Art in the Wasteland

Time to go home. Just how many book stores, gardens, art galleries, massages, yoga, and pilates does one person need? I guess I need a lot. The trick will be to find a way to keep doing these things when I get home. Now that I am a Stay Around Mom I have e few extra hours a day and I hope I don't fill them playing games on my IPad.

The truth is it is very difficult for me to be creative and feel good about myself in Los Angeles. When I am away from the City of Cranky Angels I don't spend hours of every day thinking about how old and fat I am. Sometimes I even feel good about myself. LA is tough man. It is a young woman's game and those who aren't so young anymore are desperately trying to hold on to their size 2 jeans- myself included. It is so fricking exhausting and it takes up all the space that any creative energy or even dare I say, happiness, might creep in. Not to mention that with very few exceptions Los Angeles is a cultural wasteland. It is hard to create in a fear based atmosphere and people in LA are very afraid. This is why most television and films suck. Fear from the top of the industry down. No trust in the artist whose idea it was in the first place. I have watched it happen a million times (not really a million but a few times a year) a really good idea gets thrown like a stuffed animal to a pack of dogs and if it survives at all it is handed back to the writer barely resembling the cute little bunny it started out as with the declaration, "Now that's a show!" When it becomes apparent that America does not want to watch a torn up stuffed animal the pack of dogs slink off to their master and say, "Must be the writer's fault."

I just got really distracted there. This isn't about me at all! This is what my husband goes through every year. He's even learned a few tricks to handling the pack of dogs. Some of them aren't very smart so if you throw them a cookie first they might leave your stuffed animal alone. I don't know how he does it. He has extreme discipline, does't drink or do drugs and he still creates scripts that are wonderfully funny and deep. Art in the wasteland.

Now back to me. This is not the Don Todd blog. Can't think of a thing. See you in LA. I'll be the woman with the newly auburn hair, henna tattoo, wearing her glasses. I will still be wearing makeup- let's not go overboard. Thanks Portland, I needed that.

Later: I want to add that while I consider Los Angeles to be a cultural wasteland I know many talented artist that work and thrive here. They are way cool,too.

In Fellowship

I am in Portland. I arrived yesterday, ate from a food truck, went to Powell's book store, a three story block long stuffed with books haven (where I would like to have my ashes spread) and saw a foreign film in a theater that uses real dishes. Fabulous. I was planning on taking a vacation at the end of September, but I got a job that starts September 9, so I took it now.

I was offered a Fall Fellowship from Obama For America. Basically, I will be organizing my hometown, La Canada, land of the Republicans. I think I was offered the position because I was the only one in the San Gabriel Valley who applied. There is just one teensy problem. Besides the obvious issue of not having even one viable alternative candidate, I am not real sure why we should reelect Obama. Now, I realize this attitude is not going to send people running to the poles voting Obama, but I don't think I am alone in my feelings. If I, DeAnne Todd, the person who stood screaming from the roof top of the Mirage in Las Vegas," Hope! Change!", is reluctant imagine how the less enthusiastic people in the middle who voted for him must feel. So, I am hoping to learn the reasons why I should be excited again at the training next week. I had two phone interviews for the job with people I am pretty sure were around Andrew's age, 23. I get why they are excited, they are not as tired. But, tell me why I, a fabulously young looking married 50 year old with children and more pets than animal shelter should get excited about Obama. Can you believe they hired me? Don't get me wrong, he is still my guy. I have faith, but even the faithful need to see the water turned into wine once in a while. At least now I won't drink it all.

I am off now to explore Portland, but first I am going to do some yoga with the the yoga kit they gave me when I checked in and then I am going to get some coffee. I hope I can find a coffee shop in this town.

