I'm still a playwright. But this way I'll also be employed.

Reasons Why I Should Not Be A Lawyer:
1) Everyone hates them.
2) I'll still be a student when I'm twenty six.
3) There's a bar exam, which has nothing to do with drinking.

Reasons Why I Should Be A Lawyer:
1) I'll be called a doctor.

Decision made. Stay tuned for the revamp of this blog, soon to be called 'The Ousted Doctor.'

October 24th 2009

So this crazy thing happened today, Saturday, October 24th 2009.

A woman who I’ve done some shows before randomly—I rarely speak with her online—asked me what I was writing on Facebook chat. She said that she read my blog once and was inspired (inspired, I inspire people!) by how honest I was.

And then I gushed into a puddle of thought because that’s just so darn sweet!

She continued by saying that she is amazed at how wonderful I am (Me!) and how lucky I am to have my mom and sister supporting me.

First off, Me! Secondly, wow she has a good memory. She’s only met my sister once.

She said that she didn’t have a family that believed in her when she was younger so it’s really wonderful for her to see that I do.

This is a woman who is an actress, a singer, a producer and a mother. I’ve seen her in all four roles. She’s amazing. She’s Buffy (if Buffy could act, sing, produce or mother…). Superwoman without the spandex. This is a woman I respect.

Then said that she’s excited to be able to say she ‘knew me when.’

So that’s kind of corny but the sentiment still made me gap.

Seriously.

Seriously.

She’s like my cheerleader, my personal cheerleader. And I haven’t seen her in months!

When we were done talking, all I wanted to do was blog about it, except she reads my blog. I can’t blog about it and then have her read it, what if she doesn’t like it? What if she meant it to stay private? What if, what if, what if.

So that’s why this is being posted today, a year later. If she still reads my blog, then she’ll know how much this conversation meant to me and hopefully, enough time has passed that she won’t mind me sharing it.

It’s nice to know that someone (other than family that, you know, have to) has faith in me.

Thanks, Corisa :)

Ice cream.

I can't comfort people.

I just can't. I'd like to, it just doesn't work.

Maybe it's a maternal thing, I'm not motherly so even when I want to help, I'm at a lost.

I think it's 'cause if I'm panicking, someone telling me that it's going to be okay doesn't really do anything. It just is. And I just am. And give me some time, and I'll be fine, but a sweet phrase isn't going to speed things up.

There was an incident a couple of months ago. I was on stage, and I watched as something bad happened to my family in the audience. I didn't know what was happening, or who it was happening to, just that it involved my family and that it was big and bad.

And all I could do was watch.

It was a terrible feeling. Everyone was singing and clapping and swaying along to the very last song that ended the show, all cheerful and joyous. Except me. I was watching this big, bad thing.

After a while--it felt like a long time, but it was probably something like thirty seconds--I realized I'd stopped smiling.

In a panto, on stage, that is the worst thing you can possibly do.

So I grinned. And swayed. And sang.

And watched.

I could clearly see my brother, standing in the aisle, with his back turned to me. No one in the little area where my family had been sitting was paying any attention to us on stage. People were standing up, they were looking in all directions, and they were my family.

I kept looking up and down the seats trying to find them sitting somewhere else, two rows down maybe, completely oblivious to what was happening just behind them, but they weren't there.

And all I could do was watch.

The song ended and instead of skipping down the aisles into the audience and into the lobby, we were directed by the stage crew to skip off into the wings.

"Medical emergency."

I was pretty much dead at that point. When you're on stage, there's a lot of adrenaline, you're pumped and excited and exuberant and usually there's a crash afterwards. I didn't crash. I had more important things to worry about, more adrenaline, more of everything.

And I ran backstage, ran out the wings, through the green room, through the lobby, up the stairs (passing dozens of audience members who were just leaving and looking at me very surprised since I was still completely in costume), and into the theatre.

Then I crashed.

I didn't want to hear that it was fine, that she'd be fine. I wanted to know that her pulse was stable and that her breathing was regular, which I was eventually told. And I wanted to cry because all I'd been able to do was watch, so that's what I did, in the arms of a complete stranger.

After the ambulance came, I had to go change before we went to the hospital.

Since I played a princess, I had the princess dress and the tiara and the pearls and the tights and the shoes and the stage make-up and the eyelashes. I had everything and it all had to come off now.

