So I'm hatching a plan to take a mini-vacation, maybe only about 24 hours to go see someone who won't be expecting me and probably won't even know that I'm there. Sounds stalker-ish, huh? It's not. I'd go to see a concert by a musician who keeps not coming to Chicago, but who I would really like to see play live. I'm not sure when I'll go -- it will depend on the musician's show schedule. But even just thinking about going is really exciting to me. Something fun and random to look forward to, you know? Am I crazy? Probably. But who wouldn't want to jump on a plane, see a show, and come back home? It's kind of romantic when you think about it. And let's be honest -- good music is worth it.

I'll keep you posted.

Men should not wear skinny jeans. Unless maybe you're Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting, but even then, they weren't all that. But in general, I know skinny jeans are the thing now, but men should not be allowed to wear them. It's just not pretty.

I'm tired.

I'm sorry, but I need to bitch for a minute.

I'm tired. Just tired. I'm tired of working every day of every week for months on end. It wouldn't be so bad if more of it was stuff that I love to do, but I'm finding less and less time to do the things that I love so I can do things that will pay my rent. It's frustrating. I'm tired of not having a drummer and constantly being on the lookout for one. I'm tired of costumes. I'm tired of the Cubs not winning (though yesterday was certainly a step in the right direction). And I'm tired of something new going wrong every day. I find out today that the website address I've had on MySpace for who knows how long now, years?, was reassigned without my knowledge to the personal account of a woman living in New Hampshire. I sent an email to customer service and am waiting to hear back. I'm afraid they are going to tell me that there's nothing they can do about it, in which case, I have to change all kinds of promotional materials. If it wasn't such a useful tool, I'd delete my account and tell them to go piss up a tree if they respond like that. They better be able to fix it. They better fix it now. I know MissKitty is a popular screen name, but for me, it's actually my name. People have called me that since I was a kid. Not to mention the fact that I laid claim to the name years ago. I got there first, therefore, it's mine.

Fuck. Sorry. I'm tired. And I'm getting sick. And I have to babysit this meeting happening in my office today that I really don't want to have to babysit.

I need a vacation.

And I have to talk baseball for a minute.

What the hell?

We're hitting home runs. Lee and Ramirez have amongst the highest batting averages in the league. We're scoring small ball runs, too. We've gotten some really excellent starts out of our pitchers and even our bullpen has been doing a decent job most of the time. We've made some really great defensive plays. On paper, we're a great team. So why are the Cubs last in their division? Why aren't we winning games? It's not because the fans aren't cheering loud enough. It's not due to injuries (yet). There's just something that's not happening and for the life of me, I don't know what it is and it's starting to drive me crazy. I keep thinking that it's only April, that we have the whole rest of the season to get it together. But it's hard to watch them lose every day, especially coming after a season like last year, especially when we brought in all of this new blood and new energy. Hell, even our rookies are doing well. Why aren't we winning?

If you've got any insight, I'd be glad to hear it. Otherwise, I'm going to go adopt a goat and make a deal with the management.

I had my second Moby dream in about a week and a half last night. This one was decidedly less dirty than the first one, but in a way, it creeped me out more. We were in some sort of class together, I sat behind him, and just through off-hand comments I was making and whatnot, we got to talking and I could see him falling in love with me. It took a while before I kind of got comfortable with that and then we were just talking like we had been friends for a long time, and the more we talked, the less he looked like Moby. I kept having to remind myself that that's who I was talking to because he was becoming less and less attractive to me.

Which kind of makes me wonder, when put in conjunction with recent events, am I turned off by people who love me too much? I do have my close circle of friends (the big three as I like to refer to them in my head), and if I think about it, I'm pretty sure there was a time when I was a little freaked out by how close we were and I pushed them away for a little while, but then got over myself and now we're great friends. And I know my family loves me. But when it comes to a potential partner, am I really ready to let someone in like that? Or am I just reading too much into a dream I had about a conversation in chemistry class with a rock star?

I dunno. Something to think about.

Go see Hot Fuzz. That's really all I can say about that. Go see it. You won't regret the time or the money. It's just...yeah. Go see it.

