Red leather, yellow leather

So after years of auditions, I finally landed a role.

I will be performing in a bona fide comunity-college production.

Here's why it's great: 1. I have a small but really good part. 2. The play is amazing. 3.The director is a faculty member and also affiliated with a small Boston theater company. 4. After tonight's read-through I am pretty certain I will not be the worst performer.

Here's why it's not so great: 1. College students who are all kinds of eager but who are pretty green (I know because I used to be one of them). 2. One of the purposes in college theater is to provide an educational experience -- sometimes at the expense of the finished result-- so one of the cast members is a young man who is maybe African, judging from his French-accented, execrable pronunciation. Seriously; if you don't have the script in from of you, he's unintelligible. 3. COMMUNITY COLLEGE THEATER.

But you know, I'm happy about it because I can go in and feel like a pro. Yes, I'm going for the small pond because that's apparently the only place I can get cast, but god help me, I will have the audience in tears. Plus the other actors seem like a nice, friendly bunch, even if they are probably wondeirng what the hell a 50-something woman is doing in their show.

I have fantasies of becoming a role model.

So yeah, by the way, I'm in community college. I'm studying horticulture, classes so far are good, and I'm hoping to get a job this spring/summer somewhere that involves dirt and plants. My classmates are pretty nice.

It went like this:

Last job was office manager for a startup that turned out to be a bunch of guys who have no experience running a business but think they know everything because they got a bunch of Kickstarter money, and alienated any professionals with experience that they worked with. Hot mess. I decided: right. I can either keep trying to work in administration, or I can look at the long, bloody trail of adminstrative tears stretching back a good ten years, and make a change.

Several things fell into place. I'd been living with my uncle, and he was fine with it, but after a year it was time to stop mooching. A relative went into a nursing home, where she is having the time of her life, but her house can't be sold for two years for medicare reasons. So here I am. I did some cosmetic work to make the place less extremely Little Old lady House, but I'm not emotionally invested. It's a tiny ranch house with cramped rooms, and I basically live in the kitchen and living room, which have nice south-facing bay windows. I sleep in the main bedroom, use the other as a holding place for supplies, and the other bedroom holds my aunt's belongings.

I pay utilities and take care of the place, so it's good for all involved. I'm on a busy street that intersects one house away with another busy street, and there is no charm. The neighbors are fine, and I'm close to school, and I keep telling myself that this is a passage in life while I get my education.

I binge on Netflix because it costs no extra money, and because the last 1.5 years have been such a social desert that I actually think of TV characters as my friends.

I'm hoping for a job that will give me some social outlet and doesn't involve any more insanity. My clay class has some cool people, but this time around it seems like it's just all the cool kids sitting around and talking summer camps and schools.

Note: If you are one of these women who say things like, "I know what [insert unpleasant or arduous scenario] is like: I have a 5-year-old," hear me: I don't pity you. You had a kid, and you want all kinds of sympathy for the completely foreseeable fact that parenthood is hard? No. As a single woman with no kids, I am CONSTANTLY on the outside of most conversations. The ones about family trips, and who made supper tonight, or what your husband and offspring did for Mother's Day. You with your cluster of other moms sharing restaurants and clothing stores and whatever the hell you seem to mine from the bottomless pit of My Life With Husband and Kids.

You want hard? Do. It. All. Alone. Eat alone,shop alone, go to movies/cafes alone. Do it on one income.

Soooo.....yeah. Having a bit of a hard time, but bearable since I have my education goal. And then, well, we'll see.