also

the white man with wheat colored eyes and the dreadlocks at my 7-11 feels it is his duty to father me every time I go in there and buy something.

example: What do you have on your head?

-a tiger hat. it was a gift.

-huh.

-it keeps my hair out of my face.

-some of it.

example 2: You don't need that Monster.

-I need energy today.

-eat a banana.

also

Jeopardy. Suck it, Dorland. (Play on SNL... get it?)

I grow tired of that picture that makes me look like an oompa-loompa. Will perhaps change it to that one of me in the fetching fire engine bouffant.

Also, more importantly, Suprise has now been posted online in all of his nipular glory. I advise having a peek.

Yesterday was fun. And now that I have sat down to type about it I have no memory of what the hell happened before noon.

I'm eating nuts. Turning into my grandfather. And Hannah. So, my Handfather. Or Grandannah.

Nuts, it turns out, have fat that is good for me. I have argued Adam into the ground about this. Or was it Adam? Hard to recall, I argue with lots of people about lots of things.

Anyway, nuts have pleasant mannerly fat. So I am eating a hippo full. Actually. Use your imaginations.

Animal Farm we read yet AGAIN yesterday. For another huge tribe of middle schoolers wearing lots of eyeliner and baggy khakis. They were all surprisingly well behaved though.

Animal Farm consisted of us all processing with great pomp out to our hard wooden stools (except for two members of the cast who had cushy tall stools with backs), me tripping violently over all the connecting wires Tom had rigged up for our reading lights, and recovering just in time to make my goat noise.

I have gleaned from Animal Farm that John Moon has a very impressive profile and fascinating neck veins, that Paul is an amazing donkey, and that I can sit in all sorts of extreme yoga positions on top of a bar stool without toppling over.

Also that Boxer was the admiration of everybody.

Finished my nuts. Big Gulp?

Anyway, read that.

Had my daily examination of Tom's facebook page.

Drove somewhere. Where did I go.

Probably went to the Barksdale to put the laundry in. Oh yes- and then picked up Anna from the airport and ate Mexican food and a giant slurpee while secretly trying to figure out how to steal Anna's amulet.

We return to the Empire. I lay in the floor and watch Wendy steam fabric plates. I am a little dizzy at this point.

Anyway, hoo de hoo de hoo, we all go home. We discover we all need showers. I claim that I must have one as I have not had one for a shameful amount of time. This is quickly agreed to by the other members of the household, which makes me suspect that perhaps I stink.

So I take a shower. I do not condition my hair for the first time in months. Ever since Joseph harangued me into doing it all the time. He was right. But I ran out of my kangaroo conditioner, and last time I washed my hair I tried Margaret's new leave in conditioner spray, but that only resulted in my looking like a overgrown armpit, so yesterday I just shampooed.

No good. Now look like a furry hassock.

Oh well. At least it is clean. Always feel like I've lost fifteen pounds when I wash my hair, due to oil x I suppose.

Also, in breaking awful news, my Ned is ill. Ill with hypertubbia. Robyn and I are going to try to take him on walks.

Decided to go with Adam and Anna to Margaret's show. Not to watch, as I watched it several times before last weekend, and then watched it from onstage four times last weekend, but just to be around people and have good company. Also to bother Chase. Always a good time.

Somewhere in here I drank a chocolate apple cherry martini. Or was that the day before? Was the day before.

But Adam can make a banging CACM. In mine he just pours in half a bottle of maraschino cherries and I am good to go.

Still makes me make a pinched face but I can swallow it.

So I go downtown to retrieve my air mattress from Durron at the Empire. I smile and am rewarded with cherries. EVERYONE IN RICHMOND IS PARKED AT THE EMPIRE. Never seen so many cars illegally parked in my life.

Then drive in a very roundabout winding route to the Barksdale to distribute the laundry. I have a premonition as I climb the back stairs that after all of that driving, I bet someone has already gone and gotten the clothes out of the dryer, as it was nearly 7pm, and many of the castmates are set upon by the vapors if their socks are not at their seat shortly before lunch.

And I am right. That Tom Joad.

But I use my free time while I wait for the Droops to gain instruction in applying makeup to cover tattoos. Learned that. On the resume.

Then the Droops arrive and we all drive to the Tavern. Adam has brought his iPod in the car, so he takes turns picking out a song for Maggie, Anna, and me, in a cycle. My dedications included such Honaker favorites as "Hollaback Girl," and "Don't Make Me Hit You With My Pocketbook."

Then he puts on something featuring violins and haystacks and whining and I crab until it is changed back to Dr. Dre.

We arrive.

The very very necessary couple that ushers there every night, Danny and Beverly, announce they have a gift for me. I get very excited, as once Danny gave me a bag full of strawberries. Which I promptly forgot about and left in my car for a month, but that is beside the point.

So at intermission, Danny opens the door of the booth and tosses in a small plastic bag knotted at the top. I think, "surely you do not toss fresh berries, " and open it. I am deeeelighted. When I was in the show last weekend, I noticed one night Danny was wearing a NEON ELECTRIC BRIGHT FLUORESCENT yellow t-shirt. I announced that I loved it and would wear it every day if I had one like it.

And now I do. :) Made my week.

I think it is a shirt that you wear when you go hunting so you are not mistaken for a bison.

Adam says it is my hi-liter costume.

Put it straight on. Then Chase pointed out that I couldn't wear it in the booth as I would glow like the Star of Bethlehem and pose a potential distraction during scenes of great withering emotional x, so I put on his big black vest over top of it and settled in for Act II.

Please hold. Have to go get Anna and Adam off the porch for Jeopardy.

They said, "thank you, 3."

