As part of these ongoing pre-birthday (which is now sneaking up on me MUCH TOO QUICKLY!) surprises of the past few months (like: the surprise trip to South Carolina and another huge thing which I haven't even had time to tell you about yet) one of my three sisters arrived in the States last week for an impromptu visit!

Yes, my very own flesh and blood. Well, even though she is much prettier, skinnier, better dressed, more talented than I could ever dream of "growing up" to be... So no one seeing us together would ever guess that we had both sprouted from the same family tree.

Actually, now that we mention it, I seem to be of much sturdier stock than any of my sisters. They are all petite and gorgeous and well... I look like their body guard. (Not that it seems to matter, since nobody ever notices me past their dazzling looks anyway.)

Where were we? Oh, right. She is gorgeous. And she is here! In the very next room, just a few feet away from me!

It's been three years since anyone from my family has been so close to me! And it feels more wonderful than I can express...

Unfortunately she won't be staying until my birthday (flights to and from South Africa are packed), but for now, I'm not thinking about saying goodbye again on Saturday. Okay, fine... I am, I can't help it. But I supress the feeling as quickly as I can.

We've certainly stayed occupied enough! Running around and shopping, shopping, shopping... (She, not me. I don't possess much of a shopping gene. My sisters, yet again, got my share. Oh, books are the exception of course. I can't resist a book.) And amidst it all I'm just soaking up being with her.

See? Told you it was going to be a good explanation!

I promise to be back soon. Please don't feel too neglected? And please don't leave for good!

* Yes, this site only has three loyal readers. And two of those readers are immediate family.

Dear Libby,

Hello! I'm not sure if you'll recognize me purely by my name on this e-mail (you dogs normally don't care for things like that after all, if I'm not mistaken. Unless it's names like "C-O-O-K-I-E", "F-O-O-D", or "V-E-T", right?). Unfortunately I can't describe my smell very well either, for I don't know whether Issey Miyake (the name of my perfume) will mean anything to a pup such as yourself, since it's not food, beverage, other-dog-smell, or even cat related.

Anyway, I'm that girl from the theatre who shrieks with delight whenever she sees you and then gives you a hug and a belly rub and scratch your ears. Oh, right. That's how everyone reacts when they see you at the theatre.

Mmmm. Let's see. Oh, okay! I know! I'm the girl who gave you water from the dixie cup that time when you were so thirsty, and then I got into trouble when you groaned during your scene on stage later on, because apparently those groans meant that you had to go to the bathroom quite urgently, and not, as I had intially thought, because you were worried about being separated from your master Mike.

So, Libby, now that we've hopefully established who I am: the reason for this e-mail to you is that I want you to please convey my sincere birthday wishes to your master on his 38th birthday! 38! That's a LOT in dog years!! He must be really used to birthdays by now since this is his 38th one? But whether he is or not, let's wish him a very happy birthday as if it's his very first one ever. Would you please tell him for me? And continue to look after him as well as you've been doing, alright? He's a good master to you as well, but that doesn't mean that I'm backing away from my plans to dognap you on our final night of performance in a week and a half. But we'll discuss that later.

Thank you in advance for relaying the message, Lib. Be a good girl and I can't wait to see you and your master Mike on Friday, when I'll be able to wish him happy birthday in person.

Good dog!

Love,
Red

As you've all heard by now, I suffered from apparent brain freeze during the still very cold days of early spring, because during the time that my brain was numb, I auditioned to be in a play.

Unluckily for me, the same ice gust appeared to have swept past the director's cranium, because he cast me!

When my brain finally thawed by mid-May, I received a letter about the auditions, and then all the repercussions of being in a play actually dawned on me. And the one thing that jumped out at me immediately was the prospect of having to leave the house on a regular basis for rehearsals and performances.

Which also meant leaving my beloved bathroom...

Not to worry! I requested a rehearsal schedule and started planning my pre- and post-rehearsal food and beverage intake with military precision.

It worked and for the whole month and a half or so of rehearsals I never once saw the inside of the theatre bathroom.

When the performances began the weekend before last, it called for a bit of tweaking in the feeding and drinking schedule.

This was a bit more complicated, since the dramatic onset of nerves and the pesky side-effects of said nerves now had to be taken into consideration as well, while still keeping the larynx sufficiently moist in order to retain the ability to speak and PROJECT on stage.

