On The Road — Page 100

On the Road: Fresh Flowers

May 5, 2013 at 8:15 am by Claudia

alstrobud

My number one rule for an extended stay out of town: Buy some fresh flowers for your hotel room or apartment.

If I’m out of town for more than a few days, this rule goes into effect. Let’s face it, housing can be fairly nondescript and impersonal. Hotels do their best to make you feel welcome, but they’ve been designed for mass appeal; likewise, this guest artist housing here in Hartford. All the necessary items are provided: dishes, pans, desk, television, sofa, coffee maker, bed, dresser. The bathroom is nice and large. I can hook up to the internet. I’m grateful for all that has been provided.

But it ain’t home. I can, however, do my best to make it cozier. You’ve seen my quilts and books and sewing machine and of course, Wayfrum, Little Lamb and Maggie Rabbit. These little touches from home put my stamp on an impersonal apartment.

tulips

Flowers? Number one necessity. On Friday morning, I grabbed the car that three of us are sharing and drove to Trader Joe’s. I needed some food and I needed some flowers. TJ’s prices can’t be beat, so I treated myself to two bouquets. These yellow tulips provide a wonderful, cheery splash of color. I have yellow tulips in the ground at home that will bloom while I am away (again) so I thought these were an appropriate choice. I’m getting my tulips one way or another!

tulipsinvase

I brought my pink hobnail vase with me but the wonderful thing about actor housing is that there are always vases around. Actors get flowers for opening night. They keep them in the dressing room or their apartment. When they leave town, they usually don’t want to transport a glass vase. Hence, the 3 or 4 vases I found here in the apartment.

Lucky me!

pinkvasewithflowers

I had to grab some alstromeria while I was at Trader Joe’s. I love alstromeria because it lasts a long time, so I get lots of bang for my buck.

Ah. I can’t tell you how happy I was to get fresh flowers for this space. Happier than I was buying the groceries I needed. Flowers make all the difference in the world.

We’ve had some long days of rehearsal lately. The show has been blocked and I’ve finished my one-on-one sessions with the actors for the time being. Now, Darko is working through each act of the play, fine-tuning the movements of the actors, making sure they are clear about what is happening in each moment and that the speaking of the text supports that. I am by his side, ready to jump up if needed and clarify what needs to happen from my point-of-view. At the end of the day yesterday, we ran Act Two. At the end of the day today, we will run Act One. I take lots of notes and then come home and write up each actor’s notes on a separate piece of paper, which I then, in turn, pass out to them at the next day’s rehearsal.

Next week there will be lots of run-throughs and at the end of that week, we move onstage. I can’t believe how quickly the rehearsal process is going!

Happy Sunday.

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Potpourri on Friday

May 3, 2013 at 9:11 am by Claudia

newmattress

• My second ‘unmade bed’ photo of the week. This from a girl who is a bedmaker. Like clockwork. But I show you this so that you can compare it to yesterday’s photo. Yes, the ugly mattress-turned-wallpaper is gone. I had a brief break during the day and came back to the apartment. Soon there was a knock on the door and it was the Company Manager, her assistant and a nice guy with a ladder. The guy with the ladder was there to rehang my curtain rod. Oh, didn’t I tell you? During my life as an I Love Lucy episode, I pulled on the curtains to close them and the rod came tumbling down, barely missing my head, the result of screws pulling out of the dry wall. They have now been secured with anchors. And the company manager didn’t mind at all that I had grabbed the other mattress. They moved the bad, cement-like mattress to the other apartment and then called my friend Bruce, who is an actor in the play. He likes a hard mattress. Indeed, he likes a hard mattress so much that he had been sleeping on the floor because he considered his mattress too soft. So he came upstairs, tried out the mattress and declared it just right. Into the elevator it went, on its way to Bruce’s apartment. See? Everybody is happy.

I slept much better last night. But then again, I was exhausted.

sneakers

• I hardly ever buy new clothes; we are on a tight budget. The two items I did buy before I left were a pair of sneakers and new jeans. Do you remember the jeans I bought that smelled musty? I washed those suckers countless times. I soaked them in vinegar. I hung them outside. They reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry can’t get the body odor smell (from a valet parking attendant) out of his car. The musty smell never left my jeans. It hung on for dear life.

I had to have a pair of jeans without holes in them, which is the pathetic state of most of my jean attire. I trotted off to Kohl’s. Don came along because I insisted that he assist me in a sniff test of all jeans I might be considering. So there we were, pulling out jeans in my size, sniffing them and putting them in a yay or nay pile. I’m sure we looked rather strange and somewhat questionable. Nevertheless, I discovered that Lee jeans seemed to have a musty smell and Levis did not. Levis passed the smell test. So, Levis it is.

And, in the continuing strange saga of getting older, my shoe size has changed. My feet are a half to a whole size larger than they were. Great. Just what I wanted. So, none of my shoes fit. Hence, the new pair of sneakers.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a non-musty pair of jeans and a new pair of sneakers are exciting.

