Happy Sunday! I am going to eat some pizza now and put some girls to bed. But I can feel all the friendly energy, bless you dear hearts. A good weekend.
Hope your weekend was lovely too. You should eat some pizza too and then we can be twins.
More in a bit.
P.S. I am officially a Tree-hugger.
13 comments April 30th, 2006
Thanks so much for all the break-a-leg wishes. You are such dear folks. I sort of wish I would break my leg, so I could get out of having to clean the house and do laundry. I am awfully tired but too nervous and too busy to take a nap. But last night’s preview performance went well, and we all have our fingers crossed that tonight’s official opening will be a really good one. I can’t be more eloquent about any of it, because I need a shower and Sophie needs cough medicine and the dog needs his phenobarbitol. I need a stiff drink, too, but that one will have to wait until tonight.
EBAY ALERT! LAST CHANCE TO DONATE TO THE LIKE HOME BABYSITTING FUND (evening babysitting for the past week of rehearsals and preview set us back $145, so there will be no cranberry storm door this time around, alas):
Only hours left to make your claim on the Like Home painting! Bidding ends tonight, so don’t miss this fine opportunity to dispose of some disposable income! We will cherish your disposed income and use it wisely.
More very soon, and thanks so very much for all the support. I swear I will shut up about the play soon.
12 comments April 28th, 2006
We’re off to see the Wizard. Officially. Tonight is the Half-Price Preview of Like Home (can you come tonight? some of you? please? half price and free wine and the chance to say you saw it first!).
We’d love to have a good-sized audience tonight as well as on tomorrow’s Official Opening night, so be spontaneous and come by at 7:45 so you can get tipsy before the 8pm curtain. Mir of Woulda Coulda Shoulda has delighted me to no end by telling me that she is coming tonight, so even if you think that seeing a play is a boring way to spend an evening, you can hang out with Mir and be all bored-cool in the lobby at intermission.
Editor-in-chief Glenn Drohan at The Advocate Weekly wrote a lovely preview article about the play click here click here click here, which includes a picture of the director and me. Before we go any further, yes, the rumors are true. I’m sleeping with the director and that’s totally how I got this gig. Terrible casting-couch issues in North Adams, worse than L.A., really. At least he’s hot, man.
The Advocate Weekly article is not a review — it’s just a nice story before the fact, when there’s still hope flowing and spraying everywhere. We are walking around here dripping with optimism, and someone will have to clean up the mess later, but right now, it feels good to feel good about a project again. It’s been a long time. Dress rehearsal was a joy last night, and dress rehearsals are very rarely a joy. I’m going to tuck that joy under my mattress and guard it with my life for as long as I can.
The prospect of theatre critics coming always makes me a little ill. My stomach does very bad twisty things when I hear Did you see the review?. I try to think of theatre critics the way I think about those eyebrow mites we’re all supposed to have crawling around up there — I try not to think about them or I would probably need shots of rhino-strength tranquilizer. I’m sure the eyebrow mites would argue that they’re just doing their job, exfoliating or whatever it is eyebrow mites do, but it can be hard to appreciate their service to humanity when it’s your eyebrow they’re infesting.
I would love to see you there. I think I’ve said that already, but it bears repeating.
26 comments April 27th, 2006
We are cleaning up the kitchen on Easter night. David is behaving strangely, muttering under his breath and slamming pots and pans.
“Look at it,” says my husband. He shoves the roasting pan under my nose, disgusted. “Look at it! It’s pig jelly!”
“Yes, honey,” I say. “We had ham.”
“I know we had ham.” He gestures to the table, where there is a lot of leftover ham. “I mean, look at all that ham. What are we supposed to do with all that ham?”
“We didn’t know how many people were coming, so my mom bought extra. It’s fine.”
“I feel sorry for Ali and Blair,” he says. “I know they don’t eat much ham.”
“They knew we were having ham,” I say. “There was a little something for everybody. We had vegetables. And pierogies with cabbage. That’s a vegetable.”
“I mean, next time, we shouldn’t serve that much ham.”
“You’re very disturbed by all this ham,” I say. This is what a therapist who specializes in ham phobias and other pork-related phobias would say.
“Well, look at it! There’s enough ham to feed 20 people!” He is shaking his head and looking like he might cry.