It required a fine balance, but one that was successfully met with the help of some sparing sips of coffee.

And so the first weekend breezed by, public-theatre-restroom-free.

And this past weekend, the second in our round of performances, breezed by.

Well, almost.

Until Sunday. When my carefully orchestrated schedule fell to pieces.

Our director informed us that we had to attend a matinee performance of another play before our own performance on Sunday.

So I went. Sufficiently dehydrated and clutching the trusty coffee (see? Now my addiction finally has a purpose!) in my one hand.

And throughout the performance of the other play, I absent-mindedly (but only because I was so engrossed in the play) sipped my coffee.

And I drank ALL OF IT.

Well, I bet you, my three loyal and very clever readers have already figured out what happened next.

When we got to our theatre, I had to go to the bathroom. And I had no choice in the matter.

So it came to be that I carefully (or rather, as carefully and as slowly as my urgency permitted) entered the public theatre restroom for the very first time, my eyes pinched shut, my breath sucked in.

When I finally dared to open my eyes just a little bit, I was actually met with a small but very impressively clean bathroom.

(We all know that germs and cooties are mostly invisible though.)

I dared to breathe, and I took a courageous step towards one of the stalls.

I stepped inside and when I shut the door behind me, I realized that I couldn't turn around. My knees were against the toilet bowl and my butt was against the door. And yeah, while I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly petite, I don't normally get stuck in confined spaces.

But man, I'm telling you: this stall was smaller than an aeroplane bathroom!

It required tremendous skill to shimmy around. And oh, the operation to then remove the appropriate items of clothing!

And of course, then I remembered that I still hadn't papered the seat.

So I had to do the shimmy to turn back around, again. Only, this time, I didn't have the luxury of pointing my knees in opposite directions for enhanced shimmy action, since above-mentioned clothing items were now very much binding them together and rendering them pretty much useless.

Then, the shimmy back the other way again so that I could proceed with what had by now turned into an Utmost Emergency.

And when it occurred to me moments later that I wasn't going to have the luxury of sitting down, and that I had therefore not needed the paper-layer in the first place, I cursed myself, loudly and continuously.

Luckily the relief quickly... um... drowned out my frustration.

Then came the part involving more paper. And suddenly everything I had to go through up until that point seemed like a cakewalk.

Let's just put it this way: several flailing limbs later, and after contorting my not-flexible-at-ALL body into muscle-tearing shapes, and after a succession of moves vaguely resembling the limbo, I was done. And exhausted. With a few pulled something-or-other-parts in the most surprising places...

Luckily, after enduring all of that, I didn't even have strength remaining to be nervous about my pending performance.

But I've been plagued with nightmares about being trapped in a tiny bathroom stall with a gigantic gaping toilet bowl threatening to swallow me whole ever since.

During last weekend's opening performance, my leading man poked my fake bean-baggy-pillowy belly with way too much enthusiasm at one point during our performance leaving a huge and very obvious dent in it!

We both looked down at it for a split second in complete horror... and at that moment I was sooooo tempted to say: "Well would you look at that! The poor kid is obviously a bit soft in the head, just like her father!"

I didn't, but in retrospect, I think I should have, don't you think?

I FINALLY MANAGED TO TURN THE BLOODY TELEVISION OFF ON THE FIRST TRY!!!!

"...an Englishwoman who looks like she's about to give birth to a basketball."

He is dead-on. (Except for the Englishwoman part, but hey, let's not get technical.) But don't hold your breath for photos...

P.S. Greatest thing about acting in a play? The flowers on opening night. And the "mandatory" cast parties after every single show. *Hiccup.*

And when I told you how the first leading man quit the show, I forgot to mention how this meant that we had to redo all the photos. Which means that we went through all of this all over again last week. (Only this time my outfit decided to outdo itself by being even more awful than the first one I had to wear.) And if you've been paying any attention to my drivelings, you would know how much I simply adore being photographed.

Oh, and about that flub of mine?

Within the first five minutes of my scene I'm required to turn on an actual television (by walking up to the set first and turning it on from there... technicalities) and then, after turning it on and turning the sound down a bit (also at the set), I have to drag my fake pregnant body back across the stage, fall down onto the bed and then use the remote to turn on a excerpt from the Dr. Phil Show I'm supposed to watch (because I use it to lead into my short monologue that follows) by pressing "Skip" and "Play."

