Cincinnati Bengals @ Houston Texans

This is, in my opinion, the game of the weekend. If T.J. Yates is healthy enough (and we’re all assured he is), this will be a matchup of two rookie quarterbacks. While Cincy’s Andy Dalton seems to be the better on paper, Houston’s Arian Foster and Ben Tate will have a significant edge over Cedric Benson and Bernard Scott of the Bengals. Cincy has had the tougher season, having to play the Steelers and Ravens twice this season, while Houston lost their last three regular season games. The two teams did meet in the regular season, with the Texans edging out the Bengals 20-19. In fact, the last time the Bengals beat Houston was in 2005. Unfortunately for the Texans, this doesn’t really mean anything come playoff time. This is Houston’s first trip to the playoffs, and Cincinnati is looking for their first playoff win in 21 years.

My prediction: Cincinnati Bengals win.

Detroit Lions @ New Orleans Saints

If you asked me who would win this matchup 12-14 weeks ago, I’d probably stammer and stutter a minute before picking the Saints. Now, I don’t even think it will be close. QB Drew Brees destroyed Dan Marino’s passing yards in a season record, the defense doesn’t (usually) give up a lot of points and if you follow football even a little you may have heard of a young guy named Darren Sproles (who, on a side note, almost single-handedly beat my fantasy football team in the championship). Yes, the Lions have a good defense with a lot of interceptions, and, say what you will about him, probably the best pass rusher in the game, but their offense has little to back it up.

My prediction: Saints blowout.

Atlanta Falcons @ New York Giants

What are these two teams even doing here? Atlanta looked really good early on Matt Ryan looked as if he finally hit his stride (and good for the BC grad!), Tony Gonzalez is second only to Jerry Rice in career receptions, Michael Turner looked great and the receiving corp was nigh unstoppable. Then the second half of the season started and the limped into the playoffs on the backs of the terrible teams that make up most of the NFC (Packers, Saints and, unbelievably, the 49ers being exceptions). And don’t get me started on the Giants. And I kind of LIKE these teams (save for the Giants lucking out against the Pats in the Super Bowl). Seriously, may be the worst game of the weekend, except it might actually be close. Regardless of who wins, they’re probably going to face the Packers (unless the Lions pull off a miracle), which, more than likely, give the Packers what will essentially be another bye week.

My prediction: Falcons over Giants by a TD.

Pittsburgh Steelers @ Denver Broncos

The Mile High Messiah vs Big Ben. Normally I’d laugh at the matchup explaining how sad it will be that the Steelers will just decimate the Broncos, but now I’m not so sure. Big Ben (I don’t feel like spell-checking his last name) is not 100%, they’ve lost Rashard Mendenhall, and the defense is not as good as it once was. The Broncos on the other hand, despite losing their last three regular season games and only making the playoffs because the “right” teams lost, have a full back who can throw the ball at QB (Tim Tebow), a surprisingly good running game (Willis McGahee), and a very tough D. Their record isn’t reflective of how they played since Tebow took over as QB, which is very good, much to the chagrin of Tebow doubters. With Isaac Redman leading the running game, Big Ben will be forced to throw much more than he’s used to and the Broncos linebackers and corner-backs, lead by Von Miller, will start looking like receivers. I think it will be closer than most people think.

My Prediction: My gut tells me Steelers, but I think I’m going to pick this as the upset of the week and say Broncos by a field goal (probably led by a 4th quarter comeback)

Well, there you have it. Don’t forget to tune in to the Dukes of Sports on channel 13 and the VOD here at sandwichtv.org

I have plenty that I wish to improve on, change, make better or accomplish in 2012, but I have no need for making a promise to myself that I risk breaking.

As I skim through peoples status’s on facebook I can’t help but wonder what percentage of these people will actually stick with their resolutions. The biggest ones that I read about pertain to weight loss and “getting in shape.” While I think these are healthy ideas and good for mind, body and spirit, they are subjective in nature and more often than not, unrealistic.

When I see people who appear to be of a healthy weight and read that they are trying to lose weight I always wonder what for? Better yet, who for? If for self and you perceive yourself as needing to shed a pound or two for your own satisfaction so be it I guess, but why not just set a goal of eating smaller portions or less sweets, or adding in a few more walks? These are resolutions that are concrete, monitorable, and will help you achieve losing those few extra pounds.

I could go crazy if I read one more status update that reads; “so and so just walked this far, at this speed, for this long and will burn this many calories #burningthepoundsoff,” or “I want to lose this amount by this date #onadiet,” or “I am joining this gym and am doing this program #zumba,” stop announcing and JUST DO IT PEOPLE!

