Catch UP!

Christmas with Mom
I just re-read the entry from yesterday, and it occurred to me that I did not give Mom's visit the proper respect.

She came from my home town (a tiny place in Colorado that doesn't show up on a map) on December 23rd. I turned my office room in our house into a lovely little guest room. It has its own bathroom and shower, and it's quite pleasant.

I went to the airport to pick her up, and I was startled to see that not only was she the last person from the plane, but she was being wheeled out in a wheelchair. I was totally unprepared for that -- I knew she had been having some knee and hip issues, but...!

So we got into my car, and she confided in me, as she tossed her three-legged cane into the back seat, that the only reason they insisted on a wheelchair was because of the cane, and the cane was from a friend of hers that said that if an elderly lady travels alone, she should carry a cane, so they'll be sure and take REALLY good care of her. She was right -- she was the first person on the plane, never had to carry her own luggage... What she didn't tell me was that she really did need the cane, and she was in a great deal more pain than she was letting on.

I had taken two weeks off of my BDJ (that's "Blasted Day Job" for those of you who haven't read my previous entries), which kind of gave me a weird indication of what they thought of me, considering that I had not even been at the job for two weeks yet. I wanted to give Mom my undivided attention, and the boss had no problem with that. Big change from 'The Studio', and I'm still not used to being treated like a valued employee, yet.

Anyway, Mom stayed with us for two whole weeks, through Christmas and New Year's. We had a wonderful time.. we went to see multiple movies and went Christmas shopping; my culinary genius of a husband cooked an amazing Christmas dinner, and we went to one of our favorite places for New Year's Eve. We laughed and played cards. I took her to church. I wish she had stayed longer.

I finally got to see her knee.. it's about the size of a cantaloupe. My brothers and I are working on her daily now to convince her that she needs to have something done about it. Never mind that she's in her late 70's... she's still a vital, healthy woman, and will kick herself for not doing it sooner once it's all healed from surgery. I think we might be wearing her down -- we spoke on the phone today, and she said she was going to make an appointment to "have it looked at" before June.

Thank God. I don't ever want to see her in a wheelchair again.

Hi! I'm back!

Excuses, excuses...
Wow... sorry for the 6-month hiatus, there. I guess I have a lot of explaining to do.

After my last entry (December 5, 2003), a whole lot happened in a very short time. I got an audition call for a big voiceover project, and on the same day got a call from a lighting company I had contacted sometime back in July or August. So there were interviews. Again, both on the same day.

To make a long story short, on December 10, 2003, I was hired for BOTH jobs.

The voiceover job is STILL going on. I was hired to narrate a series of educational DVD's -- there are 6 disks in the series, totaling about nine hours of final, edited narration. The producer/director is an incredible person from Denmark who has not only written the entire series, but he's also CGI animated the WHOLE thing, all by himself, after spending about five years of his life amassing the necessary research and trial-and-error experience that was his impetus for making the series in the first place. He's also quite the perfectionist... my performance needs to be enthusiastic and engaging, but I have to watch out for sounding "teach-ey" or making it sound like I'm reading it (I AM reading it, but it can't sound like it).

This means that for every solid hour of edited narration, we're looking at about six to eight hours of recording time. Factor in the fact that as we go along (mind you, he wrote the whole thing himself and this is the first time he's heard a voice with the animation) he finds things to tweak and rewrite or rearrange, or even completely do over and re-animate.

It will probably be another two or three months before the project is completely finished. But I am getting the 'Baptism by Fire Crash Course in Taking Voiceover Direction'. And I'm getting pretty darned good at it, too.

But that's not all. I landed the other job, too. I am, again, a film, TV and special events lighting coordinator for a VERY large event lighting company. And we're busy. We light nearly all of the awards shows, like the Oscars, the Grammys, the People's Choice Awards and this year they happened all within about three weeks of each other. Plus we light the Olympics (a good portion of them, anyway), several Broadway shows, two major beauty pageants, a couple of late-night talk show sets... the list goes on.

So, I go to my "Blasted Day Job" (from here on referred to as the "BDJ") at the lighting company from 8 to 5:30 on weekdays. On Tuesdays, up until a few weeks ago, I was still going to the writers/actors workshop. That has since ended, which is another long story. I'll get into that at another time. BUT, on Wednesdays through Fridays, I go to the studio at 6:00pm to record until ten or eleven at night, and then all day on Saturdays.

Somewhere in there, Mom came for Christmas. It was wonderful.

The DVD sessions are now on a recording break so the director can re-write a few chapters, re-do a bunch of animation, and edit in everything we've done so far to see how well it flows. I'm still at the BDJ during the week, but I'm really pressing to get to the next level of the VO and acting career, and get an agent.

Which, of course, is another long story.

Dishing the Dirt

Men, Women, and the filth between them
My mom is coming for Christmas.

This is a good thing, although the preparation for this event has opened all sorts of issues in my household. As my husband and I make arrangements to ready the "guest room" (actually a spare bedroom that I've been using as an office), and generally try and tidy up the place to my mom's standards, I have discovered a rather interesting phenomenon regarding the way men and women approach housecleaning.

I have often found myself frustrated by the fact that my beloved husband, darling that he is, seems to be completely blind when it comes to dirty floors. He's not a sloppy person; he has a reasonable sense of tidiness and doesn't like clutter any more than I do. But when it comes to the floors and carpets of our home, for some reason he simply doesn't notice when there are huge balls of dust-covered dog hair in the corners, or footprints and stains on the rugs.

I have a theory on this.

You see, a woman sees something on the floor that doesn't belong there, and her subconscious says, "Dear Lord, pick that up! The baby could eat that!" It doesn't matter if she actually HAS a baby in the house. It's a product of our DNA - some component of estrogen implants that instinct into all women to make sure the floors are clean (because babies are known for putting whatever might be lying around in their mouths). You don't have to be a mother to have this instinct. It's just there, and it happens without conscious thought, and if you're a woman there is nothing you can do to stop it.

By the time we hit menopause and the estrogen production halts, it's too late. The habit is totally ingrained, and besides; the "Grandma Instinct" kicks in and at that point, NOBODY's house is clean enough for the baby. Again, the presence or absence of children makes no difference.

Men, however, have a very similar reaction to unauthorized filth on the floor, with a very different outcome. If they see something on the floor that doesn't belong there, their subconscious tells them, "Oops, something's on the floor. Oh, well, the dog will eat that!" And they then go about their merry way. Again, it doesn't matter if they HAVE a dog, something about testosterone automatically assumes that some dog will wander in and lick whatever it is off the floor. Men do not do this on purpose - again, it's a product of DNA, and they have no control whatsoever of this.

Upon further thought, I realized that our very own mothers have had very a profound impact on our nesting instincts. For generations, when mommies decided to clean their houses, they told their sons to "go out and play", ostensibly to keep the little tykes from getting underfoot and messing up whatever it was they were trying to clean. But their daughters usually stayed in to "help Mommy clean the house"... Thus teaching little boys from birth that all they have to do is go out and play and all of the household dirt will magically disappear. Later in life, these same little boys will why their wives give them that LOOK when they want to go play basketball with their buddies.

Now if you'll pardon me... I have to show my husband how to plug in the vacuum.