Ah, the Cast Party

A den of debauchery and lovin', drunkeness and comaraderie.

My menu consisted of

4 Apple Pucker shots
2 Chocolate Raspberry Truffle shots
3 Malibu and Pineapples
1 raspberry vodka/Sprite

I'm happy to report that I didn't vomit.

There was drunken jumping on a snow covered trampoline, however.

Rave reviews

Opened last night to a sold out house.

Reviews are good.

My folks even came. Saw me simulate sex onstage. Saw me cry in the big death scene. Saw me bitchfight with the other convicts. Mom said it was "beatiful", and of course stood up at curtain call.

There is NOTHING to describe how this feels. The elation is the tantamount to, but a bit different in scope, the moments after I gave birth to my children.

It's like giving life to a new person every night, in the company of your two closest friends and 60 intimate strangers. :)

Who rules? That would be me!

V. excited. After watching our rehearsal, the fight coordinator (who happens to be a pretty big director 'round here) asked me to get a copy of "The Woolgatherer" from the library, as he "thinks I'll really like it".

After a bit more probing, come to find out he's on the season at the Alley next year and wants me to do the show. I hadn't read the whole show, but the cool thing? It's a cast of two, with only one woman. And that would be me.

I rule! :)

Your most annoying habit?

Aside from having an opinion on everything, that is. :)

Mine, aside from the above disclaimer, is that I chew the inside of my mouth and the sides of my tounge. I always have. I have met several other people who do the same.

I came up with this witty, brilliant idea whilst sitting here figuring out what to blog about, gnawing a small raised line along the inside of my right cheek. I always figured I'd get mouth cancer from that, but no one has been able to verify it with fact.

Oh, and two days until Our Country's Good opens. If you're in town, check this out for ticket info:

The Alley Theater

I work 20 hours a day

This is what I figured out. When I'm doing a show, which I actually consider a profession to me, not a hobby, I'm on the job round the clock. Most moms are. But seeing as how I entered Hell Week for the show this weekend, I see now why I'm so damn tired.

Wake up with boy around 7...feed, clothe children, if a school day, take GC to school
Do the SAHM thing all day. That's my job, and I do it well. Husband comes home around 6, we have dinner and I head to rehearsal.

Last night I returned home at 11:30. Shower to remove all dirt from dress rehearsal (playing a convict is fun, but messy). Took care to wrap hair to preserve the cool dredlocks that are forming on top of my head.

BOy awakes for first feed at 12:30. Then again at 4, again at 7.

So really, I get zero time to rest. Those two hours between feeds? NOT RESTFUL.

Please don't get me wrong. I LOVE staying home. I did it so I could do theatre at night and still see my children. It was the deal we made when I agreed to stay home. I love theatre. But I view it as a job. It is physically and mentally exhausting, moreso in a show with some heavy emotional shit, like this one. I come home and feel like I'm punching in again.

The kicker is that weekends are no different. How is it that we both work our "day jobs", but I still do dishes, housework, laundry and the majority of the childcare 7 days a week? And at night? Seriously, something has to give.

What the girlchild is no longer allowed to have

...Since about Christmas.

1. Markers...ask her twelve stuffed animals who now wear purple "makeup" why
2. Pens...I now have four plastic child plates that bear the mark of the beast
3. Glue...who knew how hard it is to scrape Elmer's off a dining room table?
4. Nailpolish...Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are the bomb. Unfortunately, they do not work on hot pink hears drwan on the wall.
5. Any lip product. Glosses, sticks, balm. That shit is greasy and purely hellish trying to lift out of sheets.
6. Scissors. My daughter managed to clip slices in her bathrobe, whilst also cutting the true center of her bangs down to about a half inch. In order to remedy this problem and "even it out", she now has a whack job haircut courtesy of mom. I can't look at her without giggling like Beavis and Butthead in my head and thinking "you look like a tool". My pretty little girl now looks like a row of eyelash yarn was glued to her front hairline.

One would think an almost-five-year old would learn from her mistakes. Just look at the Billy Ray Cyrus Mullet debacle of 2003. But no, she just continues to push the buttons and remove more things from her tiny little hands' reach.

Please, God, help me not to kill her.

Starving Artists not welcome here...or why sports blow, by the DQM

My town loves its sports. We have pro football, basketball (and a pesky group of streetfighters *they* are), women's bball, some baseball team AND are home to the NCAA Hall of Fame. Oh, and that big ass oval track to the west? They race cars there. Really fast, apparently. Yep, along with lameass ribbon stickers, people love to deck out their cars around here with Horseshoe flags and "GO HORSE" stickers.