So again, I ran. Out of the house (theatre), through the wings (past several crew members who looked all worried and concerned at me), down to the green room and into the dressing room.

The stupid top of the stupid dress was always annoying to get off and I just didn't have the patience, I was not in the mood to shimmy and tug at it until it came off. But I did, and I did it badly and messily and one of the other women had to help me, and then she hugged me.

She's a mom. It's her thing.

And I knew that being hugged was a good thing but I did not want it. I was worried that my parents might leave with the ambulance and make my brother take me home. I didn't have time to waste hugging.

So I wretched off the skirt, jammed on my jeans, grabbed my jacket and bag and ran. The woman who hugged me had been gathering up my stuff as I was throwing it and told me to just go, she'd take care of it. That helped me. I really did appreciate that. My dress specifically needed to be hung carefully and there was no way I could do it.

Once again, I was running. Out of the dressing room, through the green room, through the wings, into the house.

We left, following the ambulance.

Okay, here's the image I want to describe. When I walked into the ER room...I was messed up. They must be used to seeing some pretty crazy things, and I was no exception.

My hair was in an elaborate braided twisty thing, reeking of hair spray, in the style of the 1800s. I was wearing full stage make-up (think clown make-up), except my eyes were all red and I had only one fake wing--sorry, eyelash left. My neck was covered in pearls and sweat. I was wearing a sweatshirt over top of a tank top--the same one I wore under my dress during the show--and jeans. And under the jeans, I was wearing a pair of thick, white tights with character shoes.

Hehe.

We waited.

Finally, my parents sent my brother and I home because we knew she was alright and there was no need for all of us to stay. I think it was because my mom kept looking at my face. She kept commenting that I looked like death (I'm paraphrasing). I guess I did.

When I was home, I coloured. I hate colouring. I hate it with a fiery passion and think it is ridiculous for teachers to mark your overall work on the prettiness of your drawings and oh my god why am I so bad at it?

I had to create a kid's book for my creative writing class and all that was left was the colouring, so I very calmly sat at my kitchen table and coloured.

That helped. Thinking helped, moving helped, hell, showering helped (that helped a lot actually, stage make-up is really thick).

Hearing pretty things didn't help. I didn't want to hear them. I wanted facts, I wanted to know precisely what had happened and why and what it meant now. Hearing that it was going to be okay--when they had no idea if it was going to be okay--did not help.

So I think that's why I can't comfort people.

I want to comfort people that need it. I really do. But if it was me, that's not what I'd want. Hugging is always useful (except in my one case but that was a special circumstance), but not talking. I don't want to hear it. So I don't know what to say. I don't know if it would help to say that it's going to be okay--when I don't know that for sure--or if I should keep quiet.

I don't know.

So when my friend needs help, I don't know what to do, what to say.

I'm sorry.

We Are the Champ--uh, maybe not.

Today, I made a discovery.

My friends and I went and saw 'The Invention of Lying' (Ricky Gervais is a genius, especially for a secular audience), and afterwards, we weren't quite sure what we wanted to do, so until we decided, we hung around outside.

And it took me a minute before I recognized it.

We're those kids now.

We're the kids my mom didn't want us to associate with when we were younger, the reason she didn't like us going to late movies, the reason she'd always volunteer to pick us up so we wouldn't have to loiter outside the theatre.

When I was younger, they seemed so cool. They could hang out past eleven o'clock on a school night, at the side of a street, outside of a cinema, totally at ease; they could smoke and glare at people walking by; they could not worry about the 'weirdos' (my moms favourite title).

And now they're us.

But we still have bedtimes, they're just self-imposed now because hello responsibilities, and we're at ease because we have each other. We don't smoke, we only glare if we have reason, and we don't worry about weirdos.

So my revelation of the day: we are the weirdos.

They're thoughtful that way.

This post is going to be honest, blunt and bloody.

This is what happens when you give blood with the Canadian Blood Services.

When you walk in, there's a smell. A really yucky, ugly smell that's gonna remind you of hospitals and clinics and dead people (but there's no dead people there, promise).

The building is a circle, or at least the one I go to is. You start right beside the cake and the cookies and the juice (I'm sure they do that on purpose, not just because it also makes layout sense), and you can't have any, you can't even look at it too much because in a second, you're going to be called over to a desk with a man behind it, a really nice, friendly man who's been taught to not scare you. Well, try to not scare you.

