Kolaches.

Houston is trafficky. It took me an hour and a half to get back to the hotel from the Hobby Center last night. I could have walked faster and enjoyed it more. I’m exaggerating; it’s 8 or 9 miles, so it would’ve taken me twice that long to walk and it’s 90 degrees out so walking would have been very unpleasant, but the drive was excruciating, inching along Westheimer with the sun in my eyes. The one good thing about how long it took is that eventually the sun disappeared behind some buildings so the last 15 minutes of the drive was slightly less painful. My commute to work in Brooklyn is roughly as long, but I can sit (usually) on the train and read. I hate driving. Hate it.

Its still very hot here, but the outside temperature is almost irrelevant. I’m rarely outside, and the rehearsal studio is like a walk-in refrigerator. It can’t be even 60 degrees in there. We step outside for a few minutes on our breaks to thaw out. The music director asked yesterday if we thought it had maybe gotten a little warmer in the room, and I said no I think that’s hypothermia.

This morning at 9, they asked us, all the LIZZIE folks, to drop by the TUTS staff meeting so they could check us out meet us and say hello. There were boxes of donuts and kolaches, and it was the first time I’d seen kolaches since I left Texas.

There are many kinds – kolaches are basically filled yeast rolls not unlike donuts. They can be filled with preserves and other sweet things, but the ones that stand out have hot dogs inside. They’re like hot dogs with the bun baked around them. I know they sound weird and maybe sort of awful, but they’re pretty good. They’re soft and warm and hot-doggy in a good way, and they’re for breakfast! I know you don’t believe me, but I managed to not eat one or two or five. I just enjoyed the smell.

I felt pretty proud of myself. Traveling always makes me think I can eat whatever I want and it doesn’t count, but when the gig is 3 weeks long it kind of (not even kind of) does count. And, well, free donuts (or kolaches) is definitely permission to indulge, in fact it’s almost really a command.

I guess I’m well trained in “no, thank you” by my Brooklyn workplace, which, as I’ve said before, is a virtual conveyor belt of candy and donuts and pizza and burgers and cookies all day.

But we’re only 3 days in, so …

Heart of LIZZIE.

When I was in high school – it must have been my junior or senior year because I wouldn’t have been allowed to go to Indianapolis to a rock concert unchaperoned before that, and besides I know for a fact that my first 2 concerts were Rod Stewart and Black Sabbath, both in 1977, because I kept the t-shirts until I was 30 – I saw Heart at the Indiana State Fair.

I was already a fan. Barracuda was everywhere (at least where I grew up in Disco Sucks territory). I had the Little Queen album, played it to death (literally) while I stared at that picture on the cover of Ann and Nancy and the boys as rock and roll gypsies or whatever. This was the era of me trying desperately to be turned on by girls and if any women were going to turn me on it would be Ann and Nancy Wilson. But I was more turned on by their clothes, and the rest of the band behind them. Turns out I didn’t want to fuck them, I wanted to be them, riding around in that covered wagon full of long-haired rock and roll boys.

It all sounds like a cliché now, but at 16 I didn’t know from gay icons.

I was a Heart fan, but after that concert I was obsessed. Crazy on You started with Nancy in a spotlight for that long gorgeous acoustic intro and when the band kicked in the whole stage lit up and I was lost forever. This youtube clip might be the same tour I saw. It looks like how I remember it.

Not just Heart, but that particular Heart concert at the Indiana State Fair in the late seventies is deep in the DNA of LIZZIE. In my mind, this kind of huge outdoor venue is where LIZZIE lives. It’s funny because we’re here in Houston doing the show in a 500-seat theater now and everyone keeps referring to it as “our small space.” Someone yesterday used the word “tiny.” 500 seats is bigger by a few hundred seats than any space the show has ever been produced in. We're gettin' there.

Access Road.

I’m in Houston, arrived this afternoon and checked into the Extended Stay America, my home for the next three weeks. Theatre Under the Stars is producing LIZZIE, and we begin rehearsals tomorrow. After a gorgeous weekend writing retreat upstate where the leaves are just beginning to change and the air is crisp and chilly, I was bracing myself to hate the weather here in the land of eternal summer, but when I walked out of the baggage claim the warm, damp evening felt sweet and, I don’t know, promising, like a cold beer on a back patio. I love Texas.

