Tuesday musings


More fleeting thoughts

Photos from Christmas cards are on the front of our fridge at the mo'. All are of relatives, except for the one of the kids of our friends in Dallas. The odd thing is that on my side of the family, they're my siblings' kids. On Hubs' side, they're his siblings' and cousins' grandkids.

No, I did not marry an older man, unless you consider a mere three years that much older. Age difference is not to blame; birth order is. I am the eldest of my siblings and I have no first-cousins. My husband and his twin are not only the youngest of their family, but of their umpteen first-cousins as well. And as Twin SIL got a major jump on us in the baby-producing department, our children occupy the same spot in the food chain among their paternal first-cousins -- Twin SIL's youngest is three months older than #1-Son. Instead of distinct generations, our intermingled family is more of a waterfall of ages: my grandparents were 10 years older than my in-laws, who are about 15 years older than my parents, who are only 10 years older than my oldest SIL. My youngest sister is only 5 years older than my husband's eldest nephew. My youngest nephew is a year older than my husband's eldest great-nephew.

So on my fridge are photos of my kids' first-cousins, first-cousins-once-removed, and second-cousins-once-removed. And while some of those First-Cousins-Once-Removed are newborns, other FCORs are holding their grandchildren in the photo. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; a couple-hundred years ago one of my paternal ancestors married a FCOR (her dad's first-cousin), thereby making her great-grandparents also her grandparents-in-law. Family trees are an interesting thing. Even moreso on my side, with all the half-s and step-s and ex-s.

Waiting -- I hate it. I have a ton of things on order, and I want them all and I want them right now.

When my initial anniversary gift didn't fit, we ended up taking it back and instead I found a sapphire-and-diamond ring I liked. You'll remember I've been wanting one for years, but the major household appliances know when I'm about to get it and have conspired against it. Alas, but the ring cannot be sized down beyond a 5, and I need a 4 1/2 so it doesn't fall off my finger when the weather's cold, so they had to order it and told me 6 to 8 weeks. We're about halfway through that period, but it's been two months since my anniversary and I want my prezzie, dammit.

Also on order are a new pair of glasses and a trial pair of my new contact prescription. I only get new glasses every 8 - 10 years; I generally live in my contacts except first thing in the morning until I get cleaned up, so I don't feel it necessary to dump the major bucks into new glasses just because my eyesight changes a tiny bit. But I've become presbyopic as hell in the last five years or so, and also enough more myopic that any time I end up driving one of the kids to school in the morning before I put my contacts in, I'm rather uncomfortable with how well I'm not seeing (especially in the winter when it's only half-light out.) And unlike the last couple of times where I've gone for plain, cheap frames, I got a really fun pair this time that I really want to wear and may do so full-time, at least on cloudy days (I'm a little light-sensitive.) And I've never felt like the contacts give me the best of vision after dark; I may end up switching to glasses at sunset every day if they seem to do a better job.

Oh, and the new contacts -- my doctor makes you wear a new prescription for a week and come back to have them looked at before they'll order the full year's worth of lenses. But of course I have a funky toroid lens in my right eye and they never have one on hand, so I have to wait while they order it. So instead of just a week trial plus shipping time to get my next year's set of contacts, I've got another week or more of waiting before I can even start the process. And I'll be down to my last pair on the old prescription at the end of the week. *grumbles, taps fingers*

Tryouts for next summer's season of Shakespeare St. Louis are this week, and I have an audition appointment. I'm of two minds on the matter.

I go to rehearsals for CoE, and I listen to these kids, professionals in their 20s and 30s, talk about how this is the first gig they've done in their hometown and normally they're traveling around the country going from show to show, or how they used to do improv somewhere around here for a steady income until the owner had to close the shop, or how they're torn between Muny auditions and the tryouts for Carnival Cruiseline or The Big Red Boat and how working the cruise ship one summer would pay off the rest of their student loans. Or I see one girl's calendar, she's teaching two different places and in the middle of two shows; it's a big thing color-coded for teaching, substituting, rehearsals, performances, and tryouts. And I think, "Oh my god, I am amateur with a capital A, I'm old, I haven't been on stage in 25 years, I've got nothing on my CV, what am I thinking even making an audition appointment?"

Then I look at the guy in the jailer's role for CoE, he got started with the company by buying a walk-on role (no lines) at auction just like I'm doing now, his delivery is flat, he's ancient (granted, Will wrote more older male roles), but I've seen him in at least two or three performances now. And Hubs says to me, "You've seen some of the people they put on stage..." and he's right; they've got their lines memorized and they hit their marks, but especially in the Shakespeare productions (they do other ones, too) you can tell they don't completely get what they hell they're saying themselves in spots, so the audience doesn't, either.

Don't get me wrong, I love this company and that they bring Shakespeare to St. Louis because otherwise we'd get one show a year, in the Park in summer, and the intimate stagings bring the plays right to the audience. And CoE... the male leads ROCK. I know making Shakespeare comprehensible is a hullava lot of work, and in my audition monologues I've really tried to do that -- not that I've picked hard ones; I know my limits. And I'm not looking for a lead -- heaven forfend. I just want a minor role, like the Jailor says, "A couple of scenes, five or six lines." They're doing King Lear and The Odyssey; I'm not looking to be Goneril or Penelope, but Penelope and Circe both had a houseful of women and I'd settle for just bustling about the scenery and an occasional,"Yes, milady," or "See, he comes." Which I can't get if I don't audition. But I'm so in over my head. Aaugh.

Posted: Tue - February 12, 2008 at 07:11 AM   Home         | | View Technorati reactions

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