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Grand Openings of ’07

December 28, 2007 By

To wrap up 2007, I thought that I would take my favorite post openings* from each month.

(Y’all should try it sometime because it was a trip and a half.)

JANUARY

    “My friend, Karen has been constantly singing, “Everything comes down to poo” from the ‘Scrubs’ musical that aired tonight. Given my hatred of all things involving excrement, this compares to being tied down and given Chinese water torture while “Ice, Ice, Baby” blares on repeat until all semblance of sanity is lost.”

FEBRUARY

    “You know that sleep is shot straight to hell when the question, “I wonder who Jack the Ripper really was?” enters into the equation. Dammit.”

MARCH

    “The mourning process can be spectacularly cruel. Not just because you grieve loss of someone you love, but the sheer unexpectedness can be so devastating. One moment you are fine, chipper and well and then something can trigger an avalanche of pain on to your heart and make you want to run, run, RUN to escape it as hard and as fast as you can.”

APRIL (I cheated a bit. April was a light month because I switched to my own URL and WordPress theme designed by Kerflop from Blogger. Not many stellar opening lines here. SO, I will just give you one of my favorite things of the month. This ditty explains how most of my “Technical Support” conversations went during the transition:

Jessica: “Ok, Loralee. Now I need you to open the Doohicky folder.”

Loralee: “Umm…I don’t know what a Doohicky folder IS, Jessica.”

Jessica: “Oh, no problem. It is that file over there in your Thingamabob directory.”

Loralee: “Wait, is that the one that one I opened by hitting the Vorpal Blade Function? Or was it the Snarfblatt thingy you told me about yesterday???”

Jessica: “Just breathe, Loralee. Try opening your Coocookachoo drive and we’ll go from there.”

Loralee: “Ok. Hold on…Oh, DANG IT! I just hit the Bibbityboobityboo button and now “Queen” is playing and my screen has dancing Care Bears all over it.”

Jessica: “Hmmm…This could be a problem.”

Loralee: “Can you hold on for a minute? I have to go stick a Dinglehopper in my eye.”

MAY

    “Happy Birthday, Jonathan! As a gift, I promise to never download and install “Limewire” to my computer again.
    That said, I will NOT start calling you,     ‘Omnipotent Man’.(For the record, I don’t think that is a real super hero power, anyway.)

JUNE

    “I need to vent for a moment.‘FRICK! FRACK! FRETCHING FREAKING FETCH FUDGE FRICKIN FRETCHING FETCHER!’*BREATH*‘SuckasuckasuckaSUCKSUCKSCUK.‘SEE? It has even gone beyond suck and is now SCUK!”

JULY

    “If you are going to inadvertently shoplift something from your local IKEA, you might as well try to make it something more exciting than a dinner roll.”

AUGUST

    “Um…Hi, neighbor! What is going on? What? You hope I’m not on my way out? Well, I guess just because I’m walking out the door with my friend and have the car keys and cellphone in my hand doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going anywhere. What? Your phone was shut off? You need to call your OBGYN? Do I have a phone you could use? Well, sure! Luckily, I have one, you know, in my hand! With my car keys!! That I wasn’t necessarily going to use to go anywhere right now!!”

SEPTEMBER:

    “The bacon this morning was much piggier than at previous establishments.”I should probably publish more profound words about my last breakfast in Scotland, but I really think Michelle summed it up adequately.

OCTOBER

    “I enjoy “Experimenting” as much as the next person. I mean, I don’t get crazy and involve things like yaks, ninjas, midgets or have a desire to get jiggy with other couples in the neighborhood, but I do like to be creative in the sack.”

NOVEMBER:

    “It’s pretty much a given that if your brother-in-law calls to tell you that he was thinking about you in the shower, the conversation that follows is not going to be the same old, same old.”

DECEMBER:

    “You wouldn’t think that a request at the butt-crack of dawn (Ok, more like 8:30) to drive three hours and rush a forgotten passport to the airport would be greedily welcomed like a Starbucks Frappuccino to Britney Spears gullet, but it was.”

**OOPS! I meant to shut off comments on this post. Nothing really to talk about on this one.

Filed Under: Every Day, YAY

Reunited (And it feels SO good!)

December 13, 2007 By 27 Comments

I love playing dress up.

I think that was always a huge part of the draw in doing theater and opera. I have gotten to wear some amazing costumes in my life. Dresses that make me feel pretty! And witty!! And gay!!! (Well…23.9%, that is.)