The Unclean

One of the not so nice things about being fifty is that doctors start to stick things in places where things have never been stuck before. I am prepping for my colonoscopy tomorrow and I figured everyone loves laxatives so here is my day so far:

Breakfast- 2 cups of coffee

Lunch- Diet Coke and 5 laxative pills

Not too bad yet as this was pretty much my diet from 1980-1995. The only difference is back then for dinner I would have a martini (with olive if I needed roughage) while tonight I shall be swilling a cocktail of gatorade and Mirolax. Yum.

5:15pm- 10 ounces of magnesium citrate

Yuck!! So sweet. It reminds me of what I had to drink when I was pregnant with Andrew for a glucose tolerance test. I found the test completely barbaric. After making me, a pregnant woman, fast, I had to drink this yucky stuff and have blood drawn every half hour or so to see how I processed the glucose. Well, after the first blood test I threw up and was told I would have to come back and do it again. I politely said, “No way. I threw up. Write down in my chart: does not tolerate glucose test.” I thought my body handled it perfectly, it got rid of it. O.K. Just finished the mag citrate and I am starting to get scared.

8:15pm- It is now time to start drinking an entire bottle of powdered laxative mixed with 64 oz. of gatorade. This does not taste nearly as bad as the liquid laxative. I mixed it in a a blue glass pitcher and it looks a lot like a pitcher of margaritas. What a fun party that would be! Ole!

Blogus Interuptus

I was planning on reporting on the rest of the evening, but I was in dispose. It was a loooong night and I think I only slept about two hours. The actual procedure wasn’t bad at all. In fact it was a great nap. They gave me warm blankets, pillows, drugs, and then after they asked me if I wanted apple juice. It was the most I have been taken care of since I was twelve. Don’t misunderstand, I do not want to be in the hospital, but it would be nice to be taken care of once in awhile instead of being the one taking care of everybody else. It did feel a little weird being wheeled out in a wheel chair as my friend with breast cancer jumped out of her car to open the door for me and drive me home, but oh well. The only problem is that I have to do it again because I wasn’t “clean” enough. Don’t ask. Also I am told I have to have an anesthesiologist next time because even though I was unconscious on the drugs they gave me apparently I was uncooperative and I fought them. That’s right even passed out I am difficult. I’m sure this will not surprise you. So in two weeks I have to do an even longer fast and cleanse and go back for colonoscopy number two. That’s o.k., at least I’ll get warm blankets and apple juice.

Summer Light

We are on vacation in Carpinteria. I should say the kids are on vacation and I am on a trip. It's not really a vacation when you still have to clean, cook, and do laundry and I don't even have to do that at home. Still, it's really beautiful here and the view from the laundromat is nice. Yesterday I even had an entire hour to myself to lay prostrate in the sand and listen to the waves. Bliss.

So, as the sun sets slowly over Carpinteria we say a fond farewell to Summer 2011. Summer 2011 has been really difficult. Kid issues and my best friends cancer diagnosis have not been conducive to enjoying these "lazy, hazy, crazy days". (If you are not old enough to get the song reference I do not care.) I have had to do some growing and changing this summer and I didn't like it. I am generally of the mind that I am pretty perfect and it's all of you who need to grow and change so it is not easy. What has been confirmed however is that even in the darkest moments there is beauty, humor and a faint glimmer of hope and light if you look for it. I have watched a marriage grow stronger and a family come together to face a really scary disease with so much courage and love. They were close before, but now they are a formidable team. I have witnessed a teenage girl bravely begin to face her immeasurable teenage angst. And, I have been fortunate enough to sit on the beach looking at the darkness within for that faint glimmer of hope and light only to look up to find myself bathing in the awesome, magic, golden light of sunset reflecting off the faces of my children and realize what is really important......... me. Joking. Kind of. Happy Summer.

Is is Hot In Here?