I just can’t or refuse to understand announcing your personal weight loss/fitness goals to the facebook community. As a competitive society, are we announcing these things to one up someone else? Have we become peacocks, instead of feather displays we spout off about our fitness plans? A tip from me to you, it is nice to receive encouraging words and a well earned pat on the back, but you wont get that through the computer screen and why not save the commentary for when people notice what you are doing- I imagine far greater satisfaction in hearing that someone noticed a change in you rather than broadcasting that you are attempting to create said change.

Maybe it is just me; and in all fairness it should be said that I have a huge issue with the definition of “skinny” and “fat” and an equally, if not huger issue with our collective perception on what the ideal look should be, be it weight, skin, clothing choices or otherwise, nonetheless, it disturbs me to see so many people obsessed with image and in writing this, I revealed to myself that I find it equally disturbing that facebook is a platform for telling the world what you are doing, when you are doing it and why.

We’re all guilty of it from time to time. But why do we do it? If we need encouragement, reassurance, conformation, can’t we turn to our close friends or family? Why is it we all spill our guts on facebook to perfect strangers? Are our worries, happy moments, and resolutions only real if stated on facebook? If we need to state for example our fitness plans and goals, why not create a facebook page? I’ll get you started, “Fitness- For Those Who Care,” then anyone who wants to share and receive feedback on these topics could have a forum to direct it at.

But I digress.

Deadlines, goals, and routines are important to set and are helpful for staying on track sure, but miss one day, hell, even one arbitrary hour that was set aside for something specific and suddenly you have failed yourself- or worse yet, if you’re like me, you assure yourself that tomorrow you will pick it up again, and then another day goes by and another and then you start thinking, well maybe by next year. What’s left but feeling discouraged?

A little over a year ago I unconsciously decided to break away from the pressure of setting certain expectations to improve myself by years end and made an effort to improve every day.

Every single day.

Whatever plagues me, whether it is my weight (eat a little less, walk a little more), the desire to spend more time with my children (turn the television off and get out of the house), or one of my favorite subjective resolutions, “to be a better person” (spend less time worrying about myself and my problems and put more effort into understanding others), I can work on these items each day without setting a deadline, or a specific day of the week, or an even more specific time of the day and instead can focus on improving a little every day.

At the end of the year I felt pretty good about myself and I am anticipating the same 12 months from now. Always room to improve and despite the up’s and down’s with every passing year, I’m still here.

With all the planning done and having everything seemingly in order we were ready to roll.

We got going an hour later than we wanted to. In our rush to load the kids’ belongings into their grandfather’s truck, we missed the bag of soccer gear that Steve’s coat had shifted over.  The overlooked bag of shin pads and cleats went unnoticed until we actually reached the hotel in New York and I had to make the phone call to a five year-old and explain to him that he would have no uniform at his soccer game the next day.

It rained all the way up 495 North to 1-90 West. Then it pored. It came down hard and fast keeping us at a slow 40 to a crawl at many times. The wipers were whipping and people were tapping their brakes as if they were keeping beat on a kick drum. Several brake downs, road construction areas and even an accident involving a car that had hit the guard rail and come to a stop sideways in two of the three highway lanes slowed us down further. In an effort to keep stress at bay I enjoyed searching for rainbows, gazing at farmland and asking stupid questions about cows and why they are shaved only in their middles.

Why are they shaved only in their middles ?

What should have been a four and a half hour trip wrapped up in about six.

Pressed for time we checked in to our hotel room and then it was right back out the door into the night. Keeping the surprise a secret I consulted a mapquest print out for direction. I held the map sideways (oops) and thus we walked the wrong way for about 10 minutes and had to turn and walk back. Finally heading in the right direction a sudden shift in the wind occurred and my rain senses kicked in. Like being able to sense snow by looking at the sky and taking a deep breath, I could smell the rain.

“I think it is going to rain again I say,” the words are just barely out of my mouth when it opens up and pours.

With the car five minutes behind us, and the destination an unknown distance before us, Steve, coat clutched over his head asks, “Which is closer, the car or the place?”

“The car, I think.”

“Ugh, he says, “let’s just keeping going.”

“The car is closer… I’m pretty sure.”

“What do you want to do babe? Do you want to go get the umbrella,” he asks, frustrated and clearly annoyed with his wife’s poor planning.

“Yeah, then we can take the car here instead of walking,” a note of hope and optimism in my voice.

“Ugh, just forget it, let’s just go.  I’m tired of walking. I don’t want to walk all over the place,” a fair grievance on his part as I have already led him in the wrong direction once.

In a strange town, on a poorly lit seedy street, walking in the pouring rain with no umbrella, he in a coat and me in a sweater now completely soaked through, I howled like a hyena. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“We must be getting close,” I said as I checked his face to see what sort of emotion was there. All I could do was laugh for all I could find on his face was water dripping from the ends of his hair into his eyes. With great control in my voice I added, “I think the rain is letting up.” Then I was lost to a fit of giggles again.

