Thoughts on a Rainy Monday

Have you ever been to that place in your life where you just don’t fit anymore? Over time, you change, your personality changes, your goals, priorities, interests, thoughts, and feelings change. Suddenly you discover that a place where you once used to fit so nicely is not as comfortable as it used to be. It sticks out at you in funny angles and prods at you until you know that it is time to find a new niche.


I have been feeling this way lately. It is time for me to move on in my life. I need to get out, get away, and do things for myself. The problem is that I don’t really know how. I don’t mean to upset people in my life. I really do love them, and appreciate everything that each one of them does for me, but I don’t know how to show them. I feel that anything I can do won’t be enough.

Something big needs to happen. I need a change; a big change. I need a chance to prove to myself that I really can be my own person, and that I can take care of myself. Maybe if this happens, I will cease to be a burden, and I will cause less heartache to those closest to me. God knows that I never wanted to be that way to them.

I do not mean to be a Debbie-Downer on the blog today, but it’s a Monday, and it’s raining outside…and so far today, I’ve only had one English student. I suppose that I’ll go back to reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I’m nearly finished, but I find that the book is slower during the courtroom scenes. I personally prefer the beginning and middle of the book when Scout and Jem are just being children, and I as the reader get to watch them grow up. Their childhoods remind me of my own. I had a fabulous childhood, and am luck to still have a great home life. I just find that over time, things change, and no matter how much you might hate it, sometimes you have to change with them.

To Everyone Who Came to See Brigadoon Last Night! THANK YOU!!!

Last night was without a doubt the best show of Brigadoon that we have had yet! For the first time, I felt confident about my ballet numbers, and they went off without a hitch. The best part was that several of my best friends were there. It means so much to me when friends come to see the show. My one friend, who I wrote about yesterday, drove two and a half hours to come visit us and see the show. He’s a great guy, and a perfect gentleman. When he saw that I would have a long walk in the dark to get back to my car, he insisted on walking back with me. Not a lot of guys would do that nowadays. Even though I know I’m perfectly safe walking to my car, it’s nice to know someone’s looking out for me.

Earlier in the evening, I had been outside the theatre, standing in utter darkness during the intermission, trying to send a text message (because there is no cell phone service in the theatre), and I saw someone walk by the alleyway. He looked incredibly like a boy that I’ve done several shows with. He had the right profile, the right walk and carriage. I knew it had to be him. He passed by three times before I got up the courage to call to him. Of course, I couldn’t go over there to him. I was in a full-length gown, wearing enough makeup to be mistaken as a “lady of the evening.” He came over, and we talked during intermission. He’s the type of person that I always hate to let go. We’ve become close, and I really value him. It meant a lot to me that he came out to see me and his other theatre friends a second time. I mean…tickets aren’t cheap.

With everyone who was there last night, it was delightful to see so many other familiar faces in the crowd. After the show, I looked around at everyone who was grouped outside the theatre, and I have done a show with nearly every one of them sometime in the past. Theatre is like a family, and often, a show becomes like a great big family reunion, or rather, several reunions.

Of course in every family, there are little dysfunctions… I saw that the guy who had played opposite me last summer had come. As he was standing in a circle, talking to some of the actors, I came over and said hello. He barely glanced at me, said “hi” and turned away. I bet his shoulder is still icy from that one. I don’t know what was wrong, we hadn’t had a fight. I suppose that it might have been because his girlfriend was standing right there with him… Sometimes relationships change people.

All in all, it was a great night. Now I’m ready to head to work, drive way too fast trying to get to the theatre in time, and do it all again tonight. Wish me a broken leg!

A blown fuse, Nancy Drew, great friends, and a kid on the roof...

Well my day has been off to an interesting start. It’s my day off, and I’m at home with my two younger siblings. My brother is crawling around on the roof, sounding like a very large squirrel, or a hurricane wind, and my little sister just blew a fuse. She didn’t know that it is a bad idea to run the air conditioning, the microwave, the toaster, not to mention the various other small appliances in the kitchen at the same time. I called my dad, and he walked me though how to get the fuse working again. At first, I was having a blond moment and didn’t notice the ancient, hand written, smeared and blurred list of labels for each fuse on the back of the fuse box door until after I was already frustrated that the individual fuses were not all labeled. Once I saw the list, it was easy to locate the trouble fuse. For a moment, I felt like Nancy Drew defusing a bomb…except there was no bomb, and I am not an eighteen-year-old detective with a cool car and a hot boyfriend.

