You Been TREATED, Bitch!

The morning after our lovely dinner party, we returned to the Rialto Square, the prettiest theatre of all. We were all a wee bit worse for the wear, because, as Other Actress brilliantly pointed out the night before, "I love when you can mix your own drink at the bar! Because you can make like six drinks in one!" Unfortunately, she spoke too soon, because the bon mots of her word vomit ended up turning into actually vomit...yeah....thankfully I had only had only two cosmos, and not of the six-in-one variety (although, man, I feel for her, as I have SO been there at SO many parties its ridonkadonk). So my embarassing activities were confined to slight drink spillage (due more to my innate clumsiness than anything else, and quickly remedied by the coolest little spotbot vacuum I've ever seen) and badly attempting to give love advice, as I often unfortunately turn into a drunk surfer when I try to be profound after a cosmo or two, i.e. "whatever, man, your love is beautiful, but just know that like,you're awesome, dude, so like, hold onto that." Sheesh.

You're probably thinking, hungover children's theatre? Building sets and prancing around? Perish the thought! But once you've survived hungover gymnastics at cheer practice, you can do anything. Plus the Rialto is a paradise of bakery-fresh donuts, coffee, hot chocolate, tea, and a giant refrigerator full of every diet soda you could imagine. Ah, sweet diet A&W cream soda, nectar of life.

The show was fairly normal, until we got to The Necklace. When it was revealed that I had ruined my life for no reason because the necklace I had spent my life savings on was fake, bla bla bla, dramatic irony, etc., the kids totally lose their shit and start yelling, "TREATED!"
Um, WTF?

Turns out "treated!" is special Illinois slang for "burned!" As in, "sweet burn." According to Urban Dictionary, treated means:

To be put down or embarassed by someone. Put in your placed or "schooled."

You've been treated!

Whaddya know. Kids, you never stop learning. I then drove the van to Normal, Illinois. Yeah. For serious. Enough said.

Today was another typical day performing this time at Illinois State, notable only for the freakish quiet of the 700-plus kids in the audience. And for the frat-boy-ogling possibilities.

I then spent the very, very long drive to Grand Rapids, Michigan perfecting my vault into backseat of the van. Due to the tetris-like packjob involved in getting the luggage of 8 people (and, dear god, two guitars) into the van, it's kind of an obstacle course. I have yet to stick the landing with any grace, although the modified forward-handspring I did to escape the creepers at the Bangor, Mich. gas station was pretty awesome.