Again, again

Today is my last day at the office, one more time. Of course it's not the LAST last. I'll come back, whether its full time or through the conference, or for projects. As this is my third "last day" here, I know I'll be back around. I've said many times to many people how lucky I am to have this place I come every day for (give or take) eight hours and never feel like it is a chore. How many actors love their day jobs? Yes, I'm blessed.

I spent the last couple of weeks feeling a bit nervous about the trip and the show and the overall change, and now I've entered a state of complacency. Not apathy, just a steady calm of, "Learn the show, make the drive, everything will be fine." I think there's a point in a transition where you have to switch to autopilot and trust everything will work. I have a go-to statement I heard soon after I returned from the ship and it goes like this: It doesn't make any sense to fear something you want. It's a waste of energy. I repeat that to myself often.

Pictures will return to my blog soon...I promise.

ANGRY

And here's why. McCain bailed on Dave, did NOT fly to Washington as he said he would, and when he finally did, sat quietly and did basically nothing to help "bail out" the economy. I won't pretend to know more than I do about our current situation (when it comes to politics, the economy part is not my strong point) but I know when someone is being a politician rather than being a person. John McCain couldn't possibly scare me more than he has in the past couple of days. I was watching Morning Joe this morning, as I tend to do, and they showed a clip of him on a news show yesterday asnwering the question, "Will you be in Mississipi tomorrow night?" After making a lame joke and laughing at it, he said he was "hopeful" and then bashed Barack for never having agreed to a town hall forum as he has "requested over and over." Good move, buddy. Dodge the question by calling Barack out for something that has nothing to do with anything while simultaneously trying to skip out on an ACTUAL debate.

Then they do this thing on MJ called the Truth-o-meter where they take ads and statements and tell how close to the truth they really are. Sarah Palin made a statement that went something like, "a country is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens" (no need to even begin to touch that statement in regards to the US) and then went on to say that women are "killed and beaten for showing their hair" in Iran. Ok. We all know the stuff about Muslim extremist theocracies and how women can be treated and that yes, it's a rule for women to wear veils and stay covered. But according to the ol' truth-o-meter...are there women being killed daily for showing their hair? No. Have their been extreme cases of violence that we in the west are shocked at? Yes. Is it cool for a potential VP of a world power to go around spouting off stereotypical statements to make a point? NO.

And finally...The NRA is sending out a mailer that says how Barack Obama wants to implement a "10-step plan" to cut the 2nd ammendment. I know the American education system is struggling, but HOW F-ING DUMB DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO BUY THIS??? I know people (sadly) who voted for Bush purely based on the fear that the Democrats would take their guns away. This makes me cry. Now on the other side of the coin, I receive emails every day or two from the Obama campaign with videos and letters, etc...and I rarely read them. Why? Because I already know who I'm voting for. Each side is preaching to the choir and neither has a prayer of conversion.

Finally (for real) I'm angry because this guy is married.

Willie Geist from Morning Joe. Watch the show, seriously. It's the best thing on news TV.

One Year Ago Today

I started my ship blog on September 25, 2007, 12 days before I left. I can't believe it's been a year. Also kind of odd...I was offered the Novi thing exactly a year after I was offered the ship and will be opening the show exactly a year after I boarded the ship. Timing.

I've noticed a pattern since college, and it is this: great things tend to arise for me in the fall and stressful life changes tend to arise in the spring. All of my big positive opportunities have come August-October and all of my break-ups/"road blocks" have occurred February-April. I have yet to know what this means, but it's become more and more clear in the five years since I came to Chicago and began my adult life. This generates a morbid curiosity for what is to come in spring '09. There's no break up to be had, so what WILL happen? Who's the next contestant on Who Wants to Be My Future Ex? I pray not a real tragedy. Am I tempting fate by joking about it...?

So what have I learned in the year since I began this blogging journey? Well...a few things.

• I'll only go back on a boat if it's headed to Europe.
• Patience is truly a virtue. That's not just a cute saying.
• I am really grateful to my parents for moving a lot. I was inadvertantly training for my future.
• Fall in New England + Winter in New Orleans + the remainder of time on a cruise = about 15 pounds.
• Living by myself means a lot of talking to the TV. Frasier and Alton Brown are my new BFFs.
• If someone or something could take me or leave me, I should be the one to do the leaving.