Hopefully this day will get better. It looks a little dark and cloudy outside, as if it might rain at any second, but that’s okay. I’ve got big plans for today! After lunch, I’m going over my best friend’s house and we are going to hang out with a good friend of ours who is visiting, even though he has to drive several hours to see us. After dinner at their house, the whole group is going to come see my show tonight at the theatre. I must say, I’m extremely excited for them all to see the show. Since I am sharing my role with another girl, I am glad that my friend will get to see me playing my more important role tonight. I don’t say a word, and I have no solo songs, but I perform in several ballets, so I still feel that my role is vital to the show.

I am also very flattered that my friend is driving so far to come and watch my show. I have several family members who live near him, and they have never braved the long drive to even so much as come and visit us, let alone come see one of my shows. I mean, I understand. It’s a long trip…but I can’t help but think some times that that verse in the Bible hit the nail right on the head when it said something about a friend sticking closer than a brother. I’ve got a great family, but I must say, I’ve also got some pretty amazing friend who continue to surprise me with their loyalty and commitment. So, thanks guys. Enjoy the show!

Count that day lost...

Today is the last day of the work week for me, but is also the day I’ve been dreading. I’m currently in the play, Brigadoon at a local theatre, and tonight we are putting on a benefit performance. I order to actually be on stage in time, I’m going to have to do my hair and makeup before I leave work, which means I will leave work looking like a cross between a drag queen and a geisha. Once I get to the theatre, I will have just enough time to throw on my tights, shoes, and costume, and run onto the stage. I’m a little nervous about that because I’m the type of actress who likes to rehearse before every performance. If I don’t, I do not feel ready.

Even so, I kind of like the feeling of living a “fast-paced” life, so to speak. Ever since I was in my first show in 2007, I haven’t stopped acting, and always do three shows a year. I love it. I also love the fact that it keeps me busy. I don’t like being idle for too long. I sometimes even have trouble slowing down long enough to get the rest that my body needs. I guess that my desire to fill my days up with as much work and productivity as I can stems back to when I was a child. I had an autograph book that I was trying to fill. When I asked my great grandmother to write something, this is what she wrote, “Count that day lost when the low descending sun views from thy hand no worthy action done.” That struck such a chord with me, and I realized how important each day is, and how each one is a gift that shouldn’t be “lost.”

When I was a little older, I started to have some heart problems. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but I continually had violent heart palpitations. To discover the reason behind the palpitations, the doctors had me wear a heart monitor for the entire month of June. I was scared. I didn’t know if I was going to lose my life in one of the attacks, and no one could give me a straight answer as to what was wrong. I was frightened enough that I began to realized how temporary life really is. In just a moment, it can be snuffed out. I started living my life the way my great grandmother had taught me.

In retrospect, I really had no reason to be worried. My heart is strong, and I only had a small allergy to caffeine, which was easily remedied by abstaining from chocolate and other caffeinated edibles (trust me, it got easier as I went along). Even so, I felt like I learned an important principle: every day is a new opportunity to do something worthwhile. I guess my great grandmother ought to know…she’s had over ninety years’ worth of days filled with her goodness…and she’s still going strong.

Catching Fireflies with The Old Man and the Sea

Ah, day three of tutoring, and in all three days, I’ve only had one student. My coworker, who tutors math, has had more students than I’ve been able to count. This is to be expected. When you take a math class, you are immersed right in the class, but when you take an English class; you might not have a writing assignment or a paper for weeks. I’m not complaining, the hum of voices in the center makes things feel more normal, and the lack of English students allows me to catch up on my reading.


Today’s novel is The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway. Ah, Earnest! One of the easiest writers to understand, yet even in his simplicity, his writing is multifaceted. If you’ve never read The Old Man and the Sea, it’s about, well….an old man, and his life as a fisherman…at the sea. I haven’t quite finished it, but so far, he has hooked a large fish and is being dragged along in his boat, hoping that the fish will tire out and give up so that he can reel it in. The fish has great stamina and continues to swim all through the day and into the night, taking the nameless old man with him for a ride. Even though the old man has no control of his destination on the ride, he remains calm, and always has a plan for each little obstacle that occurs.

