Holding Out for a Hero

Today I wore a hat!

In other news...
I had never watched the TV show "Heroes." But my roommates have it on DVD, and I've been watching Season 1 all week. It's a lot of fun! I think I'd be driven insane if I had to watch it on regular TV, though, and wasn't able to rewind bits of dialogue I didn't catch. Or if I had to wait a week between episodes. Torture!

One of the girls in my improv class jokes about writing a comic book about a hero called Sarcasmo. I think most of us in that class can relate to that power -- and to being misunderstood and reviled because of it.

If I could have a super power, I wonder what I'd want it to be. I haven't seen Season 2 yet, so maybe someone can answer this for me: Do they have anyone with the power to command animals yet? That could be fun in a Dr. Doolittle/Tarzan kind of way. I'd probably be more like George of the Jungle, crashing into trees. Leopard skin could be nifty, although maybe it's a little bit jungle hooker. Gotta keep the jewelry understated with that ensemble. I think I'd like to ride on an elephant. Hey, maybe my parents' dog would finally come when I call her. She can be a stinker.

Perhaps I would also train a monkey to do my job.

Bling

I ordered some jewelry. I don't wear jewelry, but I'm trying to learn. As with so many other things, what other female humans learn in junior high, I am now learning in my thirties. Jude Blume books only taught me so much.

A few weeks ago, my friend Misten (you remember -- Derek Jeter's biggest fan and future wife) invited me to one of those parties that's like a Tupperware party but not for Tupperware. It was for jewelry. I know squat about jewelry. But as you know, I've been acquiring some pretty clothes lately, and this event seemed to go nicely with the recent increase in attention that I'm paying to my own appearance. I'm also a sucker for compliments, and when the saleswoman started putting pieces on me and everyone ooo'd and aaaah'd, I thought, Attention! Yay! More, please!

Then I was shown a necklace that can be worn as a belt or a bracelet, and the frugal Scandinavian in me thought, Why, this is practical!

The nail in my coffin was the wine. I have no eye for accessories, but after a couple helpings of the vino, everything in the catalog was looking good to me. What's the wine equivalent of beer goggles? Wine, uh, glasses?

Misten also said that men's attention is drawn by sparkly things. (Of course, mine is, too. It's also easily sucked in by cartoons and things that smell like butter.) Hey, can't hurt, right?

It shouldn't surprise me that the same principles I've been learning about clothes apply to jewelry as well: Different items look good on different people. Size, shape, color, brightness. A well-placed piece can accentuate what's most beautiful about you -- the color of your eyes, a long neck, a slender wrist, cleavage (OK, not so much for me on that last one). And the wrong pieces can make you look dumb. So don't wear those.

Now I need to get up earlier so I can put time into coordinating outfits and picking out the shiny bits to go with them. I'm not used to this. I'm used to being the chick to runs out of the house with wet hair because I'm cutting it close and I'm tripping over the mess in my room and I forgot to make a sandwich but I can bring an apple but I'd really like a sandwich too but I'm late but I can take the time out of my lunch break but I should really go, so I may be on time or I may be well fed or I may be neither but I'm rarely both. We'll see if I can be the girl in the well-coordinated outfit with the guy-catching sparklies and mostly-dry hair.

I still can't be bothered with eye makeup, though. That's another lesson, for another party.

Prodigal Denim

Today is a day of found things!

My roommate got her watch back after leaving it at her karate studio last week. And I got my jeans jacket.

For some reason, the jeans jacket was a really big deal to me. I couldn't let it go. I always hate losing things, but since I discovered it was missing yesterday, I actually prayed about it a lot. Tons of things went through my head: Am I being materialistic? Am I not trusting God to provide the funds to buy another one, or to help me find one that suits me the way the old one did? What's the deal?

I can explain some of the deal. It's a pretty useful article of clothing, and as I mentioned in my shopping post, it's hard to find items that suit you -- when you do, you pounce. The color, the cut and style, these all suited me. And I hadn't paid much for it -- I was afraid that to replace it, I'd have to spend $80 or so. Although I'm on a shopping kick, it irked me that I'd have to spend money on something I'd just recently owned. Besides, how can I enjoy the new clothes I've been purchasing, and enjoy the long-awaited means to buy them, if I'm being taught some lesson about not clinging to worldly possessions?