“We could have had 20 people. Anyway, we had a lot of people, and a lot of them ate ham. You had the ham, I don’t know why you’re getting all worked up.”
“Uh, I didn’t eat the ham,” he whines.
“So you ate the kielbasa.”
“Yes. What’s in the kielbasa?”
“Ham.”
He is stricken. “Are you sure?”
Now I am laughing and he is not happy. He is even less happy than he was when we started this conversation.
“I just—” I throw up my hands. I cannot complete my sentence.
“No, no,” he says chivalrously, “you shouldn’t feel bad.”
“I really don’t,” I say, “because you didn’t tell me about your ham issues, so there was nothing I could have done about it. This is self-inflicted Jewish guilt.”
“What’s wrong with me wanting to have more of a connection to my grandparents?” he demands.
“It’s not my fault that you tried to make bitter herbs out of minestrone soup and pack Passover into the one night I was away. You are feeling understandably frustrated because your children are both under six years of age and it didn’t go so well.”
“I don’t know what else to do!” he yells. He is in despair, surrounded by Gentile pork products and a wife who does not understand his terrible remorse.
“Is this why you’ve been carbo-loading with matzoh crackers? I found a buttered matzoh cracker stuck to your wall behind your desk,” I say.
He stalks out of the kitchen.
When I enter the den that is not a den, he is sitting at his computer, intently studying a website with the header: HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO KEEP KOSHER?
“Whoa,” I say, breaking into a cold, hammy sweat. “Whoa there, Jew Boy.”
He swivels in his chair to face me. “The hardest part is to keep the dishes separate.”
“Is it? Is that the hardest part?” I say. “Because I can think of lots of hardest parts.”
David swivels back to Kosher.com.
He is rapt. This is the Hebrew version of the Rapture. Any moment now, there will be lightning and flashing Stars of David and my husband will be swept up and given the best table at the Kosher restaurant in the sky, leaving behind his clothes, and his sinful shiksa wife, who will have to scrape the pig jelly out of the bottom of the roasting pan all by her little doomed self.
I read over his shoulder. “It says rock badger is not kosher. If we can’t send the kids to school with rock badger sandwiches, then you tell me what we are going to do in the mornings.”
He ignores me. This is getting very unnerving.
I am whining now. “We CAN’T EVEN MAKE IT TO ONE HAND-IN-HAND AT THE SYNAGOGUE,” I say. Hand-in-Hand is the Jewish education program for kids.
“The Jewish faith starts in the home, honey,” he says.
“I just think you should talk to the rabbi, the one who never sees us at his nice interfaith synagogue because we can’t get to his nice interfaith synagogue on time, ever. I just think maybe, just maybe, YOU SHOULD GET BAR MITZVAHED BEFORE WE DISCUSS A KOSHER KITCHEN.”
“I guess actually finding kosher cheese is going to be hard, because of the rennet factor,” he says.
“The rennet factor, yes.” Surely he is pulling my Gentile leg.
“Because rennet is an enzyme used to harden cheese,” he says. “That’s all right, we’ll look into it.”
“What is that website?” I demand to know. If I am going to get a divorce over a kosher kitchen, I want to know who is to blame.
“JewFAQ.org. Definitely a good site,” says David, the suddenly-born-again Jew. “It just puts it in straightforward language.”
“Straightforward.”
“Kosher slaughtering is the most humane way to slaughter an animal.”
“See,” I plead, “I understand that. I buy kosher hot dogs when I can.”
He glances over his shoulder at me. “Make sure you put that in your blog.”
I am really having trouble managing my panic. My knees are weak so I sit down. I cannot swallow.
He is still reading. “We might need another dishwasher too, because we can’t wash the dairy and the nondairy dishes in the same dishwasher. But maybe we can get around that.”
“I feel like this would be a good time for me to stick my fingers in my ears and do that la la la thing. I can’t hear you I can’t hear you except I can and you are really freaking me out. Do you hear me? You are really. Freaking. Me. Out.”
“What’s wrong with trying to honor my grandparents? What exactly is wrong with that?”
“My grandparents were Catholic, and you don’t see me trying to hang a crucifix in every room of the house! You don’t see me stenciling Jesus fish on the cabinets! Who are you?”
