Houston Day 312 - overshare, Estuary, bittersweet

Apologies if this is an overshare, but I spent a significant portion of yesterday morning on the bus on the way home from Hope Stone via a pharmacy, with a pregnancy test in my bag, ready to take when I got home.  Or rather, it was significant because so much was going on in my mind.  It was an interesting mental exercise in resigning myself to the possibility that my life could look very different from what it is now.  But it was negative, kids.  Don't buy your tickets planning to fly over and meet little Nikolay Buchanan yet.  (You know any child Lucas has will be named after a character in Russian literature, right?)
Have settled a little more into my current rhythm.  Am spending much more time at Hope Stone, taking class and chatting to people.  I'm also taking advantage of so much time to learn a new song and a new monologue for auditions.  The monologue is Tom Stoppard (of course), from a play called Dirty Linen in which a lowly British Parliamentary secretary is involved in a scandalous number of scandals.  In the monologue she names names - in fact, the monologue consists almost entirely of names of people and restaurants where she wooed them, almost in poetry.  It's really fun, and I'm learning an Estuary accent for it too (the kind of London accent that's halfway between the Queen and Eliza Doolittle; think Ricky Gervais).  I feel like I've begun to collect accents.
Lucas has been working hard all this week, preparing for a presentation to some company bigwigs this morning.  I got to see the presentation last night, and didn't understand most of it.  He's so sciencey and smart.  I gather that it went well, so that's good, and his boss let him come home early this afternoon, so he met me while I was wandering around Montrose and discovering a new coffee shop I like.
I'm at Hope Stone now, about to start teaching the teens, and tonight I'm going with Maggie, Shani and Bekah to see a play at Stages Repertory Theatre (who also invited me to audition for them this week.  I can't make the dates work, but it was a nice little ego-boost.)  Tomorrow is another day working at home, learning how to sound like the characters on The IT Crowd.  Then Leslie and her friend Rachel (who I'm really enjoying getting to know - maybe one of these days I could start calling her my friend) are coming over to glory in and enjoy our new Netflix subscription.
So all in all things are good.  Homesickness hit me for the first time in a while last night in response to an email from Sass about Walsh dinner.  Man I want to be at Walsh dinner.  But then I wouldn't be here at Hope Stone, or watching movies with Leslie and Rachel, or teaching Bekah how to sing.  There are too many good things in life.  You can't have all of them at once, and so you carry round this little bit of pain all the time, knowing that there are important people you'll never get enough time with.

Houston Day 306 - BREAD!!!! & other good things

Who cares if it didn't rise? It tastes delicious and I'm immensely proud of it.

OMG! The unappetising lump I put into the oven actually came out edible! I had all but given up hope, but then....BREAD came out of my oven.  Actual BREAD! Am amazing! Am in fact potential baker (Lucas was right).  Will finally earn Stellar Baker Father's approval....*wistful tear*...


The week has definitely picked up steam.  I have come up with a fun idea I call The Singing Exchange - a couple of actor/dancer friends have brought up the idea that they'd like to be able to sing, so I've offered them lessons in exchange for a lesson in something they know.  I sent out that email yesterday and Bekah immediately IMed me saying "I want singing lessons! I want singing lessons!".  She and also Benito will be my first guinea pigs next week.  Also, Bekah has this great idea for a short dance film that I'm going to be in, so that's something else to look forward to.  (I've said it on the internet now, Bekah, we have to do it.) Was chatting to her about that yesterday between Hope Stone visits, and yesterday evening Leslie and her friend Rachel came over to watch Strictly Ballroom and appreciate some quality Australian cinema.  Signed up to Netflix for that purpose and I think it is an excellent addition to our household.