We love our sports so much that are going to get rid of our current big ass stadium and build a HUMONGOUS STADIUM, where we can house our football team, including the highest paid yokel...I mean, QB...in the NFL. For a mere 800 MILLION DOLLARS. Please note, I said that correctly. EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION. And according to our mayor, with no cost incurred by us local taxpayers. Just you schmucks who like to stay in our hotels and eat at our fine chain restaurants.

Whatever. It brings business to our nice little downtown. That's great. The speedway doesn't really do enough to give our fair city enough redneck beer swillers, we really need to cram more people into a stadium painted half blue and half white. You like sports? Grand. I don't. I really don't begrudge you your sports, except when I can't find a seat to sit in on a Sunday afternoon in this town when a game is on. Is it too much to ask for some GD chicken wings without the shouting idiots? I respect that I am a weirdo for not enjoying sport of any kind. Us "art fags" were like that from way back.

I accept you for you, so you need to feel my pain when I tell you that our newspaper...the main source of news for the Eleventh largest city in the country...has pulled their arts reporter from seeing any new works at local theatres. He LOVED the Producers, which is in BWay tour right now, but won't go see the incredible new works at the Phoenix, TOTS or any other venue with some real guts. The arts section is overrun with AP photos and articles, as well as reviews of the latest concerts in NYC. Yes, because when I open a paper looking for what I want to do this weekend, I will immediately be calling Continental for a weekend getaway to NYC to see Doogie Howser in Cabaret.

SOO, my biggest beef with the sports? Please don't charge me 800 million dollars to make more room for the painted drunk masses, if you can't afford to hire a decent local critic for us Art Fags. There is amazing work happening in this town. It deserves so much more than it gets. Are you listening, muckety mucks at the Star? How about this:

You don't even have to give me a salary. I'd do it for the free tickets. But I refuse to paint any letters on my chest, and I insist my beer be enjoyed from a glass, not an overpriced paper cup.

Can we make a deal?

Twenty again

The best part of the play? Feeling human again. I mean, the kids, the fam, the house, etc. are all wonderful, integral parts of who I am every day. But acting? It's what I DO. It's who I am in my heart. I feel most fulfilled and like I'm doing what I was meant to do in those three hours at rehearsal. Moreso than I ever feel any other time. Most women I know have this. For them, it can be cooking, it could be running, some even feel that way when they're reading shiny magazines in the bathtub. For me, I am working onstage.

And as an added bonus, last night the cast went out to a bar for some cast bonding. A "karenoke" bar...woman in the play, it's her gig. She takes her stuff to the bars in Indy and puts on a hell of a show. She's a freaking rockstar and I love her.

Two drinks and a few Johnny Cash and Billy Joel tunes later, and I'm dancing onstage to the Love Shack and chanting "Girls just wanna have fun" with my friends into two mics, loving life. I haven't drank much for the better part of two years now, so after just one vodka cranberry, I almost missed the toilet seat when I finally decided to hit the john and break the seal. After two of them, I was writing IOU's on a napkin to my friend Brian, promising him that I'd give him a lapdance at the cast party. Damn, I miss this part of being a "theatre person".

I came home before 1am, but felt like I had been to Africa and back. Another world. One I've missed. One that makes my day to day life really that much better. A happier mommy makes a happier home, right?

Somehow a simple stage rehearsal, paired with a relatively cheesy night on the town made life worth getting up for again.

Even with a hangover. :)

Blissedy Bliss Bliss

Is what I'm feeling today.

* I get to make out with a totally hot guy in my show.
* Last night I learned how to be drug across stage by my hair.
* My son slept from 8 to 8, with one wakeup at 4:30.
* I actually fell asleep at 9:30, giving me more sleep than I have had in months.

I take it back: 2005 is all kinds of goodness.

Corsets freaking rock

Thanks you my son, for giving me the best damn shelf of boobage in the show.
Even my flaming friend Jeffy can't keep his eyes off it.
Baby gut? What baby gut? That shit is smooshed and squished and pulled until the belly is flat, I have a tiny waist again, and I can't feel my stomach skin hanging on top of my thighs when I sit.

Who cares that I can't breathe very well, have a bruised rib, and needed help going pee at the "take five"? I want to wear one every day. Every. Day.

