Thursday, May 23, 2013

Sleeping Pill?

I realized on the way to work yesterday afternoon, that I had a profound experience in the wee hours of  the morning.
My mother was right.  Chubby little girls who insist on ballet lessons, point no less, wind up with joint problems later in life.  My feet are a mess, but it's my hips that sometimes wake me up in the middle of the night.  Ordinarily there's no going back to sleep without medicinal intervention.  Often I incorporate the pain into my dreams.  I do the same thing with alarm clocks, but ironically the aches eventually wake me while the alarm does not.
Last night I dreamt.   The pain was huge and radiant and I somehow knew that I had to take a pill that began with "g" to be alright.  In the dream I knew the whole name of it, but in waking only the "g" remains.  My friend Minda was there in the dream, and I asked her if she had this medication.  She hesitated, because she had it by prescription and there are laws.  But seeing what misery I was in, she dug a bottle out of her purse and dispensed just one, which I did not hesitate to swallow immediately, as pain knows no laws.
I woke up, hurting.  But in the haze of half sleep I assured myself that I had just taken something and it would be okay soon.
It was when I was driving to work that I realized... the dream pill not only let me sleep, I was still pain free sitting in the car hours later.  I am rarely pain free sitting in the car.  Stunning.
Tonight I hope Minda gives me something to make my clothes fit better.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

We couldn't go back, could we Henry?

I came out of mothballs tonight.  Martha asked how long it had been since I was in a show and I said I thought it was six years.  That's wrong.  I haven't costumed a show in about six years.  I hadn't performed for 10.
The Fabbey Abbey Ball was a Downton Abbey themed fundraiser for KET held at Spindletop Hall.  Interspersed between dinner, dessert and dancing were short scenes featuring characters from the TV show played by local actors and a has-been.  Moi.  I'm not sure what made Martha Campbell think of me for the role of Violet.  I'd never seen the show and said yes before I understood fully that I was going to be standing in for Maggie Smith.  Ye Gods.
When I ran from theatre, it was 90 miles an hour into the black night screaming like a blazing banshee in soon to catch gunpowder boots.  For years I wouldn't even go to a play unless Patti was in it.  I told folks I had PTSD.  Post Theatric Stress Disorder. I had recovered enough to go to a play that Patti was not in, if she went with me, but the thought of being further involved kind of gave me the all overs.  that is, until a few weeks ago when this opportunity was presented.  When I realized that the very idea did not make me curl up into a ball, I found it was a quite convenient time for me to take a week off from Meijer, wondered what old buddies might turn up in the cast, basked in the lovely warm glow of having been asked... and jumped.
Great landing.  The whole event was FUN in all capitals.  I don't think it's the chocolate truffle-y cheesecake they fed us talking, though I confess that I am still under the influence.  I met some terrific actor people and got to work with Laurie Preston(who I have known for 20ish years and never acted with) and Martha. It was a light and easy project.  A toe in tepid water.  And it woke something up.  When the cast was joking about "next years fund raiser" as we were packing up, I found myself commenting as if I was all in.  All the way home I thought of characters I am now the right age to play. And not only that, but plays I could finish writing.  Paintings I have in my head.  The perfect set of Crucible costumes I designed and once longed to build.  Languishing short stories. Like the lid got lifted off a pot of creativity that has been simmering all this time.
Maybe I am ready to go back.  A little.