And did I mention that I hate losing things? I hate it. Don't you? It feels so wrong, like illness or betrayal.

I also become sentimentally attached to possessions. I chastise myself for this a lot, but perhaps it isn't straight-up materialism. Regardless of whether it's good or bad, it is.

The last place I remembered having the jacket was at the gym last week, so I called them first thing yesterday morning to see if they'd found it. Debbie, the very nice girl on the phone, checked the Lost and Found and every women's locker, and found nothing. When I came home last night, I dug through my room again. Nothing. Today, a desperate woman clutching at straws, I went back to the gym to ask again, and was the creepy chick opening every locker. Nothing.

I prayed the whole walk home from the gym. Giving the situation to God, asking that He would bring the jacket back to me. Or, failing that, that He would bless whoever took it (I prayed this reluctantly) and that He would provide one as good or better. I asked Him to help me trust Him by helping me believe that He cared about this, because I care about it, and He cares about me. I didn't want to hand my worries over to a God who thought I was bad and didn't deserve a nice jacket. I wanted to hand them over to a God who cares about our little things as much as He cares about our big things -- because when you think about it, compared to how big God is, everything about us is little. And if He wants us to be faithful in small things, then He must be faithful in small things Himself.

And really, who's going to trust a God if they don't believe they can really trust Him?

Well, long story made medium, I still held out hope that the jacket would be somewhere in the apartment. It made me happy just to think about getting it back. I came home, turned on the lights, walked into the living room, and there it was, tossed right on the couch. At first I wasn't even sure it was mine -- I checked the tags and labels to make sure. But hooray! Happy jacket. Happy happy jacket.

This may sound like a silly story of a messy girl who can't keep track of her clothes. But I'm confident that God is demonstrating that He cares about silly, messy girls and their wardrobes -- and loves said girls enough not to call them silly. I can trust Him to care about my desires -- for a jacket, or for a job. He cares about my feelings and my eyebrows and my safety and my acne. God is worth tears and leaps and psalms and potluck dinners and blog posts and endurance and study and long conversations.

While I was trying to figure out how messed up I was to miss a jacket so much, God was setting me up for a very nice surprise.

Thanks, Lord. I look forward to wearing my jacket tomorrow :-).

Night and Day

This is the difference between me at work and me at improv class.

Work: Cutting and pasting a few hundred questions into the proper format because the editor didn't wait for me to provide properly formatted files for the author.

IC: Walking around the room acting out "despondency, 6 on a scale of 10... now 7, now 2!"

W: My mind wandering for 30 seconds between each pasted question (Did I really leave my jeans jacket at the gym? Is it really lost forever? How will I find another one that suits me? How much will I have to shell out for it?)

IC: My mind running a mile a minute, coming up with opening lines for when it's my turn to start a scene.

W: Signing out the key to the sick room because I'm about to fall asleep at my desk.

IC: Constantly smiling, so pumped that an hour at the pub and a 45-min. commute home aren't enough to bring me back down.

Last week, the sermon at church touched on choosing to be happy in your current work situation. The easiest way for me to be happy at work is to enjoy the way it leaves my mind free to daydream about other things.

But improv class feeds something in me that isn't getting fed anywhere else. I wonder if this is the case for my classmates. Now that we're on Level 2, people are no longer there for purely functional reasons ("I want to give better presentations at work"); they're there because it's a lot of fun. I wonder how much I'm called to do this in a way that's unique and destined to be big, and how much it's just a good thing for anybody to do. I confess, I'm hoping for big things. But even if my big changes aren't going to come directly as a result of improv class, I'm glad to be doing it. It's such a gift every week.

One of the most remarkable things about it for me is that when I'm there, I'm there. I'm fully present. That's almost never the case for anything. It wasn't the case when I was a musician, even; I was usually waiting for rehearsal to get out so I could go home and eat. But in improv class, I don't wish I were anywhere else. This is novel.

I've been telling everybody to take improv classes if they can. Unless you're shy to the point of having a psychological disorder (and perhaps even then), I think pretty much anybody would find this fun. It's not all scary performance and trying to be funny. There are tons of group games where there's little pressure to perform, and you get to loosen up and laugh like a kid. It's like a moon bounce for your brain.

