it's a...nice day for white wedding

So. The Boy and i are getting hitched in 8 days. as you can see from the photo to the left, we are having a disney wedding and let me tell you something here. it is sooooo much easier to let disney take care of everything. this was the best choice we could have made. besides each other.

The Boy and i met when we worked at the same company. he worked as a carpenter and built doors and i sat on my ass and pretended to work when all i really did is play tetris all day. he and i had a mutual friend that pretty much fixed us up and it was very much like high school. "do you like him?" "do you like her?" eventually he asked for my phone number and i gave it to him sans area code not realizing that he did not have a local cell phone. so when he called, he got some funky message and thought that i had blown him off. meanwhile... i waited for him to call and thought that he had blown me off. after realizing what had happened we had a good laugh and decieded to go out on a date. we've been together ever since.

no this is not my first marriage, i can tell you this... God willing, it will be my last. and the best thing is that disney is handling everything. with my first wedding, i was lucky in that i am from a small town and was married in my home church and most of the town went to my church so they would cut me a break. i.e. a discount on the flowers and groomcake and i didn't have to pay for the rental for the church and i only had to pay 1/2 price for the reception hall (but that was because there was going to be a class reunion that night and they were just going to use my decorations). but even with all that help, it was still expensive and stressful and tedious to coordinate all of the elements that make up a wedding. like music and flowers and photography and stuff. some of my friends performed and my aunt played the piano, so that was ok. also, i had a bagpiper and that was cool. the flowers... well, the florist went on a church retreat and left his minions in charge and they duded out the church in these beautiful tropical flowers. only problem was that my colors were pastels. my mom was so upset that she cried. and for that i made the minions cry and then redo the whole thing. and to top it all off, my photographer was a total natzi bitch. if i wasn't minding my p & q's, i'd have knocked her in the head with my stilletto.

but i don't have to worry about any of those crazy things with this wedding. disney has it all under control. and for a pretty resonable price everything from the site rental to the champange toast is covered. we have our site (sea breeze pointe at the boardwalk), our flowers (white calla lilies tied with a blue satin ribbon with blue crystals decorating the flowers), the music (a violinist), a photographer (they will send the proofs in a book, put the proofs on a website for us and package the photos we choose into a personalized wedding album), a limo (for 5 hours), and the reception food (marble cake with raspberry mousse and buttercream icing and sparkling cider -- we didn't want the champange). and the coordinator is handling everything. i don't have to worry my pretty little head about anything.

as for the reception, we are going to have a progressive dinner around the worlds at Epcot. much fun will be had by all. so... all that said, my next post will be made after we get back from honeymoon, and i will tell you all about it!

Cats! I'm Gonna Purr Forever...

Well. monday night was quite possibly the biggest travesty in my auditioning career. and i have had some real doozies! Like the time that i auditioned for "Into the Woods" and the musical director didn't like the song that i had picked out to sing. she complained that it didn't show off my range. i explained that it did show off my acting and she just scoffed at me. she then proceeded to give me the wrong starting pitch twice. in a tearful voice a pleaded with her to just give me my starting note. once into the song, i nailed it, as usual. i like the song i had chosen and had used it from many auditions and have always done very well with it. then the musical director complained again that the song didn't show my vocal range so asked me to sing some scales, which she played completely randomly. i was so frazzled when i came out of that audition, all i could do is cry. and i was between shows on my double so that meant i had to reapply my makeup for the evening performance. needless to say... i was not cast in "Woods".

back to Cats.

i love the show. i have seen it a 3 different times. the first time was the national tour at the Dallas Music Hall. Grizabella forgot the lyrics to "Memory". how ironic. to forget the lyrics to a song called memory and the simple fact that it is one of the only songs that anyone knows. i have also seen it on Broadway at the Winter Garden. that was fun. there was a lady in the audience that insisted on petting one of the actors that was in the audience. he finally had to say "please don't touch my costume". i laughed at the lady. she was like, "oh, i'm so sorry. i keep forgetting that you are actors." dumb woman. the final time that i was able to see the show, was when i going to school in London. my friend matt was in the cast, and i was able to score tickets for the final performance. my seats were on the stage bit that revolves with the set. at one point his blocking was to sit right in front of me. it was very cool as i could bearly recognize him in all the makeup. so i like the show. i know that some people hate it and i could care less, because i like it.