He also manages to keep himself busy. Even out in the open sea, the old man (or rather, Hemingway) observes, ponders, and discusses to himself all of the life that he sees around him. He wonders why the dolphins appear to be purple-spotted when they really are golden, and he talks to the birds when they land on his skiff. The man is elderly, penniless, and has not caught a fish in over eighty days. The boy who had become like a son to him has been forced to work for a new fishing boat, and his small hut is sparingly adorned with reminders of his deceased wife. He has next to nothing, yet, his is happy. Out of everything I have observed in the novel so far, contentment in one’s situation stands out the most.

This theme seems to be occurring and reappearing in my life as of late. It is so important to take every day captive and find the little, pleasant things in it, even if it is as simple as observing the colors of a dolphin under water. For me, it has been the visit from a friend, a kind work spoken by a coworker, the knowledge that there is always someone out there who loves me, the single, beautiful pearl strung on my necklace, and the privilege to be doing something that I love.

With this in mind, I went for a walk last night. It was chilly for a June evening, and I was glad for the sweater around my shoulders. The sun was setting, and in the dim twilight I could feel the magic of the evening slipping out among the shadows. By the woods, I stopped, and reached out my hand for a firefly dancing amid the trees. Sometimes the fireflies are hard to spot, because without their lights, they blend into the dimness of the evening, and become one with the shadows. But then! They ignite their individual lights, and for a small window of time, I swiftly reach out my hand and grab the small creature. It remained in my palm for a moment, crawling over my fingers, and flashing its little light one more time before using my finger tip as a take-off pad. A car went by, and I realized that even though the people within the car were getting faster to their destination than I was to mine, they could not see the fireflies like I could. They would not get to witness the magic of the twilight, or capture that one small moment of the day.

While I'm Waiting...

I’ve been an English tutor for about three years now at the local college. It is the perfect job for me. I love tutoring, and feel so blessed to have been offered this position while I was a college student. Because of tutoring, I know that I want to be a teacher someday after I finish the necessary education. Even though I’ve been tutoring for so long, yesterday was actually my first day as a full time tutor for the summer semester. I thought it would be pretty much the same as tutoring during the normal spring and fall semesters, but much to my surprise, things have been quite different.


For one thing, my boss is no longer here. She is retired now, and I feel like the college has lost one of their greatest assets. A more kind, generous, godly, and helpful woman never walked the face of the earth. Her office is all cleaned out and empty now. I was told that I could use her office this summer to check online papers, but I think I will use a different computer instead. I would feel too much like a trespasser.

I called her the other day and I asked her some questions that I had about the job. She told me that I could always as the woman who was temporary taking her place, because, as she reminded me, she was no longer my boss. That’s a hard concept for me to grasp. She’s the best boss that an employee could ask for. No matter who ends up taking her place next semester, no one can be as wonderful as my previous boss.

Another change is that it is so empty and quiet! I am the only English tutor this summer, and my fellow coworker is the only math tutor. It’s just us, he and I. In the two days that we’ve been here, only one student, an English student, has come in for help. I am assured by the librarians that there will soon be plenty of students to tutor, so I have no doubt that very shortly, my days will be filled with subject/verb agreement, comma placement, and third person verses first person narrative.

Until then, the librarians seem to be ruling the roost. We are very lucky to have extremely qualified, helpful, and caring librarians who will go out of their way to help a student find a suitable book or source, but as of these two days, they’ve been checking in on my fellow tutor and I, frowning on us when we go to lunch together, and making off-handed comments about how we are running the center. Of course, the lunch thing makes sense. I don’t think we will be taking the same lunch hour any more, but for today, and yesterday, when the library is empty, I don’t think it’s going hurt. In the past, the librarians ruled the library, not the support center. I suppose that they are just trying to help out now that the boss is no longer here.

Another change is that my favorite teacher came to visit me today for a few minutes to ask me how the job is going. In all of the past semesters, I have always gone to pay him visits in his office between classes and work hours. This is the first time he’s ever just come over to pay me a visit. I am always so excited to see him. He’s not only my teacher, but he’s also my friend and greatest mentor. I told him once that he’s changed my life, and he asked me to tell him someday how he did that…and someday I will, but I don’t know where I would start. He’s stood up for me and stood behind me, when no one else would, he believes in me more than I believe in myself, and he is always ready to lend a hand when I need help. Even when I was at a different college and I was having an issue that caused me to panic, he was able to talk me down like no one else could, and helped me to find a sensible way out of the situation. Even his wife has been a reliable and helpful friend to me, lending an ear to all of the drama in my life, and being there for me in pretty much the same way as her husband has for so many years now. I don’t know what I would do without them, and I honestly wish that I could just sit down and write out every single thing that they have done for me, but that would take more time than even I have right now as I sit here in the lonely library, wondering if students will ever come.

