the shit, the headshots, the script. And the memoir...

"Though I am grateful for the blessings of wealth, it hasn't changed who I am. My feet are still on the ground. I'm just wearing better shoes."

Oprah Winfrey

hello my lovely blades... i actually don't feel well tonight :( and i think -- from all of the running around -- i need to rest. and get my achey breakey self off the computer...

i promise to be juicy tomorrow night -- and to write more and to connect my moments with you all...

some updates from today:

1. read for embittered casting associate and when i did an improvised part to the script and she scowled and was like, "What are you doing?"

And what's so wonderful is that I was like, I am the shit. And I smiled and did a second take like she asked. And I practically slammed the door behind me. 

2. I dig my new headshots. They are my most beautiful. Ever pictures in my life. Sooo promising... I have posted my other headshot choice!

3.  I wasn't able to meet up with Bekah today -- my screenwriter was in town and we talked though -- and we are looking at Mid-March for the completion of the script. I was just happy to be doing it. Talking it out -- dreaming it up. Envisioning the story... creating my own story -- and that makes the crap casting associate and the headshots -- I am the shit -- all feel right. Just right.

It is all happening... And tonight I don't feel well and so I have to remind myself -- of what I always say... That there is a divinity of timing.

That we endure these certain battles because we are being tested perhaps -- we are being tested to see how strong we are. How committed we are. How ready we are. 

And I am. (And I am SO stoked to be saying Oprah's words this year!!!)

Below is an excerpt from my memoir...

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You’ll be just fine

I had a crush when I was fifteen and he was a floppy-haired stoner named Ted. He drove a classic car of some sort – light yellow. He wore khakis and flip-flops, probably Tevas. He was a lifeguard at the pool near my best friend’s house and his skinny, tanned body was enough to make my want to dive in and struggle like a helpless goat in the shallow end. He had that sort of charm – his kind indifference brought all the girls around. And I was one of them. Except I had something in common with him that all the other minions did not – his mother had died of cancer a few years earlier and mine was slowly dying. Carnation Instant friendship. So somehow he’d become my mentor – I don’t remember how this came about, if my mom asked his father or if my big sister asked him or what. But I do remember that our drive “downtown” to get ice cream at Hillary’s and then bring our cups of oozing homemade ice cream with crunchy toppings into his car for a drive were some of my favorite high school memories. We’d chat about light things and then we’d soar down deep. Usually, we’d talk in his car on drives through newer developments and farmland, but sometimes we’d just talk in my house. I remember one time when we were sitting at the kitchen table. And I guess we were getting pretty deep into things because I started to say what I don’t think I had ever said aloud. Especially to someone not so close to me – even if it were someone I wanted to be so close to me – I started talking about my mom dying. It’s like we were excavating our souls as we sat there at the kitchen table with the plasticy tablecloth. He was talking about what had happened, “My Dad is just not there like he used to be. He’s really into my stepmother. And that’s what happened.” And I sat there wide-eyed as he talked, I couldn’t even fathom that this could be my future – my father without my mom. All the struggling with her illness wasn’t going to end; it was merely the way things were. We’d gotten so used to them – I call this being “comfortably uncomfortable.” We become inured to bad things and feel sort of oddly safe around them, like they comprise our lives and without them, without this built-in discomfort, we could not exist. We’d be lacking texture. No rub, as Shakespeare said. And so as I dug deeper and deeper into the “what if?” of my Mom’s life, and as I did, I grew more confused, more upset. My nose began to crinkle and my voice began to shake. The sick thing is that I think part of me was digging having my stoner hero around for this show – I could be saved by him, he would see my pain and comfort me. We would forever bond this evening and tell our children years later – being that I was only fifteen at the time – this is how it happened for Mommy and Daddy. Mommy was sharing the story of her Mommy dying and Daddy had just shared the story of his Mommy dying and we knew we just couldn’t be apart after that moment. We were sealed – two motherless lovers, two ships in the night – stopping to weep before one another. Btu then – something happened. As I was talking about my Mom, I really did start to feel something and my voice did start to crack. I’d gone too far, said too much and I managed to say, “If my Mom died, I don’t know what I’d d-” And before I could finish my sentence, my mother’s pink slippers could be heard sifting across the kitchen floor. “You’ll be just fine.” She ended my sentence. And in her pink turban and her pink Gloria van der Bilt robe, she was right. She’d heard her daughter discuss her mortality and she sifted her way in and righted my wrong. And Ted and I sat there, catching ourselves, skipping a breath, while my Mother made her way into the kitchen and slowly out of my life.