Please excuse the following stream of unconsciousness. Yesterday I was at the mall and I had my first hotflash and I lost my IPhone. I was passing The Brighton Store and I saw my old musical theater friend Ann Winkowski was working so I decided to stop in and say hi. Instead I said, "Is it hot in here?" At that point I started taking off any extra layers of clothes I had on and my boots. Ann took pitty on the half naked barefoot woman in her store and to get me out of view got me a chair and some water in a pretty bottle while I kept saying, "What does a hot flash feel like? What does a hot flash feel like?". Since my heart was racing and sweat was pouring down my chest and neck I was pretty sure I was either having a hotflash or a flashback. but since I wasn't hallucinating I deicied on hotflash. I was actually kind of excited. Hooray! The beginning of the end! Luckily I was sitting next to a basket full of flip flops so I put some on and handed Ann my credit card. I couldn't find my phone so I went to take all my bags to the car and see if it was there. It was not and Ann came running after me to tell me I had left my card in the store and forgotten to sign the slip.....ok.

Then began the search for my phone. I staggered from cosmetic counter to cosmetic counter to see if I had left my phone with any of the heavily made up women who had so kindly shown me the latest products for aging skin. (Yes I bought them.) But, no luck. Gone. When I called the phone someone had turned it off and the locate my IPhone button was off as well. I hope you are happy whoever you are that has my phone. Enjoy the photos of the Chinese kid!

I really wanted to cry, but I couldn't. It seemed funny in a sad pathetic, oh shit I'm old now kind of way. Don was at a business lunch meeting with a writer he is working with so I went by to see if we could locate my phone with his. From Don's point of you I lurched to the table and said "I lost my phone and had a hot flash!" I apparantly looked like a crazy woman as confirmed by Don's lunch partner who thought I was an insane out of work writer come over to hit Don up for a job and a new phone. Sometime during the hysterical retelling of my time at the mall he realized I was Don's wife and I could see the look of pity in his eyes. Poor Don. I used his phone to call my number and someone picked up! Ah Ha!

Me: You have my phone!

Man: Excuse me?

Me: You have my phone!

Man: Who is this?

Me: Who is THIS?

Man: What? What number are you calling?

Me: Mine.

Man: What?

Me: You have my phone!

Man: What is your phone number?

Me: (I tell him accusingly)

Man: That is not the number you called.

I check

Me: Sorry.

At this point I put my hand in my head and laid down on the table. Don had his hand over his mouth and the poor younger writer sitting across from him decided at that moment to either never marry or become gay. I can't blame him. You think I would be embarrassed by this kind of behavior, but much to my family's dismay I am not.

Last week I also mailed a thank you note to my friend Donna and I had stopped writing in the middle of a sentance and mailed it to her. I also mailed a note to my friend Karen with just her name on it and no address. Today I slept 5 1/2 hours fully dressed on my bed and everytime I tried to wake up it was like I had taken to many xanax on a cross country flight. I also forgot to pick the kids up from school today and I want to drink my weight in diet coke.

Sorry I am not going back over this to edit it. It won't help and I already forgot I wrote it.

Test

Test

Test to blog

F-I-F-T-Y

I forgot I had a blog. I turn fifty next Saturday and I am sure there is absolutely no connection. Remember the Jimmy Buffet song A Pirate Looks At Forty? Well, the pirate just got pushed overboard by a Showgirl Looking at Fifty.

I am not the first to go into that good night. My friends Karen and Peggy turned fifty in September and March respectively making them ever so much older than I. For her birthday Karen planned a private yoga class for the four of us who always celebrate our birthdays together. Afterward she invited some "not as important friends" to join us at her house for dinner and a DVD photo montage of our lives together. It was really wonderful and a true reminder of how often I have changed my hair color. For Peggy's birthday we hit Las Vegas where some of us retired dancers met up with some still working dancer friends of Peg and one opera diva to see Come Dance With Me at The Wynn. I haven't hung out in a group of working dancers for a long time and I was happy to find that I could still speak the language. Dancers are fun. Throw in a major opera star (who is also fun ) to sing Happy Birthday and you have got yourself a stellar fiftieth birthday party.

