Author: sychela

Categories
Drew Nonfiction Theatre Work

Straightforward

This weekend we started tech.  The show in the other theatre at MTC closed this weekend, so there was an unfair juxtaposition there.  I spent a lot of time daydreaming about the close of this show and my return to normal life.

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know when to leave a party.  I always have to go back for that one last show – that one last production – I thought I got over this in New York, I thought I figured it out.  But no.  And the first three shows at MTC were great and I had a great time, but then I had settled it.  And it’s not like, this time, I made some grand choice – I mean I literally took this gig as a job, but still.  I feel like I should have learned a lesson by now.

I’m waiting to hear back about a job application at another theatre.  I really want to at least get called for an interview.  I had good, really relevant references for this one.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Yesterday, thanks to Columbus, Drew had the day off and so I didn’t go in to the Opera either.  We woke up at a time which I once would have called early but now call semi-sleeping in, ate breakfast, hung out, went to the 11:45 matinee of The Social Network, did 3 loads of laundry, caught up on new episodes of The Office and 30 Rock, caught the very end of the sunset, shopped for and made dinner, and watched Date Night.  A really busy and fun day…but I could use another week like that.

Today it’s back into tech, but I don’t have to leave here for another hour and a half.  So far I have been cleaning.  I’m going to tackle the bathroom next.  Glamorous life here.  Hope your Monday-Tuesday is going just as well.

PS. Upside-down tomato branches have actually resulted in red tomatoes.  Wow.  We tried one and it was not very tasty.  Waiting on the others, maybe we got a bad one?  Oh well.

Categories
Fiction

Tumble Dry Low

Need to kill some time?  I wrote this.  You can read it and praise me.

TUMBLE DRY LOW
Setting: A laundry room in an apartment building.  Anna’s clothes are in the dryer.  She is reading a book.  Robin comes in and throws her clothes into a washer, sits down.  She watches Anna’s clothes for a minute.

Robin: Almost dry.

Anna: What?

Robin: Your clothes are almost dry.  You know, they look pretty fluffy.  Not like when you first put them in, and they’re all wet and heavy and stick together in a big wet heavy pile.

Anna: Yeah, they’re almost dry.  (Tries to go back to her book.)

Robin: (Sighs) That must be nice, to have your laundry almost done.  I hate doing laundry.  (Pats her laundry hamper.)  I wish this was over, already!  What’s your least favorite household chore?

Anna: Um…sweeping, I think.

Robin: Oh yeah, and none of these apartment buildings have any carpeting.

Anna: Uh, nope.

Robin: I want to lay down rugs everywhere, but you know, rugs… (Shrugs)  They’re pretty expensive.

Anna: That they are.  (Tries to go back to her book.)

Robin: What are you reading?

Anna: Um…The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

Robin: Cool.  What’s it about?

Anna: I’m not really sure yet…I just started it.  I think it’s kind of about a big mystery, and Vlad the Impaler, and, um (waves hand) some other stuff.

Robin: Is it good?

Anna: Um…so far.

Robin: Cool.

(Anna nods.  She hates the way people say “cool” all the time when they have nothing else to say.  She reads for about 6 seconds.  Shayna comes in with a bag of laundry.)

Shayna: Oh hey…Robin, right? (Robin nods) – Oh man, are all the washers taken?

Robin: Yeah, I just got the last one. Sorry.  It’ll be done in 28 minutes.

Shayna: That’s cool, I’ll wait.  You’re Anna, right?

(Anna doesn’t really want to look up, but does anyway and nods.)

Shayna: I’m Shayna.  You’re across the hall from me…4B, right?  Your husband helped me out last week when my key got stuck.  Man, I thought I was going to miss the train, and then be late for work!  I was so worried.  I guess it just took some man power…you know what I mean?

Robin: Sure do.

Anna: (Smiles weakly.)  I’ll tell Joel you said thanks.

Shayna: Yeah.  What are you reading?