It even took my mind of my jeans jacket, which I have lost. I'm distrught. It looked rather sharp. All these fun new clothes I've bought, and no jeans jacket to wear over them! Whatever shall I do???

Improv can't bring my jacket back. I'm just going to have to absorb that sartorial blow and recover as best I can. But boy, it'll take your mind off the pain like a Percocet.

Percocet and a moon bounce, people. The giddy joys of improv class are calling you... calling... calling...

HEY! C'MERE! it seems to be saying.

Yes, that's definitely what it said.

Shirtless

Have I got your attention?

After mentioning Improv Everywhere in my last post, I went on You Tube and watched a few videos of their stuff. Food Court Musical was pretty funny. And I just watched one of a bunch of shirtless men wandering around an Abercrombie and Fitch store. Some of them I think were just looking for a chance to take their shirts off, but some were really regular-looking guys, and I admire their guts (ha!).

I'm posting about it because I wasn't strong enough to let that little joke pass by.

Links!

Check it out, dudes. I finally figured out how to get links to other blogs in my sidebar. Only took me two years! I also just set up a Sitemeter thingy, since I can't get to sleep. Now I'll know how few of you are reading this.

Hey, I found those corduroy pants! I've been trying to find some for a year or two. Such shopping craziness. I'm so rarely in the mood to go, so I figure I'll ride the wave. And I got another hat! The world is not going to be able to handle all my cuteness. I'm like a kitten hugging a rainbow.

Level 2 improv classes start tomorrow. It's been a month since Level 1 ended, and I was going into withdrawal. Though a few classmates and I did tide ourselves over a bit by taking our act onto the subway. I haven't told you about that yet! Have you heard of a group called Improv Everywhere? They're in New York, and now I think they have a branch in LA. What we did is like a beginner version of that. We just went onto the T (that's what we call the subway here in Bean Town) and started improvising -- odd conversations, dancing, whatever came to us. It almost scares me that it didn't scare me more. I've always wanted to be the kind of person who wasn't afraid to do this kind of thing.

It's one o'clock in the morning, and I'm wide awake. Maybe I'm excited -- new clothes and the prospect of improv class can make a girl positively jittery.

I read that if you can't sleep, it can be counter-productive to just lie there trying not to be awake. The article said it's OK to get up and do stuff, or you may just end up putting too much pressure on yourself, and that makes it even harder to fall asleep. Plus, you end up associating going to bed with striving and failure, which are not conducive to rest. Hence the late-night blogging. Oh, and did I mention I might be a bit excited? Sleeplessness is often how I can tell I'm pumped. Over the last 3 1/2 months especially, I've been quite jazzed about what God is doing, and all the things I feel free to hope for. I'm beginning to think that paying attention to pipe dreams may not be a distraction; it may be faith.

Shopping Theory

I've been on a shopping kick this week. It's a rare thing. Normally I hate shopping. I have no stamina for it. When I was fifteen and looking for a white dress for my confirmation, my dad took me to the mall. He kept asking if I wanted to keep looking, if I wanted to visit more stores, because he didn't mind. Meanwhile, I was dragging my feet and feeling like my brain was starting to ooze out my ear.

So I'm trying to take advantage of this burst of motivation. I'm having to fight my natural frugality to do it. So far, so good.

There's more to fight than frugality, though. Trying clothes on, and especially trying pants on, is a frustrating experience. In recent years, I've come to the conclusion that this has little to do with size and much to do with shape and proportion. And because each woman is shaped differently, the vast majority of items are not going to fit her, no matter how shapely or straight or voluptuous or thin she is.

It's like a job search, where the looking and waiting can leave you discouraged and feeling like everything in the world is wrong with you. After a dozen pairs of slacks that make me look lumpy, I can be tempted to make two dozen resolutions to eat more fruit and get to the gym more often. Then I'll find that one pair that looks great on me and I'll wonder what on earth was wrong with all those other pairs of pants. That's the goal: to find the pair that makes the other pants look wrong, rather than making me look wrong.

I write all this because I sometimes have other women say to me, "You're so thin, you can wear anything." This is completely untrue, and that's not false modesty or that self-deprecation most women are guilty of when it comes to their appearance. I look terrible in plenty of things. I just don't buy those things, so you don't see me in them. (Well, sometimes I buy stuff that doesn't look so hot on me, because it's cheap and I figure I'll just deal with it, but I'm trying to break myself of that habit.) I'd like to take women who are down on themselves on a shopping trip with me, so they can see me try on all kinds of awful looks and feel better about themselves.