I have a rental car. As soon as I’d hung my shirts and texted C, I drove to the HEB about a mile and a half away. HEB is one of the big grocery chains here in Texas and was my favorite when I lived in Austin. Well, Whole Foods, say what you want, was, is, my favorite grocery store, and there is one here but it’s farther away and more expensive, so I drove to the HEB and spent about 100 bucks on breakfast and snacks, wine, stuff to make salads so I don’t have to spend a ton of money on meals out while I’m here. And not just the money, but if I eat at restaurants every night I’ll head home 10 pounds heavier.

Driving in Texas is all about the access roads. I’d forgotten that. The hotel is on an access road. Getting to the HEB was easy. Turn right out of the parking lot, then right again onto Westheimer. Getting back could have been a nightmare – the road the hotel is on, the access road, only goes one way of course, so you have to overshoot, end up on the other side of the freeway, and figure out how to get back around. Fortunately, I know how to negotiate the access roads. Far left lane to make a U-turn. Easy. I know it’s silly to be so proud, but driving does not come naturally to me, and learning how to use the access roads was a real triumph for me during a time in my life when there were few.

So, coffee, milk, fruit, raisin bran, cheese, hummus, crackers, wasabi peas, salad greens, a rotisserie chicken, salted almonds, olives. And little bottles of shampoo and conditioner – I don’t pack that stuff if I’m staying in a hotel, but I guess “extended stay” means bring your own hair products. There is soap.

I love hotels. I wish I had a real wine glass so I didn't have to drink out of this nasty ass plastic cup. I wish my husband was here.

I'm Gonna Be Strong.

One of the women who auditioned for our Houston production of LIZZIE yesterday sang this song, which I hadn't thought of in a long time but for a while years ago I was obsessed with: I'm Gonna Be Strong (by Weil/Mann). I knew it from this Buddy Miller version on his great record Cruel Moon (that's the incredible Joy White on the duet vocal). With its Brill Building history I should have known there'd be an earlier hit version but somehow this one satisfied me enough that I didn't investigate.

I think the arrangement she sang in the audition was this one. Check out Cyndi Lauper, so young, and already blowing my mind:

And Jackie DeShannon? How did I not know about this song?

Here's the original by Gene Pitney. Pretty great:

I think I still like the Buddy Miller/Joy White version best.

Nothing, Really.

Two things that I’ve started to blog about have turned into much longer, in-depth pieces of writing than I’d planned. One of them is, well, C and I have been watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show, starting at the beginning – we’re on season 3 now – and it stirs up all kinds of stuff for me from the various times in my life when I watched the show. So that blog entry is turning into a sort of biographical essay.

The other thing is a meditation on how C and I are different. I mentioned this topic to C and he was afraid I might paint an unflattering picture of him. I just think it’s an interesting topic. I married a banking lawyer. How could I not find that a rich topic to contemplate?

So I find myself with nothing to write about but a residual urge to post something today.

We went to Target today. There’s a Target about a 5 minute walk from us, across the bridge to the Bronx. Very convenient. I love that it’s there when we need toilet paper, or laundry detergent, or kitchen tools, but I don’t enjoy the experience. It’s always mobbed. (Did you really need to bring all five kids and grandpa to the Target? Really?) It’s always hard to find what you need. You always come home with 25 plastic bags for 20 items. (I’m not generally a fan of the Bloomberg nanny state, but I support the plastic bag ban. The plastic bags are out of control. It’s an addiction. It’s pathological the way cashiers are constantly pushing plastic bags at you. We need an intervention.)

Mostly what we went to Target for was cleaning supplies. We just hired a new apartment-cleaning service (see above re how C and I are different) because the woman who was cleaning our apartment was siphoning off and watering down our dish soap and shampoo. This new service uses all natural products, so they asked us to lay in a store of vinegar and baking soda, neither of which I could find at Target in the sizes I wanted.

So I apologize for this blog post which is really about nothing. I’ve spent a lot of time lately being either angry or sad or anxious or some combination of those. I could rifle through the various possible reasons, but to be honest I think it might just be seasonal or hormonal or random. There are stresses in my life, but aren’t there always? I want to recommit to the project of figuring out if our health insurance covers psychotherapy because I would love to start seeing the therapist I saw for years and who was measurably helpful back before I left New York. I read all the various booklets about our insurance plan and the language was too vague for me to be certain. The answer must be somewhere.

