Making Breakfast?

We spent our one and only residency outside of Montana (in Idaho) this past week. It was outstanding. The kids were incredibly talented, well behaved and respectful. It was just the change we needed and encouragement to keep us going the next 5 weeks before spring break. I've been writing down funny things that happen during the week and sticking them in my purse as we go along fully intending to write them down in the blog, and as we go I never can seem to find them later. I guess that's someone's way to tell me to force my memory to work harder. I also finished another one of my applications and submitted it. Two down, two to go. Getting ready.
One of the more entertaining was during a teaching session a little girl randomly stops me mid song and says "I know a boy named McAbe (pronounced similar to Macabre but with a short a vowel) who should be an animal." My response was "okay, moving on..." Later that same teaching session I asked "What was your friends name again?" She responded "McAbe. But he's not my friend. He called a a bitch on the bus twice." My only suitable reaction was to look shocked and put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing aloud. Luckily the assistant director covered for me and said "that's not suitable language for rehearsal." I died.
During the same teaching session I was working through a song called "Hula Bula", my least favorite to teach. A lyric in the song goes as follows "they learned to hula from a teacher, learned it after school-a/the teacher made it lots of fun 'cause she was from Missoula!" One of the kids wisely said "you told us you're from Kansas." I responded by singing it through the next time with "they learned to hula from a teacher, learned it after school-a/the teacher made it lots of fun 'cause she was from (deadpan) Kansas." They thought I was a laugh riot. And we all know how much I love that.
We did a workshop about improv and miming with a group of 3-5 graders and during the session we played a game called mime rhyme. Dave said "I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with rat."
A little girl raises her hand and comes up, begins miming opening a jar which doesn't have anything that rhymes with rat involved...
Another kid raises her hand to guess and says "making breakfast?"
Dave's reaction "What?"
It's hilarious to see what children come up with when left to their own devices.
Dave's birthday is tomorrow and I will be making a first ever ice cream cake. Oh lord, I hope it goes well.
I read Burned by Ellen Hopkins this week. I recommend it to anyone looking for a dark story with an unconventional writing style. It was beautiful and I tore through it. I'm behind the times, but I finally saw Milk. I definitely understand why Sean Penn won. And I saw Choke. I don't know why it didn't do well in theatres, it was fantastic! That's all the rambling I have in store for now- until next week.

ahhhh, real monsters

On the theme of mythical creatures (continuing from the mermaid bar last week) and dragons not having outward scars (week before) this week, we have encountered a robot bank, another dragon- norwegian ridgeback (I could tell, Harry Potter 4 style), and a giant. All with homestays or at Into the Woods in Missoula.
Today was the first "day off" that Dave and I have had since... the 3rd of January. Not complaining, but we definitely still worked. Happy flippin' Valentine's day. The plus is there are several TAD teams here and we were able to go out and have a good time with people our age who we know. Down side is we leave in the morning and it's still 6 weeks until spring break, so we have a long stretch to go without any more time free.
I really am enjoying this stretch of the tour, as long and Montananous at it is... and I definitely would enjoy being back on the road again for summers to come, but I am so ready for permanence. And being here with other teams and women my age made me realize how much I miss having a female support system in my life. Touring with a man is definitely right for me, but it has been SO nice to spend time with girls for a little bit. I'm sure Dave feels the same way, opposite spectrum of course.
In other news, to keep myself on track, I have finished one application for summer job outside of MCT-
1. TOMS shoes internship in Santa Monica, CA. Long shot, totally out of my realm of expertise, but I am so interested in how it works and runs that I had to apply.
2. Northwestern Cherubs program as a faculty member (almost finished, have to edit my cover letter)
3. Twin River Theatre Company in New Jersey as a faculty member for their 3-8 grade theatre camp- still working on the cover letter for that one...
4. Director for Noble Fool Theatricals (youth theatre company) for summer or fall production, outside Chicago. This is a brand new option that I have yet to begin my application process for.
5. Stay on the road for the summer, bulk my bonus and get some more americorps financial help.
6. Move to Chicago as soon as I'm off the road.
These are the options I am weighing right now. I hope everything will just fall into place.

"This would be a bustling Metropolis if not for Meth"

Notable moments from this past week
Within the first 15 minutes of being in the town I heard a recap of a failed suicide attempt from a woman to the cashier at the “grocery store” while buying a six pack, a pack of marlbro’s and some chips at approximately 2:00 pm.
Old shrivled man (who we were told would love to take us ice fishing) promptly and rudely denied my barely expelled (and polite) request to take us by telling me “he is not interested” at approximately 2:30 pm.
A formerly live tiger kept in glass case that was apparently a nuisance in some village so it was killed and donated…
16 weeks meat free.
We had some of the most rude, hateful middle school boys in the show, but one didn’t show for rehearsal and another quit three times. The third time we let him.
The bar (there were 2, a church and convenience store) had all men, one old woman with cousin it but blonde and leathery who showed the whole sausage fest of cowboys her tits through the window (Dave and I were THRILLED) and a young cute-ish bartender wearing a terrible yellow tank top in the snowy winter with a denim overall SHORT skirt outfit complete with frills on the almost non-existent skirt part. Wowza.
One of the kids asked us how old we were and a boy said “Dave is 100 and you are 19”
When we said what do you really think? They said “Dave is 42 and you’re 20”
I couldn’t stop laughing.
Switch to the BEST week we could have had ever.
Our family opened the door to us and exclaimed “A REDHEAD!” with joy and excitement. Best start of a week ever.
We made friends and went to a MERMAID bar. Twice.
They took us ice fishing.
They cooked vegetarian meals for me.
I got to play Bunko and ROCKED.
Doug’s parents came over and cooked us sourdough pancakes for breakfast and they were the freaking cutest people ever.
Lynn gave me a free pass to the awesome gym there.
During the audition my favorite quotes from one of the 107 (!) kids that auditioned said “I’maaronilikedinosaurs” and another said “I’m proud I have gum in my pocket”.
I also heard more asian jokes and stereotypes this week than ever. Pretty baller.
1 week until seeing Kyra, Liz, Katie and Caity in Missoula!

