This has been one of the most difficult summers of my life. As difficult as the summer my mother died and as difficult as when my marriage broke up. It's been an extreme roller coaster ride of emotional turmoil, which I was not handing well. I feel like for a couple of months I had left my body and been replaced by a crazy, out-of-control weirdo.

The most visible issue was my son moving out and starting college. This brought a great deal of mixed emotions. I kept thinking how every other parent I knew who's launched a child into the world didn't seem to be very fazed by it. So I had no idea how hard it was being for me. I lost interest in all the things that give me pleasure and all the "mental filters" that usually keep me from doing stupid and embarrassing things failed.

I was distraught over losing the near constant companionship of one of my best friends, but at the same time happy that he's moving on to start the next stage of his life and happy that I can now move on to mine. But the stress and turmoil over the life change, I now see in hindsight, started in May when he was finishing his high school career. And just got worse as August approached.

In the midst of all this, during the height of my turmoil and distress over Boy leaving, someone did something to me in an unnecessarily cruel way that made dealing with Boy's departure 1000 times more difficult. I am still mystified why this person found it necessary to effectively beat the shit outta me while slamming the door in my face all when I was at my most fragile.

I have more major life changes coming up, which I am looking forward to as they will be much more positive experiences (I hope). One of which is a move to New York. Making big changes, for me, is like traveling. I want to be at the destination but I hate the getting-there part. And this particular trip has been absolutely a nightmare.

Earth shattering stuff, this is :)

So, my socks have begun falling down on a regular basis, as they tend to do with age (As well as parts of my body, but we won't go there. You're welcome.) But I only today realized that it's just the sock on my right foot that falls down. Never the one on my left foot. Why is that? I wondered. Friends at work postulated that perhaps my right foot is smaller than my left. I think it may have something to do with the ankle bracelet I've been wearing. For whatever reason, whichever sock lands on my right foot persists on falling down and into my shoe. I have resigned myself to walking around work (for in the summer, that's the only place I weaar socks) all day with my sock half off. :P

And to answer the question "Why don't you just buy new socks?" Because I'm effin' cheap, that's why, and all of these cost me eighty five cents a pair. It doesn't really bother me, it's just a curious thing.

Saw this today with the Boy.

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Oh. My. God. This was frikkin' AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Absolutely the best movie I have seen in years. Completely, completely BRILLIANT!!!!! ( spoilers galore )

Saw this today with the Boy. Here's what I thought:

( many spoilers )

So, I had today off. I was tired so I let the Boy drive himself to school, which meant Mother had no transport most of the day. So I got things done. The most important of which, I think, was that I was finally able to force myself to work on the quilt I'm making him to take to uni. I've had a really hard time getting myself to work on this thing, and not for the usual reasons (I usually have to be in the right mood to sew these days). I think it was because it's so symbolic of his leaving, and I don't want him to go. But I got the top of it nearly done. So I suppose the whole process of dealing with the change, on an emotional level, is getting done too.

Next week is his final week of high school classwork. Then it's finals, a two week internship, and graduation. I'll need someone to hold the kleenex box for me.

I just need to vent a bit about what it's like working for my boss. She has the maturity of an overly emotional 8 year old and the brains of a pretty smart monkey. And that's not much of an exaggeration. At least once a week I have to read and interpret a memo for her.

Once she literally came throguh the door screaming at me, out of the blue, about did I have to use the desk and how can she work if I'm using the desk. Um, last time I checked it was a shared office and there's never been a problem. I asked her to, in future, ask me to do things in a calm and professional manner, then I talked to her boss about that. Yes I did.

And when I took 10 days off to make my trip to London I kept hearing things like "Do you have to take this day off? What are you doing this day?" It's none of her fucking business what I do with my own time. She was just jealous that I was taking time off. Completely freaking that I was going to be gone for so long. So needy, she is.

Which leads me to her inability to accept that she has as much responsibility as she does and has the work load that she does (which is no different than anyone else with her job title). She is just damn jealous that everyone else gets to go home at an appointed time but she has to stay until all the tasks get done (she is the only salaried position).

So how does she handle the stress and work load that are overwhelming her? By whining about it like a child. By running around like a chicken with it's head off, instead of being organized and "working smart" rather than working a lot.

When I was 20 I stopped working for semi-pro theatre companies because I couldn't stand working with people who were unorganised and had their heads up their asses. My boss is the same - an amateur.

Rant over. For now. Thank you for listening. :)

Well, it’s that time between events and life has been a bit weird since I got back from London. Some plans are falling apart, some are coming together, one person in particular has left me with disappointment. And I’ve been spending my days filled with an odd feeling of floating.

FANGIRL TIME

Now that I’ve looked at Harry’s Lewis gig a number of times I’m more pleased than ever. He looks fantastic, yet creepy (perfect for the character). I get the feeling that some of his bits may have been cut out (shame) just because, though I haven’t bothered to look at the entire episode, Peter’s purpose seems to be to give important information. I didn’t think he went “Baines” at all, and I didn’t feel he was being camp at all, either. Peter is a prick and that’s how Harry played him.

