Dear 34 & 35

So here is the deal, let’s face it 34 you kind of sucked! Not all of you, but a fair share of you did. I mean it took 6 months to diagnose The Chaz issues, then another month to recover once The Chaz was removed. Add a really long 2 month bout with bronchitis, I have not felt well for 3/4 of this year. I spent more in medical bills than I did on college, and let us be clear I spent a ridiculous amount of money on college this year. So 34 I am not sad to see you go away; you were not my favorite year. Now, before I send you away in tears, I really did have some great things happen this year too … my first trip to Europe was pretty amazing. Seriously can a year be totally bad if it includes a trip to Italy and France? I submit to you that it cannot!! Of course I also went to Spain and I did not like Spain; but I digress. I am now the very proud godmother to an adorable little boy. My 3 nieces and 1 nephew are amazingly healthy and still seriously adorable. Mom is still in remission and really can I ask for more? The rest of the family is doing relatively well; I mean for the first time in a long time everyone FINALLY is employed!! So not all bad of a year. I was able to play onstage again which I loved! I took my first ballet class which was amazing. I was able to see many great theater productions, which to me is the breath of life sometimes. I bought a house and one day I may even actually live in it. I just directed an outrageously funny play. So I guess 34 you did have some redeeming moments.

35, here is the deal, I have great hopes that you will be nicer to me than 34 was. Really can a year that starts playing in Disneyland be all bad? I submit to you that it cannot. Sure last year was Italy, but DL has It’s a Small World and I am sure I can catch a glimpse of Italy there. We get to have a new friend join our family in 5 months or so, and we all know I love new friends in my family. So here is what I would like from you 35: I would like to be able to replace the savings I spent on medical bills and school in 34, I would like Mom to remain in remission, I would like to keep all of my organs inside and functioning, and I would like our family to have a relatively easy go of it this year. I know that is a lot to ask, but it is what I would like for my birthday. Oh and world peace. Too much to ask?

An inadvertent fish killer

Now before you call PETA, please let me explain. It is true, I am not an animal lover, but I am not an animal hater. I would never kick a dog (I admit to kicking a cat once, but he was the spawn of Satan himself and jumped on my feet so the kick was a reaction ... Harry did not attack my feet after that, lesson learned!) I am allergic to most furry animals, so it is just best we live in different worlds. However, I like fish. I always have, and I always will. My fish Gwen died last month, I had her for a few years. I already am planning where a nice aquarium will live in my house. Since I want a nice big one I have a plan for buying it over time so I do not go broke buying fish. There is the back story, so when you hear the current fish dilemma you will be more understanding of how traumatic this is for me ... and the fish. I am not a serial fish killer.

I really wanted to dress the set of The Curious Savage with some fun treasures. People in the cast have put a small personal object on the set that is just theirs. I have a giraffe that my Mom gave me last year, there is a Navy hat, a pair of shoes, sheet music, the Thinker, etc. I thought it would be fun for the cast, and it was! I also added a bowl of goldfish to the set; it sits on the bookcase which was brilliantly dressed by Craig. I bought 3 goldfish at first (these are the 15 cent feeder goldfish, by the way) and all three lasted a week, and then died. Their names were The, Curious, and Savage. So then I went back to the store to replace them. The lady would not sell me 3 more fish, she would only sell me one at a time. (Story for another day, and is best told in person!) Thinking that this fish might also die, I also bought a beta fish as a back-up. So fish #4, The Curious Savage, died after a week also. I guess these little 15 cent goldfish are bred now to live in filtered tanks only and not in bowls ... sad ... gone are the days of winning a goldfish at the State Fair and having it live for decades unless you have a filtered tank. Alas. So the beta fish became Fifth, The Curious Savage. Fifth for short

Since most of the fish died over the weekend when they were left at the theater alone, I decided to bring Fifth home with me during our 2 day break so that he would be taken care of. I decided yesterday to clean the bowl and give him new water (I know it is a he because they tell you what gender of beta you are buying.) So yesterday morning I washed the bowl, put new water in, put in the water conditioner for betas, and then put Fifth in a bag in the new water so they could become the same temp. When I got home from work, I pulled out the bag and tried to empty some of the excess water so the bowl would not overflow. Here is where things got tricky ...

Fifth is obviously a champion fish jumper. I had him isolated at the bottom of the bag and I will be darned if he did not jump over my fingers and straight down the drain ... of the side of the sink with the garbage disposal. Let me pause for a moment so you can just get a visual of this situation ...

Got it? It should look something like the escape attempts from Finding Nemo. All drains lead to the ocean, right? Well not this drain, Fifth, it leads to death ... a painful death!

I immediately swore and then turned on some water so it did not dry up too much down there and put in motion a plan to save the fish, I was not losing FIVE FISH in 2 weeks! It just was not going to happen. Then I swore again, this is a full disclosure blog, right?

