I also have not outgrown

laughing at farts.

It's the Kneecap

In an improv warmup on Saturday, I was trying to come up with a body part that started with P. It took me several awkward seconds to think of patella. Last night, during another warm-up, someone tossed out the word penis. Oh, duh! How was that not obvious to me on Saturday? The only excuse I can think of is that I don't have one.

Although I think patella is probably funnier, I find it odd that the obvious P-word completely passed me by. This may be my first notable experience with comedic penis envy.

Things I Have Not Outgrown

Cream of Wheat
Looney Tunes
pajamas with feet
naps (actually, hated those as a kid. love 'em now.)
mooching off my parents
writing my Christmas list in October
the Muppets
letting dogs lick my face
throwing my arms in the air and saying, "Ta-da!" when people clap
wanting my mom to feel sorry for me when I'm sick
fairy tales
Disney cartoons
having crushes on movie stars
the suspicion that I really can breathe underwater
Sesame Street
wanting to be famous
the desire to please authority figures
junk food
TV
daydreaming
imagining performances when I'm not onstage
the tendency to agree with people, in an effort to be pleasant, before I realize how compromising it could be
chocolate milk
wanting to see the world
wanting to live in a castle
liking plaid
hoping for a snow day anytime between Oct. 1 and May 1
acne
wanting to be popular
being shy around cute guys
finding food in weird places hours after I've eaten (true example: eyelid)

Mangia, Mangia!

Last Christmas, one of my (male) roommates got me a calendar entitled "Porn for Women." It has pictures of mostly-clothed men saying things like, "I don't have any advice, but I'm a good listener, " and "I don't have to have a reason to bring you flowers!" It's up in our kitchen.

Mr. September is urging us to have another piece of cake, because he doesn't like to see us looking so thin.

Ladies, take heart, because men like this exist! Not just in calendars, but in real life.

In Connecticut, in fact.

I hear my dad say this to my mom just about every time I visit: "Eat up, Bon! You're too skinny!" She has to keep turning away big pieces of cake and pie. He does it with me, too, though I don't need as much urging. Dad remembers with pride the night when I was fifteen and the family went to a buffet that had a whole separate table full of desserts, and I got one of everything.

Part of this is my dad's personal aesthetic -- he grew up in the era of Marilyn Monroe, where a little wiggle in a girl's walk was considered a good thing. Part of it may be his disbelief that we women get full on less food than he does. But in recent years, I've come to believe there's a third contributing truth:

My dad is an Italian mom.

Food equals love. You doubt me? Mamaluke, what do you know? Hit yourself upside the head for me.

Ray Romano does a standup bit about Italian and Jewish "food mothers": If you want a lot more, tell her you want a little more. If you want a little more, say you don't want any. If you don't want any, you have to shoot her.

I haven't had to shoot Dad yet.

But that's because I usually do want another piece of cake.

Break Me off a Piece of That Kit Kat Bar

I'm thinking of giving myself a break from some activities. Improv in particular. This occurred to me on Monday. I thought two hours would be enough time to walk from my office to the library, putz around for a while, and then walk to improv class.

Nope.

I'm glad to have been involved in all these creative pursuits. But it would be nice to have time to putz around the library once in a while. Or buy hats for winter. Or groceries. Or do laundry. Or read those books I got at the library. Or lie on my bed and daydream. For hours. And hours.

Sometimes I forget how much freedom I have. I can take a break from improv at any point. I can come back at any point. I can explore other things. I can just watch TV for a few months. I can do anything.

The other night I went to Trader Joe's to see if anything caught my eye. The granola did. I was standing before the shelf for a while, trying to decide between two different kinds. And then I thought, "I could get both!" That sort of thing usually doesn't even occur to me. It felt so extravagant!

And then later, it occurred to me that maybe it was a little sad that that was my idea of extravagance, and that it took me so many years to do such a seemingly small thing as buy two granolas in a grocery store.

You know what else rarely occurs to me? Quitting things once I've started. But I can. If I want to.

I just need to figure out whether I want to. And I may have to figure out by doing -- or not doing, as the case may be.

Who Goes Home with the "Honor Student" Bumper Sticker?

Would you like to come to the Student Awards Night at my daughter's elementary school?

It'll be great. The kids and parents get so excited, and it's obvious the teachers take pride in their work. The band will play, there will be a little skit, and the PTA sells sodas for a quarter each.

Or how about this:

We had a big meeting at work today. They showed a whole slide show about the national sales convention. It looked like a ton of fun. I didn't go to the convention, so I don't know how it applied to me, but the sales people in the room seemed to enjoy reliving it. They announced some figures and statistics and I clapped when they said a number. And they gave us bagels. My coworker and I giggled when we saw people in the slideshow with bad haircuts.

