I wish I could be Deutsche

Idina Menzel mein AUGE!

To Do: Write an Essay

I'm really good at making lists. I don't know what it is about list making that attracts me, particularly. I may come by it naturally-- I've always known my dad to write out lists of things that need to get done. His mother had lists scattered around the house about her daily medicine intake, grocery lists (which always included plastic Ziplock bags and some variety of bran cereal), and a number of other things that stopped making sense a day or two after the list had been made. Her father started listing his bowel movements toward the end of his life. Now I'm not saying I list my bowel movements, nor will I ever do, but it does begin to explain the tendancy to list.

It's a handy tool, keeping a list, especially if it's a running list. Sure it can be kind of daunting to continue to add items to a list, but at least you have the visual satisfaction of knowing what you've accomplished when you can cross an item off. Sometimes I revel in the moment when I can throw away a completed list, when Taps or The Final Countdown plays in my mind as I crumple up that bright green Post-It and toss it into the trash. It's a small but valid victory and should be honored as such.

I do love Post-It Notes. They're extremely convenient for making lists. I like to keep a Post-It stuck on the inside of my school binder with three little lists written on it: Pressing, To Do, and Else. Obviously, the Pressing matters are dealt with as quickly as possible, followed by those things on To Do, and sometimes items on Else get pushed back another week, but it's okay. Eventually Else becomes Pressing, so it all gets done in time.

The thing about Post-Its, however, is that once you throw them away, that's it. They're gone, never to remind you again, because even though everything on the Post-It is crossed off, at least it's still a reminder like, "Wow, look at all the things I've done this week." That's where the Day Planner comes in handy. When you open my Day Planner, it has a weekly calandar on one side and a lined page for notes on the other. Of course this allows ample room for listing, and this way I've got a permanent record of all the things I've accomplished. Don't worry-- it's not like I go back and reminisce. Can't you just see me curling up in front of the fireplace on a rainy day with a mug of hot chocolate? I crack open my Day Planner, skim the pages and laugh fondly. "Deutsch Arbeitbuch, check. Buy milk, done. Lunch with Jennifer, oh what fun we had! Ha ha ha!" I'm so sure. But at least I know I'm not a total schlub. And think of the soundtrack that will play at the end of the year when I can toss out that list, that freaking HUGE list! Why, is that a Wagner sympthony I hear?!!

Types of Lists I Make
Homework lists
Errands lists
Grocery lists
Lists of topics to cover in a letter to missionaries
Lists of music I want to find
Lists of movies so I know which dvds are missing
Lists of books to read
Birthday wish lists
Christmas wish lists
Lists of important dates
Weekly appointment lists
Lists of classes I still need to take
Lists of essays I'd like to write someday
Lists of blogs I read every few days
Lists of places I've worked and for how long
Lists of shows I've been in and what roles I played
Pictoral lists of pictures I need to print out
Lists on my Facebook profile
Lists of my fictional boyfriends
Lists of addresses and phone numbers
Lists of TV shows I still need to watch
Lists of the types of lists I make

I'm currently studying creative non-fiction, specifically the art of crafting The Essay, and I've found my list making slipping into overdrive. I have lists of topics I'd like to essay about and I most of my writing seems to include some form of listing, however subtle, within the context of the pieces themselves. Rather than try to flesh out an item from a list, or even the entire list itself, into a well-written essay, I've decided to compose an essay entirely made of lists. Titles may or may not be included.

Well, either that, or write an essay about the process of making lists. Then I can cross it off and there's one less To Do item.

Thoughts, on Pi(e) Day

Have you ever seen someone start to smile in the middle of a yawn? I find it mildly terrifiying. It's like when you watch rodents yawn-- their little jaws just seem to unhinge and you wonder, for a quick second, if that little mouth might not stretch wide enough to engulf the animal's own head. Or yours, for that matter. And there's an accompanying little glimmer in their eyes that just drives that nightmare home. Anyway, that's what it's like when someone starts to smile while they're yawning. The opposide (that is, a yawn in the middle of a smile) is not quite as unsettling. It just makes the someone look kind of goofy for a moment, but you can forgive goofiness. Giant unhinging rodent jaw with little eye glimmer? Not as much.

Tonight marks the halfway point of our run of She Loves Me. The Hales typically celebrate with Pie Night, when Linda provides delicious pies for the cast (I requested blueberry to even out the number of orders for creme pies-- chocolate mousse, lemon mirengue, etc). As luck would have it today, 3/14, is also national Pi Day. If that's not killing two birds with one stone, I don't know what is. We're going to top off the evening by watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That doesn't really tie in with Pi or Pie, but it's part of the plan regardless.

I've had recent opinions forming about the process of performing a show as a single cast. On the one hand, I'm grateful and happy to be single cast because 1.) my part is not enormous. I do not have to be quite so concerned about losing my voice, hurting myself, getting sick as other members of the cast. 2.) this run will pay for a great deal of my trip to England this summer. No complaints. 3.) after my Christmas Carol experience, in which I might as well have been single cast, I like having my own costumes, my own set schedule, being responsible for my own part, and attending my own tech/dress rehearsals/performances.

