasty those things were till we took them off the walls and I got a close look at them. They are going to look so nice with fresh paint and a new floor.


And here are a couple of pics of the floor in the living room and office. They are both still a mess and these pics were taken before we got the baseboards back on. But you can see what a nice job David and his parents did laying the floor. It looks great. I will post finished product pics when we get all finished and the house put back together...in a few weeks...or months...however long it will take to put the chaos to rights.




The last two evenings have been spent putting back baseboards and caulking the gaps and putting some furniture back. We are already so beat from the prep and actual floor laying that we are taking our time and working as we can. We feel pretty productive and proud of how our first major home project is turning out.

Planet Cancer Retreat This Weekend!

I am excited. This weekend I am attending my second Planet Cancer Retreat. I am so lucky that PC is based in Austin and has its retreats here each summer. I don't have to spring for airfare! My friend Becky, whom I met at the retreat last year, is flying in a day early tomorrow and will hang with me for a night and a day before we both head to The Crossings for the retreat on Friday afternoon. I am taking her to dinner at Threadgill's and then to Andrea's production of The Vagina Monologues. Maybe a trip downtown after or on Friday to show her a little bit of Austin.

Then the retreat this weekend where we will meet and connect with cancer survivors from all over the country ages 25-40. It is a really neat weekend and I am happy I got accepted to go a second year.

I'm pretty weary tonight from working hard this week so I can take Thursday and Friday off, and then tonight getting the house ready for a guest. I have a little more to do tomorrow, but I have done most of the cleaning I wanted to do. The kitchen is the last thing and that can be done tomorrow. Now I just have to keep the small child from destroying all my work before she comes tomorrow. We may have to tie him up and sit him in the corner. (KIDDING! REALLY!)

Birthday

I had a good birthday today. David and I took Jackson for his first dental appt this morning. Not what you would expect us to do first thing on my birthday, but David scheduled it a few months ago, overlooking the fact that is is my birthday. But no biggie, I might have wanted to stay in bed longer, but I wanted to be there for his first visit.

He has been nervous about it for a few days, asking me to please not make him go. I have been telling him that the dentist just wants to look at his teeth to make sure they are strong and healthy. So he says, "What if she says they aren't strong and healthy? Will she make me stop brushing my teeth?" So there has been some anxiety leading up to this visit.



But he was so good. Didn't get too upset this morning about going and went into the exam room willingly, although apprehensively. The Dentist was great, taking time to really connect with him before getting into his mouth. She had a large stuffed frog with a full set of human-looking teeth that she pulled out to show him. Together they counted the frog's teeth and then Jackson let her count his teeth. She did and exam and polished his teeth and took x-rays. Jackson enjoyed seeing the x-rays of his teeth. All in all it was a good visit and a great first experience at the dentist for him. I am glad we went with this doc. She is not a pediatric dentist, but a family dentist that does kids too. But I think the calm environment of this office and the exemplary care of this dentist was the right choice.

Tonight, my mom came over and watched Jackson and David took me out to dinner. He set it up. I didn't even know where we were going till we got there. He took me to Fogo De Chao. Very, very good if you are a carnivore. Neat place. They bring skewered meats to your table and cut hunks off for you. Endlessly. Until you can't possibly eat anymore. And they have a first-rate veggie/salad bar. I am stuffed and content.

I have been starting to feel a bit better. My hormones are much lower which probably helps with my moodiness. Hopefully this will continue and I will be back to my old self again soon.