Bloggin' for my mama

My mom has sent me at least three emails in the past week giving me flack for not blogging! This is funny because she’s probably the one person I update most consistently about my life. Still, she feels left out when I don’t blog every day. It’s sweet (but my next blog will be titled: guilt-trip.blogspot.com).

A couple exciting things happened to me this week: On Tuesday, I visited my friend Ben’s senior English classes at Stanley Lake High School. I came as a “visiting artist” to talk about my writing and performance experience. How hilarious is that. I did a reading from my one-woman show, Bone-a-fide: A Tumorous Comedy and was surprised when the kids actually laughed in the places I intended to be funny. It was so fun just talking about writing and performing and how to turn the tragic things in life into art. It made me feel “official” and it inspired me to want to work on the second half of my one-woman show again. I would love to perform at cancer conferences and fundraising events so other people who have experienced similar struggles can laugh along with me.

Then tonight Ben and I went to see The Second City: “Losing My Denverginity.” It’s a great show and at intermission the stage manager came up to us and said the cast requested us to join them in their improv set after the sketch show, and we agreed. So a dream of mine came true tonight: I PERFORMED WITH THE SECOND CITY!!! It was just a twenty-minute improv set, and I didn’t jump into that many scenes because I felt weird 1. Because the audience paid to see Second City, not me, and 2. I was on crutches and felt a little limited by my mobility. But still, it was fun, a dream come true, and I love everyone in that cast—not only are they super talented, but they’re also wonderful, kindhearted people. Plus, they’re fun to hang out with and I’ll miss them when they return to Chicago. I hope they all go far after leaving our fair city in December.

Oh, also, in not-as-fun news I had an interview today and will start phone-fundraising next week. It’s just about the only second job I can manage while on crutches. I’m actually excited because we’re fundraising for progressive organizations and I’ll feel more in touch with what’s going on in the world and the elections this November. However, it is not lost on me that I was a canvasser for Clean Water Action when I was nineteen, and this is pretty much the same work, except via phone, ten years later. It will be good extra cash, but I have to ask myself, how far have I come in the last decade?

Okay, okay, I’ve beaten cancer AND played with The Second City, so I guess it hasn’t been a total wash. (Ha ha.)