When we did finally arrive the place was mostly empty save for four thirteen year-olds, the guy in charge and his buddy at the counter. We paid for two hours of play and flopped down at the PC’s to do Left For Dead 2 or 4 or whatever it was and Steve’s PC wouldn’t load. One of the older guys, and I use the word older loosely here (he was 19 I think), decided to play with Steve the Super Smash Bro’s on a big screen TV, and I at another, got to play Mario Kart. (A win all around.) As we left Steve thanked me for “renting a friend” for him to play with and I laughed uncontrollably again.

At the hotel restaurant we ordered some burgers and a “bucket of margarita.” The “bucket of margarita” came and it was a cocktail shaker filled with margarita (maybe two glasses each) in a bucket of ice- surprise! After twenty minutes the waitress reappeared and said the cook didn’t see our order and they were just now getting the burgers on the grill and she didn’t even apologize. We laughed some more. I had hoped we would get our bucket as a souvenir for what we paid for this falsely advertised margarita night, but no, 25 dollars for a couple of Dixie cup sized margs and only a bill to remember them by.

The hotel room on the other hand was beautiful. It was very old and charming. And while the bed was ok, it wasn’t our own. Steve tossed and turned until early in the morning. Then in the morning when I was finally sleeping well because Steve was, I heard a weird thudding noise. I listened for a while and decided it must be kids upstairs above us playing or running around, or something. Then the weird noise would disappear and then reappear within a minute or so. Soon the noise was accompanied by a panting outside our door.  It was like listening to a car horn, muffled then louder upon approach and then muffling in the distance again. I couldn’t restrain myself anymore and so got out of bed and glued my eye to the peephole. The panting noise and the thumping carpet sounds had me fearing that I was really going to be a peeping Tom to some sort of weirdo right outside our room.  As the noise grew closer to the door  I could see a man was jogging in the hotel hall at six on a Saturday morning.

A man was jogging in a hotel hall at six on a Saturday morning.

I wish I were kidding.

I watched him come to our end of the hall, stop, about face and head off in the other direction. I watched him do this several times.

I gave up sleep and took a shower in less than satisfying water pressure. We checked out shortly after that and the rest of our trip was fine and largely uneventful. We had breakfast at a local diner, drove around Albany, parked for maybe five minutes and paid five bucks to do it.

It was a trip that I will remember for many years to come and one that will surly make me laugh whenever it is brought up, the best kind of trips to have.

The problem is that I never thought about how I would achieve that fantasy. I just assumed that I would marry, have kids and run a household. It was the 1950’s and early 1960’s in my mind when getting married was all it really took to have a piece of paradise.

Times have changed.

It takes at least two incomes to achieve my dream, oh, and those incomes have to be upwards of the 80k combined range to own a modest home in suburbia, er, I mean, Cape Cod. Not only do I not own my own home, I’m not home with my kids running around and a smile painted on my face.

Like most families both my husband and I must work and when one of us can’t find work, the other must pick up the slack.

The economy, such that it is, has become a competitive cesspool.

Big companies, copious in capitol, equipped with members only passes, fly overhead in their corporate jets and grin down above the murky job water where smaller employers cut nets, once filled with employees, in order to maintain a steady bob above the disease- riddled waters. Lucky employees hang on to their jobs and grin and bear the fact that relief is a long way away. Others sink down into the mud and inhabit a sticky, gunky place and desperately try to emerge from the sinkhole, however useless it feels. What’s really disturbing is how many skilled and talented people are existing in the mud with barely a glimmer in sight of the surface they know to be somewhere above them. They claw at the mud and at each other for a chance to be scooped up in one of the remaining nets.

As Martin Luther King said, “For all of us today, the battle is in our hands. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways to lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We must keep going.” And so I keep on, keeping on.

There is no broad highway but I found a possible secondary road. It appears to run parallel to the current road I’m on, but of course that is just conjecture as there is no road map. As fortunate as I feel (I tread somewhere weakly above the mud level), I’m still resentful.

Who can I blame? All I have to do is take one short look around me to realize there is no one to blame. This is the way things are. I’m sure my fantasy still exists for many, wives of doctors, lawyers, innovative computer geeks- but the reality is this, when you have a family and times are difficult, sacrifices must be made.

My boys are always the first people in my mind when I think about the present and the future. I would give them anything and everything if I could. Taking a second job to alleviate some of the stress at home is one thing I can do. I will sacrifice my time. I must for one thing, but I do so willingly if it makes things better for them.

I know my children will be fine, for what worldly goods we cannot surround them in, Steve and I more than make up for with love. No, I do not doubt that they will fare my additional absence from home with little sadness and a sense of understanding beyond their years, but will I?