Here’s a picture of my mom. The Mary Tyler Moore essay is in part about my mother because the image I have of Mom from the seventies is mixed up with the image I have of Mary Tyler Moore. (My dad is Bob Newhart.)

I Broke My Foot.

Things that happened yesterday: T came over for dinner, and I made a Thai green curry with chicken and shrimp. It was delicious, but it had no heat. I added a whole jar of green curry paste and 2 Serranos, no heat. I added one jalapeno pepper and a big squirt of Sri Racha. Still no heat. C made a shoo-fly pie. He didn't like it. = More for me. I broke my foot. On my way down the stairs to let T in, I tripped and broke my foot.

Change Your Attitude, But Remain Natural.

I’m pretty sure I’ve written here about the lojong slogans I’ve been working with for many years now, the system of mind training that was developed by a teacher in Medieval Tibet. I’ve held onto this one aspect of my Buddhist practice – I haven’t meditated regularly in years, but I am still Buddhist in worldview and approach to life – because it’s simple, practical, and works (though slowly and not without some backsliding from time to time). And because there are flash cards.

The system consists of 50-some slogans that are designed to train your mind away from habitual responses that, if they’re not making things worse, are certainly not making things any better.

People work with the slogans in different ways; I’m pretty loose about it. Sometimes I try to keep one of them in mind for a day, a few of them seem to always apply and I’ve had them tattooed onto my body, sometimes I’ll keep going back to one over and over for a period of time if it applies to something that’s happening. Like now.

“Change your attitude, but remain natural.”

It means that when you start getting caught up in how miserable or how ecstatic or how anything YOU are, stop and look around. It means that when you find yourself thinking about yourself so hard you’re gnashing your teeth (whether it’s how awful things are for you at that moment, or how great), stop, direct that concern to others, and just relax. In other words, “Get over yourself and pay attention,” or even, “It’s not all about you.”

And work to make that your first response, to think about others instead of yourself.

I’m in Indiana. My mom’s been through the wringer the last couple weeks. We just brought her home from the hospital today after a little over two weeks there which started with severe abdominal pain, then emergency surgery a few days later for a perforated bowel. Only in the last couple days has she started to look like herself again. Recovery will be long and slow and accompanied by uncertainty about what caused the problem in the first place. Her doctors can’t poke around in there to find out until she has healed from this surgery.

My mom, who will be 74 next month, who has always been independent and fit, who is used to long walks and bike tours, tending a big yard and flower gardens, baking bread, cooking and cleaning and raising hell, today has to conserve her energy for a walk across the room.

I’ve been trying since I got here to figure out how to write about this. I need so badly to write about this – it’s how I make sense of things, it’s how I get my mind in balance, it’s the one thing I can do that I know will make me feel sane. But as I’ve said many times my rule is to avoid telling stories that are not mine without permission – and to be skeptical of permission even so, because people who are not writers don’t usually fully understand what it means to share publicly your personal life – and this is not my story. It’s about my mother’s body, and what could be more subject to permission than the inside of your body.

Despite the fact that this is my blog and sort of by definition about me, there’s something obscene about making THIS about me.

“Change your attitude, but remain natural.”

When I find myself wanting to just relax and cry (it has felt unbearable at times to watch my mother feel such pain), I realize that most of what I want in that moment is sympathy. I want someone to hold me and tell me it’s okay. And if I’m honest the one I want to hold me is my mom.

I had no idea that still, at 52, I come home to visit my mom because I feel taken care of. Not even her bout with ovarian cancer 5 years ago, when I spent the summer here cooking and helping around the house during her chemotherapy had much success rooting out my attitude that my mother is the one who comforts and I am the one who gets comforted.

Times like these I realize that not everyone is the raging narcissistic artist I am. C seems to understand in a simple way that things come up in your life and you deal with them, that when someone in your family is sick you go to them and help. Not that my first thought wasn’t to rush to my mom and do whatever was needed, but I was paralyzed by the urgency, the fear, the not knowing what WOULD be needed.

C just looked at me and said, “Don’t freak out, that isn’t going to help anything. Check flights going out tonight. If it’s too late to fly, we’ll rent a car, drive all night, and be there when she gets out of surgery.” Change your attitude, but remain natural.