...the sun and the moon and the apple trees...

There's a fabulous lady, the princess Aly, who posted a recent blog with a little crash course in the things that she was thankful for and I thought it sounded like a divine idea...particularly as I enter hour 11 of my 13 hour workday. So here it is - a list of just a very few of the things that I am particularly thankful for.

1. For only having 2 more hours left until I can go home tonight
2. For having amazing jobs that I love, and getting to work as much as I want to most of the time
3. For being given the amazing opportunity to teach children, and teach them art...
4. For all the more things that they teach me
5. For Brian...really, he's the number one thing that I'm thankful for. He makes me laugh, he loves me something fierce, and is so beautiful and strong and a daily inspiration to me in so many ways. I am a better and more full person for the (almost) 3 years that I've spent with him, and I am the luckiest girl I know.
6. For our cozy and wonderful little house, with its fireplace...for snuggling in on snowy days
7. For Denver, and it's 300 blue days a year, and it's dry cold, and its mountain skyscape
8. For music that gets you up and dancing...especially for Elvis, and the Beatles, and Lucinda Williams
9. For great books, and the New Yorker, and scripts, and libraries and the way that books smell
10. For hot beverages
11. For the Princess Aly - the best girlfriend a girl could dream of...for her living close by, and always taking me seriously, and for our adventures, and for our inside jokes, and shared history, and for her cooking, and her taste in wine :)
12. For amazing people and friends - old and new, that I've been lucky enough to always be surrounded by (that's YOU!)
13. For a beautiful, dysfunctional, loving, rowdy, supportive, and blustery family - who may not always have it "right," but is always right for me.
14. For people who actually do read my silly blogs (that's YOU too!)
15. For raspberry cordials
16. For the chance to travel
17. For theatre. For art. For hopes and dreams. ...and Julie Taymoor and Ang Lee and Peter Brooks and Augosto Boal and Amadeo Modigliani
18. Because you believe.
19. For pizza.
20. For board games, especially Apples to Apples
21. For Mississippi with its complex history, and its ugliness, and the sometimes surprising beauty that can spring out of that ugliness
22. For a new bedspread and old teddy bears
23. For almost being done with my Christmas shopping
24. For babies
25. For life, the joyous and tragic life that it is...but all mine.

So, that felt really great - perhaps I'll do it again soon. Thanks for checking in! :)

2nd adolescence

I recently had my very first bra fitting. Pimples are popping up all over my face. I'm feeling awkwardly tall all the time. I'm wearing my emotions on the outside and finding myself a little incapable of not expressing every single feeling that comes my way. If I get less than 8 hours of sleep, I'm cranky. I can't stop singing Madonna songs off of the Like a Virgin album.

I never went through the *awkwardly tall* phase - in fact, I love being tall - always wished I was taller than I am. And suddenly, there I am, standing in a crowd of people feeling so conspicuos...wishing I could just shrink down to a less noticeable size. My voice sounds funny, and often way too loud. My feelings are hurt at the drop of a hat. Seriously, I'm 16 again. 16 was an okay time for me - not great, but not horrible...it's like I'm paying the price for not having an awful adolescence...I'm having it again, and how!

Clearly, my hormones are raging - but I'm almost 30 years old. I truly believed that these things sort of settled at some point. Still...my bra fitting was pretty exhilirating...And, my bra size is pretty porn star sexy :) And seeing Madonna at 28 is ever so much more satisfying than it would have been at 16. But could we give the hormones a rest? Please?

Laundry day

There are some things that it is remarkably easy to lose and almost impossible to find. Those of the Catholic faith even have a Saint dedicated to finding things. St Theresa? I don't remember. I did the laundry tonight, and somehow lost 2 socks...2 socks, from 2 different pairs of socks. I wish you could just lose the whole pair, why do you have to hold on to this one reminder of the glory days?

Life is sort of like that. Trust. Remarkably easy to lose and just about the hardest thing in the world to find. I wonder if St. Theresa covers trust? Not just trust in other people though, trust in yourself. Somehow, it seems like it all goes hand in hand. Lose trust in someone else, suddenly the whole world looks suspicious, yourself included.

And what I can't figure outis how to go on without trust. You can put on your happy face, work out all your forgiveness and issues - but if you can't trust again...well, you might as well have just put on those two odd socks. One is pink and white striped, one is black with green hearts on it...one is an ankle sock while one reaches up towards your calf. The job is effectively done, your feet are warm and protected...but something just doesn't feel right. All day you walk around with those two socks feeling like an extension of your whole self - lopsided, awkward, wrong.

The jitters

Election Day is here! This campaign has gone on FOREVER...but it's been pretty exhilirating. And the day is here now. I voted last week, so there wasn't much to do, I guess. And I keep hearing about how electric the day is...but you know what? I just feel jittery. Tense, anxious, good, and energetic, but with no where to focus that energy. Change. Hope. ...Faith. I think that's the point, right? We do everything that we can, and then we have faith. We hope. So I'm hoping, and I'm wearing my Obama Hope tee-shirt (admittedly, in part for the political support inherent and in part for the kitsch...yeah, that's how I am), and I'm waiting. I hope. I hope for a better nation than the one we live in, I hope for a better world - I think Barack Obama is a step in the right direction. But for now, I wait, and I hope.

Which is funny actually - this election day is not a far off parallel from many other aspects of our lives, huh? An obstacle arises, we do everything that we can and ultimately realize that it's outside of our *control*. So we hope. We wait, and pray, and be as kind and as full of love as we can.

I'm a leeeetle bit of a control freak, it's true. So I find this part of life particularly, uh, challenging (read, knashing of teeth, pulling out of hair). But, as you would probably guess, in the end there's nothing I can really do about it, except for wait, and hope, and pray - and apologize to those folks who happened to be nearby during the teeth knashing/hair pulling debacle.

"God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"

Yeah...

**By the way, there's a ton of great theatre out there right now. If you're reading this and you're around Denver - check out November (David Mamet's new(est?) work) at the Avenue Theatre (you'll appreciate it this month like you never may again) I Am My Own Wife at Theatreworks in Colorado Springs, and particularly...Speech & Debate at Curious Theatre (you may never STOP smiling), and B(loved)'s newest play at Boulder Ensemble Theatre, FAT PIG. You may know how I feel about Neil Labute anyway, and you definitely know how I feel about B's work...plus, dear friends Jeremy Make and Kate Avallone are in it...it's smart, funny, incidious...you'll love it and hate yourself (sounds like a good time, right :)

Go out, support local arts!