What? You're not jealous? You're not eager to attend these events? You're not excited for the fifth grader and the salespeople? What could possibly be the reason?

Yet the entertainment industry is baffled by the fact that no one watches the Emmys.

I'll catch an awards show every few years, and as happens with my dad and Big Macs, that's often enough to remind me why I don't partake more often. I caught the Emmys on Sunday, landing there because I needed something on while I painted my toenails. What lured me in was this year's host, Neil Patrick Harris, whom I find endlessly charming. But I missed his opening number, and once that's done there's too much other stuff going on on an awards show for the host to be sufficient reason for watching. Well, I say "stuff going on," but what you really get is a night of lists. Here are six mini-series you haven't heard of till now. Here are dramas other people rave about. Here are comedies, two of which you may be able to catch on a regular basis. Here are actors on the cable channels you don't get, or the PBS station watched by people more sophisticated than you.

I can see why entertainment folks feel like they should be able to pull this off. They are, after all, professionals in all the areas required to produce a great show, something which could not be said of most other industries (tractor sales? PVC piping? come on). And perhaps, in the early days when Hollywood seemed inaccessible, there was something of the fairy tale when we watched stars on the red carpet (as opposed to the "Her dress is hideous!" snark we tend to indulge in now, myself included). I certainly don't begrudge creative folks the opportunity to be recognized by their peers; heck, I daydream about working as a creative type myself one day.

But I think that amidst all the analyzing about declining viewership and target demographics and changing technology, they may be missing one simple, key point:

Awards ceremonies are boring to everyone who isn't up for an award.

Awesome or Obscene, Depending on Your Point of View

Went to a housewarming today. There was a chocolate fountain! Chocolatefountainchocolatefountainchocolatefountain. There was fruit to stick in there. Bah! I took the last chocolate chunk cookie and smothered it. There was one fingerprint spot, left uncovered like Achilles' heels. That's OK. Still yummy. Obnoxiously yummy.

One Nice Thing about Having Roommates

...is that I can be social without having to be upright. I can go home, crash in front of the TV, be semi-conscious, and still be hanging out with someone. I like that. I like lying down. Sometimes the hardest part about meeting up with people outside the home is that I can't rest my head anywhere.

My Memory

On a Tuesday morning eight years ago, my car was in the shop. The engine had blown, and I was taking the bus to work. During my commute, we passed a minor but traffic-impeding accident between two cars in an intersection, and I remember being grateful that I wasn't one of those drivers. Their day was starting off badly.

I had no idea.

Of course, it was only 8:15, and none of us had any idea.

I first got the news from a customer who walked into the store. I was otherwise alone in the bakery. After the second plane hit, I turned on the radio and kept it on. But my human contact was with customers.

I remember feeling, and seeing and hearing in some other people, an excitement. Not happiness. Of course not happiness. But an energy, a heightening of our experience, as we were all thrown into a world where the glass window through which we viewed the chaos was shattered and the wind came rushing in. For those of us not touched by personal tragedy, was this an opportunity to engage, to take part in a spiritual battle or a physical one, to find a dangerous hole and try to fill it with our own courage? It was like feeling stunned and numb, yet raw at the same time. What would this reveal about us? Would things eventually settle down and go back to normal? Would we hear a call and heed it? Would we rise to a challenge, or shrink back? Would we get lost again in the details of our lives -- and was that necessarily an evil thing?

I learned that my uncle had made it out of the World Trade Center without injury. I hadn't even realized he worked there.

The phone chains went into gear in my church North of D.C., and in the evening we gathered in our auditorium to pray. That I was glad to do. In a situation too big for me to understand, I was only too happy to turn to the One who was even bigger than the situation, and who cared for the hurting -- and the perpetrators -- more than I ever could.

I wasn't angry, and I wasn't scared, and I wasn't sure if that was an indicator of something missing in me.

In the days and weeks that followed, and New York began burying its fallen firefighters and policemen, there weren't enough men and women in uniform to attend the funerals of their commrades, so my dad and other firefighters and cops from outside the city went down to attend the funerals.

I wondered if my brother, then a Navy pilot, would be sent to fight. I'm still thankful that he wasn't.

I don't think there was any one "right" response to what happened on 9/11/01, either in emotion or in action. Eight years on, I don't know what the proper balance is between somber remembrance and finding joy in the present.

Perhaps the imporant thing is to acknowledge the validity of both.

New Links!

I've been finding some fun blogs out there, and I've added the links to the column on the right side of this blog. Hope folks enjoy them!

Dismissed from drama school, with a note attached

The note said: "Wasting your time. She's too shy to put her best foot forward."

The dismissed student was Lucille Ball.

From one shy funny girl to another: Thanks for being brave, Lucy.

