Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Religion: Part One

I am fascinated by religion.  Only because I have such trouble believing in most of the doctrine I hear that it's hard for me to fathom that anyone else does.  Also, as stated previously, I am not a fan of reality, and religion seems pretty far from it to me, so I'm fascinated by it, even if I don't believe it. I am a Mass of Contradictions, don't judge me.

So, I will, from time to time, wax lyrically (hopefully) about some random thoughts about religion.  Here's Number One.

When I was a little bitty thing (chronologically speaking, I mean- I still ain't no giant) I was adorable.  This pretty much faded by the time I started school, but my first 5 years, I was rockin' the adorability meter.  

Every night at bedtime, my mother knelt down with me beside my bed to hear my prayers.  This was the 50's, after all, and yes, she was usually wearing a Donna Reed dress with pearls.  The first prayer was:

"God bless Mommy and Daddy and Aidy and Nana and Uncle Paul and Mam Mam and Pap Pap and all my aunts and uncles and cousins."  Then I'd say a Hail Mary, Debbie Style.  The last part was the same, but the first part went:   "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of the loom, Jesus."  My mother never corrected me, due, I'm guessing, to my High Adorability Factor.  That was the only way the prayer made sense to me, because I didn't know what the fuck a womb was, how could I?  And I sure as shit knew Fruit of the Loom, because I wore it. 

When I started CCD Classes (the Catholic equivalent of Sunday School) the Nazi Nun who was my first grade teacher (Sister Mary Elizabeth *shudder*) quickly read me the riot act for my heresy, stating the old IRS favorite that "ignorance was no excuse for breaking the law" and promising me that if I kept it up I would be burning in hell next to my Protestant daddy when my time came.  I felt my Adorability slip away from me like a pair of oversized Fruit of the Looms.  

Thus endeth the reading for today.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

I've Fallen and I Can't, etc., etc.

You know that feeling  you get when you start to fall and everything switches to slow motion and the first thought you have is not, "I hope I don't get hurt", but "Oh, Lord, please don't let anyone see me!!!"? 

Yeah, well that's kind of how I view my life.  I seem to be continually hurtling through space (Query:  Is it possible to hurtle through anything other than time and/or space?  Discuss.) into one quagmire (the thing, not the character) from another and keep hoping no one will notice, but they always do.  So, I brush it off, ("Yeah, well, you know, it's Debbie.") and inwardly wince for a day and a half.  I think less of me every time this happens, so I fully expect my friends/loved ones to think less of me, as well.  But now I'm trying a new experimental procedure that will hopefully cure that feeling.

It's called Faith. 

I've always admired people who have it (with the exception of George Michael) but I have never been good at it.  (I want to point out here that I am not talking about religious/spiritual faith at this time.  That is a whole other can of worms so huge Ronco hasn't invented a can opener big enough to open it yet.)  No, I am speaking of faith in yourself/fellow man.  Due to a Series of Unfortunate(like) Events, I have a Self-Esteem Rating of -.03%.  This means I believe everyone else in the (i.e. my) universe to be almost God-like in their sense of self.  Which, with few exceptions, (BR, Alec Harvey) is not true.  So, I plan to start viewing myself and all my acquaintances on a level playing field, one in which we are all equally fucked-up.  (I'll work my way up to us all being okay.)  See?  Done--problem solved!

Except I don't know how to do that.  Tellling someone to "Have faith!"  is kind of like saying "Grow tall!"  it feels like an impossible task.  Yet, I know people do it. (Have faith, I mean, I've never seen anyone other than the Fantastic Four grow tall on command, and if you try to make a dirty joke out of that you are worse than I am and that's saying something.)

This is not to say that I am unhappy.  Far from it.  I get to act and do improv comedy, which feeds my soul,  I have the bestest friends ever in the whole universe, and the Two Most Amazing Children in the Whole Cosmos, so I am very lucky and loved, and I know that.   I just would rather not live with the nagging feeling that I'll wake up one day and they will have all left me cryptic notes telling me to fuck off.  Which I guess really isn't so cryptic, is it?