Gayla (=Hope Stone teacher) and her husband Firat (also Hope Stone teacher, just not one I happen to work with) came over for dinner Wednesday and reminded me that I have this massive resource of things to do and people to connect with over at Hope.  So have taken a couple more classes this week, including ballet, for the first time in months.  Attempted to take yoga this morning - plan was to take yoga then have props meeting with Gayla afterwards - but public transport fail saw me missing my bus connection, then taking a bus in the wrong direction.  I didn't notice that one at first, until I looked up to see, not the hip cafes of Montrose, but the 610 freeway and the bus about to head out into the suburban wastelands.  Texted Gayla begging for lift but no response.  (Turns out she forgot about yoga and had her phone off.  Workout fail, Gayla.) I gave up, got off the bus, then walked home in this glorious spring weather.  I was about to get cranky for the first time at inadequate Houston pt, but Leslie has reminded me of my New Year's Resolution with this little present she brought over last night:

The best bit of yesterday came in the form of a facebook message.  It went something like this: "Hi Amy, had to track you down on facebook because you didn't have your contact details on your CV.  [Will obviously never make that mistake again - Ed.]  You auditioned for me a couple of weeks ago, and while I didn't cast you in that show, I thought you were great and would very much appreciate it if you would audition for the next one I'm doing.  Cheers."  Ok, he didn't say cheers, coz that's not a very American thing to say, but you get the gist.

Have filed taxes in both countries.  Have tidied house.  Have hosted multiple friends over at house.  Have made both gado gado and freakin bread.  Have been headhunted for audition.  Have had good week after all.

Houston Day 304 - road trip photos, and this week

So folks, check out my road trip photos.  My favourite part of the trip was the SXSW stuff in Austin, but I didn't really take any photos of that, save the blurry dark ones taken when I momentarily forgot I have no flash on my cameraphone.

I did feel a little homesick for Houston while I was away, and it was very nice to get home to both Lucas and Bekah telling me how much I was missed.  But this week so far has overall been less than stellar.  The post-show blues are turning me into a cross between a petulant child and a grieving mother.  The tears are pretty ready to spring at any moment, such as when I walked past a photo of my sisters and thought for about three seconds about how much I love and miss them.  Lucas is not having a lot of fun living with me right now, particularly given that he doesn't quite get this particular aspect of "our" career choice.  Made worse by still recovering from major relocation, less full life here than in Melbourne, etc etc etc, you've heard it all before, plus decision not to pursue out-of-town gigs in order to protect our relationship & mental health.
When I have the motivation to get up off the couch (tell you what, cable tv is such an enabler for depressive days), I have been doing some major organisation of our household.  I found all our paperwork from the move, which took me right back to eleven months ago when the same papers literally had me up all night.  (See very first blog post!)  Made my hyperventilate again.  The U.S. government sure knows how to stress the hell out of you.

Houston Day 301 - I am, in fact, a grownup

I just filed my taxes for the first time in this country.  Am amazing, am very clever, am law-abiding citizen and am proper grownup.  Also only paid about a dollar in taxes.  Feels especially good to not be shit at life on day one of the six weeks of underemployment.

Houston Day 300 - road trip!

Got back yesterday from an awesome road trip.  Here's the run-down:

Tuesday

• Mel & I leave Houston for San Antonio.  Roads get prettier and hillier the further we get from Houston.
• Visit Mission Concepcion & San Jose Mission.  Enjoy beautiful architecture and grounds, fascinating history; love that these missions are still functioning Catholic churches - day-to-day life happening in historical spaces always makes me happy.  Feel white man's guilt about crappy colonialist, supremacist attitudes that founded such places, alleviated slightly by the fact that this time it's not my ancestors (the Spanish can be bastards too, apparently).
• Eat excellent Mexican lunch at Mi Tierra restaurant, recommended by a random stranger at the San Jose Mission.
• Attempt to find hotel with vacancy in San Antonio.  Give up after about four or five tries (spring break=busy).   Book studio apartment in Fredericksburg, and drive there.
• Enjoy taking German accent for a spin while driving through hill country.*
• Taste some wines at a Fredericksburg cellar-door-type business.  Buy bottle and spend evening having excellent conversation on the porch of our apartment in the warm evening surrounded by spring break party atmosphere.

