Growing Up A Wee Bit More?

Capitol One just upped my Credit Card limit, without even notifying me, as a nice little holiday surprise! Guess I must be moving up in the world, grown up wise (haha)!!

(Always there can be joy in the little things)

More Errant Bits of Wisdom

Also, it is not a good idea to spend five hours gardening and planting roses in California mid day sun after having received a shot in each upper arm. Especially not before one's first day of snowboarding. Ever.

Yowza!

Love and hugs,

A Broadway Baby

California Realizations on Such a Winter's Day

1. I don't want to put aside the dancing/singing/acting business until I get the chance to be involved with the Cats musical again. Here's crossing fingers for 2012!

2. You know you're really in California when:

• You spot a Jonas Brother in your rear view mirror, then do a double take when you realize he's actually driving the vehicle behind you
• You get stuck behind an obnoxiously large pick up truck on the 710 freeway, and notice that there are huge blue balls dangling from the truck's rear license plate. ClASSy.
• Your friend takes you to the most delicious vegan food you never knew wasn't "Real Food," and it's conveniently located near an ostentatiously named succession of blocks that go West from "Harvard" to "Yale" to "Stanford" 
• What should have been a 25 minute commute becomes a two hour sojourn, and freeway detour signs send you into the heart of Compton (which is south of Central Los Angeles, and is also known as the home of some of more intense gangs than the Fast and Furious series could ever dream up)

3. Things do come full circle

• Watching your first love become promiscuous is one of the most painful - yet valuable - experiences that a person can have. 
• One day, many days after my own heart break began to heal, I  finally realized that I cannot change people. As my dad always says, "work toward acceptance, not approval."  
• Rediscovering that place of enlightenment (aka the awareness of my inability to make anyone change, even if I SWEAR I am trying to help them) and staying in that place is a daily struggle.
• Being a "solutions-based" thinker is not always the best approach one needs to solve a problem. Sometimes I just need to shut up and listen.
• Slowly, I've learned that I must let the people I love live the way they want, so I can learn what I  really need.
• For every one thing I do know, there exists an infinity of things I have yet to discover. Sometimes that is exciting. Sometimes it BLOWS.

But hey, shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you'll still land among the stars, eh?

Happy Holidays!!

And in the darkest of night, remember, it's a WONDERFUL LIFE!!

Tilda Swinton & Merry Christmas Eve!

Sooooo Tilda Swinton was totally in my Boot Camp Christmas Eve workout class this afternoon!!! 1000 reps would have seemed pretty intense and undoable without her... What better inspiration can one have than working out next to the very woman who terrified the little Narnia kids into action as the Snow (Ice?) Queen! Sooo cool.

Also, I've just spent the past four hours making twelve servings of butternut squash soup, lasagna to feed 14, and five batches of sugar cookies (my great grandma's recipe) and some Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. My only fuel? A Rigoletto soundtrack from one of my dad's principal friends, four hours of sleep, and two glasses of yummy merlot (multiple bottles to choose from! ... Courtesy of the teachers who work for/with my dad)

Suffice it to say... I LOVE the holidays.

Merry Christmas Eve everybody!

Love, always,

A Broadway Baby

Noteworthy

Courtesy of my blog-surfing friend and fellow meta-thinker, EG, the most lovely person (inside and out) that I've had the pleasure to meet for lunch in Santa Monica!

"In life, we often place merit on someone based on the job they have. We may not mean to, but it's no real fault of ours if we do -- it's been ingrained in us almost since we could walk.

Parents tell us to get an education, or we won't get a good job.

Teachers tell us to study harder, or we won't get a good job.

Potential girlfriends and boyfriends often decide whether or not we're worthy of their attention, based on the job we have and the material things said job can bring. 

 We see someone being chauffeured from place to place and immediately imagine they must be quite important. 

In social media, this feeling is only exacerbated! Our blogs become popular, we allow Ads to be posted to our site, we get followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook, conferences invited us to speak; even the blogosphere has badges of merit to show how smart bloggers are. 

When one has that kind of adulation, it's easy to mistake one's importance and think one's job is something it's not. Sure, someone might have a great job with a personal secretary; someone else's golf course fees and table service might cost more than it takes to get a child through college.

Now, think about this: 

If every blogger in the world stopped blogging tomorrow, we'd still get our news and opinion pieces. Sure, they might be watered down a little, but we'd still get them.

If every chauffeur quit tomorrow, we'd still have cabs, buses, trains, subways, motorbikes, and even bicycles (not to mention our feet) to get around on.

If every girlfriend or boyfriend dumped his or her partner tomorrow, we'd still get by with our imaginations.

Life would go on.

There are jobs we often consider to be of lesser worth. What would life look like without them?

 If every trash collector quit tomorrow, we'd be faced with disease-ridden streets and pestilence and uncontrollable rat infestations (New Yorkers, you think we have it bad when they break ground for a new subway system? We ain't seen nuthin' yet)

If every sewage worker quit tomorrow, our streets, our toilets, our running water would be LITERALLY overrun with crap.

If every school crossing guard quit tomorrow, how long would our children stay safe while navigating busy intersections?"

 We look at life through odd lenses. We see people in a dimmer light because their job is perhaps not as socially acceptable as those six and seven figure posts. We celebrate our own importance, we compete, we seek approval instead of acceptance. Yet for the self-important person, take away their job, and the world still goes on. Our existence continues even if the source of our self importance were to disappear over night.

At the end of the day, we all have something important to do and to offer. Whether our calling is as a dancer, a teacher, a cobbler, a jeweler, a dreamer; we all have something worthwhile, something CONSTRUCTIVE, to offer society.

In a time as full of infighting, greed, anger, and lack of focus as the United States is currently facing, we can all stand to remember the commonalities we share. We owe it to ourselves, about each other, and to  our country to be the best, happiest, most constructive versions of ourself that we can be.

Next time you have the choice to either build up or tear down, choose the positive route. Build. Create. Move. Laugh. Give.

Anything Goes

... awry the minute you take a vacation!!!

Alas, ANYTHING GOES -- aka the Tony award-winning musical revival of the YEAR -- is holding an audition for the national tour in New York on December 29th, and I will be in LOS ANGELES!!!

Yiikes. Definitely one of those moments when I am seriously considering buying a round trip flight back to NYC just to audition for the opportunity of a lifetime...

Cwaaap. I'll have to hope that they have another audition later in the spring, since rehearsals don't start until September 2012 (according to this casting notice) Cwap CWAP cwap!

http://casting.backstage.com/JobSeekerX/ViewJob.asp?JobID=8iuMYq%2BdVgzgoDBbpZ4Ii%2Bb8ZMh3

I'll have to find a way to send a submission to that casting office ASAP.