For The Love of God I'm Not Joining MySpace So Stop Asking Me

If you want to feel better about yourself, you should read The Village Voice personals section. Ashley and I did this a few weeks ago while making lentil soup. I have rarely been so disturbed. Our favorite ad title began "TOURRETS UNDER CONTROL". It went downhill from there, let me tell you what.

I took Gabriel to the playground today in order to obey his father's wishes that he get some "air". I was completely against the idea because it was, oh how do you say it, FREAKING FREEZING?!!??! But we bundled up and braced ourselves and Laura got herself some decaf coffee.

Gabriel: Can I have some coffee?

Me: *pause* Yeah. Sure. You can have a sip, it's decaf.

Gabriel: (takes sip) I loooooooooooove coffee!

Me: Okay. Well. That's mine. It only has milk in it. You'd probably like it a lot more with sugar in it.

Gabriel: No way, man. I like my coffee just with milk. Just like YOURS.

*pause*

And Laura?

Me: Yeah Gabes?

Gabriel: I love you.

So we walked on and found ourselves to be the ONLY ONES at the playground. Dang. This could be because it was, oh I don't know, THE MIDDLE OF FREAKING FEBRUARY!?!?!?

Now, I'm a pretty good babysitter but when it's playground time, I'd rather sit on the bench and read a book than run around like a crazy person with children. It's not that I don't love me some slides and jungle gyms, I'm just tired. ALL.THE.TIME. And also, since Gabe is an only child, I feel like it's my duty to force him to socially interact with other kids. Well, Gabe didn't have any playmates today so I got my lazy self up to run around for a 30 minute game of hide and seek and then a 7 minute sprint of tag. I was doing pretty well until I jumped off the stone castle into the sand and twisted my ankle.

"YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!!!!!!!" Gabriel screamed in my face.

As I doubled over in agony, trying not to yell out curse words, I assured him that I could not indeed catch him if my life depended on it because

Me: My ankle...*gasp for breath* is...on fire.

Gabriel: I don't see any flames.

Me: I didn't mean that literally. I mean I hurt it.

Gabriel: Oh. *pause* Well. I NEVER HURT ANYTHING BECAUSE I HAVE SUPER POWERS LIKE THE HULK.

Me: Right. I know.

AWWWWWWW! Come on people. Why am I not married and having 18 children?! It's obvious that that is my destiny. Regardless of this "I want to be an actor" shit I'm trying to pull off, we all know I'm destined for stretchmarks and diapers. I even have the huge birthing hips!

Babysitting I guess should quelch those mommy pangs but sometimes, it makes it worse. I already feel like I'm a parent except for the tiny fact that oh, these kids aren't mine. But I wipe their noses with my shirt, I jump up from sleeping on the couch to attend to the whimpers from the cribs, I share my food, I share EVERYTHING, I miss them when they're gone, I'M ALREADY A MOTHER DAMNIT. SAVE ME. I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE.

But in all honesty? I love all of it. It makes me tired and crazy but I even like stupid things like filling up the dishwasher with baby bottles and folding baby clothes. I don't even mind when Owen throws up ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE because it's me that can hold his hand and whisper to him that it's okay and give him some water and clean him up and rock him back to sleep.

And this gives me purpose, people. Purpose.

All this baby nonsense is no good for my almost-23 year old self.

My uterus is doing backflips, y'all. BACK.FLIPS.

And that is painful.

Who am I kidding, anyway? Without a career, I would probably go batshit crazy. Also, the problem with raising kids your whole life is that eventually kids grow up and become junior high schoolers and what the hell do I do with one of those??? Besides blink at them for long periods of time because they are ALIENS.

So for now I'm going to enjoy livin' it up as a young HOT New York woman!

Watch me look so cute and fly in my clubbin' outfits!

Check out my mad skillz on the dance floor! My ability to drink a green apple martini! My beautiful youth! My independence! My freedom!

I'm goin' OUT, y'all! I'm pre-gaming! I'm doing jello shots! OH GLORY!!!

Oh wait. Just kidding. Because tonight? I have to wrap my ankle in an ace bandage, drink a cup of tea and eat a Dove chocolate heart while listening to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and get to bed around 9 pm because who am I kidding, I am such a freaking loser.

Peace.

