I might make some cookies to make myself feel better.

I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance (shuddup) and I let the dog outside during the commercials. It's raining, and the dog is a wuss when it's raining. So he's standing on the step blinking at me and I'm yelling at him to "Go potty! It's not raining that hard! Go up the hill and go potty NOW!" and so on and so forth. I turn to look at the tv to see if the show is back on and I catch the last two seconds of a Cub commercial. In fact, it was the Cub commercial that I shot last month. And I missed it because I was yelling at the dog. BOO.

Oh well. It'll be on again.

The rain makes me think DEEP THOUGHTS.

"I'm not going to worry about money anymore." Moments ago, while sending a text message to friends about evening plans, that thought popped into my head. It seems like a random thought, but if you know how my mind works (and anyone who's ever had a lengthy conversation with me knows that sometimes I will jump topics, but the jump always follows a logical-to-me pattern), it's not random at all. Something about the repetitive, slightly mindless nature of scrolling through my phone's address book allowed my mind to wander, and it wandered to being able to "do good work."

By "good work" I don't mean volunteering at charities and helping ducks cross the street and things like that. Those are valid pursuits, but that's not what I mean here. I mean being able to do work that is artistically fulfilling and exciting for the intended audience, whether it's a play, a film, a photograph, or a novel. I want to do good work. And I know that in order to do good work, I have to be nicer to myself. Being nicer to myself means turning off the Internal Editor and allowing my perfectionist tendencies to fall by the wayside. It also means not taking work that I don't want to do just because I "need" the money.

Don't get me wrong: money is a necessity. I have quite a number of bills to pay and not working isn't going to get them paid off. But neither is being miserable at what I'm doing, which will only lead to my quitting and, you guessed it, not working. So it's important to me to only lend my time and energy to creative pursuits that I can look back on and think, "Wow am I glad I was a part of that." I've been blessed in that majority of the work I do *is* artistically fulfilling, but there are some things that - because they made my life unnecessarily complicated and stressed me out - I would leave out of my life if I had to re-do that section of my history.

So that, my friends, is what brought me to "I'm not going to worry about money anymore." Why should I when worry will not increase my bank account or bring me the jobs that I want to do? SARK says to "Do what you love. The money will follow." She also says that it might take a while, but it will happen. I think that's true. So for me, if it means turning down something that might pay me well but will take a big chunk of my piece of mind with it? It's not worth the cost.

Yes, please.

takeshi kaneshiro
Originally uploaded by fuchsiaboy.

My next husband.

Someday

I have been shirking my socialization duties lately. I had two different parties that I was supposed to attend this weekend and I decided not to go to either of them. I really wanted to see the hosts of both, but my mind and body were telling me, "Stay home. You have things to do and this is the place for you to be right now." So I didn't go out.

Last night, however, I realized that all my work was done. My room was clean: the file folders and majority of the miscellaneous crap was off the floor of my bedroom. My laundry was clean, folded or hung, and put away. My personal accounting was as up to date as it could possibly be. I didn't have a class to plan and I didn't have to be at one of my jobs early in the morning. It was a perfect night weather-wise, so I texted my friend Cori and we met up at Spyhouse at 9:30. It was a little late to be leaving the house, but I didn't care. Spyhouse Coffee was calling.

When I arrived I passed out the blank paper and markers that I'd packed in my bag and we proceeded to sit outside and color for the next two hours. A good friend of Cori's joined us around 10:45 or so and he colored, too. We made gloriously bad art and loved every minute of it. We reminisced about the summer of 2006 when we were writing our Fringe show. We'd meet at Spyhouse at around 5:00 pm and stay until they closed at midnight. For two weeks straight. It was glorious and it was awful. Our friendship was tested by fire and came out the other side that much stronger.

As we sat and chatted last night I looked around at the nearby apartment buildings, my eye instinctively catching on "For Rent" signs hanging from posts and stuck in windows. I'm not moving any time soon, but I still daydream of living within walking distance of Spyhouse, knowing that I could call Cori and say, "Spyhouse in 15 minutes," and that she would be there. Someday.

I really don't watch that much television.

