Categories
Drew Nonfiction

“I’ve got the TV, the laptops, I’ll just grab the dishwasher and then I’m outtie”

So we come home from grocery shopping today, and when we come around the corner to our door, Drew looks back at me, panicked, and then pushes the door open.  And I realize that the door, which we definitely left locked, was open.

Once we’re both inside we see there’s a guy, dressed in the maintenance garb of our apartment complex, crouched on the floor in front of the dishwasher.

I think we say something like, “Um, what are you doing here?”

He says he has a work order, with our apartment number, to fix the dishwasher.  We say we did not place a work order and that the dishwasher works.  He says it was draining, so he was confused.  We send him out.  He leaves.  We both take deep breaths.  Then I get on the phone with the office to try to find out what the deal is.  It’s like 10 minutes to 6:00 on the day before Thanksgiving, and I’m glad they even answered.

The woman who answers the phone is the dumbest one in the office, so Drew and I both roll our eyes and he says things loudly like “Ask if Diana is there, put her on the phone, this girl doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

The dumb girl says things like, “Oh, maybe there was a mistake” and “I’m sorry if there was a mistake” and I say things like “No if there was a mistake” and “We didn’t request this and there was a man [who I’d actually never seen before, although Drew said he’s seen him before] in our apartment.”

About five minutes after we got off the phone, Diana called me back to apologize personally, because she’s the one who wrote down the wrong apartment number.  That was nice of her, she didn’t have to do that, and I appreciate that.

Overall, it was fine.  He was a maintenance guy, he just wanted to fix a broken dishwasher in the evening of the day before Thanksgiving.  Neither of us meant to give him a hard time for doing his job.  But it was frightening to come home and find our front door not only unlocked, but cracked open.

And while I don’t mean to come across as a bitch, shooing him out and then being on the phone with the office, clearly upset, when he walked back in there with his bad work order…what if it had been just me coming home alone?  I would have freaked out.  I only stayed fairly cool about it because I came in behind Drew and so by the time I caught on to what was going on, we already knew it was a maintenance guy.

And he wasn’t in the living room flipping through DVDs…he was crouched on the floor in the kitchen with a wrench.  Worst thief ever.

Adrenaline rush!

Categories
Beauty Books Drew

There’s been a change in me…

So last night found me watching Watch What Happens Live, an interview show where Andy Cohen talks with people from Bravo TV shows, particularly the Real Housewives.  His guest was Kim Zolciak, from The Real Housewives of Atlanta.  I think Atlanta is on the far trashy-and-stupid end of the Real Housewives spectrum, and so I spent the first 20 minutes of WWHL making fun of Kim (who is particularly trashy and stupid).  I called out her lack of interview skills (she spent a lot of time looking down or just not at Andy); when she said “Do I look fat or something?” I said yes; and I was eager to watch her “perform” one of her “songs” at the end of the show.

We came back from a commercial and she was sitting on a stool, sort of bobbing her head with a track, and then she started “singing” along with the pre-recorded song.  It was awful.  I mean, truly awful.  She’s not a good singer, but she also lacks any confidence, so her “dance moves” are all half-hearted and self-conscious.  Like when you watch a middle-school production of a musical where they all have to dance and sing.  It even fell out of the “delightfully bad” range and into “painful and pathetic.”

Afterwards, Andy told her she sounded great, which was sweet of him, I think he’s a nice guy who’s just stuck with a superficial job.  Then he started taking phone calls from viewers, one of whom asked Kim, “Will you ever sing without a track?”

Kim said, “Well, that was me singing, the microphone was a lot louder than the background singing.  So you heard me.”

The caller said, “But will you just sing now, without any music?”

So Kim kind of intoned, “I’m not a material girl…”

And then you heard the caller and her friends laughing hysterically.  And Kim looked down and away some more and didn’t really talk very much for the final couple minutes.

And I found myself suddenly feeling sympathy for the trashy, self-centered Real Housewife, with the giant blonde wigs and the short tight dresses and the married boyfriend (“Big Poppa”) and the “singing” career.

Jeez.  It’s like…you don’t want to feel sorry for them.  That ruins everything.  I think this may have changed, if not the way I view all the Real Housewives, then at least the way I view Kim.  Darn.

Categories
Drew

Nov 13

So it’s been a year since our most wonderful wedding day at Tilden Park in Berkeley.  In celebration today we went to pick up our most wonderful anniversary cake from Julie Durkee at Torino Baking (she is the best!).  We had a very chill day and then we went to Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay for dinner.  So far we have only eaten one quarter of our cake (and that includes a third party eating a piece too).

Jealous?!

Categories
Drew Theatre Work

(7+2) (OOO)

Tonight was closing.  I was not sad.  Except we finished the show, and everyone gathered on the stage and drank champagne and told stories about how successful the run was and how much we all like each other, and then I felt a little sad.  And then strike didn’t exactly happen, because staff is all involved in the tech next door, so eventually I sort of struck, and then I couldn’t find the people I was talking to so I just left.

I’m going to miss those actors.  They are good people.  And I think I accidentally promised one of them I would be back as a dresser on Seagull in February.  Which…yeah.

I feel tired.

But this week is going to be fun.  For the first time…ever…we’ll both be home from work every day by 4:00.  Thursday we’ll both be home all day.  Then this weekend is very special, because one year ago we had delicious cake, and this Saturday we get to have more cake.  It’ll be like a vacation.  But we’ll both still be working.  Yay!

Categories
cars Drew Fiction Sentiment

The fuzz and the guts

My first speeding ticket happened when I was driving back from school clothes shopping in Ukiah with a friend from Mendocino.  My third speeding ticket happened when I was rushing to Solano’s Beauty and the Beast rehearsal in Suisun City, after I had missed the exit southbound and was already running late and didn’t actually know where Suisun City was.