Cookie Sheets Are For Cookies, Not Cars

Okay so remember how I went crazy on those stupid girls that kept getting up early for auditions, making me number 50 or 89 or whatever? Today, when Joanie went to sign me in for an audition, she arrived at 7:30 am and we were numbers 123 and 124, respectively.

One hundred and twenty four, people. It has gone beyond madness. It is now obsessive. Not to mention, the list contains about 10 names for every one style of handwriting, meaning there is ONE girl up at 5 am who signs in 10 of her friends. I sign Joanie up. Or Devette. And myself. Not 8 or 9 people. Sigh. There are no rules. It's fend for yourself. Get your lazy ass out of bed as early as possible I guess. But still? UGHHHHHHHH.

I kept waiting for the snow to melt before I moved my car. Why would I need to move it? Surely the warm weather will come back! All will be saved! Well. The plow went by and successfully packed my car up to the windows on all four sides. I figured there was no urgent need to scrape it off or dig it out or move it...

Until I read that though alternate side parking rules are suspended today due to the snow conditions, tomorrow they shall resume in all their pathetic glory. I? am on the wrong side of the street. My car that is snowed in on all four sides? Needs to be dug out. I? do not have a snow shovel. Just an ice scraper.

I headed out the door a true fashion victim in gray sweatpants and boots. (BUT I DID NOT TUCK THEM INTO MY BOOTS. Blizzard or not, why do you all keep doing that? You look fat, y'all, fat.) Being that it's 50 degrees, the snow is beyond slushy and now floats somewhere between melting ice, freezing water and holy-crap-black-dirty-snow-mush. I thought perhaps it'd be alright without a shovel, figuring some of it HAD to have melted by now. I thought wrong.

I came back to the apartment and left a note for my landlord to borrow his shovel. No response. I had to book it. I had to move. I had an audition later, I was number 124 people! This was important! I grabbed a cookie sheet and attempted to do my best. I was creative! Cookie sheets are just like shovels! Minus the handles! No big deal, right!?!??!

Uh. The problem with the no-handle cookie sheet is that you cannot use leg power like you can with a shovel. You cannot kick it into the snow or heave your body weight on it and then use leverage and scooooop up the snow. You can't JUMP on it like a badass and say HA! IN YOUR FACE, STUPID SNOW! You know why?

Because it's a cookie sheet.

Somewhere in between cursing the frozen dirty snow that the plow had PACKED TIGHT to my tires and getting a blister on my hand, I began to lose it. It was then that I stepped down into a 3 foot frozen slushy puddle, covering my foot and leg in yummy Queens precipitation. I couldn't help the tears that began, they were a result of my very pathetic situation.

I was shoveling snow around my car that was PUT THERE by the idiots that now were going to ticket me if I didn't move my car by tomorrow. BUT HOW CAN I MOVE IT WHEN THEY PLOW SNOW ALL OVER THE DAMN THING!?!? Then I started to cry. I cried because I was attempting to remove snow with a cookie sheet. I cried because I did not have anyone to help me, especially not a man and wasn't it the day after Valentine's Day? I cried because one day I would have a driveway and have to shovel it alone because I'm obviously never getting married because I am The Crazy. I remembered shoveling snow (with a shovel) with my father and thought about the fact that I only have, like, 20 years at the most left to shovel snow with my father before he goes to heaven and WHYYYYY GOD WHYYYYYYYYYY ARE YOU TAKING MY FATHER AWAY FROM ME I HAVEN'T EVEN HAD CHILDREN YET, I'M ONLY 22.

And then I realized that my father is in perfect health and that *I* am the one with the lump in my breast.

And then some man came over and gave me a shovel. Not just any man, my friends. This man worked at the funeral home on the corner of my street. Did you all know I live down the street from a funeral home? Did you know I see hearses on a daily basis and those big wreaths of OH MY GOD SORRY YOU DIED flowers in the middle of the street? Well. Yeah. And so this guy gives me a FUNERAL HOME SHOVEL. God knows where that shovels been.

I was grateful for the shovel nonetheless. So grateful that I almost kissed the man. But then? I didn't because after he handed me the shovel he said, "Shit. That's a lot of snow, dude."