And he looked fabulous doing it. They gave him that, what do you younguns call it? Emo? (which to me means Emo Philips) look, but I remember the late 60’s (barely) when that look was invented. So that’s what I think of and that’s why I love it. It suits Harry wonderfully. And he’s one of the few men I love seeing in a tie (and nothing else, preferably ;D )

So I was bored at work the other day. I was playing with some fake zebra fur fabric, which would make a great pimp coat and matching hat, and an image popped into my head (you can probably see where this is going). Harry with his shaggy hair, in a full on 70’s zebra fur pimp coat and hat, black sheer shirt, the big platforms, and all the bling he can carry. Like for a fancy dress party, for fun. I made myself giggle and it kept me entertained for the rest of the day. I’m hopeless. :)

After having read Iain's blog about the O&J screening, which can be found here

http://www.oscarandjim.com/blog/archive/2009/04/soho-by-night.php

I was reminded of a similar, if a gajillion times less exciting, experience I had at uni. I had written a rather lengthy op/ed piece for the newspaper. On the day it was published, and this was the first thing I had ever had published, I was sitting in a common area waiting for a class to start. I noticed another student was reading my piece. She was actually reading it and I didn't even know her! I watched her read for a bit, all the time thinking "Just read it all the way to the end. Don't stop in the middle, read the whole thing." And she did! I was so pleased. I smiled a little smile to myself and walked into my class feeling just a little bit bigger.

I am so frikkin’ excited about this movie. I grew up watching re-runs of classic Trek. I was practically raised by it. I could even “name that episode” within 12 seconds. I've nearly memorized every TNG episode. And, even if I haven’t watched every episode of every Trek series since, I’ve kept my eye on it. So when I heard there was going to be a relaunch, after the dreadful Nemesis and Enterprise series, I got hopeful.

All the promo material looks good and very promising. The actors look good. Simon Pegg is one of my new favorites and I’m glad he’s in this, though I’m not 100% certain of his casting as Scotty. We shall see.

The idea of recasting characters that have always been played by the same actors is always scary. We go through it every now and then with Doctor Who. I’m much more comfortable with Matt Smith now that I’ve seen him in person hanging about on a sidewalk. He came across as very “Doctory” just the way he was chatting. But we’ll see what he does with the part (I’ve never seen him in anything, so I have no reference).

Back to Star Trek… It’s been stated many places by many people that Star Trek is about optimism. I think it will do well because this is a time when people are craving good news. For the same reason the Shirley Temple movies were so popular in the thirties, this looks to be a movie that, if promises are kept, will deliver that good feeling. And a little escapism never hurts.

So I thought maybe I should put something up here regarding why I've titled my journal My Life Is A SitCom...

The next six months are going to be very busy and very hard for me. After setting my life pretty much completely aside for eighteen years for him, my son will be moving to the MidWest to go to university. It’s been just him and me, well, since he was born, really. His father was nigh unto useless until I kicked him out, which was when the Boy was two. My mother only helped with logistics.

So now I’m facing two impending gigantic life changes: being alone for the first time in my life (well, there is the dog) and (hopefully) getting into an MFA film program in New York. OMG, my life hasn’t seen such huge changes since the Boy was born. I’m only just beginning to wrap my brain around it all. I’m sad and excited and relieved and tense and all sorts of emotions at the same time.

I think the biggest thing is that I have spent my entire adult life taking care of other people. First my rat bastard ex-husband, then my son, and my mother was always there needing something from me (there's a psychology student's thesis paper right there). So when the Boy leaves for uni, it’ll be just me. I love my son more than anything else in the world, but… I’ll be free. I’ll be in my forties living the life of a twenty something. Or something close to it. And I can’t wait.

…or trolleys, as they’re called in the UK. I believe they are one of western society’s great levelers. Think about it. Everyone has to eat. Everyone buys food. Now, people buy their food in different types of venues: restaurants, street vendors, 7-Eleven, roadside veggie stands. It depends on where one lives, city or country, and one’s lifestyle, for the most part. But I feel safe in saying that all of us, at least once in our lives, have entered a grocery store and pushed around a shopping cart.

And just how silly do we look pushing that thing around? No one can possibly look cool and/or sophisticated while pushing a metal cage mounted on squeaky, wobbly, and possibly non-functioning plastic wheels. Watching wealthy and posh people in the snooty stores is always fun. I can tell they’re self conscious pushing a cart around because it’s something they obviously don’t do often and are therefore uncomfortable with.

Mothers in Walmart, on the other hand, spend a good deal of their time pushing a gigantic cart around, into which they’ve loaded at least some of their kids, so it has become something of an extension of themselves.

College boys, out on their own for the first time, push a cart around like it’s a new skill. Not a very difficult one to master, but new. I always like to watch them shop (especially if they’re cute!). They just make me giggle. They wander around the store, don’t know where anything is, and generally buy munchies, frozen food, and condoms.