Anna: Um…The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

Robin: She says it’s about Vlad the Impaler.

Shayna: Cool.  Who’s that?

Robin: I don’t know.

Anna: (Reluctantly) He’s the guy that the Dracula stories are based on. 
From the 15th century.  He terrorized the Ottoman Empire. 
When the Turks finally killed him, they preserved his head in a jar of honey and it was displayed in Constantinople.

Shayna: Cool.  Are you into history and stuff like that?

Read the full text here

Categories
Endings Not awesome Sentiment Tomato

*Insert air violin*

RIP tomato plant.

It’s been getting shabbier and shabbier, and while there are still lots of green tomatoes on it, they didn’t seem to be ripening or growing any bigger.  I still watered it and fed it, but I wondered if the weather lately (ping ponging back and forth from hot to foggy) had done a number on it, or maybe it had gotten sick, or maybe I just inadvertently killed it somehow.

Last Tuesday there were people here, and one of them, acting unknowingly as my grief therapist, assisted me in first pinching off all of the dead leaves.  From there it was a slippery slope to me shouting “Let’s just pull it!”  A few people had told me that even if the plant is dead, you can take the branches and hang it upside down and the tomatoes will ripen.  When we tried to pull the plant out of the dirt, the entire 5 gallon block of Miracle Gro and roots came with it, which is when it occurred to us that this kitty litter bucket might have been too small for the size of the plant.

My therapist suggested we cut it in half and plant half in another bucket, but plants don’t come with dotted lines down the middle, and I was in a state of exhileration at this point.  So we hacked off the branches with fruit on them and hung them upside down, and then kicked all the crunchy leaves on the floor off the balcony.

The next day when I peeped out onto the balcony I beheld the saddest sight: some leaning over, leafless, scrawny branches, a mess of carnage on the floor, and a couple branches tied up with baby blue yarn, bearing tomatoes that I have to admit to myself will probably never be edible.

The weird thing is that I don’t really remember what prompted the slaying.  It feels sort of like looking back on a drunken or just very late night.  It’s somewhere between the “Oops, I shouldn’t have cut my own bangs” and “Oops, it wasn’t a good idea to slaughter my pet pot bellied pig and serve it up with barbecue sauce.”  Thank God this was “just” a plant and not a pet.  And thank God I never got around to naming it.

My basil is dead (although I didn’t really expect that to work out either, as I just bought a little basil plant from Trader Joe’s and stuck it in dirt) but the rosemary seems to be thriving.

I’ll try again with the tomatoes next year.

I had to clean everything off the balcony and get rid of the evidence because it was depressing me.  And making me feel a little guilty, honestly.

I’m not leaving you with a picture because I want you to remember the good old days, the days of lushness and prosperity.

I close my eyes only for a moment then the moment’s gone…
Dust in the wind…All we are is dust in the wind.

Categories
Beauty

A funny thing: a challenge!

Body image is a funny thing.  Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some soapbox tirade about how commercials ruin women’s self esteem or how everyone is beautiful in his or her own way.

But this morning I found myself in the car, no external pressure or reason to be thinking this, but suddenly I was thinking about my “asymmetrical eyes” and wishing they were better matched.

That’s when I realized that this is something that I think really matter-of-factly about: on my worst days I even sometimes picture myself as wall-eyed.  I’m guessing that no one would call me that, or even pick on my eyes as being too small, or too narrow, or tell me that my eyelashes are too short and pale.  Yet these are all things that I sometimes hone in on when I look in the mirror or at a photograph.

Yesterday in rehearsal I overheard part of a conversation between two actors.  One (male) jokingly asked the other (female), “Well, do you like the way you look?”  After the slightest of pauses she replied “Um…sometimes, depends on the day.”

Now, this woman is like 5’10”, slender and blonde.  She has crazy long legs and big eyes.  I have been admiring her bangs for days.  But after I heard her say that, I wanted to pick her apart and figure out what it could possibly be that she wouldn’t like about her physical appearance.