Montana...oh Montana

Dragons don't leave visible scars. This is something I learned from Tommy Honton during our weekly phone update.

I have decided, since my hiatus at the end of October until now, that I may continue to keep up this blog. There are too many funny happenings each week with these kids and this job not to record them somewhere.

Since being back after Christmas, we have encountered massive amounts of snow. This is no real surprise to me, as we are in Montana and it is winter. While our tour theme from the summer was "we'll do it tomorrow", fall was "why don't we go up here and turn around" and winter is "how many times will addie get stuck in the snow".

Thus far:

Snow-2

Addie-0

Keep in mind, this happened in the same week, in a borrowed car and less than 50 feet from one another. Both times requiring a truck to pull the car out. If there has ever been a clear sign from the gods that I should retire my driver's license and get a metro pass, this was it.

The last two weeks we have been in smallllll towns. Like, small enough that the only way they are still populated has to be from inbreeding, which probably accounts for most of the lack of tact, respect, intelligence and hygiene for most of the people here. However, I can't lump all small towns comprised of cousins together- the first, the kids came around and had a pretty awesome show, and were actually really pretty good over all, aside from the fact that they didn't find me hilarious which is just absurd. The second, though was another story. Dave and I have not seen so many tears in the other 22 weeks on the road that we did this week. Probably because the kids are so bored all they have to do is make fun of each other. During our audition some kid screamed "GO WHITE!" We performed in a church of Christ, with a baptismal hot tub and no space for our set, and a piano player who didn't know a tempo is supposed to be consistent. While doing the make up for a latino boy (whose make up for his character has a brown face) the little girls watching commented "he already is that color" and "no, now he looks like a black dude"...The kids didn't give an eff about us, they were rude, talkative and infuriating. The chameleons (5-7 year olds) thought they were rebels and refused to learn while I was teaching them, nothing like last week though, when Dave said to his group "let's do it one more time!" and the shyest of them all responded with "OH my GOD!" to which he responded by laughing, but they all actually just sat down and demanded snack time in the first 30 minutes.

A few highlights:

I had a really incredible homestay. The family was super cool and the dad was my rescue party both times I was stuck in the snow.

They had a St. Bernard who was baller.

Our piano player said shit in front of the kids.

A little girl said shit instead of shirt when talking to us.

We sold 42 tee shirts.

...We're gone now.

Pray for my sanity, please. It's going to be a long winter.

End of October.

Wow, it hardly feels like this month can be almost over. The tour is half over for the fall, and while sometimes it feels like forever, it really has gone so fast!

This past week was a godsend. Dan and Katie were with us in Yakima, we had a remarkable cast, and it was in an actual city with more than one restaurant and a gas station.

Halloween on saturday! We reconvene in a college town half way between our city and their city for debauchery and fun times.

The Springfield trip is scrapped, unfortunately. The reason I was going has been postponed, thus the money it costs to go and the money I would undoubtedly spend is unreasonable with my current salary, so I am now counting down to the Christmas holiday to visit.

Other postitives-

seeing Darci and Jared in Portland in December.

Tugs and Wichita in less than a month.

I figured out how to Skype.

It's Fall!

I have so many amazing books to read.

Negatives-

We are again without cell service.

I am so sad to miss all the productions at MSU this year, and really need an acting class.

I am so out of shape (physically, too, but not what I'm going for) to audition.

October is almost over.

happy thoughts.

In light of missing things, I thought I'd make a list of some of the things I really miss from home, the little things I never really thought of as monumental, but are the first to pop in my head when I am thinking about it.

Our house

11 o'clock crazy hour

chasing Colin around the kitchen

Late nights on the porch w/ J

Emily's laugh

Movie night with JMo

Movie night being crashed by everyone we love

Sushi dates w/ Jack

NONNA'S

Downtown springfield

Townhouse thursday

Hank, Elfie, Leo and Murphy

Check-in with Stacy

Balcony

Laughing until I cried at Andy's Childhood stories

Gailey's late morning breakfasts

recapping the night before with the roommates

driving down Seminole in the fall

Backseat Time

Stopping to visit Mika and Raj every chance I had

Jay!

Crashing the theatre district

the inept space that is kickapoo, and how we loved it anyway

Advanced movement class

meeting the freshmen

doing 'work' for Angie

...playing bejewled blitz 2 with Alex on Angie's computer

auditioning.

small list of things that make me smile when I think about them.

I just put some darker red in my hair for fall, and did so in a house of a family where Dave and I are staying. They probably thought I was sacrificing an animal or something because it took so long and there is a blood colored substance on tissues in the trash can. Man, that would be a story to tell.

We go to the U of Montana hc football game saturday, and in the past few days have had the pleasure of seeing a lot of TAD's in the seattle area. Just catching up with a few other people makes it seem so much less lonely. I can do this.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner!

week one off-

Seattle visit. The facebook obsession has become more of a problem in the last few weeks with the longings for home.

What am I doing?

This job... this fantastic job, though is great and I am learning so much, is really reminding me how I need people in my life. I have to surround myself with those who I love in order to be content.

I had a good conversation today that lead me back to my major need to be in Chicago. Countdown to May.