He sighs. “There just a purity to a kosher kitchen. It’s very appealing to me. There’s a mindfulness.”
“I am mindful of the fact that you are not the man I married. The man I married did not say anything about wanting a kosher kitchen. This is as bad as suddenly wanting an open marriage.”
He points at the screen. “Okay, here’s the dishwasher.”
“There’s a kosher dishwasher? At Best Buy?
“It really wouldn’t be all that hard.”
“Yes. Yes, it would be that hard. If you ever want me to learn how to cook, having a kosher kitchen is not going to help that.”
He is very disappointed in his wife. “I just can’t believe how negative you’re being about this.”
I am apoplectic and my hands are all over the place, jabbing and twitching. I am having a Seizure of Resistance. “I love the idea of honoring your grandparents. Great! Terrific! Let’s hang mezuzzahs on the doorways. Let’s teach the kids the Hebrew alphabet! Let’s read right to left! We could host Shabbat dinners every week and talk about Jewishness and how great it is to be Jewish and get chocolate that looks like money. Shabbat! Every week! When is that? Fridays? Saturdays?”
He tries to look confident. “I think…Fridays.”
I look past him, at a new site he’s found. I read out loud: “WHO IS A JEW? WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW IF YOUR FAVORITE TV STAR IS A JEW? WOULD YOU LIKE A LIST OF FAMOUS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE JEWISH? Oh my God, is that URL actually Jewhoo.com? Is that what I am seeing?”
“This isn’t a very helpful site,” he mutters.
“Would you like to know if your favorite TV star is a flaming Catholic? Would you like a list of FAMOUS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS? You personally.”
I am cackling in nervous disbelief. I cannot stop.
“Shut up!” he says. He buries his head in his hands.
“I’m going to bed because this is just beyond me,” I say.
He returns to JewFAQ.org to find out more about recommended kosher dishwasher options.
The next morning, I awake to David leaning over me, gazing soulfully into my eyes.
“Don’t freak out or anything,” he whispers, “but I separated some cutlery.”
I stare in openmouthed horror at the stranger in my bed. He starts laughing.
I whack him. I whack him again.
He heads off to have a shower, with dreams of kosher frankfurters dancing in his head.
51 comments April 25th, 2006
You asked if you could buy a Like Home poster, but posters are so fleeting. You deserve more! So we have decided
to pass the savings down to you
to beg and grovel for your charity
to auction off the Like Home original painting on eBay! You’ll never get another opportunity like this one!
Continue Reading 13 comments April 21st, 2006
Like Home opens in one week!
It runs for three weekends! My favorite theatre director—who happens to be my husband—directed the show! And you’re invited!
If you like the possibility of thrills and chills and awkward silences and missing sound cues, come to the Thursday, April 27th preview performance at 8pm (I personally love a good preview, I really do—I always feel much closer to the actors, unless I am one of the actors, and then I just feel humiliated that my underpants were showing in my death scene, or that I forgot my line about the tea kettle and the dwarf and brought the play to a crashing halt).
If you’re a traditionalist, come to the official Opening Night performance on Friday, April 28th, also at 8pm. There will still be thrills and chills, but you may get a glass of wine or a donut out of it.
You know you want to be there, if just to get a chance to say I know the playwright and she should totally stick to blogging or I don’t know the playwright but she looks a lot hotter in that picture at the blog or My dog could have written this shite or Who knew Mattern had such a potty mouth, at least on her blog she only says bum-bum and poo.
Or maybe you’ll like the play. I have heard of such things happening, but not very often, of course.
For reservations and info, go to Main Street Stage online. The cast—Bruce T. MacDonald, Alexia Trainor, Michael Trainor, Justina Trova, Spencer Trova and Linda White—is just plain terrific. Half of them are related to each other in real life, so if you’re getting a degree in family counseling or family planning or anything else family-related, I’m pretty sure you can earn three credits, just for seeing the show. Save your ticket stubs.
The show runs from April 27—May 14th. The theatre only seats 50, so if you think you can make it, please do call and make a reservation. If I know you are coming and the house won’t be empty, I will drink less and be a better mother to my children.
Yes. The future of my children (and my liver) is in your hands.
Hope to see you there. Really. Oh my God. So much. You don’t know. I’ll die if you don’t go. Can you live with that? No, of course you can’t. Do the right thing. Save a playwright.