Remember those days of going back to school? We could have been easily marked by which category of student we were. There were those of us that were excited and loved it, those of us that accepted it for what it was and as something that must be done, and those of us that loathed it entirely and began the long count down to summer on that first long day of school.

The same is true with this change of season.

While there are some of us who tingle with excitement for the start of fall (maybe that’s just me), others of us accept it, and then there are those of us who make a big stink about it.

It’s funny that many that fall in to the latter category surround me. All around me are people who hate to see the end of August, the end of summer and complain the very first Monday in September. If I could gather those people together in one room I can almost see them singing dirges, holding lighters up in the air and swaying together as they think about the quiet sand beneath their feet being slowly blanketed by crisp falling leaves, crunching with every step, only then to be replaced by the bitter crunch of snow.

Me however, I love September.

I love the smell of the autumn leaves and the satisfying crunch sound they make under my fall boots. I love the colors of the season, the oranges, the reds and yellows; I love the foods, the pumpkin-spice, apple-cinnamon, squash and the corn stalks.

I romanticize this season like no other, because bar none, autumn is the best.

Days are warm enough for jeans and a long-sleeved shirt or light sweater. The air, although cool, is comforting, carrying that apple-wood, cinnamon-spice and sometimes smoky, smell. The excitement of autumn truly makes me feel like a kid again.

No matter how old I grow some things never grow old.

A walk through a canopy of leaves ablaze in warm colors, a climb up an apple tree for the biggest, most delicious golden apple, the leisurely stroll in the pumpkin patch for the roundest, soon to be, jolliest ol’ jack-o-lantern around is good old fashioned fun for me.  I still take great delight in dressing up on Halloween and absolutely love a good hayride.

September days are shorter allowing me the guilty pleasure of sleeping in a little since my room remains dark until six.  And although shorter in duration, September days deserve more appreciation, as time suddenly doesn’t feel as endless as it did those long summer days and summer nights.  Time again feels short and precious with the daylight slipping away faster with each passing day, fueling me to be that much more productive with the light I do have. Autumn is a busy season for sure.

Days shrink but the workload never does. Glancing at a calendar is a mild shock at the least when it stares you in the face and there is no denying that a new year is upon you in a mere couple of months. If you allow it to, the air can chill your bones and dampen your spirits when the snow begins to fly. As for me, (glass half-full type) it is a magic time of year, fresh cold fallen snow sparkling in the noon day sun only makes me that much more grateful for the varying seasons.

Then, in the blink of an eye (in retrospect anyway), the snow melts giving way to daffodils and crocuses. Days get warmer again, the light remains with us a little longer each passing day and the endless days of summer are upon us again.

I’ve come to accept the groans and complaints that befall on me daily about the loss of our dear summer and how the rude fall breeze came ushering it away. I have even come to look at it as an opportunity to rally for my dear autumn months and to speak on their behalf about the joy of their season, the coming togetherness, whether you gather around a hearth or around a mound of freshly raked leaves.

As the Byrds said it best, “To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn), There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)…”

It didn’t take much for the lousy feelings to take over despite my best efforts to “snap out of it”. The worst part perhaps being that I woke up this way and quickly came to the realization that to conquer the crummy mood feeling was going to take some real energy and might, or- an act of God.

I know you know what I am talking about.

A full nights sleep that resembles something akin to sleeping on a ship, in a full fledged, thunder booming, lighting striking, rouge wave producing, storm. The cup of coffee that doesn’t taste as sweet or as strong as normal, nor dose it do anything to revive your body or mind. The hot shower that isn’t quite relaxing or rejuvenating and feels more like a chore.

My morning were those things and more. Starting out foggy, drizzly and humid on what was suppose to be a morning run day.

Scrapped that.

I don’t need exercise that badly.

After showering and changing my clothes three times (a little tip from me to you, no matter how many outfits you put on, they do not change the person underneath), I dawdled around the house. The kids were amped up after their Cheerios, Cheerios that slid off the spoon and hid under the lip of the bowl where they went unnoticed for the majority of the morning until later when I finally cleaned up the breakfast table and noticed that they had congealed to the place mat underneath, the same kids with congealing Cheerios were also extremely loud.

I liken the sounds this morning to elephants in the wild being chased by lions or hippos or something equally fierce and scary.

Screaming elephant children with stomping, shoving and competitive tusk sparring to match.

In an effort to save my ears and my sanity I sat them down to read a few books with me before I needed to finish getting myself ready for work.  I then left them to play quietly while I finished up. That lasted all of two minutes.

Elephants in the wild? Yes and no. They started out that way but morphed into monkeys in captive at the zoo. Monkeys in captive at the zoo in a cage that was built for one but is serving two.

