One & Done Sunday #23

Hey.

It’s One & Done Sunday.

One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

My last remaining active addiction is sweets. Considering how many bakeries and ice cream shops and donut ice cream shops and crap there are within a three-block radius of my work, I do pretty well. I hold out most of the time. A significant improvement from ten years ago, when I used to have dessert with every meal including breakfast.

But every so often I break.

I snuck out to Donna Bell’s Bake Shop yesterday. This was after my husband and I had dinner between shows, after he had dropped me back off at my stage door and I was saying how I was going to go write or nap or some other bullshit. I knew exactly where I was going.

Donna Bell’s is cool because it’s unpredictable. It’s tiny, they have different selections every day, and sometimes they open late and close early. Sometimes you go and the cases are full and there are no customers. But it’s partly owned by some famous and unusual looking actress with whom I am unfamiliar, so sometimes you go and there are three tour busses full of folks buying them out of cupcakes.

I was hot for a peanut butter cookie-wich. I figured if I went and there was a giant line, or else if they didn’t have the cookie-wiches, then it would be a sign to me and I would leave, empty-handed.

There was no line.

I scanned the case and determined there were, in fact, no cookie-wiches. My eyes laid upon the Pumpkin Pie Bar (with cheesecake strudel). Intriguing, but not what I was after.

I turned to go.

But then The Oak Ridge Boys’ Elvira came on the music system. It’s a song that has been inexplicably stuck in my head this week and I knew it could only mean one thing: God wanted me to have that Pumpkin Pie Bar. He was speaking to me through the Oak Ridge Boys.

God has good taste.

I have the picture to prove it:

Here are your links:

Please don’t tell #5, but there’s a bacon shortage. Here are 25 things that helped cause it.

On the Importance of Saying “Thank You”- Broadside Blog.

In the 1860’s, Timothy O’Sullivan took some amazing frickin’ pictures of the American West, documenting as American government workers explored the western state. Holy crap these are cool! Check out this article in the Daily Mail.

And because it made me happy, another Daily Mail article: Cat Pirates.

This is an excellently written controversial article that came out in The Atlantic in June titled Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. It’s long. Read it. There will be a follow up post on it later.

Happy Sunday.

One & Done Sunday #20

Welcome to One & Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

Here’s your picture:

It’s a total geek shot of my Superstar console. The question people always asked when they saw it was, “Why does it have so many colors?”. Looking at it from this angle, it kinda looks like the venue we performed in in Berlin last year. There’s a very Euro-techno feel to it. Plus, it’s dusty.

Earlier this month, we played our final performance of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway. It was bittersweet, as I guess these things always are. I’m better for having this opportunity to work with such talented–and nice, being that they’re largely Canadian and if they’re not nice enough they get kicked out of their country– people.

There was a party afterwards. I’m not big on parties and went to a yoga class instead, planning to swing by the party on my way home.

When I walked into the locker room it was nearly empty because I was running late and made it just in time. Something caught my eye: a prosthetic full leg, from just below the hip, on the floor against the wall.

Because the natural state of my mind is to be small and boxy, I couldn’t imagine anyone who actually needed that prosthetic would be down in the hot room to do yoga. My first thought was that it was some sort of prop, a possibility since this midtown yoga studio caters to a lot of performers.

They say yoga expands your mind.

I went downstairs and set up my mat. I looked to the right of me and there was the woman to whom the prosthetic belonged. She was tall, strong, and determined and there to do Bikram. I was humbled and inspired. I could not in good conscience sit out of a single pose that class.

It was an immediate and complete shift in my perspective.

I wished that I felt confident enough to speak to her after class, but I didn’t. I didn’t have confidence in finding the words to convey what I felt without those words being condescending, insensitive, or disrespectful. But in my eyes she was a goddamn rock star.

I don’t know if I’ll see her again or not, but the memory remains. I’m grateful for it.

The next day when I was extra sore from the extra effort I put out in that class, I thought of that badass woman and smiled.

Namasté.

Here are your links:

I just came across this post this morning and it filled my soul. Not much makes me happier than when one of my kids likes my music (and props to this kid for being a RUSH fan!): Pretty Girls Make Gravy: The Day She Discovered Led Zeppelin.

When your kid has to write an apology letter on the last day of school. Sh*t my 6-year-old-says: Apology Letter

Maybe some are staged, but I prefer to believe they’re not. 21 Pictures that will restore your faith in humanity

Get schooled on heavy metal: LA Weekly (thanks Deathrow Dan for the link).

This entire blog is worth reading, so I’m linking to the home page: An Athlete’s Journey Through Breast Cancer

Happy Sunday.

One and Done Sunday #18

Welcome to One & Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

When you tell stories that are not your own, often things get lost in translation. Details may be embellished or forgotten, significant bits left out, and complete fabrications can occur.

This is not the case with the following story. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless and without any identifying characteristics, is having problems with squirrels getting into her trashcan. They have chewed through the fastening mechanism on the lid to reach the contents. They are not thwarted by mothballs, bleach, or anything she can think of to secure the lid.

No one else on her street is having this issue.

She’s one of those moms who does too much, but she’s usually in the flow and pretty organized. Monday morning she woke up and was checking out her schedule and saw that she was completely booked. She always makes Monday’s dinner the night before. (I know, right? Sunday night I make something from the freezer section for the kids and then throw lunch money at them Monday morning so I don’t have to deal with making lunches on my day off).

As she remembered she made meatloaf for Monday’s dinner, she also remembered that she’d never taken it out of the oven Sunday night.

Bummer. Bye-bye, meatloaf.

She threw it away in secret, neatly avoiding a conversation with her husband about wasted meat and what’s for dinner tonight.

Some time later her husband said, “Do you know anything about a squirrel out here with a meatloaf?”

There was a squirrel, trucking across the powerline with some difficulty, carrying damn near an entire meatloaf that he had liberated from the trash can.

Here’s your picture (sadly, not of a meatloaf-carrying squirrel).

CC was out slaughtering the overgrown wisteria and mulching our dangerously raked “back yard” and the puggles were beside themselves and would not leave me alone until I put them out with him. They have 20-foot leashes that let them explore a little bit under supervision.

Casey managed to climb up on the little stone wall into the flower pots while simultaneously getting herself all tangled up and stuck. The part you can’t see are all the branches her leash is wrapped around.

Here are your links.

A beautiful, tiny essay by a great writer: Tragedies

Reminiscent of that Moe the bartender Simpsons quote I was born a snake handler, and I’ll die a snake handler: Paul Johnson at The Good Greatsby If It was a Snake It Would Have Bitten You.

On Michael Ruhlman’s excellent food blog, Anthony Bourdain So You Wanna Be A Chef.

Seinfeld Episodes That Wouldn’t Work Today – Jenny at Caffeinated & Random

Beth Howard makes pie. She also lives at the American Gothic house (yeah, that one in the Grant Wood painting. I mean, the actual one that he painted, she doesn’t live in the painting. She’s a real person). She has a hell of a story about coming back to life after her young husband died suddenly. Here’s her Real Simple article Miss American Pie.

Also you should check out her book Making Piece, a Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie.

So technically that’s six links.

Happy Sunday. May your trees stay up where they belong and your squirrels keep their damn hands off your meatloaf.