The Real John and Kate

A very sweet friend mentioned on Facebook the other day how no one would watch a reality show about us – the REAL John and Kate – because no one wants to watch two people who are really in love. It got me thinking…


A reality show about our life?? Oh you have no idea.

Here’s the pitch – a bohemian family struggling with chronic illness, high IQ’s, and cats who think they own the lot of them move into a 100 year old home with no closets. Hilarity ensues.

On any given day our house looks like a chaos bomb hit it. We recently tore up a front flowerbed and displaced about 1 million little black biting ants. My boy cat thinks he’s a soccer star and loves to kick things onto the floor (mostly my pint glasses full of iced tea and anything smaller than a dictionary). Daughter 1 is struggling with a recent diagnosis of a syndrome that keeps her on the couch 24/7. Daughter 2 just stepped on and broke Daughter 1’s laptop severely limiting any connection with the outside world.

John is at home writing for a living and frustrated that he’s fixing the writing of fools instead of writing his own stuff and I am gone half the time at an office job or directing other people’s children in community theatre productions.

You want fights? We got fights! But does anyone want to see us argue about how you should wash a dish, or whose turn it is to make dinner? How about which daughter gets to use the one working laptop we have? Or even better – when the lawn is going to get mowed!!

Yesterday Daughter 2 and I had a conversation about the gallon of water she spilled on the stairs. We got 3 clean stairs out of the deal. I tried to get her to clean more of them. No luck. I explained I only care about spills when they are sticky, stain, or are stinky; water not so much. Words to live by.

SO if anyone wants to pay us a million dollars or buy us a giant house to sell out our story on tv; bring it on. You will also see us all sit down to dinner every night, watch movies together, get insanely fattening custard and carmel corn sundaes, spoil our cats to death in what we call “kitty city”, and have Indy car races with Sarah in the Walmart wheelchair.

An Actor's Life For Me

I’m having a hard time lately in my life so I'm trying to write about things that would make me happy. I am even having a hard time thinking about some of the fun times because of regrettable occurrences that happened after or with the people involved… This is kind of stupid. You are not supposed to be depressed at the beginning of summer vacation!

SO in honor of my summer theatre kids here is a list of some of my theatre memories growing up:

• My first stage feature was as a yellow crayon. I wore corduroy and a turtleneck. It was deep in the 70’s.

• My follow up performance was as a townsperson in Tom Sawyer. I got the role because my mother has a talent for historical costuming. (I already had a dress)

• Then I was typecast in the role of Lucy in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. It made me love Moonlight Sonata and gave me knock out audition song. I got my first community theatre role with that song in Music Man; another costume drama and my first “cast party”.

• 7th grade was Bye Bye Birdie and the director who quit every year the week before Dress Rehearsals. In 8th grade she quit Oklahoma too.

• I went on to play such show stopping roles as a Swedish Maid, a stripping Aunt, a tomboy, a catatonic nursing home patient, the Chiquita Banana Lady, Cassandra, and an angry Earth Goddess among others.

• I loved doing theatre. I loved hanging with the boys backstage and running across the street to get malts at Dairy Queen. I loved and still love the smell of dust in hot lights and how cool the floor is underneath the stage.

• In high school some genius gave me the opportunity to be a stage manager. Probably type casting again but I had never considered that being bossy could actually be a job!!

• Theatre teaches you how to see someone’s real personality. The one they only show when they are acting. If you don’t believe me you have never been in a show.

• Theatre teaches you how to find your own personality. The one you think you never show anyone.

• I still love theatre and I love children’s theatre because I see the looks on their faces and I know that they are starting to hear the voice of their true self in their minds. I hope they never lose the ability to hear it ever again.

I am doing more children’s theatre this summer even though it is a longer drive and a bigger commitment. I am doing it because theatre let's me hear that voice of mine and because when I see the fire catch in their eyes it makes my heart sing.

Homage to the Armstrong Bathroom Makeover Disaster

I did not want to move. Don’t get me wrong I love being in Winston Salem and it is for sure the best thing we have done in our lives so far. But folks I did not want to pick up all of the stuff we own and put it into a truck/our cars/my hands and move the shit into another house where I would then have to dig through it and find places to put it away again. I did not want to do that.

