Why am I still awake?

It's 3:41. A ridiculous time to still be awake. Why am I up? Dunno. Procrastinating actually going to bed I suppose.

Update of my life: today I spent a large amount of time wandering around grocery stores with my mom. We literally filled the cart to the point where I was carrying around the few last little purchases. Christmas Eve dinner always is lasagna at my house, so we were stocking up. Plus my sister and her boyfriend were supposed to get here tonight at 11:30pm. More about that later. In grocery news, I got this ginormous red grapefruit. I am so obsessed with them, it's weird. Standing in the grocery store, my salivary glands were activated by the sight and smell of it. I felt compelled to send several text messages about my grapefruit. I have yet to cut it, but know that when I do it will be a monumental event, complete with photos. My mouth is watering thinking about it. As a friend once said to me, "anticipation heightens the pleasure," so I'm putting off eating it until I've had adequate time to want it and lust after it. Mm.

The story about my sissy. Well, it seems that the weather here is not in favor of anyone coming for Christmas, because there was a major ice storm all over Northeast Ohio. So her flight was cancelled in Charlotte NC, so she and a few others determined to get to Ohio are currently driving. Yeah. Tomorrow (today) will be interesting since no one will have had much sleep. Except I'm a bit of a dillweed and I have no excuse for being up this late. Just my own weirdness.

Onto pictures!










Me and Simba lounging on the floor. He likes to "help" me knit. At least he moves when he's attacking the yarn...usually he's just a lump of fur on the floor that will periodically rub itself on a pair of feet nearby. No joke.














Awesome retro 80's hat I discovered. I will be wearing it a lot seeing as normal lounge wear around my chilly house consists of my jacket, a scarf, and glittens. With the hat I can afford to lose the jacket. But I must jealously guard my body heat...Jack Frost is just waiting to steal it away from me.

Expect more pictures of an awesome grapefruit and my homosexual nutcracker soon. I'm heading off to bed. Finally.

Home again

This is what a storm crow looks like.

Mystery Nutcracker went relatively well. My "husband" in party scene, who also happens to be the Dance Master kept saying, "hmm isn't it mysterious?" all throughout party scene. It got to a point where I was alternately stifling laughter and setting him up for "hmm, mysterious" responses. The orchestra, which happens to be composed of students, sounded much much better than in all the rehearsals. We were all happily surprised that they played everything together and well. There were a couple of shaky points in rehearsal where literally half the orchestra was playing a measure behind the other half, and there was just no reconciling it. In those situations, we would usually half cringe and laugh uncomfortably. But during the show there were no such incidents. Thankfully.

The shows on Sunday went very well also. This time they were regular Nutcracker with canned music. And even though it's so much better overall to see a show with live music, I felt so much more secure with our usual music-from-CD show...even if it does reveal our company to be a little low budget. My last Rat Queen run went well, and I think (but who really knows) the audience appreciated my Swan Lake death. Both a cute little ballet joke and a possible foreshadowing of the future for BTM (yikes). Nothing beats the stone cold silence I got during the second run of school shows. For those, I chose to die in more pop-culture way, so that everyone can get a laugh, even for the "only nutcracker" ballet viewers. The first week was the time-honored cabbage patch dance move. There were a few chuckles and sniggers for that. But the second week, which was this past Thursday, I did the robot, and then died as a robot, then died as the rat queen. As I was standing there, letting my robot arms swing and go limp, I thought I heard a cricket or two. Or maybe a pin drop. Or a tree in a distant forest fall.

Not even a pity chortle. Oh well. I got paid ten dollars for that show, so my robot moves were worth something to someone.

Anyways, the first show on Sunday I had a little fan club out in the audience. I was actually really nervous to perform because they were only seeing me once. In the past my parents would see almost every show I danced in (their choice, not mine. Cross my heart and hope to die). So the one time only deal got my nerves a-janglin'. But everything went pretty well. Afterwards, literally everyone was offering to get me food. With another show looming so incredibly close, I couldn't have eaten much even if I wanted to. But the lack of vittles was such a hot button issue that I found it quite humorous. I pretended to swoon from hunger and there were hundreds of "are you sure you're okay?"s. I'll have to remind everyone how eager they were to feed me then the next time I want to go out to eat.

But here I am now, safe and sound in good ol' Tallmadge Ohio. It's freezing, there is snow on the ground, and the sun set at about 4:45. Already a recipe for depression. On the drive back so many crappy things happened, I really hope that it's not foreshadowing something. There was an insane wreck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, so we were stuck in traffic for about an hour and a half...with no exit in sight. So there was no escape. This made my Dad extra happy. Then we hit another wreck once we crossed over the Ohio border. So we took the long way on all the back roads. In the midst of all that, I had a conversation with my ex which ended with him hanging up on me in a huff. It started out nice, and he was comforting me. But I'm not sure how it ended up so shitty. Oh well, I'm not letting it bother me too much because there is so much personal growth and self-improvement that needs to be attended to.