now. i am no dancer. i like to pretend that i can dance but in all actuality, i dance like a big old hot mess on wheels, as my roommate from college can attest. i dance like my dad. and he dances like elaine from seinfeld. and in the words of jerry, "it's like a full-body dry heave set to music." i have taken some dance classes. i did a whole year of it my freshman year of high school and i also took a class in university. i have had some intro to ballet, jazz and tap. i also like to watch Fosse and All That Jazz. but that is about all i know about dance. but i am trainable. and a hard worker. so i get to the auditions (after being sick all day with a sinus infection) and we start part of the dance audition. after an hour of (painful) dance we take a break. there were plie's and jumps and a lot of cat movements. i liked it but it was rather difficult for me. but i did my best and laughed at the whole thing. then came the singing. the accompanist gave a lovely flourish instead of the starting pitch that i asked for and i (stupidly) picked the wrong note to start. i was singing my song a full octive higher than it was written. but since i couldn't hear the piano anyway, i just plunged on. then i was asked to do some tap dance step. i didn't know how and the director settled on seeing what i could do in tap, which isn't much. after everyone sang, we started the second dance portion. it was easier for me and had lots of high kicks, which i can do in spades. i was so excited when i nailed it during the group dance that i was jumping up and down. of course i became fumble feet during my actual audition part but i smiled and was energetic. and i had fun. some of my theatre friends were there as well and we all had a good laugh.

i don't have any high hopes of being cast. i will be lucky if i get a call back. if i do i know that i can impress the director (whom is a friend). but i am sure that i will not be one of the cats. i might still have a shot a Grizabella but more than likely i will just be a backstage singer. oh well. i get 'em next time. meow.

Michael Jackson is to blame

He's to blame folks. here is the man...er...whatever. i have been forever scarred by this man. and for what he did to me, i can never forgive.

when i was 5 years old, my mom would leave me at the day care center while she was at work. i don't remember very much about this day care center except that it was a group of brown buildings and it was surrounded by pine trees. and there is a "school" smell that i will always associate with that day care center, but i do remember the day that my world came crashing down around me.

my pre-school teacher wanted to have a fun halloween party. i remember that there were pumpkin and bat decorations hanging from the ceiling. and the teachers rolled the t.v. cart over and put in the michael jackson video, Thriller. we were all grouped around t.v. to watch. the next thing that i remember is hiding under a table with my eyes and ears covered, crying, and my mom pulling me out from hiding to take me home. apparently the teachers never noticed that i had run, terrified, from the room and hid in a classroom in a different building. needless to say... my mother, being the caring and saintly woman that she is, switched my day care center and i never had to go back. (incedently, that day care was shut down by child protective services... where my mom works. don't mess with my mom-- she'll put the hurtin' on ya!)

mama says that i was a pretty normal kid up until that point. (despite the fact that i felt the unquenchable desire to wear strange things on my head as hats. bowls... pots... boxs... baskets... the cat.) it was this michael jackson moment that changed me for the worse. after that point i was scared of the dark, monsters and dead people. not long after the day care incident, she was watching mtv and the triller video came on. i remember having a full blown freak-out until my mom changed the channle. soon we moved to Beaumont, Tx and i was enrolled in a new day care. it had the best playground in the world. this is when people just let childern run free on a playground and safety wasn't considered too often. good times. good times. they also took field trips all the time one of which was the weekly trip to the rainbow roller rink. this rink had blacklight painting of the solar system on the back wall and a disco ball. they also had really sticky bathroom floors and orange carpet. we would skate for what felt like hours and there was always a music video break where they would lower the projection screen and show the music video for a popular song. one day they made the horriffic mistake of showing... you guessed it, Thriller. i high tailed it to the back stall of the bathroom and tried to hid behind the toilet. the teacher finally found me but i wouldn't budge untill the video was over. they must have spoken to my mom about it because they let me hide from michael jackson from then on.

fast forward to today. i am 29 years old and i have yet to watch that damn video. i have trouble even looking at pics from the video. i also am terrified of zombies, the monsters under my bed, in my closet or generally lurking about to get me, i can't watch any scary movies and usually need an escort if i go anywhere at night. and you can forget about me taking a shower at night when i am home alone. when i was in college, they all got a big kick out of freaking me out. it was bad enough that it is embarressing to be such a wussy but there were times that i was so siezed by fear that i felt like my heart was going to explode. the worst was my freshman year. we went to the on campus haunted house, which i thought would be fine as i knew most of the students running it. in the first room, i freaked out, hypervenalated, kicked some guy in the balls and had to be carried out. my RA happened to be there and then proceded to excecisize the deamons out of me. she wasn't helping the situation at all. after i calmed down, my freinds and i headed to the theatre to watch a movie on the jumbo screen. and of course, the popular film was scream. damn that scream and it's sequels. needless to say... i didn't sleep well that year. i did everything i knew to do to conquer my fears, but i was just making it worse.

now we head into the halloween season. i love halloween. dressing up and not looking like a lunitic for going out in public is the best. the food, the crisp fall air. i love this time of year. but for me it is a double edge sword. t.v. starts showing more scary movies. and i start walking on egg shells. i still feel the panic rising in me like boiling water just walking into the halloween section at wal-mart. i start taking more baths and less showers because i'm too jumpy and i have an even harder time getting to sleep than normal. this year though, i have my zombie survival guide so i think i will be ready for halloween. all the same, i think that i would rather trick-or-treat at mickey mouse's not so scary halloween party- if it's all the same to you