Filing Recipes Will Have to Wait

Every couple of weeks, I feel the need to have a long day at home where I can intersperse relaxing with getting some items crossed off my to-do list -- one of the luxuries of spinsterhood. If I have a second day like this, I can delve into those long-standing items, the ones I wrote down a year or two ago and still haven't gotten to. The problem with not being a hermit is that such days can be hard to come by, and the cupboards grow emptier while the laundry pile grows bigger (for the record, laundry and groceries are on the immediate to-do list, not the year-long one).

Well, it ain't gonna get done this weekend. Because my Jeter-stalking friend, Chris, and I will be heading to NYC for a weekend of being fabulous. Sex and the City without the sex. This will be aided by the fact that I found out this week that I'm getting a sizeable bonus at work! (Really, I never expected anything so huge. Ha --that's what she said!) My salary ain't huge, but this should at least give me an excuse to replenish my barely-hanging-on summer wardrobe, and have a few drinks and sleep indoors while I'm at it.

Hmmm. This might be at odds with my sleeping goal.

You're Getting Sleepy, Very Sleepy

Or maybe it's just me.

I was never more well rested than when I was a struggling musician. By the end of that four years, I was down to two days a week at my retail day job. Apart from that and church on Sunday, I didn't have scheduled activities till I started teaching in the afternoons. So I could come hom from rehearsals and gigs at night, unwind by snacking (or having a super-late dinner!) with a book or in front of the TV, then wander off to bed and sleep till 10 or 10:30. I woke up when my body wanted to wake up. Then I could lie there awake for a while, and maybe work out before showering. It was great. So great. Most of the rest of my life sucked, but that part was great.

No more. It's all about the day jobs now. And while to some folks I come across as quite conventional and square, I have a determined nocturnal streak that my will has not been able to tame. It likes junk food and late-night TV. It's not a partyer, but it has plenty of energy for evening performances and hanging out with friends. It likes to go to bed around 1. And while it often manages to hit the hay by 11 or 11:30, it still feels very sorry for itself on weekdays at 7am.

The struggle has increased since I got myself into so many improv activities, which are geared toward night people. I want to sleep. Honest I do. I'm good at it. But it's happening less.

I've recently read about the importance of sleep. This was hugely validating, because while my practice may not be great, my desire is usually for 9 hours per night. Conventional wisdom is that we need 8, and most folks consider that a luxury, so I felt like a slob for sleeping longer when I had the chance. But at least according to one article, folks regularly slept 9 hours 100 years ago. So maybe I'm not a bum. I'm just old-fashioned.

In our culture, busyness is like a competition. Songwriter Sara Groves wrote ironically, If you sit at home, you're a loser/ Couldn't you find anything better to do?. If you're going without sleep, it must be because you're busy, right? I kind of get tired thinking about it.

Last night I saw a Nova episode about sleep. They're still trying to figure out exactly why creatures need it, but based on studies done, it looks like one of the huge benefits is that the brain uses the time to work through, practice, and solve problems. One scientist theorized that by sacrificing sleep, we sacrifice wisdom! Not to mention the fact that we're mentally and physically impaired by tiredness, and the cost to health, well-being and lifespan can be considerable.

I don't want sleep to be something I save up for on one or two precious nights a week! I want to be rested, happy, and wise. Sleeping Brainy.

Cinematic Levels of Ick

If you were going to write a screenplay and make the Holly character look pathetic, it might go something like my evening.

We had our weekly improv performance. I'm not thrilled with how I did, but I'm getting over it by the time the second intermission comes around. Then I have a decision to make: Do I put my name in for the lottery? The lottery is where everyone who has improvised that night puts their name into a plastic pumpkin (like you'd use for trick-or-treating), and if your name is drawn, you get to do another improv set with the professional improvisers who've come to the show that night. The only rule, that I know of, is that you shouldn't put your name in if you got called the week before.

But I've been called twice already this term, and I didn't want to get called up too much, you know? On the other hand, I wanted to redeem myself after a weak showing earlier that night. After asking for the input of some of the other actors, I put my name in.

I got called. And our director, who drew my name, says as I walk up, "Did you get called last week?" I said no, and he said, "Holly's been lucky with the lottery." Which, combined with the insecurity I had already, left me feeling like everyone had seen too much of me and I was a selfish jerk for being up there again. So instead of getting out there more (my main frustration from earlier was that I'd been too quiet), I held back even more.

But wait, it gets better. After the shows, the actors and their friends go to this local pub. So I went, knowing I was too wound up to get to sleep after an upsetting show.

And I ordered my drink.

And I drank it alone, because no one else showed up. I just sat there by the window, looking to see if anyone I recognized was on their way.

Um, could something really romantic and redeeming happen now?