I have ALSO worn some costumes that are decidedly NOT pretty. That is the natural consequence of being an Alto/Mezzo. When you have my voice type and look, your roles are usually placed in the following categories: Witches, Men, Vamps, Alcoholics, Step-Mothers, Nuns, and Bitches. (I am also adept at playing Whores who end up sleeping with/and or murdering, Witches, Men, Vamps, Alcoholics, Step-mothers, Nuns, and Bitches. Just so you know.)

Fortunately, this show falls in the classification of “Pretty Costuming”.

Tonight we got to faff about with dresses for the last half of rehearsal.

YIPPEE!!!

Now, this is not quite as exciting as when I do professional or main stage university productions. For those shows your costumes are custom designed, built, and fit to your exact specifications. The costume department measures EVERYTHING. Ever been measured and fit for a wig? No? You’re lucky, because it.is.a.pain.in.the.ass.

With community theater, it is usually a crapshoot. Hopefully, the company has good costuming connections or has been around long enough to have their own wardrobes. You just cross your fingers, hope your costume fits. Well, that and that you don’t get stuck with the dress that is lime green satin, trimmed with purple fringe that looks like it was last worn in the days of Wyatt Earp by the Tequila shooting hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold at The Boot Hill Saloon.

As this company is fairly new I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know that we are having our main costumes made because they are basically sarongs and are not hard or expensive to build.

There is one scene that is full of complicated hoopskirt dresses, though. Dresses built for hoopskirts are really expensive to make because of all the material in them. I SO love wearing them, though. I swish and swirl and say things like “I don’t know ‘nuthin about birthin’ no babies, Miss Scarlett!!”

So, I wasn’t sure what they were going to do. My guess was that they were going to rent costumes from the professional opera company that lives in my valley.

I was right.

The doors to the rehearsal space flew open when all the wives were in the middle of twirling around on stage and the costumers came in with racks of dresses. I saw a flash of blue and cascading lace trimming the edge of a puff sleeve that was peeking out from all the other fabrics and my heart started beating faster.

It COULDN’T be.

Yet, I knew immediately that it was. I would know that fabric and lace ANYWHERE.

This dress was custom built for ME.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

Holy freaking double moo cow!!!!

I wore it for 3 months in “La Traviata” during the inagural season of aforementioned professional opera company. I freaking LOVED it. I secretly thought that I had the prettiest dress in the whole cast. The costume designer told me it was her favorite and she’d named it “The Wisteria Dress”.

mycostume.jpg

I felt so pretty in it, which was quite a triumph considering that my custom made wig was HORRIBLE for me. The wig maker did all the wigs for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and most of them were gorgeous.

Mine? Was platinum blond and due to my freakish hairline that comes down practically to my eyebrows, they put tons of curls in the bang area. It looked like they draped a dead poodle over my forehead. (Kind of like this, only platinum. And not as soft. Or non-hideous.)

The girl next to my makeup station had a gorgeous auburn wig that looked terrible on her. She looked like Jessica Lange. We bitched all season that we should have each other’s wigs. So on the last night we switched and were ratted out by the assistant stage manager. They held the curtain while the wig mistress switched our wigs back and we were fined heavily out of our paychecks.

There are reasons why I didn’t pursue a professional career, people.

I ran right up to the rack and pulled it out so I could see it better. Then I started babbling to anyone who would listen that it was my dress. The costumer was confused and took the dress off the rack saying that yes, she wanted to find me a dress that I liked but that we had to be sure that they fit well.

“NO! It really is MY dress. Made FOR ME! PLEASE let me wear it again!”

She looked a little skeptical and then I remembered.

“Look on the inside of the waistband. You should see a heart and the letters L.M.A.L.S written in Sharpie Marker.”

Sure enough, there it was in all its sentimental glory.

There was another girl in La Traviata that had a very similar skirt and we kept mixing them up. So…I put my initials and my boyfriend’s initials and a heart on the band of my skirt with a Sharpie. I’m not sure which horrifies me more, the fact that I marked up a gorgeous costume that didn’t belong to me or the fact that I was so damn cheesy about it.

(Give me a break, people! I was young! Poor! I needed the money! People make mistakes! Posing naked with a gang of bikers and some chipmunks was just a youthful folly! Really! Wait…Uh…What were we talking about, again?? Oh, yes….My costume…Ehem….)