With this being said, it’s been a pretty decent day. I even got a visit from my two best friends! We had a little girl chat, gossiped, shared a package of Starburst, and took a group trip to the bathroom. Even in the mundane regularity of life, every day seems to hold some new surprise, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow….and to the paycheck…

"All the world is a stage..." unless you're my ex...

As an actress, I love being in the spotlight. It just feels right to me. I am at ease and comfortable performing in front of dozens, if not hundreds of people. It’s a second nature to me. Even though I am comfortable in this environment, some people are not so inclined. Take my ex boyfriend, Dean, as an example. When we dated, he had always come to my shows and supported me, but swore up and down that acting was something that he simply couldn’t do. I was fine with this, because I understood how he felt. Acting isn’t for everybody, and I would never want to force someone to do something that they find uncomfortable.
Well, something must have changed for him. I broke up with him many months ago, and ever since then, he’s been suddenly interested in theatre. It was so sudden after our break up, that I found it suspicious. Now, he is taking an acting class at the college we both attend. I still find his motives questionable, especially after he once hinted that he was interested in theatre to “meet new people,” and joked about dating some of my friends. I tried not to let this bother me, but to some extent, it does. The local theatre scene is my sanctuary. Theatre is my place to relax, and be myself through being someone else. Let’s face it, actors are highly possessive people! This is our spot, our place, our refuge from the rest of the world; our place to be with others of “our kind.” Now I felt my sanctuary was about to be invaded.
Every year since I’ve taken the acting class at my college, I’ve gone back semester after semester to join the class for the first few weeks in order to brush up on my Improv skills. I adore improv games, and the teacher always begins her class with improv exercises. This semester was going to be no different, except this time, I had an added incentive to go; to watch Dean perform. He had always been so quiet, so withdrawn into himself, that I found it hard to believe that he had actually enrolled in a theatre class, and an acting one at that. I knew that he would be horrified to see me in his class. He probably thought that he was safe from seeing me there, since I had already taken it years ago. Little did he know that news travels fast on campus, and that I had many friends in the class.
Although Dean sat in the very back of the class, and constantly made sure that if I was on stage left, he was on stage right, and vice versa, he did a very good job of playing it cool, and never looking in my direction. Amanda, our acting teacher knows me well from years of taking theatre classes and performing in her shows, so she asked me to introduce and lead the improv games. I was only too happy to oblige. There is nothing more fun than a good game of Freeze to get you going in the afternoon!
This particular game is played by two people who are instructed to act out a certain scene, and are supposed to make as large of body movements as possible. When the next actor in line to play, sees a movement that he likes, he (or the teacher, if he’s taking too long) will yell “freeze!” and will take the place of one of the two actors, standing in the same position that the other actor had been standing. Using this body movement, it is up to him to start the a totally different scene. If an actor simply cannot come up with a scene, or is struggling, the teacher will yell, “Bonk!” in a game show sort of way, in order to end the scene and keep things moving. It’s not a hard game, but can be intimidating the first time.
When it came to Dean’s turn, even I was surprised. I even felt a bit bad for him. It was painful. He didn’t know what to do, and just stood there, thinking. When he did try to start a scene, he embarrassed himself, and ended up stopping and thinking out loud about what he would try next. I must not have been the only one embarrassed for him, because before the teacher had a chance to yell “bonk!” to stop the scene, six students yelled it for her. The rest of the games weren’t as bad, but I think Dean felt enough like a fool during the first game to last for the rest of the class.
I had come to the class hoping to see him make a fool out of himself, and I wasn’t disappointed, but deep down to the heart of me, I felt sort of bad for him. Sure, he hadn’t treated me very kindly after the break up, and still refused to speak to me when we ran into each other, but he was a human being, and didn’t deserve any extra humiliation from me. Besides, he was doing a fine job of humiliating himself on his own.