I've been busy.

I have not updated this here blog in a long time. Sorry for that.

But I have been busy. Busy working on a show and getting a photo taken by me in the Star Tribune. Maybe there'll be one in the City Pages, too.

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I had my first serious disaster as a teaching artist last night. I was supposed to do a two-hour residency at a St. Paul rec center. Well, I work downtown Minneapolis and I got off work at five. The residency was to start at six. The rec center was on the far east side of St. Paul. You can see where this is going. Yes, I was late, and because I was late, the majority of the kids who had been present for the residency took off. When I finally arrived, they managed to round up a few children, but only six or seven. I had been expecting 20 and had planned my class for 20. We started with a warm-up game and the six or seven became four. And then it became three.

It's really difficult to do theatre exercises with three children who've never done anything like it before and have no idea what this whole "teaching artist residency" thing is about.

Needless to say, the evening limped along, with one girl making a real attempt to stay engaged with me and create a play, and the other two leaving and coming back, and leaving and coming back. It looked as though we might actually accomplish something when the older sister of one of the girls burst in and demanded that her little sister come home with her right that minute. Well, I wasn't going to stop them if they needed to go home. Little Sister was not so happy about this fact and stomped around collecting her things.

I and the other two girls gamely tried to continue with our rehearsal, but moments later, out in the hall, we hear screaming, and then the distinct sounds of two people pummeling each other. Big Sister and Little Sister were fighting. It didn't last long, because one of the rec center workers broke it up, but at that point I had had enough, and I asked the remaining girl - the other had run out to watch the fight - if she wanted to continue or call it a night, and mercifully, she said we should call it a night. So 10 minutes before we were supposed to be done, I packed up my bag and left. The girl who had been trying to stay engaged with me gave me a hug as I left. That was really sweet and I wish we could have really done some good work together, but it just wasn't possible.

I really feel like I failed as a teacher. I know that the circumstances just stacked up against me, and I was working with kids who haven't ever been in any kind of theatre class, but it still feels like I failed.

"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?

More bullet points!

I have been busy. I know I say that all the time, but this time I mean it. So because I went to bed at 2:30 and woke up at 7:00, you get the bullet point list. Bullet Point List of Doom!

I have:

• started a dance residency with Kenwood School. Yay! Fun!


• been understudying "The Left Hand Singing" at Park Square to go in for Christiana May 2nd through the 4th; you should come see it


• started writing my blog posts on my hard drive so I don't have to worry about losing them


• been throwing the dog's schedule all out of whack because my schedule is all out of whack


• been eating fat and sugar almost exclusively


• NOT been going to the gym


• been getting to use my newfound Japanese skills, specifically shooting a commercial for Cub Foods


• woken up before 7:00 am nearly every morning for the last week and a half; I get to sleep in on...Tuesday. I think.


• started working on another screenplay


• needed desperately to clean my room


• looked at my room and thought, "I'm not cleaning this now"


• wanted to run away to Duluth for a weekend


• realized that I love writing more than most things I'm doing these days


• randomly text messaged some folks; sorry! I was bored


• had no idea what bullet point to use to end this magnificent work of art, this blog post, and left off with some lame sentence that desperately tries to be sort of funny but really isn't

rain makes me lazy

My residency at Homecroft Elementary ended on Friday afternoon. I gave the students "Thank You" cards and they gave me irises. I thought they were fake because they're so perfect.

this is aisha. she has hijacked the computer and she says hi. GO DUKE!

Can you believe she's older than I am?

Anyway. Flowers.

Praise the Lord.

Today was a MUCH better day with the residency. We got through all the things we needed to get through, and everyone was much better behaved. In fact, some of those who were the most unfocused before were the most engaged today. Whatever their teacher said to them before I came in, I thank her very much.

Now I'm really excited about what we can accomplish.

Aaaaand GO!

We have limited time and a performance deadline. I feel that I'm not engaging the students in the classes for the residency. We need to start rehearsing this week for their 15 minute performances. We need a structure, energy, and excitement about performing.

Any suggestions? Because I feel I'm nearly out.

Blogger made me do it.

You probably won't notice anything different, but Blogger made me move my blogs to their new service, which requires me to create a Google account. It's relatively painless, but I'm getting older and more rigid in my ways. Flickr is trying to do the same thing to me. I only have until the 15th of March with that one.

But enough complaining about technology. It's snowing again. They're expecting 10 to 12 inches on top of the 10 or so that we got last weekend. I don't know how I feel about this. I'm glad we're getting some much needed precipitation, but man. I don't want to shovel anymore. Sunday afternoon was bad enough, what with the 50 minute aerobic and strength training workout. Amazingly enough, I wasn't sore.

I'm a ramblin' woman tonight. My brain is probably rebelling from coherent thought because it knows that I should be searching for images and music for my residency tomorrow. And I just found the album that I must have. I don't want to buy it on iTunes, though. They'll keep me from moving it around on various computers and other media platforms. That's annoying. Stupid iTunes, all convenient and stuff, then ruining it by tightly controlling usage.

Alright. I think I'm going to see if I can find the songs I like for free. Naughty me.

Sleep tight, munchkins.