Chill it Out Take it Slow, Then You Rock Out the Show

You know, it's funny - I spend all week looking forward to the weekend, but it's usually during the weekends where I find my darkest days, and the minute I get to work and back up on stage (as Ichabod astutely noted, the minute I have that Katrina hankie in my hot little hands) the world is instantly a brighter, better place. Huh - I guess that means you have the right job when you actually prefer your job to your time off. And yet, that Pavlov's dog response still goes off in my head - "Zing! Friday!" even though Fridays usually just signal the start of 48 hours of milling around Cracker Barrels and K-Marts. Although this weekend I did drag the entire gang on a forced march to the mall - how was I supposed to know it was 3 miles away? Whoopsie...meh, exercise is good for 'em.

Monday's show went fairly well, except I somehow lost my shoe during Sleepy Hollow. This wouldn't be odd, except for the fact that they are mary-jane style tan character shoes, and thusly, have an ankle strap. I made an extra ambitious hop on "oooo STOP pawing me like a bear!" and somehow hopped out of my shoe, yet the strap remained buckled around my ankle, so I was forced to sort of prance around and try to kick the shoe back into place, which obviously didn't work. I tried to whisper to my fellow actors for aid but there was nothing they could do; at one point I swung my leg up on the bench because I was going to try to do a flirty "I'm gonna bend over and fix my shoe and shake my tush" thing and pretend it was part of the blocking, but the show just kept going, so I did all of Sleepy Hollow balanced on one foot wearing a tan mary-jane character shoe like an ankle bracelet. Le sigh. I was obviously terrible in every other show because all I could think about was my stupid shoe.

We then headed to Danville, VA - at first I thought, lame, but it turns out, Danville, "gateway to the south," was the last capital of the Confederacy! Jefferson Davis learned of Lee's surrender at Appomattox in a house on Millionaire's Row in Danville! I was embarrassingly excited, obvi.

Unfortunately, my shoe was not all I lost that day, for on my evening jog I lost my way. Like somehow-exited-the-city-limits-and-was-surrounded-by-cows-and-a-glass-factory lost my way. It was a little scary, because I had no idea where I was, the sun was setting, and I could practically hear the music from Deliverance tuning up. And yet, just when I was starting to panic/give up hope (this would be two hours into the jogging adventure - I KNOW TWO HOURS gaaag me), as my ipod crescendoed to "Proud to be an American" (yes, the American Idol song, bought during my uber-patriotic jingoistic phase in France when I was really homesick and made a country song/american pride song playlist and would blast it in my dorm and danced around in my red white and blue hello kitty underwear. and I wonder why I didn't make any French friends...), I saw the glowing lights of CVS in the distance! Civilization! Right around the corner from the Sleep Inn! Saved by a CVS sign - I was proud to be an american.

For dinner that night we decided to head off the beaten trak and forgo the IHOP for a local joint: "Hams! Good Times Since 1935!" Turns out the times were extra good, because kids eat for 99 cents on Mondays. Not only that, there was a magician, balloon animals, face painting, and Hannah Montana karaoke. Yeah...it was, as I'm sure you can imagine, INSANITY. The four of us were literally the only table there sans child. The food was delicious, and the screaming child ambience could not be beat. Although I swear, if I heard one more kid butcher "Best of Both Worlds," I was ready to get up there and show those bitches how it's done - Miley Cyrus-style.