The thing is, even if I could point to her and say “Her nose is too big” or “She has lopsided ears,” I bet the things she focuses in on when she looks in the mirror are not even things I could pick out.

Even Drew has mentioned things he would change about himself, things that I can’t see once he’s pointed them out.  So guys are not immune to this.

Body image is a funny thing. 

I have a confession.  (And I bet I’m not alone in this.)  Sometimes I stare in the mirror, but not in a negative way.  I admire things about myself, let myself obsess for five minutes or so about a feature I particularly like.  I feel like that has to be healthier than obsessing about something I can’t change anyway.

So if you dare, leave a comment with something you love about yourself.  Something specific and physical that you are really vain about.

I’ll even go first.  I am proud of my teeth.  I never had braces and they are really straight, and the right size for my face and for my mouth.  There, that wasn’t too bad.  Your turn.

Categories
"Other people" Friends Home improvements

Payback

I have kind of a grudge against our upstairs neighbors.  They can be loud, both speaking (shouting?) and stomping.  Plus they have this dog that loves to whine loudly, and run back and forth through the apartment, especially late at night.  For some reason that sound travels right through the floor, which you’d think the carpet would help.  This is not some New York City parquet floor.

Also, their dog definitely goes crazy barking at people when they take him out for walks, which bothers me, because we all lived here first.  We got a flyer from the office on our door yesterday reminding us that everyone needs to pick up after their dogs, and in my mind, I’ve accused the upstairs neighbors of making those flyers necessary.

So on Monday night I was getting uptight because of all the yelling, screeching, and pounding going on up there.  We finally realized it was probably a football thing, which meant it went on for like 4 hours.  Annoying!  Please don’t disturb our 2-hour game of Super Scrabble.

But last night we got sweet sweet revenge, when eight of us piled into our living room to watch (and loudly approve of) the season 2 premiere episode of Glee.  Take that, tough-looking upstairs neighbors.

Categories
Books Drew

Walls and windows

A couple weeks ago I read a book called Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert, of Eat Pray Love fame.  It offered me some of the best marital advice I’ve ever gotten (which reminds me of a funny story about my mom).

I wish I had copied this straight out of the book but alas, it’s back at the library (or hopefully being read by someone else impressionable).  The book is called a sequel by some people, but I hope people aren’t disappointed when they read it and find it is hardly Eat Pray Love 2 (Eat Pray Love Returns? Son of Eat Pray Love?).

It’s more a history of marriage and it’s adaptations and evolutions over the years.  Each chapter is “Marriage and” something, for example “Marriage and Motherhood,” “Marriage and Religion.”  Again, I wish I’d taken notes.  It’s really interesting and covers a lot of ground, geographically and chronologically.

The basic plot that makes it a sequel is that Eliz and the man she falls in love with near the end of Eat Pray Love are blissfully happy together, and swear never to marry, having both been married before and liking things the way they are now.  But when he’s banned from entering the US, they have to face up to the fact that the quickest and easiest way to secure him a permanent visa is to be married.  So while they gather paperwork and get it processed (just under a year, I think) she travels with him and investigates the sacrament of marriage as it applies to many cultures and generations, in order to work out her own perspective and point of view on marriage.

But the part that really stood out for me, the best marital advice I’ve ever gotten goes something like this.  In every relationship, like a room, you have walls and windows.  The walls go up around you and you don’t let other people see certain things about the two of you and your relationship.  The windows are the parts you make public.  Sometimes, you will connect with someone outside your relationship and have an intimate and amazing conversation with them, in which you put up extra windows between you and this outside person.  Then you feel guilty so you don’t tell your partner, thereby putting up a wall between the two of you.  Then this continues until everything is so mixed up, there are windows and walls everywhere, and you end up making out with this new person, and then you cry to all your friends saying you weren’t “looking to cheat” and it “just happened.”

