Spring is here (I hope): Leaves on the elm trees are growing fat enough to cast a shadow, and the hamsters are so rambunctious that I've been bitten twice this week while trying to keep them from fighting. They lock onto each other like burrs and roll in every direction, biting and growling, until they're pried apart and sent "back to the mattresses". They weren't this aggressive in the winter.

I can't sleep at the moment because dear old Auntie Flo is visiting and occasionally demands tea, Hershey Kisses, and/or Tylenol. She also can't keep warm and demands to have every blanket in the house. (Speaking of houses, she also made me miss House, the @#$%*&@) She is quickly becoming Ogden Nash's "polterguest".
I may be taking this dumb metaphor too far, but just relax and be grateful I didn't use the word "clots".

I am watching/listening to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There's a checkout guy at the grocery store who changes his hair colour - seriously - every other day or so. The style changes too. Sometimes it's Flock-of-Seagulls in ultramarine, other times it's orange devil-horns, and once in a while it's pink spikes in the shape of pyramids. At Christmas he shaved a candy cane on one side of his head. I asked him if he'd ever seen Eternal Sunshine and he said, no, he always considers renting it then gets "something about killer robots" instead. So I explained Kate Winslet's hair - the Agent Orange, the Red Menace, the Blue Ruin hair. He said, "They stole my life story!"

I haven't updated my other blogs for such a long time because I'm finishing up the program for Walterdale theatre's Evening of One Acts - three new plays by local amateur playwrights, including Richard's friend Leland (his play is Kissing the Armadillo). The one-act plays stand out from the rest of every season's fare because they're A. usually written by teenagers B. Usually produced by teenagers, and C. Really over-the-top and occasionally even disgusting. A show called [iceland] (yes, the brackets are supposed to be there - don't ask me why) featured several Walterdale firsts: Onstage vomiting, gay kissing involving baked beans (move over, Ann Margret), and a cannibal BBQ. Last year there was FranChews, about a Vincent Price-esque young guy who gets dumped by the gorgeous Fran and decides to turn her image into a brand of chewy, fruit-flavored candy so that wherever she goes, she will see children chewing on her face. FranChews is currently being made into a movie. So this is just a teeny taste of what the one-acts can be like. Last year, I stage-managed (for the first time, and ineptly) a one-act play called Double Occupancy, about a middle-aged married couple having affairs with younger people in adjacent hotel rooms. I had to admire the two younger actors for wandering around in their underwear for the better part of an hour every night, because it wasn't exactly spring this time last year, and killer drafts were whooshing right onto the stage. It's amazing what actors will do to themselves for their art, especially on an amateur level. Not to mention the crew members! I mean, would you clean faux puke off a stage every night for weeks for free? And I thought making cucumber sandwiches for The Importance of Being Earnest was tedious.

We're hoping to do some camping in early June, when Richard has a bit of time off. I want so badly to see the mountains, I can almost taste them. And mountains don't taste so great.
Demi will be here later in the summer, and we may take her to the coast to see the ocean, finances permitting. Richard and I were both sick over spring vacation, and the poor kid spent most of her time cooped up in the apartment with us, playing Spongebob UNO.

I'd better try to get some sleep before Aunt Flo wakes up with some weird request, like bananas dunked in sugar or sardines with mustard. Goodnight/morning.