He's going to take a tiny little plastic thing and ask for your finger and you, not realizing what this tiny plastic thing is, are going to hold out your hand and feel a prick. He'll have already told you that he needs to do this to make sure you are plush full of iron. It's a pinprick. You may not even feel it. Imagine someone pinching your arm: this hurts less.

There'll be a little well of blood on the tip of your finger, but they'll try to cover it with their glove.

He's gonna take a drop and tell you if your iron is high enough. This is important. If it's not high enough, then it could be dangerous for your health to give blood so they're not gonna let you. But let's pretend that your iron level is fine.

Next comes paperwork. Mostly, it's about sex. Sex-sex not gender-sex but they don't want to know your most intimate details, just if you might have AIDS. All of the paperwork is online (just google them) so you can look at it in advance too.

Next, you'll go in this private room and someone will go ask you more questions (mostly about sex again) that you'll say no to, although there'll be a couple of yes's just to make sure you're paying attention. I promise they're not judging, they just want to be safe.

They're going to give you two stickers with barcodes on them and then leave the room. If you want to donate your blood, you take the appropriate barcode and stick it on your file. If you want to check for AIDS or other blood-related diseases, or just find out your blood type without donating, you choose the other barcode.

When the person comes back, all they'll see is a barcode, so again, there'll be no judgements.

Next comes the obvious part. The giving of blood part, the sharing of survival part, the big ass needle in your arm part. Breathe. Seriously. It's okay.

Now, you might think (wrongly) that since your arm needs to be bare (and if it's the middle of summer), it would be a good idea to wear a halter top. It is not. The bed/lounge chair/thing you are going to lie on is plastic.

Don't wear a halter top. You'll stick. My bad.

So you lie down, the nurse finds a nice vein while making small talk, and they'll set everything up.

I apparently have very small, invisible veins. I'm practically albino, so you'd think they'd be easy to see, but they're so ridiculously small that my nurse took quite a while to choose a vein because she wanted to be absolutely certain that there would only be one more prick to come. For me, that involved strapping up one arm, deciding that she wanted to try the other arm, finding that the other arm wasn't any better, and then going back to the first arm. You might think that's silly and time-consuming. I think I'd rather they check several times than leave me with a collapsed vein. So yeah, they're thoughtful that way.

They'll tell you when. My nurse told me that if I was going to look away, now would be the time. I did look away, since it was my first time, but it's not that bad.

Believe me, I'm a sissy.

The needle isn't that big. The prick doesn't take that long. The pain is not that bad.

Seriously. I'm a whiner, if it really hurt I would tell you and then be bitter about it the rest of my life. It's more like a sting than anything and it only takes a second and then you can't feel it anymore.

Blood. Right.

Typically, donations take five to ten minutes. A while ago my friend asked me how long and I said it depends on your blood pressure. It does depend on your blood pressure but said friend turned really pale and didn't want to go with me anymore, so I'm going to stick with five to ten minutes.

If you hand gets cold, which mine does, they'll give you a glove tied up that's filled with hot water to hold, and if you have lower blood pressure, which I do, they'll ask you to squeeze and unsqueeze it over and over again.

There are nurses everywhere and they are bent on making sure you are perfectly fine.

There was another woman there who, after donating and sitting there for a few minutes, was feeling dizzy. Immediately, there were three nurses surrounding her with ice and cold pads. Within another few minutes, she was fine.

I think my albino-ness caused them to be overly concerned, because thirty seconds couldn't go by without a different nurse coming up to me, taking a quick glance at my file (and reading that it was my first time) and asking me if I felt okay.

I felt just fine.

Okay, that's a lie.

I was sticking to the seat: that did not feel fine. My arm felt pretty normal though.

I watched the blood. Right as it starts, you can watch it run through the tube and you get to see how fast it's going. That's cool. Afterwards, it's just a brown tube.

(I got kinda sick of all the people asking me how I felt so I started texting random questions to my sister just so they'd stop asking me.)

Once you're done, they'll take the needle out (another sting, just for a second) and press a piece of gauze where it went in and ask you to hold it there. Five minutes later, they'll come around check to make sure it's done bleeding, and then tape a fresh piece of gauze on.