It's all about finding what works for you, and it's going to be different for everybody. For example, low-rise pants were a Godsend I did not expect. I lean toward the modest side with clothing, so I avoided this style at first. But when I tried some on accidentally, I realized that they were just what I needed. There's a huge difference between my waist and my hips, and it's next-to-impossible to find something that will fit both. With low-rise pants, I don't have that problem! Hurrah! I've also discovered that stretchy items, rather than being awkwardly tight, can be quite comfortable.

This weekend, I head out again in my quest for corduroys or something equivalently casual. I've made several trips and come back with nothing (although sometimes I come back with something I didn't plan for, like last Sunday's hat and debit-card theft). But eventually I'll find the pair for me, and I'll look great, probably in a different pair than the one that will make you look great. And that's OK, because there's one for each of us.

Say It Out Loud if You Have To

In a piece I was working on today at work, an author misspelled democracy as decocracy.

Wouldn't that just be another word for patriarchy?

New Hat! Thievery!

On my list of things to do when I have money: Buy and wear hats. Well, friends, I have a little bit of cash, and I have bought a hat! Unfortunately, I don't know how to describe it to you, which doesn't do you much good. But I bought it and it's a happy thing.

You know what happened, though? Somewhere in the three purchases I made yesterday, somebody swiped my debit card number! Grrrrr! I got a call today from someone wanting to confirm that I had purchased some domain name. Neither it nor the company sounded familiar, and I was told that somebody must have used my number. Well, I'm glad it's been caught quickly. I called my bank and they're on the case. I expect they'll get the fraudulent charges erased; and if -- worst case scenario -- they don't, at least the purchases were very small.

Normally, I'd expect to feel bad about the inconvenience of it all, and would be worried that somehow it will fall on my shoulders to pay for someone else's crime. But there's an emotional consequence I did not expect from myself: Suspicion. When I was in college, our apartment was broken into while I was away for Thanksgiving. I was unruffled. But today, I found myself wondering whether the guy who made the intial call to me was honest. I wondered, as I was passed from one bank operator to another, whether I should be confirming my passwords and personal information over the phone. It was harder to trust everyone because one person out there has shown themselves untrusworthy. And for that I am pissed. For unrelated reasons, I've been thinking lately about what a big problem I have with blind selfishness and disregard for others, and this added fuel to the fire. The person who trips the final wire in the minefield of my temper will be most unfortunate.

But while I'm giving them an earful, I'll be looking cute in my hat. Pretty hat!

I Love the Gym

But don't worry, I haven't become so distracted in my affection that I can think of nothing else. I've actually missed many a date with Gym. But when I go back, I remember why I love him so. He makes me feel pretty.

And it's nice to get reacquainted with my muscles. I lean toward the scrawny side, so it's easy to look at me and wonder where they are. Well, they're there, lifting tiny little 5lb. weights and feeling happy that they were invited to the party at all. Sometimes they'll even step into the spotlight and show Miss Cellulite she's not the only girl in the room.

Speaking of parties, this is my 200th post! A seasoned blogging veteran, I am.

Vlog

Today's post is brought to you by the letters B and V.

I kinda dig linguistics. Not enough to be in any way proactive about it, of course. That would be work (or, in Spanish, trabajo. I think.) Just enough to think, "Huh" about certain things. Like, have you ever noticed how much the letters B and V sound alike? And how when you cross from one language to another, sometimes one replaces the other? Take the aforementioned trabajo. Does anyone out there know if it's related to our English word, travail? I'd be willing to bet a Snickers bar that it is. Marquioni, as the reader who knows the most about Spanish, can you tell me whether I'm onto something, or if I'm completely off my nut? I know I work at a textbook publisher and all, and I have access to books where this information would be readily available, but that would mean looking things up.

If I'm right, and B and V do occasionally do each other's trabajo, then I feel somewhat vindicated (or bindicated). In college, I had a classmate whose last name was Satava. But I had never seen it written; I'd only heard it said aloud. I once had to write it, asked about the spelling, and was told, "It's just like it sounds," upon which I spelled it Sataba and was laughed at. Meanies.