And so I shoveled. And then I alternately moved the car and shoveled some more. I'd back up the car, inch it out a little bit then put it in park, shovel around the tires, move it again, etc. Rinse, repeat. This took approximately one hour. During this time, at least three people walked by and said something smart and cute like "Oh my God. That's a lot to shovel!" Aw! Really, guys? I had NO idea! And also during this time, I had not noticed that while shoveling out the snow, I was tossing most of it on the sidewalk or at cars that went by that I thought were ugly.

A little while later, an Indian lady came out of the house next to my car and stared at the snow I had thrown on her sidewalk. It occurred to me that she was the landlady. It is illegal at this point in NYC *not* to have shoveled your sidewalk. You can get a lovely pricey one-of-a-kind ticket! She stared and pointed at the snow and asked me, "Who did this?"

I thought she meant the snow itself so I replied, "God".

And then I realized she was Indian and probably Hindu.

She said, "What?"

I explained that God brought the snow but that I was probably the culprit for throwing it on her perfectly shoveled sidewalk but also? It's 50 degrees and already melting so what's the big deal?

She blinked a few times.

"Who did this?"

I gave up and muttered, "I'll fix it when I'm done," and muttered something about karma. She gave up staring and went away.

I finally moved my car and returned the shovel. A big man in flannel walked by and said, "Woah. Nice work."

And it was, wasn't it? I felt satisfied until I returned home and saw three messages from Joanie, telling me they were on number 70, then 80, then 90, hurry up and get on down here. Well. At this point, I haven't showered, I'm soaked with snow, I'm not in the mood to smile and sing 16 bars of music and so. I stayed home. I let those crazy I-get-up-before-you wenches have it.

God. Don't you just get the feeling that something good is going to happen to me really soon?

Phew. That's good. Me too!

Peace.

Because I Am Misinformed 99.9% Of The Time

Um. This one time? I bitched and moaned for an entire YEAR about my dental cavities and how I couldn't get them filled and how it was all President Bush's fault and how they were going to rot out my teeth and then the teeth would fall out and no one would marry me and I would die alone, at the hand of the Republicans, who would sneer and show me how Iraq is now a democracy.

And then today? My father found out that through his union, I am covered for dental care until I turn 25 years old.

Uh. There is a girl we like to call THE CRAZY.

She would be me.

She is going to the dentist, like, yesterday.

By the way, if Jamba Juice is "all natural" and in tune with nature, why oh why is the smallest size smoothie 310 calories? Why is the largest over 550? IF IT IS A *NATURAL* FRUIT SMOOTHIE, THAT IS NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE.

Even better, their new "Enlightened Smoothies" are great at a whopping 150 calories for the 16 oz. until I realized they use SPLENDA. Um. If you are all natural and just using fruit and ice and other natural organic crap, why.do.you.need.Splenda? Because, for the record? Splenda, I don't care what you say about it, is not NATURAL. (Here is a great anti-Splenda propaganda site! Wee! Let's all rail against artificialness and the US government!) I don't care if Splenda is all "made from sugar" or some other stupid ridiculous excuse. If Splenda was "all natural", I should be able to go down south and pick it out of a field.

That's all I'm saying.

I'm going to go get me some cavities filled. Stat. Peace.

Hold Your Head Even Higher And Into The Fire We Go!

I went to an audition yesterday, my sixth in the past two weeks and was once again sent home without opening my mouth to sing. SIX AUDITIONS. HAVE NOT SUNG A NOTE. Fun.

But two of the calls I've attended, including yesterdays, were non-union. The problem, both times, was that there were just too many freaking non-union females and the casting director decided to type. I will state right now that I love typing. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.

I've been lucky with typing a few times before. But these past two weeks? Not so much. Yesterday, they kept short brunettes. Last week, they typed me IN to stay and then WOOPS typed too many people and typed us OVER AGAIN and I was sent home. It sucked but like I said, I do like this system because, if you don't want to hear me sing, just tell me to go home so I can go back to sleep or start my short story collection or make cupcakes. I'd rather that than wait around til 4 pm and THEN be told they don't want to see me.

What irritates me is not the typing system. What irritates me is the fact that lately, auditions have been packed with people I have NEVER seen before in my life. And also, crazy crazy people, in case you didn't know. But I try to be nice. GRACIOUS even.

I'm gracious to the girl who steals the pen out of my hand while I'm doing a crossword, without even asking to borrow it.

I'm gracious to the girl who stood up in the middle of a crowded holding room while undressing and took off her bra in front of everyone.