They said that they wanted to see if it still fit. I was pretty confident that it would, because that season was not too long after my gastric bypass and I was still transitioning from being the size of a heifer. Lo and behold! It not only fit but it is actually a little big on me!!! WOOT!!! It is such good condition for its age and when I get a hoop skirt under it it will look FABULOUS.

I know that it seems like a stupid thing, getting so worked up over some lace and taffeta, but this is history for me. It made me think of the millions and millions of things that have happened to me between the first time I wore this costume and now. I remembered how young I was, how little of the roads of my life had been put in place. How many mistakes and triumphs that I were still to come.

It was pretty amazing to think of all the life experiences that led up to this moment of reunification.

It was totally cool.

I can’t wait to put it on again.

Filed Under: Bits of Information, Every Day, YAY 27 Comments

Come on, admit it. You TOTALLY think about me when you hear “Nepal”.

November 13, 2007 By 35 Comments

It’s pretty much a given that if your brother-in-law calls to tell you that he was thinking about you in the shower, the conversation that follows is not going to be the same old, same old.

“I was thinking about you in my shower, Loralee, and I had an idea. And ideas in my shower are never wrong. I have come to the conclusion that you are the only one that can help me and the sherpa.”

Now, if you are anything like me, you are probably thinking, “HUH????”

Have any of you ever heard of a sherpa?

Because I hadn’t until today.

Basically, the sherpa people (Preferred spelling is with lower case lettering) are indigenous to Nepal in the high Himalayas. It basically translates into “East People”. The term “sherpa” is applied to an elite group of expert mountain guides that are take people on expeditions. They must be top notch in terms of physical endurance, knowledge of the local terrain and are extremely adept at high altitudes. You do not have to be an ethnic sherpa to be a sherpa, though many are.

I know what you’re thinking. What the freak do Nepalese mountain guides have to do with a stay-at-home mom who lives in Utah and has the muscle tone of head cheese and the endurance of a three-toed sloth?

I wondered the same thing.

My brother-in-law has a company that my husband consults for quite a bit. It handles high-end technical support and web design. In addition to that, my brother-in-law is also partner in a company called, “SuperSherpas”.

Two of the most famous sherpa founded it with other partners and they are relocating their families to America. (They’re in Wikipedia for the most treks up Everest and the fastest run up Everest. Meet Apa and Lhakpa) They not only guide expeditions to Mount Everest and other treks through the Himalayas, but they also sell various outdoor gear and merchandise made in Nepal. They also divert a percentage of proceeds to a charitable organization that will help children from their region get an education.

All of this is totally fascinating, but I still, even with my glorious imagination, could not come up with any fathomable reason as to how I could be involved in the information that he was telling me. You know, because of the aforementioned SAHM three-toed sloth made of head cheese thing.

“My company is designing and setting up their website and we’re having a problem. We do the technical coding, but that is just the bare bones of a good website. It needs good content. Nobody has time to write everything that needs to be written. I need someone who can immerse and obsess about Nepal and sherpa, Appa and Lhakpa and the company and put all that information onto the site so that it is user friendly and makes sense.”

“So…You need someone who digs research, who can totally obsess, write good content, and can be completely, and utterly a big techno-dork that still cannot grasp WordPress plugins and shuts down the power of San Bernardino when I try to play with my template?”

“Yes, that is basically it.”

“I am SO your girl.”

“That’s what I already figured out. You know, in my shower. Which is never wrong.”

The best part about this is that if I can pull this off well? They’ll hire me to do other projects. As in, real jobs. For my weird little set of skills. Do you know how bizarre it is for ME to actually feel and be useful? It is blowing my mind. I could write and get PAID? Awesome.

Plus, part of the compensation is free web design (Which I need) and possibly a trip to Nepal at cost. Hey, my 10th anniversary is coming up next year, although I’ve never really pictured myself as hanging out in the Himalayas before (Although, I did really dig the film, “The Golden Child“. Eddie Murphy cracks me up: “Nepal!” N-E-P-A-L! WOO HOO!”…Um…You’d have to see it.)

I have a 2 o’clock meeting at their company to meet with the other owners and to start getting a feel for what they are looking for. Part of me is scared shitless. I’ve never DONE this before. On the other hand? You know when you just KNOW that you can do something?

Yah, baby. I have that feeling.

Wish me luck.

Filed Under: Bits of Information, NaBloPoMo, Obsessions, YAY 35 Comments