I start my day with a little love note, “Bella, my love, I love you. xo. PS Tartuffe puked beside the bed. xo”
I have an adaptation of The Thin Man to finish this week and I am chuckling in the car, remembering my own joke, hoping it’s funny to everyone else. Then I furrow my brow. Maybe it isn’t? Maybe it’s cheesy? Maybe I should make the scene leaner and add the bit about the secretary off the top? As a woman writing in a male dominated industry in an even heavier male dominated genre, every joke has to be great, every scene has to have a sharp shape, it has to be excellent. It has to be better. I have to have great rhythm if I want to be on top.
I drive to Bread Uprising bakery with the intent gaze of a perfectionist having an aggressive inner monologue. I chide myself, “Order the salad instead of the ham and cheese croissant! It will make your mind sharper and you could lose some weight!” When I am on one of my “bigger better faster” kicks, it usually includes the idea of a complete and impossible make over. I order the croissant.
My daughter orders the fruit bowl AND the orange juice. I know this is going to give her a stomach ache but she has to learn herself. I am tired of nagging. So I order an extra scone. Indeed, about half way through her third chunk of slightly fermented pineapple, she looks up at me with her big worried hazel eyes, “Mommy…I don’t know if I can finish…my tummy…” “I know” I smile, and hand her the scone. She is Christmas present happy. “I didn’t think you would understand!” Oh I understand. I understand what it is like to take on too much and to never learn.
I drop her off early and hustle back through the side streets between Victoria and Commercial, my sister’s new CD playing. Eve Hell, Snake Oil. Man, it is fantastic. It is simply fantastic. So gutsy. So completely unapologetic. I think every artist comes to a “no turning back” place. Partly because we get good enough at what we do with time and practice. We feel we have a right to be there. Partly because we get to the point where it feels too ridiculously late to start over. 
I get home and discover the night I need to hire two Latina actors is the same night the latin community is getting together to discuss how they are being marginalized in the theatre community. I chuckle. What am I supposed to do now? Bing goes my phone. An audition to play an Hispanic house wife.
Ah well. The ups and downs of it, the world is trying to become a bigger place. And for that, I love it.