And then, after my little monologue, I'm supposed to turn it off by pressing "Skip" and "Pause."

Well, sounds simple enough, right?

And yes, perhaps for you techno-savvy people it is. But this is me we're (sadly)talking about, remember? Me, who can't even successfully upload her blog or send e-mails without somehow awakening and releasing a thousand slumbering viruses.

Needless to say, I nailed it during rehearsal. (Although, if you MUST know, not the first time. Or even the second or third... you catch my drift.)

And then, last night. I turned the TV on. Check. And it worked!

I waddled (preggers, remember?) over to the bed and to the remote. Pressed "Skip." And "Play." And thank the theatre gods, for it was cued in the correct place, and Dr. Phil's enormous bold head filled the screen. (Didn't think I'd ever be so happy to see him as I was last night.)

So far so good, right? (And I should've known right then that it was going way too well!)

But again, it's me we're talking about. So needless to say, my ever reliable "Disleksick" alter-ego stepped in and I pressed "Pause" instead of "Skip" or something when I was supposed to turn the TV off, and well... of course nothing happened.

Couldn't just turn the damn thing off at the "off" button either, because the DVD had to remain cued for the leading man, who also uses the TV throughout the entire production. And if I had just caved under the pressure and turned it off (and believe me, in that moment I was verrrry tempted to do just that) I would've thrown the entire and meticulously cued DVD horribly out of whack.

The leading man saved the day by swiftly re-entering and gently prying the by-now-very-cursed remote from my frozen grip and getting it off and cued and fixed, all in a mere second.

Gah.

But remember, I was still there, and the remote was still in the vicinity, so of course something else just had to go wrong.

And it did.

Because at one point during the scene, when I'm supposed to fall back during a fit of frenzied contractions, the blasted TV came on. Seemingly all by itself.

But no. Upon closer panicked inspection we realized that it was all my doing again. Of course.

See, in the middle of my very melodramatic rendition of the contractions during which I fall back onto the bed with an ear-splitting groan, I apparently rolled back with such enthusiasm that I landed Right On The Bloody Remote.

At that point, the audience simply couldn't contain themselves any longer and we all just burst out laughing. Yes, that's right. I said "we." Because always the cool, calm, consummate professional, I started giggling uncontrollably.

Oy... just fifteen more shows people. Just fifteen more shows...

Sunday, August 1: Happy to receive divine morning coffee from the boy. I swear, if he keeps it up, he might just turn me into a morning person! (GASP!)

Monday, August 2: Happy and honoured to have the chance to giggle with the girls (and boy) in my cast.

Tuesday, August 3: Happiness is being allowed to pet a beautiful black lab seeing-eye dog.

Wednesday, August 4: Happy and grateful for a good book and the luxury of time to finish it in almost one sitting... well, more like a lounging, then.

Thursday, August 5: I'm actually not happy at all yet. Just petrified since tonight is the first time we'll be performing our play in front of an audience (and the media!). So I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Like the fact that the leading man quit the show three weeks ago. Following hot on the heels of another actress who, on the same fateful weekend as our leading man's departure, simply failed to show up for rehearsal. And then, when someone eventually did manage to get a hold of her, she weaseled deftly manoeuvred her way out of it by feigning a sudden and somewhat mysterious (she was very sketchy on the details) family emergency.

At least, I suspect (and hope for her sake) that she feigned it. I think she really did fake it though, because she had the wise foresight to be nervous about the prospect of performing way back when we started the rehearsal prospect. Not like silly me who supressed the panic until today - Opening Day - when I'll only be able to die my way out of this... and really, I just might. Die, I mean. From sheer terror.

Which leaves only three of the original cast (or in my case, grossly MIScast) members.

The replacement actor and actress are FABULOUS though, and despite not being aware of this play's existence until two and a half weeks ago, they were already off-book a few days after stepping in. And here I am... still lustily forgetting my lines and my blocking AND still unable to grasp the basics of acting.

Please pray for me tonight at 8 - 10 (Eastern Time)? AND tomorrow night. And Saturday night. And Sunday night... (And all the weekends after that until the end of August.)

P.S. Charleston displayed all the expected Southern charm and then some! The trip was positively delicious. More about that later.