I love how actors describe objects in their lives in terms of upstage/downstage. Like, "You have a smear of ice cream on your chest. No, no- downstage left. More downstage. Ok,you got it."

So then we all ride back to Richmond, I am dropped off at the Dale to begin the laundry and then to meet everyone at Joe's. Chase and I have decided during Act I that we will both get The Big Breakfast and I will give him one pancake for one slice of his French Toast.

I go upstairs and ask whoever is in the dressing room how much acting is left to go. The boys tell me fifteen minutes.

I start to show my dad's awesome card trick to the very nice boy in the cast who has a pretty smile as well as that fascinating skin condition where you are pretty much made of elastic. SO cool. He can affix any number of clothespins to his face and neck and anywhere on him and it doesn't hurt at all. Might try to develop this friendship so I can pull on him.

But anyway, he seems markedly calm about my card trick and then I find out that he knows A LOT about card tricks. We remove ourselves to the back hallway and he teaches me all kinds of cool stuff for the rest of Act II. Like one tidbit in particular that I will not disclose, but will begin trying to find the right situation to employ immediately.

I put in the laundry.

I go to Joe's. We laugh hard and a lot. Which is wonderful.

Go home, read a novel. To bed.

Slept stiff.

Well, I'll say, as a fan of pretty gowns, that this years Oscar crop looks like a collection of bunchy garbage bags.

Hasn't anyone heard of a hoop skirt?

Today was BEAUTIFUL.

I habitually got out of bed, knifed the mascara off my eyes, bundled all up in my cozies and tramped outside to go do the Grapes laundry. (Which, by the way, I woke up at 7:30 and then slept in til 9:30 and then freaked out realizing that the laundry would not be done by noon! Then caught myself- they do not need their laundry by noon. X giving into to the impracticality.)

So, to resume, I had tramped about halfway down the block and then was struck still by the realization that teh day was beautiful. The sun I could feel on my face, the sky was blue, it was almost warm, and there was a darling breeze.

I smiled cheekily and continued my jaunt to my car. I arrive at the end of my jaunt and realized I must jaunt on, as my car was nowhere to be seen. I find it eventually, and am glad of the walk in the weather.

So I go. I put in the laundry. I go over to CVS to get vitamin water because my eyelashes are disintegrating and my liver has shrunken to the size of a cat nipple due to dehydration. And because Maggie told me that last week when she was dehydrated she felt like a new woman after drinking Vitamin water and Pedialyte.

I get two.

Red ones.

I go back over to the theater and get my book about Elizabeth Taylor going on a diet and Russell's tweed dinner jacket that has been hanging backstage since the heyday of the Confederacy and go back outdoors to sit on the bench and feel the sunshine.

I fall asleep.

I am awakened once by three small girls marching by with their Daddy chanting "BOOGER KING! BOOGER KING! BOOGER KING!"

Their father was not responding.

I am awakened twice by my jam session/trash dumping buddy Tim, who is rumbling by with the grocery cart and is concerned that I have locked myself out of the building. I suppose he thinks this because I am prone drooling on a bench bundled in tweed.

I am awakened once again by Tom Joad ringing me from thirty paces down the sidewalk to let him into the building.

(It is 11:30 at this time. Showtime: 2pm)

I let him in. He forges very quickly ahead, but manners have apparently been instilled and he waits to hold the door. In my opinion, if he wouldn't rush off ahead so much, he would have to spend less time holding the door. But that's my opinion.

I inform him that I will be joining him today for Sealquacking in the conference room as I feel like I have been run over by a cement truck.

We do that. I am then dismissed and I don't know what all went on in the conference room for the next thirty minutes.

I distribute the laundry.

I go home to meet Margaret for the matinee.

I eat a banana.

We go to the Tavern.

We put on obscene amounts of makeup, curl my hair, which by this point in the weekend has the consistency of driftwood, and shiggle into our skirts.

We go downstairs, and do the play, which involves cutting napkins, giggling and giving lots of meaningful looks to Maggie.

Also lots of crying. Which worked out particularly well this time, due in part to my being blocked to stand directly beneath the air duct.

I see my wonderful mother. I love her so much.

My mother and I drive to Qdoba at Vcoo.

We eat, we talk, I open up the women's bathroom to the sight of a substantial woman pooping.

We go to Lowes to drop me off for the carpool.

We watch the audience exit the Firehouse following the matinee of Crumble, Lay on Top of me Justin Timberlake, or whatever it is.

We watch Jackie Jones in her apricot colored top- you all know the one- mince daintily across the street with what appears to be a platter of her oat-fudgies.

Joe Carlson pulls up in his car directly beside us. I divine from this that the Grapes matinee is over. I say, "Joe, this is my mom. We sit in Lowes parking lots."

He nods and tells me he is going across to the Camel for dinner.

He leaves.

My mother points out that I did not ever actually explain what we were doing there. I like this.

Bet he thinks I'm REAL weird now.

I call Katrinah when she is five minutes late. She answers. I have woken her from her nap.

She peels into the parking lot five minutes later. And proceeds to peel right past me. I assume she is doing another lap and then will pick me up. She reaches the corner and takes an abrupt left back onto Lombardy, and then away.

I am glad my mother has not pulled off yet. I flag her down and she drives me down to play practice.

At play practice, I fended off my coma, drank Sunkist, and did HEAVY PARTNERING with Brandon Beckman. Which I so adore.

Then Katrinah drove me home. We are smushed against the center guardrail by a semi that was going to get over like it or not.

We drive down the shoulder for a while.

And now we are are watching the Oscars and Adam is torturing us by chopping onions in the next room. But I will forgive, as he is chopping them to make fancy little pizzas and salad.

Maggie just said to the cat- "you have got to grow your fur back. Cause I am sick of looking at your nipples."