Ten Reasons: a Musical Journey

Well, this has gone by TOO QUICKLY!! Here we are (thank you Andrew Byrne... :) ) one show from the end of this run. It feels really surreal. My brain is telling me that I should be keeping my journal current on all of the things that are happening so that I never forget these moments, but my body is telling me in every spare moment, "Sleep. Sleep. Sleep." I'm glad that I'm not in my early 20's anymore for many reasons, one of which is the fact that I now (mostly) listen to my body. In fact, my body also told me to eat the spare piece of apricot, sugar plum, blueberry and black plum tart that was in the kitchen. What? I had to cook for my cast! There was one extra piece and I am part of the cast, so it was mine. Alllllll mine......

Great, now they know what they're getting. Oh well. I don't think they read the blog anyway. :) If they do they'll all know and they'll still have to wait till Thursday when we have our FINAL performance. You know when I'll have time to journal about all this stuff? After we close when I'm in that post-show down phase where I walk around the apartment picking things up and putting things down and forgetting why I walked into rooms. Am I the only one who does that? It happens when I'm distracted and processing emotions. My husband always has a little smile on his face and watches me as I walk around. After about an hour of it he'll say something cute like, "You don't even know what to do with yourself now, do you?"

Um, no. I'm not sure what happens next. I've only planned for this far, so I don't know at all. I do know that I'm going to a wedding in Florida next weekend for a dear friend who has finally found her prince. :) He's sweet. Also from a far-away land. Just like mine.

Well, I'm still in show mode, so I'll say this much. I cannot read ANY reviews of the show until it's done because it would make me too nervous. I'll spend the morning after closing with a bloody mary clutched in my paw and the URL(s?) under my clicky little finger. Maybe I'll ask Liza to come over and read them with me. She not only plays my best friend, we are very close, both in relationship and proximity.

I'll even make her breakfast AND a bloody mary. :) Maybe she'll help me pack again. That girl is all-knowing and all-powerful. Who KNOWS what I'd do without her sense and smarts and friendship.

Oh, now I'm getting all sad-faced about the end of the show. I'm going to miss everyone so much.

I don't want to get too melancholy, so I'll end with another story. This one is really really good.

I just totally wrote out a story about my very first love, the boy from Germany whom I met when I was 17, but that's too personal for the internet. It's also not as funny as another horror story...

O.K. Here goes...

When I was about 18 years old, I did a community production of Mystery of Edwin Drood. I was in the chorus and so I helped the audience vote for who the murderer was at the end of the show.

O.K. Store that in your brain and fast forward. Please join me again in the food court of the mall for a little adventure...I was working at the restaurant and this guy came up to me and gave me the weird look. You know, the "I might know you" look. I didn't recognize him, but he recognized me. It was maybe late November early December.

This was my current situation with guys: I had a boyfriend in Germany who agreed that if we needed to, we could see other people because we lived across the ocean from each other; I had just ended (on Halloween...well, ended for the first time) a relationship with an older R.A. whom I met during a study group with his roommate at his apartment (he was adorable...and a little hung up on this other girl who had a boyfriend...oy... we had a messy on-again, off-again relationship for a few years. Mostly off...with a bit of making out...I broke it off with him over email when he sent me his new address. It was back in the early days of email...messy...did I mention, messy?)

So anyway, boy at the food court came up after eating and slipped me a note that said something like, "I remember you from the show at the Playhouse...can I talk to you later?" It had his number and name on it (turns out I knew his sister pretty well in high school...), and I was in a very WTF mood, so a few days later I called and chatted with him. He asked me out on a date and we went to Perkins and had dinner together and talked a lot. He seemed nice. A little intense. Very interested in me. He said that I'd worked his section during Drood and he'd noticed me and how pretty I was. He said it was kind of awkward for him in the moment, because his girlfriend was at the show with him, but he never forgot me. Me? Well, how sweet.

In any case, it was a pretty successful date and he called me a lot after that to chat and stuff and wanted to plan another date with me. I had made a bunch of Christmas cookies that I wanted to deliver around to my friends, but otherwise I was pretty busy, plus, I started to get a sort of funny vibe from him, so I asked him if he just wanted to come with me on that jaunt. He was excited to come with me and met me at my house where we got into my car and he went with me ALL OVER Duluth delivering Christmas cookies...even to the home of the R.A. with whom I had just ended it...I was nothing if not people-pleasing at that point in my life...

There were a lot of guys on that delivery route that I kind of had the hots for, so it was nice to be with a guy that seemed to like me that might make them jealous (hahahahhahahahah...o.k. I'll admit...my young naive thought-process was a little bit skewed at that point. I was just laughing so hard I couldn't type...). Anyway, to be honest, I was a little bored of my company towards the end of my date and sort of thinking in my head about what one of the guys for whom I'd had the hots had said to me when I gave him his cookies when something drew me to full attention.

"What?" I asked of the guest in my car, for it had registered that he'd said something red-flag worthy. He said, "I said I think we should be together forever."

I gripped the steering wheel. I got really warm. I wanted to roll down the windows and let in the -20 degree north winter air. "Um," I said, "I'm kind of in a place right now where I'm kind of dating around. I don't know if I can be with only one person." What I meant was, I don't think I can be with you. As I discuss in the show, I wasn't dating around (I am terrible at that...I mean, utterly miserable...), I was pining around which is much different. I certainly wasn't ready to settle down at 18 years old. Oh wait, he'd said something else jarring, so I steered myself back out of my thoughts and into the conversation.

"I just don't see why you'd need to be with anyone else when I know that you and I are meant to be together forever."

"Um. I...well..."

We sat in silence on our SECOND DATE as I pulled around the corner to my home on Peabody St. and towards his car. I said that I couldn't commit to being with one person, gave him a peck on the cheek, shook his hand and wished him a good night and happy holidays. He called a few more times, and I kind of blew him off.

I ran into him about 6 months later, right before summer and he told me he had just gotten married a few weeks prior to that to someone he'd met at some kind of party earlier in the year.

Woah. So, he wasn't looking for a girlfriend, he was looking for a wife. Well, I dodged that strangely trajectoried bullet.

That was a weird one. And on that note, 4 days till our closing show. Goodnight!! :)