Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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Grateful

June 19, 2015 at 7:53 am by Claudia

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First off, Scout is home. They didn’t get to her procedure until late in the day yesterday. I lost count of how many times I checked my phone during the course of the day. My concern was not the procedure itself, which was relatively minor. It was the use of any kind of anesthesia. Scout is 16½, remember, so she doesn’t sail through these things like she did when she was younger. I had Don tell the vet that she was very sensitive to certain medications, like acepromazine. It takes an alarmingly long time for her to recover. So they ended up giving her an IV of something or other that was mild. Even so, she was moaning and barking last night. (She doesn’t bark anymore, so you can imagine my surprise when Don sent me a video of her doing that very thing!)

No cone, thank goodness. I’m so glad she’s home with her dad. We’re grateful to her doctors, who are simply the best.

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We never heard from our neighbor, the electrician. So Don called a friend of his named Gus, who is also an electrician, and he came by the house late in the day yesterday. He and Don played with the circuit breakers and Gus replaced one of them. While they were in the middle of running up and down the basement stairs, Gus noticed the dehumidifier in the basement was shooting sparks.

Oh boy. We think that dehumidifier was the culprit. It was sparking, which caused the circuit breakers to flip. Needless to say, it was unplugged immediately and so far, so good. The power company is going to check the lines today and I think it’s a good idea to have them do that, just to be safe.

Grateful, as always. Grateful Don saw what was happening to Scout before he went to bed for the night. Grateful for our local vet. Grateful for friends who stop by after a long, long day at work to check our electrical problems. Grateful Scout is okay. Grateful my husband is dealing with all of this while I’m away. Grateful for the good thoughts sent our way from all of you.

I don’t like to dwell on the negative here on this blog. That can get old very quickly. Everyone is dealing with challenges, big and small. So we’ll end with the positive. Scout is well. Don is well. I am well. Our house is still standing. We have friends everywhere. We are blessed.

Rehearsals are long but lively and I’m having a great time.

I am convinced that Our Town  is simply the best play ever. It’s that profound, that powerful, that glorious.

Lucky me!

I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to acknowledge the senseless tragedy in Charleston. Words escape me. Our collective heart is broken. Sending prayers to all those who are suffering and are waking to a world that will never be the same.

Happy Friday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

 

Filed Under: Don, On The Road, Scout 50 Comments

Problems Back Home & Some Chautauqua Cottages

June 18, 2015 at 8:23 am by Claudia

My absence from home is not coming at a good time. We’re having electrical problems; due, I’m sure to the loss of power we had during the tornado/microburst. Don put in a call to our neighbor, who is the electrician who put in the wiring when the house was flipped. It’s worrisome.

And then, late last night, Don called in a panic. He was getting ready to go to bed, so he was about to let Scout outside when he noticed her left ear was bleeding. A lot. Big clots of blood. She didn’t seem to be in any pain and he tried to stop the bleeding to see where the injury was, but it wouldn’t stop. So he called our vet and took her in around 10:00. After long minutes of panic on our part, the vet said that it was a fairly common problem. There is a growth inside her ear that had probably been there for a while. It had either been lacerated or it popped. Since it’s in the head, it bled profusely, as all head injuries do. They kept her overnight and today they’re going to cauterize it. And they’ll give her a bath because she is covered in blood.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep a whole lot last night, but I’m praying Don did because he hadn’t slept very much the night before.

Send some positive thoughts our way, will you? For Scout and for our cottage. And for the abundance needed to pay for it all, which, at the moment, seems to be missing. Sigh.

I managed to get some photos yesterday as I walked through Chautauqua. It was a gloomy morning and I had to use the iPhone. (I do have my big girl camera with me and I promise to use it soon.)

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These are on the larger side; my favorites are the smaller, narrower, dollhouse-like Victorian cottages and I’ll take some pictures of those while I’m here. Almost all of the cottages in Chautauqua have cottage-style gardens like the one picture above.

Workmen are everywhere right now; fixing, painting, planting, getting houses that were closed for the winter open and ready for the summer. They have to be done with everything by a week from this Sunday, when Chautauqua officially opens for the season.

By the way, a reader alerted me to an article on Chautauqua in this month’s Victoria magazine. I don’t read that magazine, as a rule, but I bought a copy the other day and the article is very informative.

Happy Thursday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Filed Under: Chautauqua, Don, life, On The Road, Scout 65 Comments

It’s a Very Small World

June 17, 2015 at 8:11 am by Claudia

Chautauqua.

It’s beautiful here – except for the weather. The weather, alas, is the same as it is back home; muggy, stormy and generally uncomfortable.

The night of my arrival, after a 5 hour train trip that turned into 6 hours, and a 90 minute trip from the train station to Chautauqua, I dropped my stuff off at the apartment, met my roommates (I was the last one in) and then we all went over to the Artistic Director’s house for a lovely meal.

It rained torrentially while we were there. Thunder, lightning, the whole shebang.

But then this happened:

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I haven’t edited this photo, save for adding the watermark.

This is how it looked on Chautauqua Lake.

We’ve been in rehearsals for two days now. I love the cast members I have met so far. More are coming on Thursday. And, as always seems to be the case, I’ve found out that I coached two of them years ago at the Old Globe. Theater is an extremely small world. In that same vein, one of my roommates is the costumer designer and we were chatting about her wedding a couple of years ago, which, it turns out, took place very near to my home in a well-known mountain resort. She told me that the rehearsal dinner took place at a different venue – an old distillery – and I quickly figured out that she was describing a place just down the road from our cottage. Then she remarked on what a lovely area it is and that she worked with an actor once who lived in that same town. Now, I know of a few well-known actors who live near us, so I was thinking about possible names. As she struggled to remember his name, she mentioned that they had worked together in Pygmalion in Williamstown.

She was talking about Don.

The moment I realized it, I said “That’s my husband!” And we laughed. I also got a chuckle because I was thinking of all these other names and not Don’s. Theater is truly a small world.

Then my other roommate, who I met last year and who has a long history with the Chautauqua Theater Company, and I had a conversation and we discovered I had coached him in a production of The Countess at the Old Globe. When I met him last year, I thought he looked familiar and I also remember a conversation we had at the time where we racked our brains trying to figure out how we knew each other. It wasn’t until this year that we got the connection.

Just after this realization, we walked back to the rehearsal room and another actor in the play who has done a lot of television and film work (on The Wire, for example) looked at me and said, “We’ve worked together. I recognized you when I saw you.” And then we went through possible connections and realized we had worked together on a production of The Hostage  at the Old Globe.

It never fails to amaze me. I’ve coached hundreds and hundreds of productions over the years, so the details don’t always come readily to mind, but I never forget a face. I knew I recognized that actor, but the director said it was probably from The Wire. Turns out it was because I coached him in a Irish dialect!

I love this sort of thing. It’s so wonderful to meet up again with faces from the past.

Happy Wednesday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

 

Filed Under: Chautauqua, life, On The Road, theater 41 Comments

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Welcome!

Welcome!

I live in a little cottage in the country with my husband. It's a sweet place, sheltered by old trees and surrounded by gardens. The inside is full of the things we love. I love to write, I love my camera, I love creating, I love gardening. My decorating style is eclectic; full of vintage and a bit of whimsy.

I've worked in the theater for more years than I can count. I'm currently a voice, speech, dialect and text coach freelancing on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional theater.

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Scout & Riley. Riley left us in 2012. Scout left us in February 2016. Dearest babies. Dearest friends.

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