Before the real poop slinging could begin, I write this figuratively although the way they talk to each other, and shove each other, and compete with each other is sometimes much grosser than real poop slinging, I built them a race track . I rigged it up from the top of the bunk to the ground below with a basket to catch the cars as they plunged down the shoot. Lucas played by himself on top of the bed and Noah raced the cars. Life was good again. Well for a few mere minutes anyway.

I returned to the kitchen to build my lunch, opened and closed the fridge. Scanned the cabinets, the freezer, opened and closed the fridge again. After standing and staring at it blankly knowing no new contents were going to magically appear until I went shopping for them, reluctantly I took the left over spaghetti when the crying and screaming started again.

Noah fell off the ladder trying to climb up the bed to drop the cars down the chute.

Awesome.

Turns out he was fine thanks to many pillows and blankets strategically scattered about the bedroom floor. Tears dried, hugs administered, I recreated the track in a safer location with only one step up where he wouldn’t be balancing precariously on a small wood step while turning around backward to watch the cars plummet followed closely behind with his own plummeting. I then hugged and kissed them both, said my goodbyes and crept out the door, lest I upset them more with my departure.

Now at work, requiring a second cup of coffee before my desk I sit. Still brooding, still considering the effort I need to put in and pull myself out of this blasé mood and wondering what sort of animals I have left in the zoo at home.

In just two years time I will have been out of high school for ten years. Hard to believe and yet harder still for people who look at me and see a woman who could probably still pass as one of the newest graduates herself. While I am looking forward to this ten year mark and hope to make it up to my old stomping grounds for the class reunion, when I take a moment to take stock of my real feelings it isn’t the people I want to see most, but the town. I want to see the post office I walked to every day, the grocery store where I first new what it meant to have a job and all its responsibilities. That very same store where I found what it meant to have a first love and a first huge crushing let down, and my old home, if only from a distance.

I’m not sure how it sounds to hear me share that it isn’t the people I care to see most. I’m sure it forms some sort of opinion on the type of person I just might be, but why would I rush back to see my friends from high school that even when traveling in their circles left me feeling like an outsider and not really a part of their group.

I was always left wondering what the inside joke had just been.

These same friends that only a few short years before, at the crest of puberty, when the time to be selective about who was cool and who was safe to hang out with was upon us, and dividing into social ranks that could last the rest of our mandatory educational years was inevitable, had ostracized me.

Worse.

They had painted an image of me that I couldn’t recognize in the mirror when I stood before it, or truthfully, crumpled before it.

Sure, kids will be kids and if you aren’t the one putting the others down you might turn your back and it could be you. So as my shoulders were actually quite small I learned to bare the burden and to even walk tall. I suppose there is something to be said about the power of forgiveness and actually going from the weird cootie that sat in the cafeteria alone when she braved it enough to even go to lunch, to being somewhat, even if only minimally, accepted into a group in high school after having been a loner for so long. So say what you will about me for not looking forward to seeing these people, but who would?

I am no saint.

Now don’t pity me. I certainty don’t need it. I made my own way and turned out just fine, relatively scathed, slightly damaged and mishandled, but still good. So when graduation rolls around year after year and I think about going back I certainly won’t be looking for a warm embrace of once familiar arms.

No.

I long to stand still at a place where I once stood still often and consoled myself and dreamed. Places of my childhood that were always there when I turned to them.

My love of places, landscapes really, began in Germany. It was there that I was old enough to not only see places, but to take them in and carry them with me even to this day. I was little then and seeing broken castles and cobblestone streets made me feel like a princess waiting for my knight on his white horse to come and sweep me off my feet. Sometimes they made me feel like a farm wife with fields and children to shepherd over. The history and significance of Germany and these sites I was seeing held no meaning to me then, but I felt them all the same, and embraced them as any five year-old might.

On a recent trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with my husband we spent a great deal of time in the Art of the Americas wing. While I appreciate fine art nothing in the exhibit did it for me. There was portrait after portrait. I glanced, took in and walked away, but my husband lingered. He appeared to see something I could not. So I asked him about the portraits and what he saw. For him, it was like looking into people who once lived and gleaning something from their eyes, or from the way they sat, or the clothes they wore. He could be there at that moment in a way I could not. And so I told him about my love of landscapes and standing before them and being there. So while I shrugged at his portraits and he at my landscapes I could understand how he felt.

Landscapes. I can be there. I only alluded to them and the significance that they held for me that day in the art museum. Sure I think now, having fretted over not appreciating portraits in the way perhaps I ought to, I can be there, because I was there so much over the years.

Alone with something great before me.

A vastness void of vulturous peers who filled their free time with caging me and putting my delicate self on display for all to see.

With another graduation past me I woke up this morning with it on my mind and a song stuck in my head. Miranda Lambert sings, “I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here it’s like I’m someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself. If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave, won’t take nothing but a memory, from the house that built me.” Fortunately for me, or unfortunately, I had many houses to build me. At each and every one of them I spent loads of time in the landscapes outside their windows.