Tomorrow evening my sister and her boyfriend will be back in the states. This means my schedule will be full of family and doing things that can only be done stateside. I hope a few of those include things I can only do while here, like going to eat at a Jimmy John's or Swensons.

That's all for now. Until next time.

Black eye shadow and eyeliner lipstick

Tonight I will don a black unitard, and black pointe shoes. Oh and the goth make up will complete the look. Tonight I am a storm crow in The Case of the Missing Nutcracker. An interesting take on the Nutcracker that I still don't fully understand. And I'm dancing in it. I read the synopsis, and it still doesn't really make sense to me. The synopsis is really a retelling of the whole story in complete and minute detail. You would think this would make it easier to understand...but i still feel like I'm out of the loop.

It's the final weekend of shows. After tonight's we have two shows on Sunday and we're FREE until we have to be back and rehearsing for First Night Annapolis. And we've been so into Nutcracker stuff no one has really had time to think about what we might be performing that night. But for some reason I have always hated new years, so I'm glad to have something to do and some place to be. And I think I might be paid for this gig too.

Today was the first time I saw a cat projectile vomit. My room mate thought it would be a good idea to pick him up as he was gagging so he would be barfing on the bathroom floor instead of the carpet. Needless to say I dashed out of the way of some flying liquids. It was incredibly gross yet slightly funny.

My life as of late has been full. Full of rehearsing and trying to keep up some semblence of a social life, and also getting a decent amount of sleep. I've been noting more and more how important it is to be positive and just laugh...it's gotten me through a lot of tough situations lately. I'm hoping that these next few days off I will be able to find time to try and plan out my future, but with my sister and her boyfriend visiting for the holidays, I'm not sure that will be possible.

Oh well.
Namaste.

This shiz is bananas

Can't believe it, but we've finished our first weekend of nutcracker, and we're moving on to the second. Three shows behind me, and three more to go. Weird. It is so close to Christmas when I'm done, and I have no time or money to do any Christmas shopping or planning. I barely have groceries. Le sigh.

I like my Christmas gifts to be meaningful, not showy or expensive. Which is part of why I hate the holiday. So many people use it as a way to show status by giving and asking for huge expensive gifts that have no necessity or meaning in their life. And plus everyone says they love to see the goodwill and cheer people exude during this time of the season. But for me, it brings out the uglies in people. I have never seen so many rude and greedy people out and about at once. Ugh. Yes I know I'm a grinch....so let's not get into this.

Sundays shows really were not fun for me. I was let down severely by someone close, and the second show i was close to tears literally right before the curtain went up. Well, out since Maryland Hall doesn't have the capability to fly drops, let alone curtains. Anywho, I just didn't have the will to perform, so the show sucked for me, and I was feeling pretty low about myself.

I went home, I showered, I napped. I was ready to go to the dancer party and unwind. But it became just another depressing debacle. In short, I realized the wine I had bought was super sweet, therefore I couldn't drink it (literally couldn't even force myself to drink it), the people I brought were causing problems, and I was getting in trouble for being associated with them. I went home, I cried, I talked it out. I was frustrated, I cried myself to sleep, and then I woke up this morning. It's a new day, but still not a perfect day. A better day. A step above.

I'm getting stronger all the time, but sometimes I doubt my own strength. It's difficult sometimes, but other times I am so grateful for my strength. And sometimes, I think it intimidates people.

In other news, drama is happening all around me. I wish I could be in my own personal hamster ball sometimes, and just live in that little bubble and be impervious to other people's crap. I don't want to get involved, but somehow I get pulled in and before I know it, I'm the center of a "he said, she said" talk. Le sigh.

I need to try to move onward and upward. I'm going to look up an Ethiopian restaurant in DC as a possible site for a birthday bash

Sensitivity

Sometimes I think I'm too sensitive for my own good. Things really get to me, then I go back and overanalyze an exchange or a situation. And I just think too much.

Sensitivity is good, but too much is too much.

Once an energy/chakra lady came in and did individual readings of the people in our dance class. She looked at me for a moment, and said one word: "breathe." I need to remember this more on a daily basis.

And where did my self-esteem go? When it left, vanity came storming in, and I have been grappling with that ever since. Maybe it's because for the past month I've been battling with the complexion of a greasy-faced 12 year old. I'm almost 23...I shouldn't have to worry about this silliness anymore.

Le sigh.