However, I have to say, I think the theoretical benefits of single casting do not come to realistic fruition. Running a musical seven times a week is exhausting, even though my part is, as I have said, not enormous. I can't even imagine how my full-time working castmates are handling their Real Life jobs and carrying the weight of a show on their shoulders to boot (without even the option of an understudy!). Sure, it's one thing if doing the show each night was your job, but around here, that's not the case. Okay, so maybe a theater will throw their cast a bone and cast understudies. Why not double cast, then? I, for one, would find it very difficult to decide if being cast specifically as an understudy would be worth my time, even if I was promised at least one show a week or whatever. Frankly, I'd be terrified to be single cast in a role bigger than the one I'm playing at the moment for a run longer than a month or so. I don't know. These thoughts are disjointed, and they're not even very detailed. I've got a whole stack of opinions still stashed away. It's probably not worth going on about anymore.

Things I Need to Ween Myself Away From
1. Most Haunted and ghostly things
2. Diet Coke
3. TV on DVD, specifically Arrested Development
4. Day dreaming
5. Dying my hair all the time
6. Nevermind, I like Most Haunted and ghostly things too much to be weened.
7. Same goes for Arrested Development
8. How about I just stick to unleaded Diet Coke exclusively?
9. #s 4 and 5 still apply.

Love Journal 2008

In high school, I had two cute friends who sparked a phenomenon amongst our circle of girl friends:

The Love Journal.

Our Love Journals not only chronicled every excruciating detail of our (mostly made-up) high school love angst, but they also contained quotes about love, pictures from romantic movies, notes from each other, lists of things like the number of "True Love Hugs" we received, and quotes from our daily lives that continue to make us laugh to this day-- since we all exchanged our journals to read and steal ideas for a more complete Love Journal of our own.

It was silly. There have been many times since 2003 when I have been so violently embarrassed about the ridiculous things recorded in my Love Journals (yes, there are multiple) that I've been tempted to burn them in a quiet, sentimental ceremony. Somehow, I think that burning ceremony might carry much of the same sentiment as the ceremony Kirsten, Heather and I conducted in the airplane bathroom when we flew to Disneyland for our choir tour...

Here is a little slice of what can be found in the Love Journals, because for all its humiliation, yes, I brought my Love Journal to college:

"To write a good Love Letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to tsay, and finish without knowing what you've written"
--Jean Jacques Rousseau

A Friend-- I think you're probably a good kisser.
Me-- What makes you say that?
A Friend-- Because of the way you hug.


Dear Valentine,
I love you. Whoever you are.
--Sally Brown

"Love makes me weak in the knees, light in the heart, and dizzy in the head-- it's kind of debialating."
--M. A. Ungerman

I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.
--Anne Shirley

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
--Matt Groening

Mr. Brower-- A wanton is someone who craves... bad stuff...
Gene-- Like french fries?

June 25, 2003
To every boy I've ever liked--
Yes, there have been a great many of you. I don't even remember most of you until I reread journals. Even then you are such shadows of my memory, it's hard to believe I could have been infatuated with you. Others of you I remember so well-- you're scratched into my memory for the rest of my life. But wahtever impact you did/did not or will/will not have on me is significant. The fact is each of you has helped mold my character and personality. You may not have ever liked me back or even knew who I was, but you and experiences I had with you have helped make me the person I am today. I hope your lives are wonderful. I hope you find someone deserving of you and live happily ever after. Thanks for everying,
Love,
Emily Llewellyn

"You know, Marissa's right. We write these Love Journals when none of us really know what love is. But that's okay, because the thing is--we're learning, one page at a time. And when our true loves do come along, we'll know the entire book--back to front."
--Heath the Feath

Reading through it makes me all kinds of nostalgic. There are many quotes I actually remember writing-- I remember where I was, who I was with, whose journal I was copying. It makes me smile.

For all their silliness, the Love Journals inspired a higher purpose. We all became obsessive journals, just generally speaking. The Love Journal phase petered out (I tried to continue it into my senior year, but it lost it's meaning, in part because my Love Journal girls had graduated and gone off to college without me), but the Journal itself pressed on. Soon our Love Journals and Dear Daughter Journals and Quote Journals and every other kind of journal idea that had been sparked-- soon all of our journals became one wonderful source of enlightenment, humor, sorrow, exploration.

They're how we caught up on each others' lives without having to repeat the same stories a dozen times. They were our alternative to passing notes. They became mini scrapbooks and memory books. I developed journaling habits in my junior and senior years of high school that have continued, though perhaps not in such detail, to this day. Maybe it's silly to admit, but thinking back on it literally fills me with an odd, but sweet, sense of emotion and longing. I miss those times. I miss those girls.

Fast forward to 2008. We've really begun our "growing up." We all went to college-- some of us have graduated, or are about to. Some of us have moved away. A handful of us have completed the Love story we dreamed of in high school and have gotten married. There are even Love Journal babies. We can never go back to high school when we sat in the front row of choir and blatantly read each others journals in front of our choir director, but it's okay because now we have:

The Blogspot.

Maybe it's less personal, and maybe we put less work into them as we did/do our hardcopy journals, but for all intents and purposes, our little blogs have taken the Love Journal tradition to the next level. Boil it all down, blogs serve a no different purpose than our Journals, except now our family and other friends read them too. We can still update, comment, and inspire each other. In some virtual, deep-down sort of way, we'll always have the Love Journals, and we'll always be those girls who write the Love Journals.

And for what it's worth, I still intend to write a young adult book series entitled The Love Journals.