My second speeding ticket happened after a family lunch in Santa Rosa, and I was headed back to Davis and was trying to find the exit for 37 at San Rafael, but I missed it and got almost to the Golden Gate Bridge, and I was trying to make it back for an IS event that night, and (I know now that) all that highway south of San Rafael is 55 mph, and a cop pulled out of a speed trap just north of the bridge and got me.

I drive past that speed trap every single day (never going more than 62 mph) and every single day I think of that speeding ticket.  I haven’t actually seen a cop there again, even though I check every time, and anyway there is always someone cruising along in the fast lane.  But it’s strange that I could think of something that happened in 2003, almost every single day.

Nanowrimo starts on Monday so I figure one of two things will happen: I will either disappear from this blog, or I will post snippets of the amazing Nano writing I’m sure I’ll be doing.  In the meantime, here’s a picture of the pumpkins we carved today while we watched Anastasia and sang along.

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
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
Drew Sleep talking

LOLs

1. I was just on Facebook and changed the page before I realized this, but on my home page were 2 things for me to potentially “like”:

          LOST!
          1, 342, 857 people like this

          JESUS CHRIST
          493, 400 people like this

2. It’s my fault for having the light on and typing too loud in our room, but Drew (who has to get up in 5 hours) just had this sleep-talking conversation with me (out of nowhere, I might add):

Drew: You really broke up with the one on the left.
Syche: …What.
Drew: The left.  The left.  One of the characters.  (Sits up)
Syche: What characters?
Drew: In the — In the computer.  (Jerks head toward computer.)
Syche: Um.
Drew: On the left.  The left.  (Rolls over.)  YOU know.

Usually I’m in bed with the lights out when this happens, so I’m so glad I was able to grab a pen and record this for you and for posterity.

Categories
Awesome Beginnings cars Drew Family Memoir Sentiment

One year: California

 

I can hardly believe it, but a year ago today Drew and I arrived in California with a van packed full of our stuff (see above) and a camera full of pictures from our warp speed drive from NYC.  We arrived one day ahead of schedule (earning us back a day’s refund on our rental car – totally worth it).

I am so happy that we decided to drive back.  Driving across the country was kind of inspiring.  I just flipped through the Facebook album I made when we got back, and there are some really great pictures in there.  A lot of the landscape and the way it changed over 3000 miles.

Iowa, one of the best states.
I think this is Nebraska...I have like 15 pictures of this labeled "Void 1," "Void 2," etc.
Colorado, or Wyoming, something like that.

One year later, I still think it was the right thing for us to do, to come back.  I don’t think that we “gave up” or that New York “got the best of us,” especially considering we had a pretty sweet setup out there.  It was a good life for three years but I guess we both knew it wasn’t going to be our life forever, and it was time to get that party started.

Right now, Liz and Bill are packing up their lives: putting a ton of boxes in storage, giving away a bunch more, and packing up a few suitcases and their cat, and in a week they’ll be flying out to New York City.  They will go from the airport to their sublet in Brooklyn (sound familiar, anyone?) and try to orient themselves to a lifestyle completely unlike what they’ve been living.  While a little part of me is jealous over this blank slate, most of me is just plain excited for them…while also being relieved that I don’t have any packing/unpacking in my near future.

I am ready for an NYC vacation, so hopefully we can get it together soon.

In the meantime, I can see the Pacific Ocean from where I’m sitting, and even though I just saw my parents less than a week ago, I’ll see them again next weekend.  It’s 68 degrees here and I’m wearing socks to keep warm (sorry, New York friends).  I miss New York, but not the way I missed California.  Plus, think of the stories to tell my kids about my reckless youth.

Categories
Awesome Books Drew Sentiment

At least mine were human, Agatha.

I recently remembered this game I used to play when I was a kid and couldn’t fall asleep.  I would lay in the middle of my bed and make up this family for myself – all my own children – and take as long as possible thinking up all their names and ages.  There was always at least one set of twins.  There was no father involved, I don’t think that even occurred to me.  Then I would imagine the circumstances leading to our poverty, and why my 10 children of varying names and ages, and I, all had to share a bed.  I would assign them places around me.  Usually by the time I got to this point I was tired from all the cogitating, and would fall asleep.

When I told Drew about this, he said, “You used to daydream about being a single mother of 10?” which really put it into perspective.

But kids play weird games when they’re by themselves, and I offer this proof, from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, published in 1977:

From as early as I can remember, I had various companions of my own choosing.  The first lot, whom I cannot remember except as a name, were “The Kittens.”  I don’t know now who “The Kittens” were, and whether I was myself a Kitten, but I do remember their names: Clover, Blackie, and three others.  Their mother’s name was Mrs Benson.
          Mrs Benson was terribly poor, and it was all very sad.  Captain Benson, their father, had been a Sea Captain and had gone down at sea, which was why they had been left in such penury.  That more or less ended the Saga of the Kittens except that there existed vaguely in my mind a glorious finale to come of Captain Benson not being dead and returning one day with vast wealth just when things had become quite desperate in the Kittens’ home.
          From the Kittens I passed on to Mrs Green.  Mrs Green had a hundred children, of which the important ones were Poodle, Squirrel and Tree.  Those three accompanied me on all my exploits in the garden.  They were not quite children and not quite dogs, but indeterminate creatures between the two.

This only makes me love her more.

Speaking of kids and their trains of thought, here’s an excerpt or two from Drew’s third-grade in-class journal.  These are all responses to writing assignments.

And my personal favorite:

This is turning into Blast from the Past week.