For the benefit of Mr. Kite

Or at least Cass, who if nothing else, is the world's most polite stalker...;)

Some interesting tidbits from the Life and Times of Emily.

On January 10th, Jules and I got up at an obscenely absurd hour of the morning to drive down to New Jersey via Rte. 80 (mostly) in order to get my interior braces finally off. They'd snapped just before Christmas, which made Christmas and New Years' dinners interesting, and it seemed about time to get them off. No orthodontist up here would take us without first taking several thousand dollars, and our orthodontist down in Jersey was rather cavalier and told my mother on the phone that we could just get some needle-nosed pliers out and rip them off ourselves. But at-home-dentistry didn't seem to be the way to go, for me at least, so live with broken braces I did until that Thursday.

Curiously enough, as we drove to his office through our old home town and old stomping grounds, I found that I was driving like a person might with a rheumy eye. It was as though I was at once seeing the streets I knew well and not seeing anything at all, all through a sort of dense opaquerie. It was like being in a dream. Vaguely this way would bring us to something we ought to be at, non? And so I'd go vaguely that way and end up in a place that looked familiar enough to make me head turn here and there and finally end up at my doctor's...whose waiting room was exactly as it was 17 years ago. Julie told me she felt the 8-year-old need to jump around on the seats like she once did. (I'm told that she behaved admirably while I was being tortured for good money.)

Inside, Dr. Piekarski looked just like he did as well - all macho and meaty forearms and buzzcut and glasses and thick wristwatch and a cockiness that made you want to hit him and trust him all at once. The nurses even wore scrubs that could possibly have been minted in the 80's. I was taken into a room where the good doctor came in and non-chalantly took out a pair of pliers and RIPPED the braces from my teeth, causing much pain. I squeaked, which caused his automatic reaction, saying, "It's gonna be OK, princess. Just relax." I was twelve years old. My doctor was calling me princess.

There was apparently a lot of tartar build-up under the lower braces, which a very wonderful nurse scraped off, using a regular metal pick (ouch) and a water pick (really ouch). What made her wonderful was that she told me everything she was going to do before and while she was doing it, and she realized that one of my teeth was uber-sensitive and so she let me gasp for air before going in to get it all set in small doses. (Yay for nurses!) The thing is, I've no cavities and have always had pretty serviceable teeth, so actually being in pain in the dentist's chair was an unusual activity for me. Being talked through was nice.

Afterwards, Jules and I moseyed over to the Wayne Public Library, which I was pretty sure and was correct was down thataways, and which had been rennovated to be, it looked, smaller. Booooooo. Gone was the second story where all the really goooood fiction was, where Teresa Edgerton's first two novels of her Green Lion Trilogy had been...before I stole them and then paid the library back saying I couldn't find them. My one true crime. Hrm.... We then circled around our old parish (back there somewhere), with its stained-glass window of a the dive-bombing duck in place of the Holy Spirit (booooo to bad stain-glassers!) still intact.

Then, being so close anyway, we stopped over to the Greydanus clan, where Suzanne and all the kiddies were, including my godson who is now seven years old and quite an active little boy! It was neat to see him and his older brother (my parents' godson) wrestling and generally having a good time, while the two girls orbited them and the baby got into everything, and we attempted to converse with Suzanne. Then several hours drive home, with much laughing over when Jules and I on our first day sleep-deprived in Ireland, driving on the wrong side of the road and trying to find our way via unfamiliar highways-and-byways-and-hedgerows to the abandoned house we were going to sleep in kept ourselves awake by shouting out the music to "10,000 Miles." Good times good times.

In celebration of 27 Dresses coming out and James Marsden being my new wunderkind (even if he doesn't know it) - which is to say my Fred from King of Fools (can't you just see it?), Mom and I had a movie night where we watched Interstate 60 with guess-who, followed up by a Woody Allen film (wherein I did not put my fist through the TV screen, although his every stutter tempted me) and then the Marsden parts of Superman II. Girl bonding over pizza and chocolate, while everyone else is out at work or in DC - is there anything better? I thought not.

Bye Bye Birdie continues to go well (barring some *ahem* silly people not making their appointments). Goes up in less than a month. Phew! Spent some time thinking about Wallace's Will - it's weird, I could act it out on the stage the other day - but pinning it down on paper is proving difficult. Also on the creative front, I finally got Sibelius to upload...but now it turns out that my keyboard doesn't really work as a midi device to the computer so I need something with which to write music.... *sigh* All these wires! Sorry for the obscurity...let's just say that creative projects feel at a bit of a standstill.

Of course, one could blame the beginning of school taking up time! ;P Had my first day back on Wednesday. Drama as Education II first, which was nice - familiar faces! The professor met me on the common as I walked from the garage, which was an even nicer way to begin the new semester. I asked him if there were any standard curricula (sp?) that we could look at, pull apart, etc. for when we create our own, but his answer boiled down to: "Every theatre curriculum centers around who you're studying under." Hrm. I can see this making my way into part two of my thesis: the role of the director in the role of the actor (in the role of his life).

That afternoon, I had puppetry with a woman who daunts me very much so. I spent my rebellious teenage years refusing to be domestic - so that consequently I don't know how to sew or do fine needlework or cut from a pattern - and I'm so pigheaded that I've refused to learn ever since. But now it seems that I'll be doing just that. The class is mostly undergrads and all techies - it's like being thrown in among serious engineering students armed with a couple lines of damp poetry. Fortunately, there are two grad students also in it, one the fabulous Brenda who assures me that she'll help me learn how to sew on a button. Mom will be so proud. Jules will lord it over me for weeks. It's bad enough that she has me crocheting. If I'm not careful, I'll be quilting soon. (Actually, I need a new quilt.) Nesting! Nesting! What the...?!??!?!

On Monday night, I'll have my directing I class. Sooooooooooo psyched. I just want to get in there and direct and direct and play and goof about and sculpt moments and aaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! Gimme gimme gimme! "Back back back! Down down down! Mine mine mine!" As Daffy Duck once said. I'm glad of the books (mostly source documents) that we're reading. Although I didn't get my Grotowski. What the? And I was confused why we were reading the Stanislavski system and not his actual books. Eh. C'est ca. I've got them at home. At least An Actor Prepares. I think I may kick the Artaud book around the room, though. He makes me a little furious. Good old Peter Brooke is on the list. Another excuse to read The Empty Space? I'm soooooooooooo there. No idea what I'll do for my scene. I was poking about the limited theatre section of Borders the other day (Jules was at the other end of the store looking at artwork, natch), but I was reminded of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. Possibilities!

That's really rather it for now. I think I'll go off and argue with Sibelius a little more about how to write music. Ah the joy!

Mood: Comme si, comme ca. Glad for morning joys with friends.
Music: "Wait" off of Sweeney Todd.
Thought: My toes and fingers are really cold.