The Play's the Thing

And I'm in one. Yay! Started rehearsals Monday night, even in my boogery goodness. The show is called Our Country's Good. It's a theatre lover's play, in that the moral of the story is redemption and civilization through the theatre.

It's about the first colonies in Australia. British soldiers and convicts. And to while away the hours aside from bird hunting and whoring and smallpox, they decide to put on a play. Casting the convicts. By the end, people who behave no better than animals become people with a purpose, with dignity and power over their futures. It's so so good.

OH, and there's sex, violence and nudity. Not mine this time, thank God. But I do play a whore in a corset. So that's always fun. And I get to be Cockney. Something new, finally. That whore thing was becomming old hat, anyway.

Three full weeks of rehearsal and it goes up at the end of this month. Finally time to get out and do my own thing. No baby on boob, no clinging on the pantleg. Dad gets kid time, Mom gets her own time. NOT mommy time. Ang time. Yay!!

To counter my bitching

I stole this list from SJ. I need to type something that isn't bitching, so here it is:

Three Things

Three Names You Go By: Angela, Ang, Mom

Three Screennames You Have: aksteele13, um...that's it.

Three Things You Like About Yourself: That I was brave enough to give birth twice, that I didn't watch Seinfeld. At all. That I have good hair.

Three Things You Dislike About Yourself: My baby fat that continues to live as my baby really grows into a toddler, my sailor mouth, the fact that I care about what others think of me. Too much.

Three Parts of Your Heritage: Polack, baby! German and Irish, too.

Three Things That Scare You: George Bush, Spiders with knees, and when my husband swings the baby by his feet.

Three of Your Everyday Essentials: Coffee, Buffy and lipgloss

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now: New stretch jeans...love love love, lands end all weather mocs, and my free Dove Sweatshirt from drugstore.com.

Three of Your Favorite Bands/Artists (at the moment): Indigo Girls, Carrie Newcomer and the Carpenters.

Three of Your Favorite Songs at Present: Anything NOT played on Radio Disney.

Three New Things You Want to Try in the Next 12 Months: To lose 20 pounds, then get my back tattoo, then go out and party in a hootchie shirt and stretch jeans to show it off. :)

Three Things You Want in a Relationship (love is a given): compliments, backrubs and oh yeah, honesty and shit.

Two Truths and a Lie: I lost my virginity at 16. My husband was a virgin when he started dating me. I told him I was, too.

Three Physical Things About the Opposite Sex (or same) That Appeal to You: Pointy hipbones, absence of back, nose or ear hair, and long eyelashes

Three Things You Just Can't Do: Watch the news on TV, listen to talk radio, french braid someone else's hair (I do a damn fine job on my own, though)

Three of Your Favorite Hobbies: SJ, mocking is indeed a hobby...I do it myself. That and crafty things with my kid. Oh, and watch Buffy. Oooh, I'm sad.

Three Things You Want to Do Really Badly Right Now: Make a coffee cake and eat the whole thing. In a bubble bath. Then go back to bed and sleep all day.

Three Careers You're Considering: Some kind of home biz that makes tons of money for not much effort: Um, phone sex operator? Actor? Drug lord?

Three Places You Want to Go on Vacation: Anywhere warm a cruise can take me, Prague and Seattle.

Three Kids' Names: Wesley James and Catherine Eva would have been the kids' names had they been the other sex. Um, another name? Perpigilliam.

Three Things You Want to Do Before You Die: Go to all the continents (except that cold ass one down below), get a lead in a musical, and watch my kids grow up and not be total screwups.


Three People You Want to Take this Quiz: HG, MichBitch, my Sister In Law

Happy Craptastic New Year

Oh man, we're in for it if this is an inkling of how my year is going to go:

Fought nonstop with hubs from about Christmas Eve onward

Had a very sick baby most of the week, who got up MINIMALLY four times a night to eat and cry and blow green boogery goodness all over my chest

Truck's electric panel went out and went in the shop

Car died on the way home from Chicago. In the rain. At 9pm on New Year's Day. A 911 call and a $135 tow later, we ended up back at my mother in laws for one more night. That car is still in the shop in my hometown. Who the hell knows when it's coming back, and how much THAT will run me.

Finally made up with the husband and had the makeup sex. Which is nice. But couldn't go to sleep until 2am after all the emotional crap. Woke up this morning with my son's green boogery goodness in my own nose and a throat that feels like I ate a cactus.

Egads. I need a nap. Please wake me around April.