DIARY

DIARY

Oh The Verlegenheit

April 8, 2015

(Full disclosure: this entire post may just be an excuse to use the word "verlegenheit" in a sentence. It means "embarrassment" in German and I have no idea how to pronounce it, but seriously think it may now be one of my favorite words of all time.)

So I spent this morning packing the attic, because my daughter ate the end of my computer charger*. Which brought my workday to a halt until I was able to find a RadioShack (yes, a RadioShack) willing to sell me a way-out-of-date MacBook charger for the bargain price of NINETY DOLLARS. Let's just let that one go, shall we?

Back to the packing. In our attic we have these built-in storage shelves that go wayyyy back into the house, and are thus the repository for things that we use so infrequently that we completely forget they exist until we unearth them during the course of a move (very useful stuff, as I'm sure you can imagine). And while going through one of these storage shelves I found them:

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DIARY

Because Audition Tapes Are Always Fun

April 6, 2015

You know how occasionally some actor's original audition tape for some film or another will get released, and it's always fun to watch? Fun to see why they got the part in the first place (or maybe why they didn't)?

Watching these tapes gives me All Of The Residual Anxiety. Because GOD, I hated auditioning. No matter how prepared I was when I walked into the room, no matter how right I was for the part, I could never be sure that my nerves wouldn't get the better of me and leave me standing there in front of a huge room of people with my knees shaking, my neck bright-red, and my voice all high and weird...and oh, the lines? Not thinking about those even a tiny bit anymore; all I'd be thinking was GET ME OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW. It was terrifying, and self-esteem crushing, and it made me dread each and every time my phone rang with my agent telling me I had to go in and read for a new part.

While effectively quitting the acting industry (or being forcibly evicted; however you'd like to put it; the latter being significantly more accurate) was obviously one of the most overwhelming (and frightening) moments in my life, it was also kind of…a relief. Because even though I was being faced with starting completely from scratch, looking out into a wide-open future full of uncertainty, I knew one thing: I would never have to audition again.

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SNAPSHOTS

Steam Trains And Diamonds And Why I Pierced My Nose

March 24, 2015

Our one not-house-hunting, non-quarantined day was spent in Berkeley with Francesca and her brother, and we packed in enough good stuff that I went home feeling like, you know: we rode old-fashioned steam trains through the hills. And saw dolphins. I had the best latte I have ever had in my life (at Cafe Med, on Telegraph). And we ate Burmese food and played in the sand, and got ice cream whenever possible. And even a trip to urgent care is…well, it's its own kind of memory, right? (The steam trains were better.)

 

Oh, also: we made a quick stop into Industrial Tattoo and Piercing, and I finally went ahead and pierced my nose (Indy got to choose the jewelry; he went with a diamond over a gold stud; good man).

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DIARY

Holding Pattern

March 22, 2015

This trip has not gone exactly as I planned.

I had this fantasy of what was going to happen: we were going to spend a couple of days looking at every house on the market in a good school district within our price range (which is a total of about twelve), then spend a couple of days making offers and dealing with logistics while also slotting in some fun - a trip to the Children's Discovery Museum, maybe, or the pony farm at Half Moon Bay. (I'll write about how the house hunting part went later; I'm feeling all superstitious and want to see how it comes out in the wash before I make any predictions.)

And then that "carsick" thing that I mentioned the other day? Turned out to be one of those 24-hour bugs. And on the way to urgent care with Indy at 7AM to make sure it was nothing more than that, I discovered that whoops, I had it too (and let me tell you: I discovered this in basically the most dramatic way possible; I won't go into details because eww, but…EWW). So post urgent-care, we spent the day doing literally nothing while doing our best to inhale as much Pedialyte and water as possible, respectively. We did so much "nothing," in fact, that it became actually kind of fun in its own way - our B&B was cozy, and airy, and there's something to be said for a day of cartoons and not much else.

There was even one moment, right before we went to bed, when we were laying on the pillow and looking at each other and just smiling, and Indy reached out and stroked my cheek, in exactly the same way I stroke his when he's feeling bad. It made the entire day - this whole trip, this whole move, this whole life - just…worth it. Kids have a way of doing that, right when you need it most.

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