So my husband and I had that conversation. I work 3 jobs. I am taking classes. I cannot help you do this. It is your priority and I have finally given in and acknowledged that we need to be in Winston Salem, but I cannot help you do this. He engaged the help of his father and I said fine. You move it. Remember that I cannot help you.

I knew that the agreement had gone South when I got the call at 8pm on day one of moving van rental. “We picked up the van. Then we bought a chair and went to the house to load the things that are going to my Dads. Now we are going to Dads to unload. None of us have eaten and we’re just going to have to load up the truck in the morning.” Oh Sweet Lord this was bad. It devolved from there to become a 2 week process of exactly what I expected. Picking stuff up, carrying it to the car, driving to Winston, carrying the shit into the house, putting it down, and then milling around in giant stacks of boxes until you find something you need. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

The I Can’t Help You conversation is long forgotten. Saturday we dug out a 4 foot by 6 foot Prickley Pear cactus. This was a remarkably easy task that only cost me one pair of leather gloves. I still don’t know how to get it to the compost facility or if they will even take it once I get it there, but it is out of my yard. I am seriously considering those things that shrink wrap bags of clothes and blankets so you can store them in small spaces. Someone at work had a box of books to give away left over from a yard sale. I checked every title in paperbackswap.com and these aren’t even my books!

We do have a Harry Potter room under the stairs… Now if I could only figure out how Harry makes it into a real sized room that holds all of his shit.

It Is What Makes Me... me.

I’ve been talking to an old friend about the things that make us who we are. It’s where we are from but much more than that. It is where we are and how we got there and the people who sang us their songs along the way.

I am back in a City. It’s a community within a city. It’s the people you know and which streets you use to get where you’re going. It makes a big difference. Do you take the back roads or do you always get on the expressway? Because there are cities within cities and your boundaries define your limits.

People have said to me a million times: I didn’t realize you grew up in town. You don’t sound like you grew up in town.

That’s because I didn’t. I lived in town, but that is only a part of where I grew up. I grew up in farm fields, and county parks. I grew up with my feet in the streams and rivers and the storm drains. I grew up in our family van driving the back roads of America looking for pieces of history and culture that most people never see. I grew up with my friends sitting on the edge of the levee and lying in the leaves.

Sometimes my new City reminds me of home. On Saturday mornings it smells like lawn mower exhaust but this morning it smells like rain soaked lilacs. With a window open I can hear dogs barking and kids playing somewhere down the sidewalk. Other times it reminds me that here, old men speak using accents that my brain lags a good 3-4 seconds behind in comprehension.

Stories swirl around you in Cities. Waiting to be sung.

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art

My stepdaughters are writing a horror story.

"Fictional" characters living in a house that sounds like our. Who are haunted by living memories inside the house.

Both John and I have been having dreams that go way beyond your normal night time flights of fancy. I can't help thinking that either the girls are planting seeds in our brains or that this house has inspired all of us to take a deeper look at how we relate to the past the present and future.

We are, after all, living in a 100 year old farm house in the middle of a major city.

Ear Modification

Industrial

I pieced my ear again yesterday.

Man, I hope my Mom isn’t reading this.

I couldn’t resist! When I realized that I could get a 16g stainless steel barbell in my upper ear at Claire’s using the earring gun at the mall for less than $20??
I was so there!!

So I get to the store, a little worried because, hello! Cartilage! And I sit down to wait for the manager who is the only one in the store trained to pierce cartilage. And who should walk up to wait in line behind me to get her little ears pierced but Cindy Lou Who. I swear this little six year old is standing by the chair I am sitting in sucking her thumb and holding her teddy bear.

I tell her “don’t worry if it looks like it hurts me, yours is going to be MUCH easier than mine” (at this point I am hoping for silent tears at best) and her mother ask where I’m getting it, I point and she mouths to me “she’s really scared, this is her 3rd try”.

Great. No pressure to cowboy up or anything.

They watch. I get pierced. Cindy Lou gets a high five from me and she was all smiles hopping up into the chair. I didn’t have the heart to stay and watch her get hers done. I would have felt like a traitor.

But honestly? It really wasn’t that bad! Not really that much more pain… seriously.

I can so totally handle a tattoo now.