My Mister Man

LB has been hired to go on tour with me in October! I am in shock actually because it has all happened so fast.

Two weeks ago I found out that one of our team members on the tour had bailed. Our tour leader sent out an email imploring us to send forth anybody we might know who would be a) qualified to facilitate a drama workshop of their own devising and b) available to be on tour for all of October and November. Of course I thought of my wonderful man who had yet to secure a Christmas contract. When I told him about it he answered the way he always answers...with a resounding "YES!"

So we whipped up a kick ass proposal, he was interviewed and this morning he was offered the job. For weeks now we have been freaked out at the thought of going from spending 24/7 together to very abruptly spending two entire months apart. Seems now we will not need to experience that at all and will, instead, continue to live as though we were attached at the hip. Hoorah for that, I say. I have never been so in love with a hip before in my whole life.

It is amazing to me that I have met the man, after so many men that have come before, that I can easily and happily spend the rest of my life with. I have found my "one" - as much as I hate that word - and with that find comes all that freedom from doubt that I had heard of before. And to imagine he feels that same way I do!! It is a type of heaven. He has proven how much he wants this with everything that he has done to fight to keep us together. He never seems to crave cigarettes anymore and in the last five weeks, he has had a total of three beer. Not that he doesn't give me plenty of challenges to live up to as well. But we make each other want to be better people and we bring out the very best in each other. I know - cliche, cliche, cliche - but it is true.

To think I used to cling to a man who only stayed with me out of duty. To think I used to say that I never wanted to get married or have kids. To think that all those people were right about me all along. They told me so. And I didn't believe them. But then again, I hadn't met LB.

I have always had good luck with men.

But LB...ah, now HE is a miracle.

Arachnophobia

Like many adult aged children, I become a paranoid freak when I know my Mom is about to visit. Already a very clean individual, I never the less start cleaning like Molly Maid on speed. Thus, with my mother's imminent arrival tomorrow morning, the last 48 hours have been filled with pulling couches out from the wall, flipping chairs upside down, shoving my curvy little body underneath beds and going where no man has gone before. You might think that what I have been combating mostly has been dirt or dust or the clutter of three actors, but it has been far worse than that. Oh no, what I have been up against are those eight-legged, web-spinning, almost-invisible monsters.

That's right folks...we got spiders.

They are everywhere. Most of the them are the baby spiders, itsy bitsy spiders, and hundreds of them. At least they aren't bedbugs, but REALLY they are far from wonderful to have inhabiting every square inch of your home. What it up with me and torture-by-insect?

And what is up with the male versus female way of dealing with the eradication of the little critters? Syl and I will, when first stumbling across one (or a herd of many), scream and then go and grab papertowel to scoop them up and squish them to death. The male in the household will see them, not scream but rather sigh, then pick up whatever hard object happens to be within arms reach and smash the bejeezuz out of them. Makes me ask the much larger question - is having a penis undeniably the same thing as violence and aggression?

Now that the house is clean (or at least in a state that won't send my mother into convulsions) most of the cobwebs and spiders are gone. The house is at peace. Tomorrow The Parental Unit arrives and life will be filled with challenges bigger than spiders. It will also be filled with lots of Team Konkin love.

And as long as it isn't mice that I am having to deal with, I am a happy camper.

As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows The Tree

There was a show in July where, for some reason or other, while I tapped away during our closing number of Act One, I fell on my ass. I wasn't even doing one of the more dangerous steps. I think I was doing a slow two foot turn, but down I went. It was shocking and humiliating, but I bounced back up as quickly as I fell and, other than a deep scarlet blush, I was fine. It just so happened that my Artistic Director, a man I greatly admire, was in the audience that night. After the show, to ease my embarassment, he kindly said to me "if nothing else, your dance teachers from childhood would be proud how quickly you rebounded and didn't let it phase you". I thought of her then. Doris Sitter. The woman who was primarily responsible for teaching me that the show must go on.

When I think of Doris, I see her standing in that space just off the stage left wing in the Peacock Auditorium, that space that was just about as wide as her body and was almost facing the stage. She would stand there during competition and watch her student's solos, a constant presence, smiling and supportive. It was both unnerving and helpful to have her there, watching over me. I wanted to badly to make her proud.

I also remember attending my first modern dance class after I moved to Toronto for college. The teacher was a wacky woman and her movements, so foreign to me, seemed ridiculous. What got me through was my memory of Doris' explaining modern dance to all of us one day in class when I was about 10. "Modern dance", she explained plainly, "was invented by people that failed at ballet."

Her strength and independance and grace was a more invaluable gift for myself to have recieved as a young girl than all the medals in the world. Too often I forget this, even when each sequin I get paid to wear and each shuffle step I get paid to do, was because of her. And I know that even though she has the air of a person that will never die, she isn't actually going to live forever, except within those moments that I fall in front of an audience to only get back up and keep on tappin'...

...without ever, once, losing my smile....

and there she will be, there she always has been. Thank you Mrs. Sitter.

Just Call Me Bloggy McWeakness

I have tried not writing my letters to the world, but here's the thing. I miss it. I have a million and one things that I want to write about and a thousand and one questions I want to ask. Which means, I am going to try blogging again, but with a slightly different approach. I am going to try to only referr to myself and leave others out of it. When I must refer to someone else i.e. my boyfriend, I will use initials instead of names. This could be like an alcoholic thinking that they can go back to 'just having one or two a week' when really they are simply falling off the wagon. But I guess, if this is the wagon, then I am up for the fall.

You see, I have watched documentaries about Jim Jones and compared/contrasted The People's Church to CSL and wrapped my brain into such intense tangles about faith and religion and cult and cynicism that I long to talk about it. I have laid on the covers in my boyfriend's bedroom awash with sudden certainty that I would marry him tomorrow! A year ago I was just beginning to walk upright from the most devastating heartbreak I had ever endured and now I am sure for the first time in my life that I have met the man I am going to marry and have a baby with. How can I not talk out loud about that? I have wanted to talk about what degree of compromise is healthy and what is not, about how scared I am to teach all those kids on the fall tour because what if I suck and they all hate me? How overcome I am by the thought of this contract ending and how, with all its ups and downs, it has changed my life? There are blogs in me about real estate investment and how cool it was to be back in my apartment for three days and L's challenge for me to reconnect with my extended family. Oh, there is so much to share.

But for now, a quick update and then bed...

Life has been joyful as of late. My hamstring still yelps when I ask it to do too much, but it is on the mend. We have very few shows left and I am both relieved and horrified. I paid off my huge Europe debt and now want to plan a trip to Greece with Lee. L gave me a promise ring - a beautiful aquamarine in white gold - and he gave it to me in the greeting card aisle of a Walmart because he was too excited to wait. As for waiting, I may have waited too long to get an IUD put in this summer, but I am becoming more convinced that I will switch to one before the end of the year. My mom is coming for a ten day visit in less than a week, I discovered a very cool degree program that interests me at Royal Roads University and I am looking forward to the road trip from here to Moose Jaw that L and I are going to take after we close the show. I saw my first shooting star the other night, have a bigger sexual appetite than I ever thought possible and still dislike the politics connected with the theatre industry. My friend and co-worker is in the hospital and another friend of mine from CSL passed away unexpectedly a few weeks ago. L and I really want to buy a place together and sometimes I adore how easily we talk about being married and sometimes I start to panic when we so calmly discuss baby names. I am thinking about doing another cleanse, my car is making funny sounds and my life, frankly, has never been this good.

I definitely can hear myself tumbling off that wagon...

Ah, heck, I'll join a twelve step group later.