Happy Anniversary, me.

Lost and Found

When you spend every waking moment with someone, you inevitably associate things with them. In the wake of a break up, there are often things that are "lost" if only for a short time...things that carry the label of "ours" and you can't bear to look/listen/think about without pain. I'd rather not address my current list of lost things, but I was thinking about the things from my past that I absolutely associate with a boy and can never enjoy again. Note: most of these things aren't that heartbreaking to miss. It's really more a matter of fact than any tragedy. A random sampling of things that have been ruined for me...







But the bright side, things that over time have been reclaimed...


The process of self actualization leads me to realize that these things are ultimately part of who I am, not part of what WE were. Now in the end, when things are all said and done is anyone really going to give an F whether or not I can listen to a Lenny Kravitz song without feeling melancholy or watch the Big Lebowski without wanting to vomit? No. These things are trivial and to a third person rather lame. But at the end of a relationship there is a strange logic to opening a half and half container to add to your diner coffee and thinking, "I remember when we used to sit in this booth on Saturday mornings and make little maelstroms in our coffee with these creamers. SOOOBBBBB." It's very human to hang onto these things when we can no longer hang onto that person.



I threw a lot of things away last night. My home is mine. Not ours.

Thanks, Mom and Dad

Two ways my parents made my night a little better:

Me: (crying)
Mom: Hey...fuck him.

Me: My life is in shambles.
Dad: ...but the Cubs are in the playoffs!

Blessed

Finally, tonight we open in the city!

This blog was getting pretty dull without pictures. More to come once I get with the traveling again. My readership, I'm sure, is very excited to see pictures of Novi, MI.

I've been a real downer lately. There's no way around it. I'm just sad. And I'm letting that be ok. I'm functional, I'm not locked in my apartment with the curtains drawn living on dry Ramen or anything...and in light of that silver lining, I feel like I can live in the pain for the time being and, as my grandmother used to say, "offer it up." In the meanwhile, I am very grateful for the following...

• My show. It's my heart and soul and it's been in the works for so long.
• Vinnie. Aside from the writing and the performing, he's been a really great friend to me all along the way. And he never lets me forget it.
• Fall! It's here! I couldn't be happier about pumkpins and cool weather and chestnut flavored coffee and all the rest. It's my favorite season.
• Travel. By the end of November, I will have spent about 40% of 2008 away from home. While I miss Chicago immeasurably, the opportunities afforded me this year have been amazing. I'm doing what I love and actually getting paid for it. I'll never take that for granted.
• CSz. A big dysfunctional family of ridiculously talented and supportive people. Where would I have spent my weekends in Chicago if it wasn't for this place with these people?
• Faith. I wrote a whole show making fun of the Church. But as a priest in Gainesville once said in a homily of his, "If you can't laugh at your religion, you're in the wrong one." I kid because I love, and my faith as defined through the Catholic Church has been the biggest thing in my life. I've remembered that a lot more readily lately. Again...can't take it for granted.
• Friends. While I'm tempted to name names, I would inevitably leave someone out. I can't take that risk. You know who you are. Thank you.

The Sky and I

Are both crying today. That's the title of my book of collected poems I write when I'm having a tear-filled anxiety attack and it's an odd time to call people and I have no access to internet (that sentence is the subtitle).

Too personal? Maybe. A friend and I discussed recently how it's really awkard when people get TOO personal on their blogs or their Facebook status. Look, we get it. It's the internet. We're all crying for help and looking for attention. If we weren't, why the hell would we be putting it all out there on this semi-public forum? But it's so inconsistent. If you're willing to put it out on the internet, why not be willing to say it to people's faces? Look out, the next time I see you and you say, "How are you?" I'll say, "Natalie is really trying to make it work." Or, "Glad you asked, here's something interesting I noticed about life today..."