If I go back to Pepperell, to my own reunion you may find me on the swing set that over looked the pond where behind my back the kids would walk home and hang out and do whatever it was kids with friends would do and I would escape.  Escape into the pond, the clouds or sun, the metal chains of the swing in my hands. I miss that pond. I miss those swings. I miss those landscapes and hope to reunite with them soon.

It was a few weeks ago that a friend flew in to Logan and being who I am I offered to pick her up. Well being who I am also led me deep into conversation which I gave my fullest attention and what was left for my driving, sad to say and scary to admit, was the bare necessities required to operate a motor vehicle. In the movie “Resident Evil” the Red Queen tells the hopeful survivors that the T-virus was a military weapon designed to inject the body so that even in death, the body could perform the most basic of functions. Bodies can walk and attack driven on the need to feed. While I wouldn’t say I was quite at the level of these most basic of functions, it did occur to me as I missed my turn off in our beloved Big Dig tunnels, that clearly conversations in the car distract me, when I am distracted I am at my worst, and I make mistakes.

Last Thursday my husband and I drove the kids up to Children’s Hospital in Waltham for Noah’s feet. We had a 10:45 appointment and weren’t seen until after 12. Needless to say we were all edgy, I, not much of a morning eater, was edgy and hungry and getting grumpy and short, and so was the rest of the family. Finally we were seen, had a really funny doctor who was great with Noah, and Steve as it were. I thanked him, dropped the first of many checks to come for Noah’s new inserts and took the family to lunch at the local 99. We ate and were replenished and happy to be together again when the bill arrives. Digging through my purse I come quickly to realize I have no wallet. Maybe it was in the car? Did I have it at the doctor’s? I am trembling with embarrassment and a little fear of the unknown (do they really allow people to wash dishes their way out of a bill?) when it comes to me, my wallet is at home on my desk.

The night before I had been on the phone booking a trip for the family in a few weeks and needed my credit card information. Phone + conversation+ dealing with money =  distraction + feelings of “burnt outness” + I will deal with the rest tomorrow = forgotten wallet on desk. The waitress kindly brings over the manager after I finish stammering my way through an explanation that she probably didn’t need, or probably has heard before, “this never happens to me!”- well guess what, it doesn’t!

I was horrified.

The manager was kind and said he would take a check, although usually they won’t, and to please show him some ID.

Was this some sort of cosmic joke?

“Sir,” I say, “I don’t have my wallet, therefore I have no ID.”

Duh, and of course spread knowingly over his face and he accepts my check with phone number and ID number that I have, at least, memorized. Steve heads off to class as the kids and I head for home.

I am distraut.

“No biggie,” Steve said as we left, “this sort of thing happens all the time.”

Well not to me! This sort of thing has just rocked my world!

Now I head home and Noah is screaming about wanting a drink, I have no money to buy him a drink and tell him to hang on until we get home. In hind-site I probably could have found a water fountain at a bathroom or something I suppose but I just really wanted, needed, to get home and have my wallet in my hand. Then I could relax. Well we are nearly home when Noah upsets himself so much that he gets sick, really sick, in the car. With all four windows down and eyes straight ahead we speed home. I throw open Luke’s door and rush to Noah’s side to get him out of the mess as quickly as possible. I am wrists deep in wet slime, tomato chunk with a chocolate coating (thank you for those grasshopper cookies you so willingly hand out to children at the end of their meal 99) when Luke begins to scream. I have no idea what the hell is going on. He is freaking out as I stare through the window to where he is standing and I put two and two together and bolt to his side of the car and yank the door open as fast as I can, with oozing dripping puke coated hands.

His finger is smooshed.

Bad.

Purple, black, white in the middle. Am I going to have to take him to the hospital I wonder as I am left to quickly make decisions on the next course of action. I opt for at least cleaning them up first and then reassessing the situation. It all turns out OK, we put ice on Luke’s finger and he regains composure when I promise that, no his finger won’t always look like that, and after a few bend checks tell him yes, he will be able to play his games. Noah I hosed down in the shower, clothing and all. And his car seat. And his toy. I only wished I could have put my entire backseat in there too. But the point to be taken away from this little story is, when I am distracted bad things happen to me. Mistakes that compile. Mistake one for example, forgetting the wallet in the first place. Mistake two, not listening to my intuition when it suggested first to stop and get coffee on the way up to the doctor appointment, which would have alarmed me to the wallet. Mistake three, again ignoring myself when I realized still close enough to the house to turn home that I didn’t have the diaper bag. Even if that wouldn’t have cued me about the wallet I would have at least had something to clean Noah up with. Mistake four, not stopping to get some water at a fountain somewhere.

This brings us back to the Boston pick up.