And am I alone in thinking that V is a cooler letter than B? I think that's why we have V for Vendetta and not B for Boo-Yah. Perhaps this is an issue for Sesame Street to tackle. Surely they'd find a way to address it while preserving B's self-esteem. Perhaps V is cooler, but that doesn't mean B is any less valuable. He's kind of cute, in a chubby, ticklish sort of way.

Work-Related Injury

I am all alone.

As people leave my office "to pursue other opportunities", my workplace becomes quieter and quieter. Which means I get away with more and more. I've been the only person in my whole block of cubicles for weeks, and yesterday the offices along the wall also emptied. So I've gotten braver about singing along with the songs on my Pandora Radio. It's way fun. But today I got a little carried away today, doing a Muppet dance to Maneater in my chair, and conked my ankle against a metal bar on the stool I use as a footrest. Owie.

Not much else to distract me here. I feel like I should be singing cowboy songs -- just lonesome me and the tumblin' tumbleweed...

Understandably Misused Words

Would it be too obnoxious to complain again about some word mistakes I hear? I'm pretty good about not correcting people, I think, but a girl's gotta vent her grievances somewhere. I even looked these things up, to make sure I wasn't nuts.

1. To quote a T-shirt a friend of mine has, "There is no 'X' in 'espresso.' "

2. Nor is there an "X" in lackadaisical. I think people combine it with lax.

3. There is no hard "C" in et cetera, which means it's pronounced et-set-er-a, not ek-set-er-a.

4. It's not wrong to pronounce the "T" in often, but I find it unnecessary. We don't pronounce it in soften.

5. If you're on guard or cautious, you're wary, not weary. Weary means tired. I think people combine wary with leery.

6. If you're haggling over a price, you're bargaining, not bartering. To barter means to trade without the exchange of currency -- like swapping raccoon pelts for blankets.

So there they are, a few of my little pet peeves. Gotta run, but feel free to add some. And if I got something wrong, well, I'm pretty much asking to be corrected, aren't?

Faceless on Facebook

I done been taken to task by my Mama for not posting enough. I can't argue. I confess, I can't quite figure out how to handle the blog, Facebook, email -- all these things I want to do to keep in touch with people and respond to what they've written, without falling into another legalistic situation where it becomes all pressurized (the pressure coming from myself).

I wouldn't even have a Facebook page if I hadn't been invited to join a group there. I don't think my profile is complete. I definitely don't have a picture up. And I might not have specified my gender, because it seems to think I'm a man. It has been nice to be found by people I haven't been in touch with for years, so that's something cool. I usually accept the games and add-ons people send me, which means that, among other things, I'm a knighted hottie werewolf with the power to freeze people and the beginnings of a vegetable patch that will end global warming.

I should know better than to make predictions about future diligence, but I sometimes think I'd be better at keeping up with online communication if I didn't spend all my working hours in front of a computer, and I wonder if you all would hear more from me if I had work that suited me better. There are vague memories bouncing around my head of my time as a musician, when email was something I looked forward to, and wasn't merely a desperate distraction from, uh, work-related emails. Of course, when I land my dream career, if I'm still just as delinquent as ever, you'll know it's not the job at all; it's just me.

Speaking of which, I've amended by hoped-for job description: Rock-Star Actress Comedian Writer Princess. That last item is new. A bit different from the others in that one must marry into it, but it seems like the surest way to end up living in a castle. So if you run into any Scottish dudes (or lads, I should say) of royal lineage, let me know.

Just don't send them to my Facebook page.

Free Horribleness

Hi, guys! It looks like you can watch Dr. Horrible for free now, because they're showing it with commercials or something like that. So, in case the whole payment thing turned you off last time, here's another shot: http://drhorrible.com/

There's a button for "watch it right now."

Sample lyric, to whet your appetite:
This is his dry-cleaning bill -- four sweater vests!

Tired Girl

I work not with the reading material people buy for pleasure, but with textbooks.
Not with the textbooks themselves, but with the supplements that accompany them.
Not with the content of the supplements, but with the formatting.
And the production schedules:
Has authoring begun yet?
No, that's late. Will that make the supplement late?
Yes, that will make it late.
It's taking a while for the author to answer the copyeditor's queries, too. Will that make it late?
Yes, that will make it late.
I just sent the author some files I found, rather than wait for you to send me formatted ones. Will that affect the formatting?
Yes, that will affect the formatting, and it will make it late, because it will take time for me to fix it all.