This week has been full of ups and downs. Lots of negativity, lots of fatalism in my head. But also great things. I'm really living the full spectrum these days. 2008: the year of extremes. And of travel. Great segue to....I'll be leaving in October to go to Novi, MI. The ol' SC Detroit. I'll be doing a show there for 6 weeks. More deets to come, I'm still not solid on everything. I'm very happy for the opportunity and very excited to get the F away from here for a little bit. Not from my show or from friends or from CSz. Just from here. I'm reading a book right now about prayer and I read a part today that said when you ask God to get you through hard times he will provide some "emergency exit." Not to advocate running or hiding from problems...but I really liked the term emergency exit.

This whole Saturn's Return thing...sucks.

Politics for a moment

So I don't often pull out a soapbox unless it has "food," "faith" or "improv" written on it. I'm going to take a moment to borrow this one that says "politics" on it...and it may or may not have a faith footnote.

Sarah Palin struck me as the mayor of Snoozeville when I first saw her speak. I've only seen clips of the convention speech, but I hear that she blew the rest of the speakers out of the water. Now when the rest of the speakers include McCain and Lieberman, well... The point is, sure she's firing up the party. She's a chick in a bikini with a gun and a Bible. It's a Republican's dream! Now I won't sell her short for her story or her accomplishments...I'm just saying that those things come in a very particularly "marketable" package for the GOP.

Let's switch to simmer and put her on the back burner for a minute. The thing that really prompted my rant is this quote from an AP article entitled McCain campaign courts critical Catholic vote: "One Catholic McCain supporter, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, spoke almost exclusively about abortion at various events this week, hammering home the claim that Obama would be 'the abortion president.'"

WHAT?

I heard someone in the McCain camp recently say that Obama "promotes abortion." Let's make this clear, friends. No one promotes abortion. No one likes abortion. No one says, "You know what sounds like fun? An abortion!". It's clear by the language used on either side of the fence that no one ever bothers to discuss any real feelings on the topic, in that pro-choice supporters use the term "anti-choice" versus "pro-life" and and the pro-lifers prefer "pro-abortion" versus "choice"; both sides take a lot of care to portray their opposition as negative and wrong, naturally. I have close friends who have made the choice to have abortions in their past. I did not know them at the time, and thus cannot say first hand what their thought process was...nor could I have, I suppose, unless I lived in their heads. The point being that even when women make this decision and stand by it, it's not easy. If there is anyone out there who thinks an abortion is an easy or fun or simple decision for a woman to make, you are 99.9999% wrong. (I'm leaving the leeway of .00001% for those women who may have no feeling about it one way or the other...who knows.) But the women I have spoken to about it did not consider what they did a political statement or some moment of liberation. They went through a serious medical procedure that eliminated the potential in that moment for them to foster a human life inside of them. For some high-horse, selectively religious zealot politician, male or female, to say that any human is PRO-abortion is just fucking ridiculous. The truth is that the idea that life begins at the moment of conception assumes that God intends for that person to develop. Thus, the person has a soul and is intended to live on this earth. This is based in FAITH. Not FACT. It cannot possibly be proven as fact that humans have souls or that they are "intended" from the moment of conception. That's what makes it faith, friends. If it were a fact, faith would be useless. As a Catholic, I believe that life begins at conception, and thus I would not (likely, I've never been faced with the decision) choose to end it. As a person of faith, I know that I can't prove to the next guy that what I believe is what they should believe. That's what makes this sort of thing completely inappropriate as a matter of civic law. It is entirely personal. And for those of you who say that passing a law to make abortions illegal is morally responsible...well, maybe you can sleep better at night if it's written on a piece of paper. But it won't stop it from happening, it will only increase the physical danger for the women who choose to do it. The best way to deter abortions is to encourage education, both abstinence AND contraception. Hey fellow liberals, I know you bristled at the word abstinence....but let's be honest, it's a pretty effective form of birth control, why not at least mention it as an option to our kids out there? Call me crazy.

And now let's go back and check on our simmering pot back there, Ms. Palin. She advocates abstinence only education in schools. A pregnant teen daughter kind of drives the nail into the coffin of that argument, doesn't it? Then again, maybe Bristol was absent from Health Class that day.