So the bar has been set and what do I want to do for my fiftieth birthday? Nothing. Not that I don't want a party and presents and cake and presents and Facebook salutations and presents and such, but nothing special. The thing is turning fifty isn't the big scary thing I thought it would be. Probably because I have felt old since I stopped dancing fourteen years ago. Dancing is a business venture that is short and sweet and when it was over I was left feeling old, useless, and I had no identity of my own. A young adult life spent emulating diferent choreographers and playing different roles does not leave a great deal of time to grow into your own personality. Throw that in with a constant need to please, no job security and being judged only partially by your talent and the rest on how you look and it's a wonder you can remember your own name. Then imagine being thirty six when most people are moving in to the peak of their careers and you are told you are now too old and too fat to work. AND by societal standards not only are you not fat but look like you could use a sandwich. It screws with your head not to mention your body image. You start your career in a skimpy costume barely breaking a sweat dancing to the most difficult choreoraphy ever inventented and then one day you find yourself on stage at the Dorothy Chander Pavillion prancing around in a hoop skirt waving a fan in Placido Doming's face and then it's over. That was life changing and difficult to deal with. Fifty? Piece of cake. Oddly enough something about turning fifty is actually healing. I can have dinner with a group of younger women and I don't feel like I need to look like them or want to do what they are doing anymore. It is just ok to be who I am now and it only took me fourteen years and a carefully balanced combination of anti depressents and AA metings to feel like that. I have an acceptance now and the ability on most days to appreciate and be grateful for my life. The truth is fifty is different than it used to be. I am not saying it is the new forty because I do not remember having to get a colonoscopy at 40. Yet, fifty is not your mother's fifty. Old age is going to look very different from how it looked when I was a kid. We have to reimagine how we are going to look and feel as we age. With inovations in medicine, health care. and most importanly injectible facial smoothers, we have the possibility of living longer and looking and feeling beter while we do it. Maybe we are still young and we don't know it! One good thing about being an "olderish" dancer is I know that getting old doesn't make you stiff and unable to move, not moving makes you stiff and old. So all my fellow friends of fifty join me! Let's eat well, move, move, move and get the occaasional facial. There is nothing better than finally knowing who I am and having the health to enjoy it. Here's to fifty and God willing fifty more.

The Baby or the Tiger

Don and I took the kids to The San Diego Wild Animal Park over Christmas vacation. As part of a special tour with two other families, we were allowed to go with a guide "behind the scenes" of the lion enclosure. What this really means is you get to go see the office where they take notes and look through glass at a concrete cage where they keep the lions when they are "off set." We were all very excited when the tour guide looked in the room and said, "Oh! Good news, there is a tiger in here!" I was the first one to enter the room, and I looked through the first glass window where I was suddenly nose to nose with a Bengal tiger maybe twelve inches from my face. Self preservation being everything in this world, and thankfully instinctive, I jumped back and kept moving. It was incredibly humbling to be that close to a tiger, and she and I both understood that if the glass hadn't been there I would have been tiger lunch. Don and I took the girls down the hallway (me moving quickly) to the second window to make room for the other people. The guide had mentioned that the tiger is usually very interested in the little kids, so I found it fascinating when the tiger saw Addie in Don's arms. Then the tiger looked away for about thirty seconds, and I thought she had completely forgotten about Addie. Turns out La Tigre was totally messing with us. Before you could say Siegfried and Roy, the tiger lept sideways, jumping into the air and traveling the entire eight feet to the window to pound on the glass in front of Addie. No glass, no baby. Addie was very brave and tried not to cry, but she completely understood: tiger vs. man with glass, man wins; tiger vs. man, no glass, it's the tiger every time. Top of the food chain. No question. Don't even try. Adios. See you in the next life. Well, you get the idea. It was so scary watching the tiger try to eat my child, yet one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I mean, I'm super happy Addie didn't get eaten and all, but the tiger was way cool.