So if anyone out there (assuming there is anyone out there reading this, but I don't believe there is) knows the Secret Meeska, Mooska, Mousekateer Password for learning to believe in people and/or my ownself, pass it on.  But spare me the George Michael impersonation, please.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Friends

Friends are awesome.  Wow, there's a banal statement for you.  But, it's true--kind of like "All You Need is Love" sounds like an oversimplification, but it's true.  What they don't tell you (and don't ask me, "Who's they, because I have no idea) is that love is really, really, really hard.  It's not all rainbows and unicorns and free beer, it's a lot of patience and understanding and intense pain--and those are the good parts.  But, I digress, I am on my current soapbox to talk about friends.

There was a time in my life where I had no friends.  It was just me and the hubby and the 2.3, and we had vague interactions with people, but no friends.  Now that seems odd, but at the time it was perfectly normal.  Then the 2.3 left the nest, and the hubby kicked me out of the nest and I really wasn't (am still not) in the market for another hubby or 2.3 and in stepped my friends.  It was like discovering a brownie with ice cream and hot fudge sauce for the first time.  Emotionally orgastic.

I have some of the same friends I had then and some new ones now.  That is the nature of  friendship, especially in the theatre community where people are constantly pulling a Kaiser Sosze, and I'm sure I didn't spell that right.  When I was in college I had theatre friends and my mother and sister couldn't stand them.  They thought they were always gushing how much they loved each other and reeked of phoniness.  Well, here's the thing--that's not phoniness, that's truth.  We DO love each other, in a deep-down, I'm-there-for-you kind of a way.  And we know that it feels good for your friends to say, "love you".  We don't give a shit what people think of us. . . .we're actors, people are always going to think we're weird.  And people are right.

But my friends are awesomer than yours.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Put Up Your Nukes

I tend to anthropomorphize stuff  (I swear that's spelled right, I used spellchecker).  It makes life seem more like a kid's book and, as we all remember from one of our previous lessons, I don't care for reality.  Kid's books are usually much more fun.  (Except that one about pooping.  Potty training was not my favorite part of child rearing.)

Well, in my kitchen, the coffee maker and the microwave share one plug.  And lately, I've been using the coffee maker a lot more than the microwave.  So now the microwave is copping an attitude.  First the "zero" stopped working.  Fine. I can add a second or two on and never miss a particle of radiation.  But today the "start" button refused to work.  "Oh, yeah, you want to defrost this bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, bitch?  Well, Sharp Carousel ain't gonna let ya.  Suck my plug."

I am not apologizing to the microwave.  The Bad Boyfriend used to accuse me of apologizing to everybody for everything ("Here, Steve, take all my money.  I'm sorry."), but I have learned my lesson.  I will not apologize for the  increased-intake-of-caffeine-and-sort-of-never-eating-anymore phase I'm going though.  It will pass and I will once again become a decaffeinated pig.  But I expect my household appliances to have the same patience with me that I have with them.  (Except vacuum cleaners, that's an Israeli-Palestinian issue there.)

So, bring it, Mr. Carousel.  Not only do I have opposable thumbs and a possible window in my 2014 budget to buy a new microwave, but I remember how to use a stove.

Hey!  Whachyou lookin' at, hair dryer???

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Boredom

When I was a kid, my best friend and I sometimes complained to our mothers that we were bored.  This would always piss them off.  They would come up with a list of various activities to amuse us (many of these involved housecleaning, which I still do not view as an acceptable remedy for boredom), and we would turn them all down, and dream of the day when we would be adults and never be bored again.

Well, I'm ostensibly an adult now (I had a local blacksmith check my teeth to confirm this) and, like many delicious childhood fantasies I had about adulthood, this turns out not to be the case. In fact, I spend a way larger percentage of my life being bored now than when I was little.  I take full responsibility for my boredom, since it is mostly at work, because of the brilliant career choices I made in my youth.