Wednesday

• Breakfast at a lovely restaurant called Bejas.  Sopes with sausage, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, and a mimosa, coz am on holidays.
• Browse through a fun jewellery store and buy a funky ring.
• Attempt to visit Enchanted Rock state park, but turn away in disgust due to crowds arguing with each other.  Appreciate rock from a distance instead, and drive off.  Enjoy country drive anyway.
• Visit Pedernales Fall state park.  Breathe in the horizon and the views and the feeling I get from being near water, which I think I inherited from my beach-obsessed mother.  Walk and climb over rocks and talk and soak up the sunshine and watch interesting birds.
• Drive to Austin.  By happy coincidence, arrive in the middle of South By South West film/music/arts festival.  Whole town is having a party.  Meet Morgan & McKenzie (friends from City Dance Summer School who live in Austin) at the Spider House.  Drink, dance, listen to music, meet people, and generally have a good time.

Thursday

• Spend whole day and night enjoying SXSW stuff.  Highlights include the sunshine, the excellent Mexican food, the live bands, a film called "Gayby", street party atmosphere, meeting strangers, playing frisbee, and Austin's loveliness.  Oh, and did I mention all the music gigs were free? I've never been a music festival fan, mostly because in Australia you have to be dedicated enough to pay $200 for a Big Day Out ticket, and camp for a week at Fall's.  But in Austin? You can wander in and out as you choose.  It's awesome.  Lowlights include inability to deal with tiredness after fifteen hours out, sunburn, and losing Morgan in an enormous crowd.

Friday

• Tour Natural Bridge Caverns on our way home.

And then, when we got back to Houston, Mel hopped on a plane but Lucas and Nick and Bekah and I went to the Rodeo! I went to a Rodeo! It was so different to anything I've ever done before, but it was great.  So...I drove from a music festival in Austin to the Houston Rodeo, and there were bluebonnets aplenty by the side of the road on the way.  I love Texas.  Photos to come  xo

*I learn everything I know from theatre.  Research for Freedom Train and attending Main Street Theater's Coast of Utopia season have taught me about a wave of German immigration into Texas in the 1840s owing to huge political turmoil all throughout Europe at that time.  The hill country is full of German proper names.

Houston Day 295 - a little confession, and a little observation

Observation: People say "excuse me" much more here than Aussies do.  I gather you're supposed to say it when...

• you sneeze
• you yawn
• you cough or clear your throat
• you walk between someone and what they're looking at
• you walk close behind someone....even if you don't need them to move!
• you overtake someone on the footpath
• ...pretty much anytime you walk close to a stranger....actually you really can't get away with walking close to a stranger without saying something, otherwise you come across as rude.  Ah, the South.

...it's funny to me.  

And now a little confession.  The friendship circles I had in Melbourne were so excellent, and so close, to me and to each other.  Building up similar friendships after moving here is happening more slowly than I would like (I feel like every other time I've moved I just jumped into a ready-made close-knit community), so that means that the friendships I do have are so precious to me.  I am so grateful for them! Here's the confession part: I know that I need most of my friends more than they need me, and I get so afraid of losing them.  Being so needy & vulnerable is not pleasant, to say the least.

Leslie as Mrs Who

Saturday evening was a very fun & social evening...Houston Family Arts Center's production of Seussical was excellent, and it was so fun to catch up with people afterwards! (Yup, these are some of the times I'm grateful for!)

Nick as Horton

And now, a little afterthought: those of you who know us well will know that we love being social and hospitable, but are pretty rotten at keeping the house clean.  BUT we seem to be blessed with the knack of making friends who are happy to do our housework for us, which means we can have our cake and eat it too.  I was thinking of our Melbourne friends who did this - remembering one of my birthday parties when I walked into the kitchen to find that Caleb and Stu had done all the dishes, remembering the time Amber came over after work and cleaned pretty much the entire house in one evening, remembering Hayley, and Monica, and Jenn, and Janet, who I think cleaned our little white house in Chadstone more than we did.  The reason I was remembering this? Lasagne Day last week, when Shemica came over between shows, marched straight into the kitchen, pulled up a chair in front of the sink, and got to work on the dishes.  Bless her.

Houston Day 293

So the last show went off without a hitch, and in order to assuage my post-show blues Shemica and Benito went out for brunch with me at the Down House, which Benito prefers to call "our club"*, afterwards.  The other gentlemen of the cast couldn't join us because they had, respectively, rehearsals and an angry pregnant girlfriend to get to.  (Although, in the immortal and way-funnier-out-of-context words of Derrick, "She's not angry, she's just black.")