David painted the picture for the poster. Ruby slippers! Isn’t he good? And he COOKS.
30 comments April 20th, 2006
Very noisy mornings here the past two days, as a work crew’s been digging up the sidewalk across the street to put in a gas line. Sophie has pretty much ignored the whole production, but Hannah is riveted. She is majorly digging the digging.
Yesterday, glued to my bedroom window, she watched one of the big construction vehicles (a bulldozer? an excavator? if only I had a Bob the Builder–obsessed son to explain) finish up and leave the scene.
Gazing mournfully out the window, she said quietly, I love it so much and now it’s going away.
20 comments April 18th, 2006
Yeah, I know this is supposed to be a blog about bohemian parents parenting and cute kids saying the darndest things, but I’ve got to get it out of my system. I’ll be back to talking about Pull-Ups and dog vomit and kitchen renovations in no time.
I’ve added a new ghostly category (Boo! Our resident ghosts), so that in the future, those of you who groove on the ghost tales can skip the earthly stuff and astrally project yourselves into Ghost Wonderland! And the rest of you can pretend none of it ever happened and I am still the same sensible blogger you have always enjoyed with your morning coffee and a.m. procrastination!
Continue Reading 25 comments April 16th, 2006
I am in a LET’S JUST SAY mood this week. Here’s a (sort of) non-ghostly one for you:
LET’S JUST SAY you are on a flight from, say, Pittsburgh to Albany, hurtling along at an altitude of 35,000 feet. Terrible turbulence kicks in. You wonder if you are going to heave your Sbarro pizza lunch all over your knees. Your sense of well-being does not improve when the flight attendant hurries to her jump seat (why must they call it this? why?) and straps herself in.
LET’S JUST SAY you keep glancing over at her to see if you are in really big trouble. She seems relaxed enough, so you relax a little and stop digging your nails into your armrests.
Until the flight attendant peers out the window, looks down down down 35,000 feet, and says conspiratorially, “You know, I think this is where it happened.”
LET’S JUST SAY you and everyone in Rows 1 through 12 immediately lean way way way forward to hear more.
What would you like the chatty flight attendant to say next?
Would you like to hear her say, YES! THIS IS WHERE I SAW THAT CLOUD FORMATION THAT LOOKED JUST LIKE HOWARD STERN! Yes! You would!
Would you like to hear her say, THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE THE MAGIC RAINBOW APPEARED AND GIGGLING LEPRECHAUN ANGELS LEAPT ONTO THE WINGS OF THE PLANE AND DID THAT FUNNY JIG IN THEIR SPARKLY ELF SHOES AND OH DID WE EVER LAUGH! Yes! You would!
Here is what you WOULD NOT LIKE TO HEAR HER SAY at 35,000 feet during Turb-O-Rama:
YEAH, THIS IS IT. SEE THOSE WINDMILL THINGS? THIS IS WHERE FLIGHT 93 WENT DOWN.
LET’S JUST SAY I would like to see the US Airways employee training manual. Let’s just say! Let’s!
27 comments April 14th, 2006
Needless to say, Tree had me at Hello, he smokes a pipe. Mr. Pipe! We have a Mr. Pipe who sits on the woodpile and strokes his beard and means us no harm! This, I can live with! Yes! Ghost jackpot!
She had David at Hello, he smokes a pipe, too. He spun around in his desk chair, gaping. (Good old-fashioned don’t-let-the-flies-in gaping! It takes a lot to make David gape! He is not a gaper by nature! It’s impolite in Canada.)
“WHAT ELSE DID TREE SAY???”
I bet you are asking the same question. So I will tell you:
“I tried to figure out your February issues next: first, I saw an older woman in the kitchen. She spent a lot of time in the kitchen and made bread on a regular basis. She was a very big woman, and hard working. I was a bit confused about how she appeared to me…she was making bread and kneading the dough…Details were hard to get, but I felt that she is your connection to February. Valentine’s Day was especially hard; she suffered instead of being happy. I’m sorry; that’s all she showed me about what happened to her. She also showed me a little boy. I am unsure whether he lived in the house or was a friend, but she showed me that he fell through some ice…it was a big event in the town. Might be something to look into.”