Speaking of tigers... what is all this bruhaha about the Chinese Tiger Mom? If you haven't heard about the new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, written by Amy Chua, it details the Chinese Mom method of parenting. Such as:

No sleepovers.

No plays or drama class.

Many hours practicing musical instruments whether you want to play them or not.

Nothing below an A is even the least bit acceptable.

People, and by people I mean American people, are really upset about this and my guess is they are feeling a bit criticized, which is making them defensive, which is making some of them behave stupidly and overreact. While I agree it is a tad extreme, it's not all a bad idea. It has made me realize that Don and I don't require enough of our children and are way too easy on them. We have let them quit activities way too soon. Ms. Chua asserts that things such as playing the piano become more fun as you become more proficient. I can actually attest to this. The first twenty years of ballet are the hardest! Don and I have always joked that our poor Chinese kid was going to be raised by American parents and lower the standard for Asian children in America. Happily, she is proving us wrong even with our lax American parenting. If I am being completely honest I have to admit the reason I can't be a Tiger Mom is because I am way too lazy and selfish. For instance:

Musical instruments being practiced for four hours?

Who wants to listen to that?

No theater?

Pulease!!

No sleepovers?

When would Don and I have sex?

Anything below an A?

I would have to help with homework and quiz for tests. No thank you. Uh uh. Adios. Not in this lifetime. Well, you get the idea.

So, I thought about changing, but instead decided the best thing to do is hire a Chinese Tiger Mom to raise my children. That way, everyone is happy. Except probably my children. But as a good Tiger Mom would say, "Who cares about that?"

DeAnne at the Lapin Agile

Don gave me a book of Steve Martin's plays for Christmas. On the plane to Vegas today (later) I read Picasso at The Lapin Agile. I saw the play in New York and I read it before and I truly love this play. It is funny and smart and sometimes I don't understand what they are talking about and it doesn't matter. It makes you want to do something good, something important. The play is about one night in 1904 when Picasso, Einstein, and a Visitor (Elvis), meet at the bar Lapin Agile in Paris. Three great minds of the Twentieth Century who changed art, music, and our understanding of the universe.

Picasso: My name is Picasso. Are you an artist?

Visitor: I had my moment.

Picasso: What kind of moment.

Visitor: I had my moment of .... perfection.

Picasso: I know the feeling. I just had it over there.

Visitor: It's a good feeling.

Picasso: Yes, it is.

Visitor: I think not many people have it.

Picasso: No, no they don't.

After reading this I put the book down in my lap, closed my eyes and thought about my one moment. An instant that was well..... perfect. I was playing Louise Bigelow in Carousel. For my non theater friends Louise is mainly a dancing role and the first time we see Louise is in the Ballet. I entered the stage in the dark and the lights came up. I raised my arms above my head in complete silence. The conductor was to take his cue to start the orchestra when I lowered my arms and began to dance. Our eyes were locked. My arms were raised and his arms were raised, then in perfect synchronicity we lowered our arms, me beginning the dance, him beginning the music that carried me away. It was a brief moment, a breath, inhale arms up, exhale arms down, but I knew I had just experienced something rare and elusive. It was as if time had stopped and I entered a different reality that was huge and expansive and beyond my comprehension. Where everything begins. Where anything is possible.

I was nineteen.

I am positive we did other performances , but I don't remember any of them and it didn't happen again. I have performed in hundreds of shows since then and never once experienced such bliss. That is o.k. I was smart enough not to chase it. I knew I was lucky enough to have that feeling of perfection even once in a lifetime and it was enough.

I am not a genius by any stretch of the imagination. I don't even know if I was any great artist as a dancer. My moment of perfection will not hang on someones wall or come through your IPod and break your heart. My moment is just mine. It lives inside of me and I cherish it. I can recall the moment with perfect clarity anytime and I will never take for granted that for one short instant I danced with God.