My first mistake was to not save the conversation, or at least the meaty stuff, until after successfully getting on to Route 3 South to where it wouldn’t matter nearly as much how engaged with the road I was, at least there was a straight shot. Mistake two, after figuring out how to head back in the direction we needed to be going I came quickly upon a toll for the Mass Pike and listened too much to Steph’s GPS which said bare left. Left I was, so far in fact that I was in the FAST LANE ONLY and unless willing to possibly get into an accident with the cars around me and behind me, I was using their U-TURN instead of paying the normal toll U-TURN. Oh well I figured, I will get a bill in the mail for $25 dollars, that’s what my brother had sent  home once after a similar mistake. I can deal with that. Mistake three, figuring the bill in the mail would only be $25. Try $50. OUCH!

Today is a new day.

Mistake one, opening the white envelope with the big words on it, VIOLATION NOTICE. IMPORTANT- DO NOT IGNORE. RESPONSE REQUIRED first thing in the morning. Hopefully, although distracted, I can avoid further mistakes for today.

I was her.

Often times after seeing a performance you might ask yourself how, how did he/she/they do that?  This character that an actor plays speaks, shouts to you, and you are like, man, amazing!  Period.  Was it Heath Ledger spiraling down to depths so low that he himself couldn’t crawl his way back out, method acting?  Or was it something else?  A shared experience.  A real truthful moment.  You’ve been there and that’s where the magic happens.   Nothing against Heath who I truly believe was brilliant, but the ability to be yourself and someone else I find to be impossible and certainly not worth the risk.  Failed marriages, depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, untimely deaths, all likely results of getting lost in someone else.  So I was feeling pretty good about having shared a piece of myself  last night when on my way out I was asked if I had been bitten by the acting bug.

For just a beat I sat in stunned silence.  Now I will tell you, if you have had even a single conversation with me before I need not tell you, so you just go ahead and skip to what follows down below, but for anyone else, I am a sensitive being. Phrases like “she wears her heart on her sleeve” may have well as been invented after a single encounter with me.  So what exactly was meant by that question?

I had to know.

The mind is such an amazing instrument, such a tool.  In a single beat I was searching for the hidden context, the deeper meaning, what it was that she implied in a single, honest, innocent even, question.  Several possibilities were known to me.

A. She meant that so far up to this point my performances had been ho-hum.  Standard.  Of average caliber.  Now as much as that might hurt my delicate ego, I can accept that and rise to that challenge.  This possibility says to me, that yeah, I’ve been O.K. but last night, boy did that waterline sink and reveal the humongous iceberg below.  I did it.  So hey, that actually was a nice compliment, kudos to me.

B. Perhaps my attitude up to this point has been indifferent, blase even.  Maybe without me even realizing it, I have been reeking vibes of, meh, whatever, this is fun… I’m not really invested, just looking for something to do… who cares?!  If that be the case, wow!  That is pretty rotten of me.  My classmates, colleagues, are a series group.  They work hard.  They are there, showing up week after week and pounding it.  Really terrific people.  If I am giving off an essence of it doesn’t really matter, I’m just playing, then shame on me.  Because it does matter.  Yes, my personal goals heading in were, to break down my own inhibitions, to gain a level of comfort in front of other people and on camera, and above all else to do something fun and enriching for myself. They were not, I am looking to land an acting job.  I work really hard all week long, and have two wonderful, albeit super hyper to the max boys, ages 5 and almost 3.  I live in a world of complete chaos so this class was for me.

One night for me solely.

And I love it.

And I am series about it.

I don’t think I am at the point where I will be auditioning for a series role in a feature film, but if some opportunity were to come my way, and as Kevin says the stars align, then yeah, maybe I would go for it.  I just want one thing to be clear, this class may be for me, solely, but my children, my family, always come first.  I can’t commit to a series role without uprooting them, and at this time, it wouldn’t be right.  Now I probably sound a bit pompous, too confident,  I want it known that I am not meaning to, I am actually rather humble in general, and I know that  I’d be extremely lucky to land said role in the first place.  But for arguments sake, this is the way it is and maybe one day I can commit more time and will go for it.  Until then, I hope I give off, I’m happy to be here and to be stretching myself with you all, vibes.  I’m really excited to do this week after week.

C. And my final fleeting thought on the question was that maybe I bugged her last night.  Now I really sound full of myself here, but maybe the truth struck like lightening and maybe it seemed to come too easily perhaps.  Well it didn’t. There are lots of parts of me that I had hide.  Don’t most people?  I have no intentions of explaining what it was that I really shared last night, but just know that it was truth.  It wasn’t exactly the same thing that my character was facing/feeling/dealing with, but although I may be only 25, I have lived.  I have experienced enough to relate on many levels.  I am a flawed person with hidden truths and last night I tapped into one of those.  I showed the class, me.  A very small me of the many mes that I am.  So again, sounding like a jerk here, if I had once appeared as though I don’t care about this “stuff” and then last night wham!- and so a loaded question was tossed my way with implications suggesting I didn’t deserve to hit it because I haven’t struggled enough, or been committed, or longed enough, well then, sorry, that just ain’t true.