Are you bored yet? Falling asleep, maybe? Me, too. Literally. I fall asleep at work. Shhhh, don't tell anyone. You might wake me up.

I start to feel tired on Saturday night, at the thought that only one day separates me from having to return to my job. Most days I don't hate it, but some days I do. And I'm always looking forward to the weekend, when I'll be able to rest. I haven't figured out how much of my tiredness is related to my medical condition (which has improved since the second surgery -- yay!); how much to my lack of inspiration at my job; how much to my lack of physical activity (which my roommate and I will try to change this coming week); how much to the fact that I'm nocturnal, and I won't be well-rested until I'm allowed to sleep past 9am on a regular basis; and how much is my non-physical temperament, which means I'm always more inclined to recline than to jump up and down. Whatever it is, it feels physical, mental and emotional -- the Complete Tiredness Package.

The thing is, I've had worse, at least as far as jobs go. I've done retail, where I was constantly apologizing to customers who assumed that because I was wearing an apron, I must be stupid. I've worked in sales, where the boss liked to call people into his office on a regular basis an yell at them (and I mean yell). I've temped. I've earned much, much less than I do now (which is really saying something). So I haven't been inclined to leave my current job unless I found something fabulous to take its place; I need a benign job to keep the bills paid while I figure out what I really want to do, and this job fits the bill.

At least it did.

This past week, I started wondering if there might be a better interim job, something that could be a stepping stone to the pipe dream. I certainly don't want to pick something arbitrarily, and I'm wary of getting stuck in something that's just good enough to keep me complacent and cause me to stop looking for my ideal. But maybe there's something out there that would be worth smiling about in the morning.

I do OK. It's a bit like math and science in high school were for me: I'm smart enough, and work hard enough, but they sure as heck weren't my strong points. I can get the job done, but it doesn't showcase any of my greatest gifts (except for some people skills). And now that most of my immediate colleagues have left and I'm picking up their work, I find myself being asked on a fairly regular basis to do tasks that I just barely understand. It's like spending all day writing with my left hand. Oh, did I mention that I work with computers all day? Surely the it's only a matter of time before the incongruous pairing of me and computers tears a whole in the universe, creating a vortex into which space, time, and reality itself are sucked and altered forever.

I hope that doesn't result in a new universe in which I'm again asked to work with computers. Then the vortex wouldn't be the only thing that sucked.

Anyway, this isn't to complain. It's just what's going on. In the interest of balance, here's some good stuff about my situation: I love having a salary, with paid sick and vacation days and holidays. I like not having the pressure of having to job-search, especially as I don't yet know what kind of job I'd want to search for. Because my salary has gone up a bit and my rent has gone down a lot, I feel financially comfortable for the first time in my adult life (this is a biggie!).

So yeah, it could all be much worse. Much, much worse.

But I'm still holding out for better.

Smouldering Wick

I am in possession of a book which bears the same name as my blog, albeit with a classy British "u" in "Smouldering." It's in the form of a devotional, which means it's a collection of very short essays, usually less than one page each, and is meant to be taken in small doses rather than read in large chunks.

So far, I'm recognizing the thoughts expressed by Adam Pope, the author, as lessons hard-learned. On the surface, many of his statements appear simple, even obvious, but I know that in my own life it took painful, difficult experience to drive these truths home in my heart. I'm enjoying having these lessons reinforced. And when I run into lessons I have yet to learn myself, I'm confident that they come from a place of experience, even though it's an experience I haven't been through (yet).

Adam's style is unique (or at least unusual enough for me not to have seen it before) in that he writes in the second person, as if talking to himself. It's important to keep this in mind when reading. We're not used to hearing or seeing "you, you" unless it's from a preacher or teacher, someone looking us in the eye or pointing a finger. But these are the reflections of a man wrestling with God, on his knees before God, on his face before God, asking himself honest questions and telling himself truths he doesn't want to forget.