Mrs. Kitchen! We have a Mrs. Kitchen and a Mr. Pipe! This feels right to me! I am feeling much better about things all of a sudden!
I just want Mrs. Kitchen to be happy. I wonder if there is anything I can do to make Valentine’s Day happier for her. I am lost in Mrs. Kitchen thoughts. I won’t make her bread because 1) I don’t know how to make bread and 2) I don’t want her to think I’m trying to steal her doughy thunder, because no doubt the little lady could bake like a dream. But maybe I can paint the pantry for her, if she’s spending so much time there. Mrs. Kitchen will find happiness, by God! She will never weep ghostly February tears again! Rainbows and white light and playful ghost puppies will spill out of the pantry once we make things right for Mrs. Kitchen!
I see that David is still gaping from his desk chair. It’s beginning to look like a Perma-Gape. It’s very endearing, really.
“Maybe you should paint a little oil painting of a loaf of bread and we can hang it up in the kitchen, in her honor,” I say.
“Uh, maybe,” says David. He uses his lips only to make the two words, then they snap back into the Gape.
Later, I ask Tree if Mrs. Kitchen and Mr. Pipe know each other. I ask her if she’s sure these aren’t mean ghosts who are going to retaliate now that I’ve ratted them out. I ask if H-Belle is safe in Mr. Pipe’s pipey old room. I ask if Mr. Pipe and Mrs. Kitchen are watching us during delicate moments. I already have to endure Victoria’s Secret dressing-room surveillance and children who want to sit on my lap when I am on the toilet.
I keep asking questions. I can’t stop.
Tree is very kind and patient with me:
“Your house is friendly! The most negative thing is that there is some sadness…but the vast majority of energy is wonderful, welcoming energy. These people LOVE people…love children and are happy for the company. I do believe the pipe-smoker is a quiet observer, just enjoying being around your lovely family. And yes, I think the woman knows him, but I’m not sure how. Husband? Father? I don’t know. But I know that when she was sick he grew distant…
Anyway, your house is a wonderful house. Nobody is going to bother you. Yeah, they could be around during your more private moments, but honestly, they don’t think of pooping or sex like we do…it’s just not funny or embarrassing anymore.
You have respect for your house and the energy in it and it (and they) appreciate that. You are doing exactly the right thing! You can say hi to them if you like, or not…it’s completely up to you! And yes, Hannah is fine in that room.
You said you wish the woman could be happy…she is! She’s mostly in the kitchen and that pantry room. I do feel like she thinks something’s in the wrong place, though. But I couldn’t begin to tell you what!”
I take a look at our kitchen. Everything is in the wrong place. The walls and cabinets are half-primed. The table is covered with boxes and buckets of paint and rollers and tarps and BIN primer and foam brushes and screwdrivers and rows of little seedlings that Sophie and I are hoping will make it into the garden. We have not eaten in the kitchen for over a month.
Oh my God! Mrs. Kitchen can’t bake her bread! She can’t roll out her ghostly dough on our kitchen table BECAUSE I AM SELFISH AND TAKING UP ALL OF HER GHOSTLY BAKING PREP AREA!
“What are you doing?” David asks.
“I’m cleaning up for Mrs. Kitchen,” I say. “So she has a place to work. I don’t want to be rude.”
“Huh,” he says. He has stopped gaping, and now he looks very amused.
I am spritzing, wiping, shoving, organizing, arranging. “And maybe we should buy some pipe tobacco and leave it out on the woodpile for Mr. Pipe.”
“We don’t have a woodpile. We don’t know where the woodpile would have been.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” I say. “We could get him some of that cherry-vanilla–scented pipe tobacco. Is there such a thing?”
Gape has transformed into a Full-On Smirk.
“I just want them to know we respect them.” Suddenly I am horrified, remembering. “Oh God, I yelled at the girls today!”
“Everyone yells sometimes,” he says. “It’s okay.”
But I am disturbed. “But what if Mr. Pipe and Mrs. Kitchen don’t like it? Now I’m going to worry that they’re assessing my parenting skills. I have to require more of myself now.”
David continues smirking. It dawns on me.
“I was a compulsive people-pleaser. Now I’m a compulsive ghost-pleaser,” I say. “Crap.”
“I think you’re going to need to write about that one,” he says.
27 comments April 12th, 2006
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