October 2007 Archives
You can delete me. I'm just here to make this work.
In an attempt to allow my body the ultimate highs and lows of a sugar rush, I have foregone all sweets this week to prepare for our annual Scary Movies and Pie party this weekend. I decided to host this fete last year when I found out the show I was working on was going to fold within the week. What helps me through tragic times like those? Being thankful no one I love is possessed by the devil. Also eating pie. Did you get that? Yes. Perspective. Perspective is key, and it's something I find only in horror films and art I don't understand.
Cliffhanger is sharing hostess duties this year, which means I stuck her with the least desirable task: designing the Evite. Evite is, like, two letters (or maybe three) away from evil. And Evite does not like to save Cliffhanger's hard work, which means she called me from her office past nine PM on Friday because she needed moral support to re-create the damn thing for the fourth time. Now we know how the Wright brothers must have felt when they were attempting to get a plane off the ground. Discouraged, frustrated, and rife with low blood sugar.
Now, I know in the scheme of things (i.e. my aforementioned speech regarding perspective) that losing an Evite doesn't sound like a big deal. But on a Friday night, with an empty stomach and stress, I think having your computer not save your work might, just might, rank right up there with having to take refuge from the undead in a nice, clean shopping mall. Or being incinerated when you thought you were going to dance the night away to Jon Secada. Of course, I keep thinking I'll get to dance at least one of my nights away to Jon Secada, but it has yet to happen.
I'm going to call the Make A Wish foundation immediately.
I have stumbled around this week in somewhat of a daze, seeing as to how the Fiery Redhead is gone, and I am left to fall back into my routine of waking up at 6 AM, writing, working out, then traipsing over the hill to work. These past two days, I even opened up the novel, read through it, and polished, something I've been dreading for a month. The skeleton is there, I can sense it, but I don't like writing prose with outlines. I think this is because outlines are so vital to my own script-writing process/understanding structure that I want to play in my prose. But as we all know, playing can get you into trouble. Regardless, I am trying very hard not to force anything, not to put anything on the page unless it kinda tumbles from my head and out through my fingers and I don't feel like I am overthinking it. This is very difficult. This is worthy of fear.
Lucky for me I have an entire writers' support group - the writers on my show are fantastic. We eat lunch together in the writers' room every day. Today was no different, except one of my colleagues went on a first date last night. Now, I gave up dating long ago. I find it tiresome. I would like someone to curl up next to, because the thought of dating makes me tired, but I know I cannot find that person unless I agree to date, so I will continue with the Tylenol PM/Dawson's Creek watching to help me fall asleep. Anyway, back to today, when my colleague was describing her date, then wondering when she should expect a follow-up. Of course, the other writers wanted to know who he was, what he did, what he looked like, so I piped up, "Did you google him?" CUT TO: EVERYONE looking at me like I was crazy. Perhaps it all would have worked out just fine, had I not decided to dig myself out of the hole with, "What? I google myself every day."
That's right. I do. And I have yet to do anything amazing, according to that silly search engine.
The Fiery Redhead has been in town all weekend, so I've been playing hostess to her whims and neuroses (now I think I know what it's like to be Cliffhanger or the Designated Driver and to have to deal with me). The Fiery Redhead is like me in many ways - if she's hungry, she must be fed now to avoid a tantrum. Cliffhanger has a spiffy trick for dealing with my low blood sugar. She never shows up at my house without a cupcake or some sort of baked good that will send me into a fifteen minute sugar high before I pass out in the passenger's seat of her car, shutting me up for a good hour so she can contemplate the reasons she is still friends with me. By the time I wake up, all sunshine and roses, I smile at the world, and at Cliffhanger, and she forgets that I am an egomaniacal, insecure, moody claustrophobe. Or she just files these things away to use against me on a rainy day.
The Fiery Redhead matches my moodiness, even outdoes it, any day. As soon as she's fed or liquored up, though, she turns on the charm and the backhanded compliments. Here is a list of said compliments I received this weekend:
FR - "Oh, my God. You've lost so much weight! Are you anorexic?"
LATER
FR - "Your hair looks so gorgeous down."
Me - "But I'm wearing it up."
FR - "I know. And it doesn't look good. That's why I said something."
EVEN LATER
FR - "I mean, really. You look like a skeleton. Did you have to buy a whole new wardrobe?"
Me - Silence.
FR - "Calling you anorexic is a compliment, Melissa. And you needed all new clothes anyway. Don't get me started on your old ones..."
Despite her acerbic wit, when the Fiery Redhead is warm, she's warm. I'd kind of forgotten that she pretty much knows everything about me, and the stuff she doesn't know, she's not afraid to ask, and I, surprisingly, am not afraid to tell her. She's flatteringly nosy, if you will.
She was not, however, down for the game plan Saturday, which included a double feature of THE GAME PLAN and THE KINGDOM, with Cliffhanger and her pal (mine too, don't get me wrong, but Cliffhanger introduced us) Apples to Apples (yes, dearie, I'm naming you after your game night contribution). Apples to Apples also did not realize the first feature in the day's double feature, and there was a double tantrum at the Century City mall, which I tried to mediate whilst Cliffhanger took control of my debit card and purchased my tickets. And a Coach bag. And a onesie from Baby Gap. No, no, I kid. I kid. But I'm going to check my bank account as soon as I finish this.
So we settled in for THE GAME PLAN amidst groans and mutterings and general poutiness. And who's crying by the end of it? Not me, although I did have to keep repeating to myself, "You cannot lose your shit right now. You cannot lose your shit." Certainly not Cliffhanger, who was sitting next to me contemplating the abolishment of sentiment from the range of human feeling (yeah, I said she was contmeplating the abolishment of feeling from the range of human feeling. Because she was. I saw it in her eyes). But Apples to Apples and the Fiery Redhead both had to head to the bathroom to perform emergency mascarectomies. So HA!
Also, I have just learned that a person whose blog I have read for a long time has started a new website as she writes a novel in two months!!! This is a wonderful challenge, in my opinion, so go check her out and give her some support at www.katiemorton.com.
Cliffhanger and I have a longstanding tradition of abusing our respective companies' mail codes to send each other useless, pointless, time-wasting materials. Examples of past tomfooleries: mood rings (because we're twelve, remember?), kites, Las Vegas snowglobes, and, of course, peanut butter sandwiches. Today, though, she has topped the list in more ways than one, because today I received a miniscule statuette of TWO ELEPHANTS HUMPING, accompanied by a note, "Is it only me, or do they look really 'into' each other in an enthusiastic way?"
I would like to answer her question right here. YES, they look really "into" each other, because they are HUMPING. They are into each other both literally and figuratively; although I guess one is only into the other figuratively, while the other is physically inside the former as well. And now I'm grossing myself out.
Regardless, I have discovered that HUMPING ELEPHANTS ARE GOOD FOR OFFICE MORALE. The Boss walked into the Writers Room earlier today, and with a sigh proclaimed, "Four more episodes." He looked tired, he needed encouragement, and my, "Don't worry! You'll be fine!" was met with a "you are so full of shit" raised brow.
So I grabbed on to the closest thing possible, which happened to be my brand new elephant statuette, and exclaimed, "Look! Humping Elephants!"
This time, instead of a skeptical brow, I got an, "Oh, thank God. And thank you, Melissa."