• When did the words feminist or feminism become something bad? I have been reading a few posts around blogland that seem to be saying just that. Perhaps from a religious perspective? Is this something leftover from the days of bra burning? Something about women being subservient to men? Hmmm. So I looked up the dictionary definitions. As an adjective:

Advocating social, political, legal and economic rights for women equal to those of men.

The theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

As a noun:

An advocate of such rights.

Sounds good and fair and right to me. There doesn’t seem to be anything outrageous in those words. Aren’t we supposed to have equal rights in this country of ours? Forget the use of the word men in the Constitution – that’s a product of the time in which it was written. Women couldn’t even exercise their right to vote then. Feminism is a positive thing. And I’ll take it even further: the equal rights of all our citizens are good and fair and right to me. I’m no more special than anyone else. Neither am I less than. Neither is anybody else. With all due respect to those of you that might disagree with me and I do respect you, I’m a proud feminist.

I have a feeling this could be a blog post in itself. Who knows what controversy I’m stirring up!

projects

• My future projects:

Finishing the hand quilting on that quilt and binding it.

Starting my new quilt with the fabrics on the top shelf, except for the bark cloth on the right – that’s for a pillow cover.

Okay. I’ve rambled on enough.

Happy Friday.

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The Move That Wouldn’t End

May 2, 2013 at 8:54 am by Claudia

Moving from the hotel to the apartment was not as easy as I thought it would be. Don and I drove to Hartford, quickly packed up the rest of my stuff, loaded up the car and drove to the apartment building. So far so good.

Went up the elevator to the apartment. The sun was pouring through the windows. Very nice. After several trips up and down the elevator, we finally managed to move everything. Don had to leave. I went back downstairs to see him off. Then I tackled unpacking clothes, food, sewing machine, books, scripts, laptop, camera, etc. I liked the apartment and the mattress looked rather new.

I decided to take my shoes off.

That’s when I noticed that the carpet near the door was completely soaked with water. Uh oh. I called the Company Manager who said to check the hot water heater which was in a closet adjacent to the wet carpet. Sure enough: a leaky hot water heater. There were also water stains on the outside walls and some mold on the wall next to the heater. Not good. I’m allergic to mold.

The company manager said to hang in there, someone would come to look at it and I would have to move. Turns out I could move into the apartment next door. After I got the key, I moved everything over. It took a long time. I also switched out some of the lamps because the ones in the apartment I was now moving into were hideous – those cheap black modern floor lamps that are always just about to fall over. And one floor lamp had 5 or 6 extending goosenecks – it looked like an octopus.

So what should have taken about an hour ended up taking up several hours.

Fast forward to bed time. I got into bed and quickly realized that this was the hardest mattress I have ever encountered in my life. I am not kidding. I might as well have been sleeping on a piece of cement. I tried everything. I even dragged out some spare pillows and tried to sleep on them. It wasn’t working.

Now, you know that I’m used to a bad mattress. Our mattress at home needs replacing – both Don and I wake up sore every morning. So it’s not as if I’m the title character in The Princess and the Pea. Or in Once Upon a Mattress, though I actually did play that character many years ago. I’m not pampered by any means. But let me tell you, after 4+ hours of trying to sleep, I gave up. In the middle of the night, I went to the apartment I was supposed to be in and dragged the mattress top to this apartment. Imagine that picture: me in my flannel pajamas trying to quietly move a mattress down the hall. I battled with the cement mattress top and managed to stand it up against the wall. I remade the bed (for the third time) and finally fell asleep.

After about 4 hours of sleep, I’m hanging in there, but just barely. Meanwhile, I’ve emailed the Company Manager to update her on all of this.

Oh, and I was in such an exhausted haze that I filled the dishwasher with dish soap instead of dishwasher detergent and I had to bail the sucker out when I noticed some bubbles appearing where they shouldn’t be. But that’s all fixed.

Don said I’m living in an episode of I Love Lucy.

Here’s some pictures of this apartment. The ceilings are unbelievably high, which makes the apartment look quite spacious.

hall

The hallway. I moved this piece over from the other apartment with the help of the Company Management Intern.

livingroom

Living room. The coffee table was truly hideous, so I covered it up with my quilt. The sofa looks to be an Ikea Ektorp loveseat, but it’s been covered up with this slipcover that does not fit. Believe me, I’ve tried. I was told the actor who just vacated this apartment had his dog here and he kindly washed the slipcover.

I think it shrunk.

sewingarea

The little dining area which has become my sewing table.

kitchen

My favorite area – the kitchen. Love those industrial looking hanging lamps.

And the bedroom in its current state:

bedroom

I’m predicting a new decorating trend: Refresh your wall by propping a mattress against it. Instant wallpaper.

I am one tired woman. I suppose if I were a twenty something I could put up with this mattress – heck, I lived in dorms, slept on cots, even on floors when I was younger. But I’m not that resilient anymore. I need a softer mattress. Remember, I’m the oldest person working on this show.

Have to take a shower and get ready for a day of rehearsal.

Over and out.

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On the Road: Fresh Flowers

Potpourri on Friday

The Move That Wouldn’t End

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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