What Eliz says you should do, if you find yourself in that type of intimate conversation with an outside person, before anything goes any further, is you should go to your partner and say, “I had this incredible conversation with Mark today, like the kind you and I used to have, and I don’t know why I let that happen.  I would rather share these things with you, so let’s talk.”  Basically.

I think you can apply “walls and windows” to all sorts of situations, not just the example above.  If it’s true that your loyalty, first and foremost, should be to your partner, it eliminates a lot of guesswork.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have confidences outside your relationship (bestie girlfriends, anyone?) or that you should confess every single thing (sometimes I find myself doing this, and rather than titillate Drew I think it just bores him, LOL).  But I think that if two people can keep this concept as the foundation of their relationship, lots of trouble would be avoided over the years.  Walls and windows, people.

Categories
Memoir Religion Theatre Work

I did say it was indescribable.

Yesterday was the first day of rehearsal for 9 Circles by Bill Cain at Marin Theatre Company.  Being back there is really indescribable for me.  Driving up there was this huge mashup of feelings, from nostalgia for the days when I was paid hourly and contracted for longer than 8 weeks, to excitement at seeing people I’ve missed, to that crazy rush that floods you in the fall (you know what I mean).  We don’t get leaves turning colors in San Bruno, and I miss that.

Then add in the fact that I’m a little jealz of the people working on the mainstage show that opened last night (In the Red and Brown Water, part of the Brother/Sister Trilogy), and I kinda wish I could be back in the main theatre.  I did spend 6 months skulking around back there; I guess I was feeling a little territorial.  It’s cool, but it tinged my HAPPYNESS! with a little bittersweet edge.  Same thing when I thought of my friends there…we’re never going to be friends outside of work.  You know how you can just tell?  But I really love hanging out with them, like, between shows.  It’s so much fun, and I think I miss having guy friends around.  Where did all my guy friends go?

PS. Mill Valley is freaking gorgeous.  I think it must just look like Lake County and that’s why I’m so drooly over it all the time.  With leaves changing and clouds making dapples everywhere and everything smelling like woodsmoke and apples (or did I just make that up?)…  Even now I’m like flailing around in my chair trying to get out my feelings.  This is why I’m not a poet.  Ah beauty!

On my way home I stopped at Target and then store-hopped around the shopping center.  Running errands like this, especially when the sun has already set, makes me think of Christmas shopping.  It’s like around the corner!  Halloween stuff is everywhere!  Holiday time!  Omg!

Did I ever mention that in March/April, spring is my favorite month, but the rest of the year, it’s FALL?

Categories
Memoir

Stream of awkwardness

Omg, omg, the overly friendly guy who sits next to me at work (I sit upstairs with the telemarketers) just told me that when I take my lunch, he brought a suit for me to try on.  It apparently belonged to his fashion-forward cousin who just had – get this – gastric bypass surgery.  When he told me about this last week, he asked if I was offended and I said “Um, I’m not really offended I guess, but I gotta be honest, that’s weird.”  I thought that would be the end of it but apparently not.  Can I sneak out of here without saying anything?  I like this computer (they just gave me a new one and everything) and I like sitting here, is this guy gonna ruin it for me?  He’s always been, like, too friendly: I don’t even know how many times he told me I “don’t need to wear makeup like some women” and that I “shouldn’t feel like I need to go to the gym” to change myself…oh, but that I can go if I want.  But all these compliments are a little bit negated by the offer of pre-gastric-bypass-surgery clothes.  Am I right?

My phone just died so I can’t even send out texts or update my Facebook status about this awkwardness.  Omg.

Update: He slid the Macys bag over to me at some point and said “Just try it on, and then if you like it, no pressure, but if anyone asks, one of your lady friends downstairs gave it to you.”  I peeked in the bag and it was a pile of wool with a houndstooth pattern, and I started thinking, How cute would I look in houndstooth in the winter?  In my little skirt suit?  When he left his desk for a minute I pulled the skirt out of the bag and held it up, and it was (according to the tag) an entire 3 or 4 sizes too big for me.  Which made it not worth it anymore.