So yesterday I got to "phone in" to a radio talk show in New York to talk about body image issues. Trying to put some positive vibes out there, you know, because I think the idea that women should look like pre-pubescent boys is ridiculous. Anyway. If you want to take a listen (and perhaps learn more about me that I might be comfortable with you knowing, but oh well), it will air on WBZB 98.5 in New York on Saturday, April 21 at midnight. Which would technically be Sunday morning, I guess, but whatever. If you don't happen to live in New York, you can listen online here. I believe. I did a Google search for the station and I think that's it. So anyway, take a listen and then maybe go tell all of the women in your life that they are beautiful. Because they are.

So I'm going to be on the radio in New York today. Sadly, I can't remember the call numbers of the station, or I'd tell you all to tune in. I'll keep you posted on where you can perhaps hear it after the fact. But anyway, I'm going to be on air talking about women's body image issues. We all know I've had issues pretty much my whole life and I'm tired of them, so I thought maybe it was time to put some positive energy into the universe on this topic. I know logically that all of my issues are in my head, but I've been struggling with them a lot again lately, especially as I'm getting older and I'm trying to sell myself to an industry that still thinks I need to look like a lollipop to be worth anything.

I want very much to be a positive voice for women's body issues. To scream from the mountain tops that women are supposed to have breasts and hips. To lambast the fashion industry for telling us all otherwise, and for not making clothes that fit real women. To force feed models and teenagers until the need for clothing in a size 0 disappears. To let young girls know that whatever they look like, however much they weigh, however bad their skin gets during puberty, no matter what the boys say, no matter what the other girls say, that they are beautiful and that they have the potential to do anything. I want my best friend's baby girl to grow up loving herself and being proud of what she looks like as well as who she is.

So I'm going on the radio today to talk about some of the absolutely ludicrous things that go through my head when I look in the mirror. I don't have a cure yet for a negative body image problem, but I'm working on it. And maybe if I can show other people how ridiculous it's gotten, they can work on it, too. I hope. Women are beautiful, damn it. Every single one of us.

I get to go to my first Cubs game of the season today and I'm so excited. I'm going with another big time, long time fan, so it should be a lot of fun. And we actually got a decent day for a game, too. I'm just worried that since they won 12-4 yesterday, that they'll be runned-out for today. They do that sometimes -- the day after a blow out win, they can't put a run together to save their lives. Here's hoping today doesn't go like that. I do get to see Maddux pitch, though. Not for the Cubs -- he's the opposition today. But it'll be nice to see number 31 back on the mound (even if he is in the wrong uniform).

Couple quick birthday shout outs -- Fucknut's was a couple of days ago. Happy happy. And my clown friend's birthday is today. Happy happy.

And I know that it seems kind of trite to talk about baseball and birthdays when 32 people were shot and killed in Virgina yesterday, but it's one of those things I can't really fathom. You see the video on the news where you can hear the gunfire, but it looks like a movie. You hear the people talk about it, the one woman in the classroom who laid on the floor and pretended she was dead so the gunman wouldn't shoot her and...how do you wrap your head around that? She was so nonchalant in her interview, too, like it was a perfectly normal thing to do, to lie on the ground and pretend you're dead until it's all over. I want to know how all of those people are doing today. I want them all to know that I'm thinking about them. I want the families of the victims to know that they are in my heart. And probably just like everyone else in the country, I'm hoping they find some kind of note or journal or something that can try to explain why he went on this rampage. Why he targeted that class. Why he targeted that dorm. Why he felt that mass murder was his only option.

We do everything we can to make schools safe places of learning, but sometimes, there's just nothing you can do. It makes me sad that the students there will be afraid to go to their classes for the rest of their careers there. It makes me sad that so many didn't get to graduate because of one man's pain. And the faculty that was killed won't get to share their knowledge with eager young minds anymore. And none of them get to hang out with their friends and families. Because of one man. What was so horribly wrong in your life that this was the best choice?

Sorry. That's why I was talking baseball and birthdays today.

My heart goes out to all of the students at Virginia Tech and their families.

So in an effort to make my house feel cleaner to me, I started going through my filing cabinet to sort and weed things out. In the process, I found a lot of things that I have written, mostly in college. Conversations that could be plays, or the start of plays. Stories that could be compiled into a book. Essays that are just plain funny. And it made me realize that I am a really good writer. I've been blogging for so long, just randomly putting my thoughts on the page, that I had forgotten that I have a really good imagination and I am a good writer. I think I'd also convinced myself that I'm not good at it because I don't write in the same style as the rest of the people in my theater company. My humor is more subtle. But that shouldn't stop me from writing. That shouldn't make me feel like I can't write. I actually have some ideas kicking around in my head that I think I'm going to start working on, whether they be for my current theater company or not. I need to not have that audience or stage in mind as I write. I need to just write and see what happens. Who knows? Maybe in a couple of years, in addition to having an album out, I'll have a book of short stories to publish. Hit all the major media outlets at once. Woo hoo!