Last night was true.

Did I really need to take offense at the question?  Most likely not.  I bet it was meant in jest.  A rookie baseball player has been training all season and has been hitting some good balls, nice runs have been made and then opening night comes and wham!- home run- out-of-the-park! As he returns to the dugouts his ass gets slapped by next batter up and he playfully yells out, now that’s a hit! ( I don’t actually follow baseball and am quite sure my vernacular is way off here- but I hope you get what I mean), maybe that was the acting bug question.  I’m in the major leagues now.  The young gun.  Watch out.  Time to play with the big boys.

So how do you answer to this, “So, (pause and shift body weight), have you been bitten by the acting bug,” when you have been infected with it all your life?   Even as a child I was “play acting.” I was a mom or a sister to my baby dolls, I was more often than not April O’Neil to my brother and his friends’ Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael, but I digress.  So what sort of response does the question merit?

I was offended.

Rightfully or not (see paragraph about extreme sensitivity above).  Keeping myself in check and knowing, it probably is me, I sort of said,”oh- yeah, I guess so.  I mean I have done this before, it’s so much fun and I love it.”

*Disclaimer- I am putting myself out here with this entry.  I am not looking to burn any bridges and I certainly don’t mean to create conflict where there need not be any.  I just went home with the question bugging me.  And I woke up and realized it was still boring its way though me and realized I needed to vent in some way.  Truthfully, I’m hoping this to be obvious, my feelings on this aren’t really about the question that was posed to me, or the question asker (she is a lovely person who I really like and think has a lot of talent and didn’t mean any harm to me at all), it’s about perception. How I am perceived.  Let’s just say as a young mother, who looks younger than her age, I battle these sort of feelings a lot.

So this is about me.

I want to come across better.

I want to be respected and appreciated for who I am.

So I am putting myself out there, knowing full-well the consequences of doing just that.  I’m O.K. with that.  I’m here to stretch after all.  And as bothered as this left me, it also left me elated.

I’m sure I dream more often than I remember.  I think I read something somewhere once long ago that we dream every night and that we just don’t always remember those dreams.  Furthermore, I think I also read that dreams were a way that our brains cleansed themselves out, expunging the excess crapola we stuff in there and making room for our new thoughts and ideas.  Once in awhile we have those dreams that we can recall and they hint at something within ourselves that perhaps we have hidden away.  A dark chamber filled with elixirs of troublesome or at least complex thoughts.  I suppose we also stuff ideas that need further thought out, in there too.

It seems to me, while I go out on a limb here, that REM sleep is the moment, like the person you know you shouldn’t talk to before they had at least one cup of coffee in the morning and then you spring your well thought out, let’s get going plan for the day on them- it is that moment where the coffee has been drunk and good ol’ brainy boy decides that perhaps now is a good time to remind you that you have been storing some extra “Worry” on the shelf in a bottle next to bottles labeled “Feel Bad About,” “Wish I Had,” “Why Did I,” “Now What” and “What If”- and hey, guess what, shelf space here is at a premium and it is time to clean some of these things out.

During REM sleep Friday night brainy boy came in with the broom, the mop and bucket and, oh hey- what did he find in a bottle of “Maybe I Should?”  Why an idea to cut my hair.  It has been burbling in its jar for months now so it was only natural for brainy boy to decide that Friday night was the time to release it.  On the floor in front of the shelf at his feet, a pile of thoughts to fill jars “Not At This Time,” “Someday When” and oddly enough something labeled “Just Keep Swimming,” all of which being far more important and interesting then the notion to cut my hair.  With that settled he knew the idea to cut my hair had to go.

I wasn’t ready for that one to go.  That thought that brainy boy dumped out of its jar I clung to and I dreamed of it. Most of it was patchy like only seeing what the headlights illuminate in a thick fog, but I remember it was short, and although shocking to the strangers in my dream, it was light and it moved.

When I woke up and thought about the hair dream I knew it was time to just do it. Sometimes I follow my dreams.  I dreamed about winning the lottery, bought a ticket and won zilch but then again I once had a dream that actually led me to making a decision which gained me a best friend, who I still have today.

When I spun around in the chair and hopped down I saw locks of hair all around.  I cut off somewhere in the vicinity of 7 or 8 inches.  Wowzer!  And while strangers I encountered on Saturday had no idea that I had just undergone such a deep spring cleaning that started with a bottle on a shelf in a chamber in my mind and ended in piles of hair on the floor, it was light and it moved.