Last week when he first brought up this subject, he was telling me his cousin used to be “the same size” as me, “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”  Um, apparently you don’t because you overshot by quite a bit.

Categories
Being a girl Not awesome

I don’t read my mail anymore, man, it just makes me paranoid.

So WEEKS AGO I got a notice in the mail from Prudential saying that my IATSE Annuity Fund had been inactive for 6 months and that I needed to either tell them to keep it open, or if I said nothing, they would cut me a check for the balance: $13.62.

I have no idea why I would have an account through IATSE (which is the union of “professional stagehands, motion picture technicans, and allied crafts” – but not stage managers, who are part of the Actors Equity union) but I checked with Marin anyway, and they said no of course.  So then I carried this letter around with me for like 2 months, and never got around to calling to find out what it was from.

On Thursday night my parents stopped by our apartment on their way to San Jose, with a grocery bag full of pears, another grocery bag of vegetables, and a stack of mail.  One of the pieces of mail was a check from Prudential for $13.62, which I was like, Score!  Every little bit helps, right?  But this morning, I determined to figure out why I was getting this money (especially since technically I’ll have to claim it in my taxes next year), so I called the phone number listed on the letter.

I went around and around with the automated voice messaging system, trying not to put in my social security number and just get a person on the phone.  But it was stubborn so I finally just did it, said “I don’t have one” when asked for a PIN, and gave my date of birth.  They said they couldn’t find an account for me and to call back during the hours when they had someone working there.

Jeez, this makes me nervous.  A Google search for “Prudential scam” returns nothing of consequence except the standard page on Prudential’s website that says generically, “Sometimes people use our name in scams.  Call your bank” or whatever.  Part of me is like, This is the most thorough scam ever, if you don’t give in to your curiosity and give them your social, they still send you a check.  I don’t know.  I’ll have to call them first thing on Monday to allay my fears, but in the meantime I just hope it’s all right.  It probably is.  I should do a credit check anyway, I guess.

One of the other pieces of mail was a new credit card, like, with my name on it and everything, that I absolutely did NOT sign up for…but the other part of me is like, take it and activate it and never use it.  So I have to figure that out today.

Categories
Theatre Work

Take that, Iac

Yesterday was the final dress rehearsal for Aida at the SF Opera, and it was open to the public as well as to staff +1.  I took Molly as my +1.

It might be true that I’ve been listening to the cast recording of Disney’s Aida a lot.  So I’m kinda into all things Aida.  It’s like during Music Circus in 2003 when we were doing The Wizard of Oz, listening to the Wicked soundtrack during daywork, and I was reading Wicked.  Overload.

Opera is so fun, seriously.  I like reading the whole thing(supertitles), and I really like the parts where I get caught up watching and forget to read, but still follow along.  It’s just so big.

Because this was open to so many people, the house was just packed.  We were near the back of the orchestra off to the right side.  But there is another dress rehearsal (for Werther) this Saturday night that’s just open to staff, and I’m going to go check that out.  It’s another tragedy, I’m pretty sure Werther dies in the end.

There were times in Aida that I nearly risked getting my phone out and taking a picture, just out of excitement.  Since I managed to refrain, I had to draw some pictures of what I remember the show to look like.

I could only find watercolor paper, and crayons (actually I tried oil pastels first but it was a terrible disaster; and we have watercolor paint but no brushes).  So enjoy these three scenes from Aida (the opera, not Disney).

(That’s an elephant there, and Radames is riding it in.)

This morning I got Jared (New York roommate) to tell me the synopsis of the Disney Aida, including explaining the conceit of the show, with it beginning and ending in a modern-day museum.  This only makes me want to see it even more!

Here is an actual shot from their photo gallery…this is what I was going for.

(What? Did my pictures not look like this?)