Today in the skyway I saw a woman wearing - almost exactly - an outfit that Michael Knight designed early on in season three of Project Runway. I looked around wildly for someone to ask, "Did you see that?" I even picked up the phone to call my boss, but then I realized I was geeking out over a tv show and realized that my excitement would either be met by puzzled silence or outright ridicule. Good-natured outright ridicule, but most certainly ridicule. I hung up the phone and made an exclamation-pointed, triple-underlined mental note to blog about it.

And now I can't even find a photo to show you what the heck I'm talking about. *sigh*

I loathe trying to think of titles

Polyester Bride by Liz Phair is playing on the stereo at the coffee shop in which I currently sit. Someone told me that the song reminded them of me and that I should listen to it. So I downloaded it, and I found I liked it. I'd listen to it over and over. After college my computer died I lost every single bit of my digital college experience. Hearing Polyester Bride just reminded me how much I used to like that song, and how much it sucked when I lost everything.

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So my folks are going to Hawaii to visit my sister on her 20th (;)) birthday. I hadn't intended to go with them because I had signed up for teaching summer classes. But with the enticement of going to the Big Island and realizing that I hadn't yet signed a contract and the appearance of another class to take the original class's place, I decided to try to go. Now I feel like I'm just causing a big headache for everyone because I changed my mind so late. Why couldn't I have realized this sooner? Boo to me.

Weird train day.

Yesterday, while waiting for the train and texting friends, I heard a shout. I looked up and one man was chasing another. He pushed him up against the wall and I thought, "Hey, that's not nice." Then I noticed that the pushy man had a walkie on his belt and was putting the other man in handcuffs. The other man dropped two clothing items with tags on them when he was getting handcuffed. "Ah. He shoplifted." Pushy security man then took shoplifting man back into Nieman Marcus and I went back to texting.

Not one minute later someone else waiting for the train bursts out with, "Can you PLEASE not talk on your cell phone right next to me. Thank you." He was talking to a woman walking past him, and everyone, including her, just stared at him for a minute. I snickered. I couldn't help it. That was a gutsy thing to do, albeit slightly crazy. Most people would just move themselves. He was OWNING his personal space and he didn't want some loud cellphone talker right in his personal space bubble. Good for him. But it was funny.

Go away, Mary Sunshine.

I think I'm turning into a morning person. And it frightens me.

In the past few months the majority of my days have begun before 7:30 am. Well, in truth they've begun with me crawling down to the foot of my bed, groping for the snooze button on my buzzing alarm clock, and crawling back under the covers muttering, "Just five more minutes..." But I'm generally up and heading out of the house at 7:30, on average. This week it will be much earlier as I have to be at the school at 7:30. And the school is across town. Sleeping in? What's that?

I used to be able to sleep until 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And I didn't always go to bed at 3 am, either. Summers off from college or high school, woe to the person who attempted to wake me, shouting, "It's noon! Get out of bed!" They would get nothing but stony silence in return. Take that!

And when I did get up, I hated talking. Actually, I still don't like talking in the morning. I'm a grunter. "Good morning!" "Mmph." "Do you work today?" "Grimgphf." "Will you be home for dinner?" "Grtqwf." (Don't ask me how I pronounce all those consonants. It's morning-speak. Different language rules.) I'm not chipper in the morning, and it makes me cranky when other people are and expect me to be. I may be up and moving around, but if you're talking to me before I have a full cup of coffee in me you're not going to get much more than "Grtqwf." So while the early mornings are getting easier to bear, there are still some bits of me that have dug in their heels and refused to get with the program.

If I'm ever chipper before 10 am, it might be best to run a DNA test on me to make sure I'm not a pod person.

"There's no place like home!"

I'm teaching a dance residency for the next few weeks. Monday, while I was taking a break inbetween classes, a line of kindergartners accompanied by parents volunteers and teachers trooped out of the front door of the school and onto a waiting bus. Two little girls in the line were dancing and shimmying as they walked, and I noticed that one of the little girls had on glittery ruby slippers. "She has impeccable taste and a sense of nostalgia at five years old," I thought. "She'll go far in fashion, I guarantee it."

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I redesigned my webpage for spring, and maybe forever. iWeb is neat and user-friendly, but it's also headache-making in its limitations. I can't even make a simple table, for goodness' sake!

Nevertheless, if you go to the main page and things look wonky to you, would you let me know?