If you enjoy the more serious, contemplative parts of my blog, you may enjoy this book as well. You can check it out here:
http://www.mioomi.com/adampope/

One Great Aunt

I spent the last several days travelling to and from New Jersey to be with family and celebrate the life of my great-aunt, Evelyn, who passed away this past Saturday. She was a woman who was good at eating, drinking, and being merry, so we did all these things in her honor.

Some fun facts about my Aunt Evy:
She loved Atlantic City and would talk gambling with my brother.
She chose her restaurants and pubs based on whether they gave twofers -- a chip good for a free drink when you bought one.
She spent her whole life near the shore, and I never saw her without a tan.
She was 91, but lied to her boyfriend by telling him she was only in her eighties.
She was the most efficient phone-call ender I ever met. No conversation was left to linger.

Fun Story #1:
She no longer drove, so Clarence, who lived next door to Evy with his wife, would give her rides when she needed them. His hearing wasn't great, so one day when she knocked on his door, he couldn't hear her over the TV. So she let herself in. He had been sitting in his underwear, and he quickly tried to cover himself with a newspaper. She waved her hands dismissively, saying he didn't have anything she hadn't seen before. After which she walked over to him and gave him her latest request: "I want a third husband... who can drive at night."

Fun Story #2:
A couple years ago, my cousin got married. There was some difficult and painful family history, which the priest decided to detail in his homily. It was awkward, long, and from what I'm told, boring. At long last, Evy leans to the person next to her and asks, none-too-quietly, "Is he still talking?" To the disappointment of all in attendance, this was not enough to stop him.

Fun Story #3:
One Christmas, my brother flew low over the tiny airport near my parents' home. This was planned, and my dad and I headed out with the camcorder to videotape the event. It was cold, so I had on this big L.L.Bean barn coat, and my dad caught some footage of me in it. Evy sees the video and says, "You look so fat!"

I made my first purchase of keep-at-home alcohol a couple weeks ago, and tonight I broke it open and made myself a drink, which I now raise to Evy: Here's to the great-aunt who loved Manahattans and her family; who always owned multiple swimsuits; who was barely five feet tall, but could fill a room with her personality; who was first to belly up to the bar at her 90th birthday party; who never stopped sending me birthday money, because she knew I could really use it.

Here's to you, Aunt Evy.

Joined at the Brain

One of my roommates showed me some video clips by these guys:
http://www.umbilicalbrothers.com/site/stuff/videos.php

Not really brothers, but they're so in synch with each other and their performances are amazingly tight. A couple things are rather random (not sure how Yogi Bear ended up getting shot on the Leno show), but I was blown away by how much they communicate with only their movements and human sound effects. And Australian accents are hot.

Little Girl, You're in the Middle

Friends, I have wretched news to report: In my improv class, I fear I may be -- gasp! dare I say it? -- average. I don't get all the laughs or all the attention or all the praise. Sometimes I screw up. Sometimes I'm not even noticed at all. Tragedy! Abomination! Mortification! Frick-knickers!

I know you're as shocked as I am.

But really, it has taken a fair bit of mental and emotional discipline on my part not to get discouraged by the absence of good grades and gold stars. I'm a good little Lisa Simpson, accustomed to accolades from her instructors. When I don't get that, I wonder if I'm any good at all. I went into this class knowing that I'd have off days, and that one of the big reasons for learning improv at all was to practice taking risks and learning to make mistakes. I knew I was a beginner, and that I couldn't expect to master the art without putting in time and effort. And the last several years have taught me that some things just take time, and they cannot be rushed; like with physical growth, you can make choices that are helpful (eating well, getting rest), but they can't accomplish the work of years overnight.

I've learned big lessons in recent months about what I listen to -- what criticism is unfounded, what praise is worth absorbing. This is proving helpful in the silences, when I'm left with only my own assessments of my performance. I don't obsess over what might be wrong. I allow myself to see the pattern of what God is affirming in me, both directly and through other people: My humor, my gift with words, my performance ability... even physical beauty (but that's a whole 'nother blog post). So, I'm still enjoying improv, even though each class doesn't end with the instructor telling everyone to look to me as an example, or calling me off to the side to confide that he hasn't seen talent like mine before. (OK, no class has ended that way.) I'm just learning, and practicing, and waiting, and seeing where things go.

Although, hey, maybe this need for praise, applause, and approving laughter is proof that I was, indeed, born to be an actor.