Once, a long time ago, I was shopping with a 21 year old named Justin. I was working at a summer opera company at which he was an apprentice. We got to the checkout and he, literally, started going on about “I’m in a grocery store and I’m buying food for myself with my own money!” very loudly. Well, he just had a loud voice. I walked away and pretended I didn’t know him. No, really, I did.

But it’s a necessary thing, a shopping cart. No one can just carry enough food to feed a family for a week all the way up to the checkout. I, personally, have a difficult time with large carts as my arms are not long enough to reach down to the bottom to retrieve things. It’s really quite embarrassing to have to lean over the damn thing, my butt sticking up in the air, just to get that last small item.

I do love the new little carts they have, the ones that are like two hand baskets one on top of the other. They’re just so darn cute! They’re like the Mini Coopers of shopping carts. And they’re perfect for me because a) I’m a bit like a Mini myself and b) I shop fast and I can zip around old people and children really easily with those.

But, I digress. The point of all this is that shopping carts, mundane contraptions as they are, bring everyone to the same level of ridiculous necessity. Can you imagine someone like, oh, Kim Jung Il pushing a shopping cart through a grocery store? Or Paris Hilton? She’d probably need help operating the thing.

Well, for my first post, I've decided to talk about what I thought of the play I travelled across an ocean to see Harry Lloyd in.

First, the bad news. Hayley Atwell was simply dreadful. Well, maybe that’s not quite the right word. Amatuerish. That’s it. She didn’t have any idea what to do with her body on stage and her entire performance was very High School.

Second, the good news. I did like Ken Stott. He put everything into his performance. His accent was good, although it started to flag a bit towards the end. Never heard the English come through, he just lost some of the Brooklyn. And, it must be said, Brooklyn is a very difficult accent to do, even for Americans.

A cell phone rang during one of Ken Stott’s more intense scenes in the second act. He started to seethe. We all thought he might explode. But he didn’t, he returned to the script after a few minutes. What is it in our modern first world culture that has made some of us so wrapped up in our own world that we can’t remember to push a tiny button and be fucking polite?

Now, the Harry news. He was quite good. It was so very nice to see him in such an energetic role and he really turned it on. But he’s still, essentially, apprenticing and I think it showed especially in the scene where he takes Atwell into the bedroom. I just didn’t get any sense from either of them of the sexual electricity that teenagers feel when that sort of thing happens. These two characters are supposed to be in love, there should be little heart shaped bubbles popping over their heads. Still, I firmly believe in his talent and potential.

The Duke of York’s Theatre is tiny. Very ornate, but tiny, tiny, tiny. It’s only about a fourth the size of the Kennedy Center Opera House (which is my main point of reference), and that’s on a good day. It is literally the smallest top tier theatre I’ve ever been in. Oh, and someone should fix the big hole in the wall above the stage left light tree.

The set was quite impressive, at first. The building exterior looked and felt like a typical Brooklyn apartment house. It was really large, though, and very far downstage and made me feel cramped or crowded. And I was sitting in the balcony. Then the exterior flies up and reveals the interior of the apartment. That was a disappointment. It looked like it hadn’t been thoroughly thought out before it was constructed. I just didn’t believe that a family actually lived there. I did like the fact that they didn’t mask the rest of the stage. You could see the stage left wall and the stairs leading to the building exit. It was all painted black so you never saw any of it when the lights were up.

The costumes were only okay, too. I liked Atwell’s red dress, mostly because it fit her so well. The entire time she had that on I was paying absolutely no attention to what she was saying and thinking about what it was probably made of and imagining what it might have been like pressing all those pleats in (I hate making accordion pleats). I also liked the dress Bea wore to go to the wedding and wondered if it was vintage. The men all looked appropriately period. And DAMN Harry looks good in a nice suit. My favorite costume of his was the brown outfit with the leather jacket. Again, he is extra fine in nice clothes.

LONDON

I felt very at home in London, very comfortable. It only reinforced my desire to emigrate. It was like I wasn’t on another continent, or even in another country, just another city. The area around Trafalgar Square, the London Eye, and the Embankment all reminded me of DC. It’s the big marble buildings, tourists and open space. Some of what I saw going to and fro Heathrow reminded me of Baltimore.

I was amazed at how nimbly the city buses negotiated the small streets. And then I realized that the entire city is just scaled down from anything I’ve seen in America. The traffic is smaller and quieter. The streets and buildings are all smaller. Everything just felt much more on a human scale. I guess that comes with being a much, much older city than anything here.

And the Thames isn’t anywhere near as wide as I thought it would be. I had just kind of assumed it was like the Potomac. I don’t know why I did, just cuz it’s a river through a big city, I guess.

I like that British money comes in a wide variety of sizes and shapes to choose from. It’s much more fun than ours.

The only really bad thing was that the pollution was playing havoc with my asthma. By Sat. afternoon I had to use the stronger medication I have so I wouldn’t cough all through the play.