(Unless you're so friggin' albino that they want you to sit for another few minutes so they go get you a drink and make you sip it there. I tried telling them that I'm naturally this ghostly but she didn't buy it.)

And then that's it! You get cookies and cake (if you're lucky and it's someone birthday) and juice and volunteers make small talk as you sit. There are people all around you--at all times--making sure that you are okay. They make you stay for a few minutes afterwards because if you faint, they are going to catch you. They're there for you. You are going to be fine.

You should know that from the moment I entered the building to the moment I left, I never once saw blood. First it was covered by the person's glove and then a band-aid, then in a tube, then under gauze, but I never saw myself bleeding.

On Greys Anatomy, there was a guy played by Seth Green who had an exposed carotid artery that burst. Lexie practically bathed in blood until she managed to stop the bleeding.

I know that that didn't really happen, but it could, it does, and you could help.

It's in you to give.

Perspective.

The other day I needed to find a postal code for the SARA Society. They deal with survivors of childhood sexual assualt (SARA stands for Sexual Assault Recovery Anonymous).

See, when I was working with a non-profit group that deals with homelessness, I learnt a lot about other societies and why we need them. There are dozens of crisis lines, for all sorts of reasons, shelters, emergency centres, help lines for families, women, men or children, people with diseases, people that are borderline homeless, people that are homeless, people with mental or physical disabilities... People that need help.

Along with their address and phone number, the SARA Society also had a little blurb about contacting them. If you leave a message with them, you have to say if it's safe for them to leave a message when they call you back.

Not if it's okay, but if it's safe.

And then, if it's not safe, there' s a code.

My mind? Blown.

They have codes. They need codes. There's a need for codes out there! It's one thing to be sneaky planning a surprise party, but to have your safety depend on it? I don't know if I could do that.

I guess it just makes a failed piano exam seem sorta insignificant.

Le Vent Dans Les Ruines is Kicking My Pasty White Ass.

I haven't been practicing enough.

For nearly a year and half I've been learning these songs, these same pieces, and that may sound crazy dull and you may be thinking a year and a half and you still can't play them? but it's not like that.

There are five pieces for my repertoire and two studies, plus ear and technique.

My first piece is a Prelude and Fugue, meaning that although it's considered one, there are two different pieces to learn. My second is a Mozart sonata which contains no less than three movements.

So five pieces becomes eight, plus two more, plus ear and technique.

I know all the repertoire well. I could perform all but one confidently right now. But you can't just perform at an RCM exam, you also have to impress. That's the tough one.

Last year, I did the exact same I've been doing this year and I should have failed. They passed me by quite a bit--I figure they could guess how well I knew the pieces even if I didn't do the best at playing them there--but I don't think I deserved it. So that's why, with my exam six weeks away, I'm sorta beginning to panic.

My last piece, the one I'm definitely not comfortable performing, is five pages of sixteenth notes, played rapidly, by Ibert.

I did the (very loose, approximate) math: it's about eight notes a second. Ibert was a cruel, cruel man.

I was late to start learning it and then procrastinated. I had all sorts of excuses. When I was supposed to be working on it the most, I was on stage every night doing Pirates of Penzance so my practice time went from borderline sufficient to nil.

Now I'm really panicking. It's a difficult piece, there's no time to think as it's ridiculously fast and I'm supposed to have three and a half pages memorized by tomorrow. I'm just shy of three right now and they're the easiest three.

And, to be honest, I should have had it all memorized several weeks ago.

Usually, I practice an hour a day during the summer. In past years, it's always been enjoyable practice because all I would be doing is learning the basics of lots of songs so that I could figure out which ones I like enough to focus on in September. That didn't happen last year, it definitely won't happen this year.

I'm going to practice at least an hour a day from now on. Really it should be two. I'm saying one for now just to make sure I do it.

Tomorrow, I begin house sitting for my old theory teacher, who's probably the gentlest, kindest most compassionate person I know, while they're away (she's doing a concert with her sister, the professional violinist, in Michigan. How cool is that!). That means that for as long as I want every day for the next ten days, I have access to her beautiful, black baby grand.

Oo!

It really is beautiful, and massive which makes it all the better.

So that's it. I wrote this because once it's in print, it'll make things more real and my practicing has to be very, very real.

An hour a day.

Easy.

Right?