So it's slushing outside. Not raining, not snowing, not sleeting, but slushing. Seriously, get your your flavor syrups, throw some on your car or on the ground, scoop it up and you have a lovely summertime treat. Except it is decidedly not summertime in Chicago. As I said, it's slushing outside today. I was supposed to go to the Cubs game, too, but it got canceled. Which is maybe a good thing, considering the fact that it is slushing outside. And it has given me many opportunities to learn that "canceled" only has one "l."

Cubs home opener and it's snowing.

I love Chicago.

It's always a learning experience, you know? If you can learn something from it, then it wasn't for naught. So what did I learn?

I want to be challenged.
I want to feel it in my toes.
I want to be pushed to be more than I am.
There are people out there who even introverts want to be with all the time.
No matter how appealing it might be, if it's not 100% what I want, I'm not going to take it.

God, I sound like an uppity bitch, don't I?

On a totally unrelated note, happy Easter. As I kid, I never understood the whole Easter thing. How did Jesus go from being born to being an adult and hated and crucified in three months? And I know there's this whole thing in the Christian church about burying people three days after they died because Christ rose three days after he died. So Good Friday happened, yes? And he died around sundown on Friday night? And Sunday morning when they came to clean his body, they found the stone had been rolled away and his body was gone? That's not three days. That's a day and a half at best. Where did the three days thing come from? And the whole bunnies and eggs thing has to be another pagan tradition that Christians adopted so as to not seem too strange. We didn't really do Easter presents at my house. I think I got a new Easter dress once or twice, and we did color eggs and hide them around the house while we ate WAY too many jelly beans, but somehow, as religious as my father is/was, Easter never felt like a really big deal to me as a kid. Maybe because it was a different day every year that seemed kind of arbitrarily picked. Christmas is always the same day. The Fourth of July is always the same day. Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Easter fluxuate from year to year, which to me, made them feel like lesser holidays.

But I'll give you a big smooshy kiss if you can spot all eight-seven reasons in this one entry alone why I'm going to hell.

There is very little in this world that can't be solved with chocolate pudding.

So Houston was exactly what I needed. Thank you so much to my friends down there for sharing their house and their lives with me for a couple of days. I love you guys and miss you already. And if you could clone your dog for me, that would be great.

Seriously, if I could have a dog like that, I'd be a total dog person. Anyway.

I know I promised you more brain droppings about my trip and they are still coming. I wrote about five pages in my paper journal about it, and I have to weed out what is too sappy to put up here and what is okay. But in the meantime, I want to say that I kind of rediscovered my other favorite bald musician on the plane on the way home and I love rediscovering your favorite musicians like that. Remembering the first time you saw them live. Hearing all of the tunes again with new ears. Getting excited about what tunes are yet to come. Watching videos and remembering what a great smile or sensibility an artist has that makes you respect them as a person, not just a musician. Yeah. If it's kosher to say, I have an artist crush on this musician, too. If he'd let me, I'd buy him a beer. But I'd make him talk to me while he drank it, so it might not be such an appealing offer. Anyway. Go check out his stuff. It really is good music and he really is a good person.

What is it they say about making new friends and keeping the old? What is it when you reacquaint yourself with old friends so they feel like new friends?

Oh, and I decided that I need more girl friends. Good girl friends. Who live close by. I love my Texas friend so much and I love our friendship -- it's unlike any other friendship I've ever had -- and it's hard to not be able to hug her more often, you know? Anyway. I need more artistic, wonderful, intelligent women in my life. Just something for me to keep in mind.

Hey.

So I'm in Houston with my wonderful best friend and her beautiful baby girl and her super fun puppy (who isn't really a puppy) and her groovy husband and I love it. I wrote more about being in Texas in my paper journal yesterday and I'll put it in here later. I had a lot to think about during my four or five hour layover in Dallas that I should share with you, but at the moment, I think I'm going to get up and go about my day. Day full of puppy and baby and girl talk. Puppies and babies and girl talk, oh my! Puppies and babies and girl talk, oh my!

Tee hee.

Happy April. And happy opening day! Go Cubbies!