Have I mentioned recently that Forest is absolutely the most adorable person in the world? He is. There's no particular reason for me to say this right now, other than that even when we're apart, my heart is bursting with love for him. I picture him smiling at me when I'm driving home, and I go a little faster in hopes of seeing him sooner. I love my sweety so much!
And I miss him, a lot. Last night wasn't as bad as I had imagined, although I gave up some sleep for the chance to spend an extra half hour with him.
I went to brush-up rehearsal, and like a trooper, ran through the show. I really don't like brush-ups very much. They are often unnecessary; or if the lines need brushing up, the same effect can be accomplished by a speed-though. Inevitably someone pulls the first prank, and then all sorts of silliness ensues. Last night wasn't bad as far as brush-ups go. Normally I don't participate in the pranking and silliness much; but last night the first joke was on me, so I decided to retaliate 12-fold. I thought I was too tired to laugh, but it turns out that I had to work hard to deliver my lines without laughing many times.
See, the final scene in this play is a formal dinner party, which my character Ruth is hosting. Ruth has been dreaming about this for a long time; there's formal linen, crystal and china on the table, flowers and candles, the works. After my brief monologue, I invite the guests to come in, and there are a couple minutes of improvisation while everyone gets seated and acquainted. During the rehearsal process though, before the show opened, every night one of the guests would ad-lib a line saying, "Where's the Cheese Whiz?"
I couldn't think of any response for poor Ruth (who has hired a first-rate cook and two maids to serve this classy meal) than to throw the offending person off the stage.
So every night in rehearsal, that's what I did. Everyone laughed, and thought it was hilarious, that I would allow no talk of Cheese Whiz at my perfect dinner party.
Then, on brush-up night, early in the show, my 5-year-old character, Sandra, opened the lid on the soup tureen to discover a large jar of Cheese Whiz in there.
I was too tired to think on my feet at the moment, and decided that I'd better fish the jar of Whiz out of the soup, and take it outside to dry off. While I was baskstage I hid the jar, and decided to declare a small war.
In the very next scene, I play a maid, Dora, who serves lunch to a man and his grandson. On each of their plates I served a jar of Whiz or can of Easy Cheese. I kept a straight face, and so did they. Our director laughed like mad; Jack (Grandpa) even managed to work the Cheese Whiz into his lines.
The situation escalated into a trial of one-upmanship, as people integrated the cheese whiz into every scene of the show. In another character I served Cheese Whiz with the Thanksgiving turkey. Another character of mine served the whiz instead of lemon with afternoon tea; then Gary Riggs brought his character on stage with an Easy Cheese booger in his nose, and I pretty much lost it.
Finally, in the very last scene, I decided that poor Ruth would give them all what they had asked for. Instead of putting out my usual place cards during her scene, I put a thick paper napkin on each guest's plate. Then, when I usually pour the wine during my monologue, I spent the entire speech filling each plate with generous quantities of easy cheese. It was actually pretty fun. I emptied the whole can, making spiraling patterns and designs on their plates while I delivered my usual lines.
Everyone seemed ever so pleased with the tasty results.
Happily I was out by 9 PM, and even though I was dead-tired, I stopped by to play for a while with Yeffy and the gang. It was lots of fun, especially since I got to play my own character, plus Forest's lizardman wierdo.
Still, behind all these other fun thoughts, all night I just wanted to go home and be with my honey.
So as soon as I could, that's what I did. When I got home, Forest was starting to practice with a yoga video, and I joined him. We smiled, and laughed, and stretched together merrily. It was nice to unwind that way, and I think I woke this morning feeling more refreshed than usual. We're considering making a regular routine of that, because while we don't tend to get up and around at the same time each morning, we *do* usually go to bed together at night.
After yoga we crawled into bed, and read our books for a short while before going to sleep. I love that we can do things like this together. It just feels good. We're both the sort who love to loll about and read books; and we're good at exercising together, probably because we're used to it. It will be a nice life.
My ex-secretary stopped by a little bit ago with her baby boy Jacob. Aww.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It's really strange getting used to Forest's current level of responsibility for Kirstin's life. He's really stepping in and becoming a great dad, and I love it. They have their own special breed of relationship worked out, and a unique way of communicating with each other, which I don't quite understand. Still, the job gets done, and they are both smiling through most of it. Forest describes it as, "She whines, and then I use my Sir Didymus voice, then she laughs, and stuff gets done." Sir Didymus is the very noisy fox from Labyrinth. He's awesome, and Forest does a voice which is very similar. It's so cool! Anyhow, today Kirstin is going to her violin lesson, and Forest is taking her there. Then I'm meeting them in town. Twice this week already he's volunteered to stay home and take care of her while I've been out in the world. It's most unusual; in the past if I was going to be out like that, she either came with me or I had to beg around for a babysitter, or hire one. In this case, I don't. Forest just considers it his part of the job; and the best part is he seems to rather enjoy it.
Ah, well. I won't ponder it too much; it might be a fantasy, and if I look too hard at it, it might go away!
Today I went to lunch at the Store, and Forest and I realized that when there are two of us, it costs twice as much to go to a taekwondo tournament. For this Saturday we would be looking at $12 in gas, $20 in meals, and $150 for our two registrations in the event, plus $25 for mouth guards. That's a heck of a lot of loot for a single day's adventure. I'm going to go over the bills and see if we can afford it; but I'm just plain not optimistic.
Bills are a little scary right now anyway. I was panicking at Forest and lunchtime today, because I had no idea where all my money kept going. He pointed out that I'm spending way more money than I normally would because of the show. It's 32 miles to the theatre from my house, which means when all's said and done I will have driven at least 2048 miles to do the show (not including detours for fast food.) My van gets *maybe* 20 MPG, and gas costs about $2 per gallon in stupid Okemos where I always end up filling up. That's $240 extra dollars spent on gas in the past month. I also spent $50 on an extra oil change, about $5 per night on fast food ($10 if I had Kirstin with me) and $12 on tights to wear in the show. We had to pay $175 to have a guy put handrails on our house for our new mortgage, and $75 to have some guy verify that we don't have termites or carpenter ants. These things have a way of adding up.
To top it all off, I'm some kind of moron, and have misplaced a check for $174, which I was supposed to deposit in my account. I can't find it anywhere. My life has been so hectic lately that I've been losing things left and right. Losing money, though, sucks. I have to wait 30 days before they will issue me a new check. *sigh*
We also have our first honkin' huge house payment coming due November 1, which happens to be the same day as my less huge but still intimidating car payment is due, so I know I have to save money against that horrendous day each month. Ick.
Anyway, that's enough freaking about money. All our bills have been paid on time faithfully every single month. I shouldn't worry. I've proven I can do this. Really. (Now if only I believed that.)