My first cc was to become an actor!  Statistically the lowest-paid profession in the country!  Attagirl!  Reality finally shot down that Fantasy Island and I was so busy chastising myself for being an idiot (I hold a masters degree in Self-Loathing) that instead of Thinking Things Through (not a fan), I took the path of least resistance and went to Secretarial School for a year.

Yes, it was as Mad Men as it sounds.  I took such intellectually stimulating classes as "Filing" (alphabetical AND chronological!), "Typing" (we learned on manual typewriters) and the timeless classic "Gregg Shorthand".  After a full year of this rigorous training, I was able to go out in the world and get a job.  I was disappointed that my thrill level of this was only a fraction of the thrill I used to feel when I got cast in something.  Reality sucks.

Anyroad, I've had about 294 clerical jobs in my life, some a lot of fun, some not so much, but they have all had extended periods of boredom in them.  Part of this may be the nature of the beast, but I actually think a large of it is because I'm not very good at secretariness, because I just don't care.  I have become a Profesesional Apathetic.  "We have to get this tax return out ASAP!!" *yawn*  "This letter needs to be put on letterhead right now!" *rude gesture* 

Every once in a while I make a half-hearted attempt to find a new job, but I don't really care enough about that, either.  I think I may be getting to the point where I actually am embracing my boredom, becoming One with Boredom Kingdom.  "ALL HAIL. . .oh, whatever".

At least when I got bored when I was a kid I knew that it wouldn't last, because cartoons would be on in a half-hour, or Barb's mom would make us warm chocolate pudding with milk on it (an almost orgasmic experience) and life would be back to it's bearable self.

Still waiting for that last part to kick in here in Grown-up Land.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Sing Me a Song Mr.--oh, nevermind

I've gone out a couple of times recently to see a friend of mine play keyboard and sing--he's really good.  I'm not, but I felt inspired this morning to dust off the ol' keyboard and see what I remember.

I remember that I suck.

My main discouragement, however, is that I seem to have ADD when it comes to playing the piano.  I normally am fairly disciplined and focused when I want to do something (i.e. my current 5:00 a.m. self-taught Kaddish lessons) but when I play the piano I'll get a quarter way through a song and --SQUIRREL!!!!

Also, my fingers are pissed off at me that I started playing again without giving them warning.  They are bending all sorts of unnatural ways and shaking and just generally acting like a three-year-old on the way to the dentist.  So I will talk to them calmly, buy them an ice cream, explain that Mommy loves them and only does this because it's good for them, pop a copy of  Little Mermaid  in the DVD player and sneak out for a drink.  Works every time.

Anyway, that's enough self-disappointment for a Saturday morning.  And it's all David Roseman's fault anyway.  Thank God I haven't been going out to see any of my friends who are sword swallowers.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Here's the thing. . .

The older I get, the less time I have for bullshit.  I think it's because I spent a vast amount of my life apologizing for who I am, being told by those close to me that my behavior was not "the done thing".  So I would sit back in the corner and observe life, rather than participating in it.  The few times I would step forward and Be Deb, (admittedly frequently fueled by alcohol and/or anger)  I would later spend hours of weeping/wailing /gnashing of teeth and self-loathing only because I said/did what I truly felt at the time but felt that now everyone would hate me forever.

Meh.  I'm over it.  Life is too short to be anything other than what you are.  I realize it's rather late in life for me to get to this point, but everyone travels through life at a different speed and I've been stuck in second gear for a while.  Well, I'm now rebuilding my transmission.  (The mind boggles with endless automobile metaphors here, but I'll move on.)

I have no money, no career, and no future but I have two immensely incredible children and the best bunch of friends a gal could wish for.  And, as the great philosopher Popeye once said, Iyam what Iyam.

So there.

Damn, I hope I don't regret posting this. . . . .