*Certain areas of the Heights are still technically dry, according to some way old statute that nobody's bothered to change since the Prohibition.  Many local bars get around this by calling themselves private clubs, and in order to buy alcohol you need to join the club.  Benito joined the Down House with us after we went to see his show Circulo Vicioso de un Cuarteto Amoroso....I think I remembered that title right...

Last night, like the truly hip Houstonians we are, we hit up Montrose for some great food and many many beverages.  "We" in this case means Lucas and Mel and I, and James & Aria + kids for the dinner part, and someone Mel met at Exxon called Erica & her husband for the drinks part.  The best pizza I have ever tasted.  Rocket (arugula as they call it here) + taleggio cheese + pear + truffle oil.  That is all I will say.

Freedom Train cast: Brandon, Shemica, me, Derrick

Benito & Shemica at the Down House

Today Mel is off for a few days to some national parks east of here toward Louisiana, Lucas is off to Costco, and I am doing not all that much.  Tonight is Seussical, starring Leslie and Nick and some other friends from The Sound of Music.  Tomorrow is brunch with Aaron (from Exxon) & Lorena, and something which sounds very boring but will I hope be very helpful - a tax seminar put on by my agency about how to manage taxes as an artist.

Houston Day 291 - unemployment again???

Freedom Train ends tomorrow.  It's been such a wonderful journey, and the cast are very sad to be bidding farewell to working with each other every day.  I had an attack of the post-show blues on Tuesday night (yes, before the season's even over) which Lucas very lovingly sat through, and my darling husband talked me down off my metaphorical hysterical high ledge.
Not only am I sad about saying goodbye to this precious time with some dear people, I'm also terrified of being unemployed.  At this stage the next bout of full-time work happens in the last week of April, which is production week for the Hope Stone kids' show (and Pinkalicious rehearsals start the following week, in May).  There are a couple of opportunities in the pipeline, but nothing I'm ready to move from "possible" to "likely".
And, blog readers, do you remember the last time I was unemployed? Existential angst, self-worth through the floor, and it being way too hard to get out of bed in the morning? Most of my brain knows that there are two big differences this time - one, I'm at home here now, and two, I have friends.  In fact, two friends in particular have reminded me of their excellence this week.  Bekah and I usually let each other know about audition results as soon as we find out, and when I told her on Tuesday that I didn't get in to Goldilocks she came over immediately and comforted me with good conversation, a French musical movie and going out for ice-cream.  And Leslie, who is also finishing up a show this weekend, has suggested we watch Strictly Ballroom when we both get back from our post-show holidays (she to Kansas City to visit her sister, me road-tripping with Mel Bok who's visiting from Melbourne).  But the tiny afraid part of my brain can scream pretty loudly sometimes.
I'll figure it out.  I'm sure it'll all be fine.  Something will come up, and if it doesn't, I'll make that fine too.
Check out the link below for some Freedom Train photos, which I'm sure I'll add to after our last show and what I'm sure will be a massive cast party (the party will be massive; the cast is pretty small).

Freedom Train photos

Houston Day 284

Yesterday was a marathon day. 4 shows at 3 different venues adding up to a 15-hour work day. With a decent-sized break in the afternoon for me to invite the cast back to my house and feed them my excellent home-cooked lasagne. Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you there was a lot of sleeping going on in the back of the van between shows.  But that didn't seem to ward off the hysterical exhaustion that overtook us at the end of the day.
It was so much fun. The first crowd of kids weren't great, and the second show was bizarre, because we had a time limit and so sped up the pace so much I was buzzing and couldn't slow down afterwards. The third show was pretty good, as was the last one. But this cast gets on really well, and we make each other laugh, and we look after each other.  And we also explain, multiple times a day, to the resident Australian and token white person, that just because I don't always understand what's being said, doesn't mean they're insulting me.
Today was pretty chilled to make up for it.  I went to the doctor this morning and I think I've finally found a doctor who I like.  She talked to me like a person, which is a big step up from the last doctor I tried.  I'm at Hope Stone now, and heading out for tapas with Scott, Maggie, Leslie and Lucas before we go and see Part Three of the Tom Stoppard trilogy tonight.  So the serfs will be freed, and I think Bakunin gets a bit of redemption as well.