Yes, I try to be kind. But...when girls start getting up at 5 am to be the first on the list they started at 5:30 am for a production of HELLO DOLLY! I think I have a right to be peeved. It's 5 am my little friends. Stay in bed. It is warm and cozy. That's just my opinion.

But no one did ask me. Did they?

So I guess I should keep my mouth shut.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

An actor friend once asked me why I care so much about the girls in the holding room, why I ceaselessly mock them and get amazingly funny stories from watching them. The question was: why can't I just concentrate on me? On my song, on my relaxation, on my craft, etc.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

This is all Comedy Gold my friends. It's material. Pure comedic material. Fodder, if you will.

I think it's also good in case I ever want to go on dates. (Dating...what IS that...?) I can tell these audition stories when they ask me about my career and then they will think I am cute and funny and worth marrying.

It's a done deal my friends.

And seriously, why would you EVER steal someone's pen without asking!????????

~Peace.

The LauraMat

I really don't mind going to the laundromat to do my laundry. Sure, it's a big pain in the ass but I kind of like the fact that I can go in the middle of the day and sit around and watch soap operas. I'm not sure what I like better--the fact that the place is owned by a cute little Greek lady who smokes tons of cigarettes or the fact that there is a CAUTION sign next to every dryer that says "BEFORE LOADING LAUNDRY, CHECK FOR CHILDREN AND PETS."

This is listed in the instructions as Step One. I always try to read the instructions carefully so I know exactly what to do--I want to put my detergent in the right compartment, select the proper heat, not toss in a human child with my pants, etc. So usually, I study the panel carefully and make the necessary adjustments.

First, I read the caution about checking for children and pets. Usually, I just assume that there are no kittens or toddlers in the top row of dryers because how could they have gotten there? However, this past week, I had to use a BOTTOM dryer and thought that it was quite possible that a three year old and/or parakeet could've wandered in.
So, I read the directions carefully and then opened the dryer door to check for small children. I thought it might be fun to spice up the place for those poor elderly people who sit around all day with nothing to entertain themselves with except "Days of Our Lives".

"Bernice???" I wondered aloud for those poor old folks, "Bernie? Little girl are you in there?"

Since my imaginary child, Bernice, did not appear. I then checked for pets.

"Rudy??? Little Rudy? Are you in the dryer?" I asked no one in particular.

Since my imaginary iguana was not in the dryer, I then deemed it safe to load up my clothes, throw in some Bounce, slide in my quarters and shut the door.

I finished High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, my first Hornby experience which I really enjoyed. But now, cannot get the question of my mind: Do I listen to sad music because I'm sad? Or am I sad because I listen to sad music!? Damn. Must write down Top 5 Saddest Songs EVER:

1. A Case of You by Joni Mitchell
2. Kissing You by Des'ree
3. Danglin' by Maury Yeston, sung by Johnny Rogers
4. Nothing Compares To You by Sinead O'Connor
5. Shoot the Moon by Norah Jones
5.Doubting Thomas by Nickel Creek
5. The Luckiest by Ben Folds
5. Brick by Ben Folds

Songs that almost made the cut include "Coming Around Again" by Carly Simon, "Ghost" by the Indigo Girls and anything by James Blunt.

I leave you all with a morning conversation on the phone with my mother, who called at 9:30 am to wake me up with a very important question.

Mom: MORNING LAURA! Just wanted to see what day you wanted to go see Jeremy in "Godspell", I thought Sunday March 5th at night?
Laura In Sleepy Haze Starts Screaming: NOOOOOOOOOOO!
Mom: What?
Laura: The Oscars!? Holy cow I can't believe you'd make me sit through "Godspell" when the Oscars are on TV, the best night in my life!? You are a TERRIBLE person did you know "CAPOTE" got a nod for BEST PICTURE AND YOU WANT ME TO MISS IT JUST TO WATCH A 15 YEAR OLD SING ON STAGE, SOMETHING I'VE BEEN TRYING TO DO AND I CAN'T EVEN GET WORK, YOU ARE AN UNFEELING TERRIBLE WOMAN!
Mom: Oh right! So. The matinee then?
Laura: (still groggy and now sulking) Okay fine.
*pause*
And thanks for the 50 bucks you put in my account.
Mom: No problem. Okay Bye!

Indeed.
Peace.