Maybe at this point it is important to remind my viewers that I have a really big issue with germs. Really. Big. Issue. With. Germs. I took a deep breath, took the ring off my finger, and stuck my hand down the drain to save the fish. Gross. Luckily for me, it appears someone had recently run the disposal and there were no real big messes down there. That being said it still was slimyyuckygross (just one word would not do, all three even seem not enough.) I got the fish in my fingers and gingerly pulled him out of danger. Mission almost accomplished.

The bowl of water was right there so I introduced him to the water. Fifth just laid there for a while, like too long of a while, and had that look in his eyes like: Lady what are you doing to me? I was almost free. When he did start to move, he only moved his left side. I thought great, is this fish hurt and I am being inhumane by keeping him alive? (see I do have feelings about animals that are good.) I put a few food pellets in there, which were ignored. He mostly just laid there. Not moving. Bless his heart. I decided to give him 24 hours before I make a decision about replacing him. He bounced back and is using both sides of his body.

I tell you what, if Fifth can survive 2 more shows I would be happy to release him to the wild if that is what he wants. Maybe he just does not know that he is the star of a stage play. I bet if he understood that, he would not have jumped.

A Curious Review

A few days before we opened The Curious Savage, Craig asked me if he could schedule a reviewer to see the show. I so extremely nervous to say yes. While I knew our show was funny, I was nervous that a reviewer might not like it and would say things that might adversely affect the performance of some of the cast. I should have known better. A very nice reviewer, Jennifer Leigh, came opening night. Her review was very gracious and I could not be happier with it. Check it out:

"The Curious Savage" by Midvale Arts is Not to be Missed

Sadly the reviewer missed naming one cast member in the review, even though she is mentioned in the caption under the photo so we assume it just was an oversight as I originally was not listed either but rather the producer was listed as the director; things happen. Melody Marse plays Florence. The rest of the cast is listed and is amazing. There are 3 more shows: Tuesday (tonight), Friday, and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for Friday and Saturday are going fast online so I recommend coming tonight, buying tickets online at showtix4u.com or coming early on those nights to ensure you can buy tickets at the door.

The other night my pal Larissa, who explains it all, said I need to blog about this show. I do indeed. That post will come as soon as I have some pictures to go with it!

Grams Taking Me Gambling

Were she still alive, today would have been my Grams birthday (she is the on the right in this pic with the white sweater, the other lady is her sister, my Aunt Alice. I think this pic was taken at my Uncle Lee's funeral to be honest, because there is ham and funeral potatoes on the table.) Today she would have celebrated 100 years. Sadly she passed away about 10 years ago; I miss her. I did just buy her old house, though, because of the memories.

Grams was pretty great. She did not have any teeth, but could gum a bite of steak faster than I could chew one. The only thing she had issue with was salad, and I shall not tell you how she ate it, gross! Every year she had a boutique in her house where she would sell wrapping paper and greeting cards to make money. She taught me how to plant a garden and shuck peas. She taught all of us the value of an honest days work for a wage, the same lesson she taught her children, the same lesson my Mom taught us. We knew not to disobey Grams, she might have been old but she was quick! I still remember her chasing my cousin around the backyard yielding 'the strap.' She used to babysit us after school and we quickly became fans of her "shows" such as Days of Our Lives (remember when Hope Brady was killed in a vat of acid but then she was alive again? That is good programing! The Brady family is wildly unlucky)

Where was I? Oh Grams birthday. So my Mom and her siblings all decided that for Gram's 100th birthday they all were going to go to Wendover, NV and spend it how Grams would have wanted: gambling. Grams was by no means a compulsive gambler, do not get me wrong, but she loved sitting at a slot machine and enjoying the buffet. Grams took me gambling once on our way home from a vacation. We were stopped in Las Vegas and she was getting too old to pull down the lever, this was before the convenient button you push instead of pulling anything, and so she put the money in and my job was to pull the lever. I was probably 15 at the time and she made the mistake of telling me that she was going to teach me a lesson to never gamble. Of course she won money that time. I learned a valuable lesson "Never gamble unless you are teaching someone a lesson, you will lose!"

Grams left my family a wonderful legacy to follow. Grams was the sort of person who would very literally give you the shoes off her feet if you needed them. Mom is the same way. Grams was quick tongued and very straight forward. She told it like it was. I will never forget her kindness and strive to live my life like she did; the way my Mom does from her example. Grams is the best kind of person, she passed that on to my Mom and Aunts, and I know that if even a fraction of her example rubbed off on me I am lucky. Two of my nieces were named after her (her name was Lottie) and carry that part of her legacy. I am so blessed to have had a Grams like her to share an example of what a truly good person is.

Happy Birthday Grams!