Here I am chillin' at Panera of a Saturday morning, on the first day in recent memory that I haven't had anything scheduled. I do have to write an article, but it's a fun one and doesn't feel burdensome. Later, I'm going to run and shower for the first time in at least a week (the run, not the shower) and make granola and green tea and stretch and maybe call Lyndsay for movie/show-on-DVD chill time. This is what Saturdays should be!
So the article I'm (ostensibly) about to write: a response to Shadowlands, the play based on C. S. Lewis's late-in-life romance. I didn't know a dang thing about his life! And I learned it in the most enjoyable of ways. He met Joy Gresham when she was 41 and he was 58. He was a bachelor, and she got a divorce soon after they met but not because they met. They had corresponded by post for a long time. She came to visit from America, and then after her divorce she ended up moving to the same town as him, Oxford. I won't give anything else away, but I will tell you it's a great and unusual story. This is Big Dawg Productions' second time wowing me with atypical romance, which is the only kind I can really stomach in stories. A few weeks ago, I saw their production of Neil Simon's Chapter Two, a more light-hearted but still very affecting love story.
On Thursday night, I went to see the musical The Secret Garden, also for work. It was weird and artsy, like with ghost people showing up during regular scenes so you know they're remembering the past, and red cloths to represent cholera. But it's The Secret Garden, and by no means did they mess it up. I'm so ready to read it again!
Both plays made me feel kind of icky and eye-rolly, like "la la la, I'm not listening," because they were both about trust and loving people even though you know you're going to lose them. My deep dark side said, "Psshht. That's all well and good for other people, but I'm not capable of, or not interested in, that kind of love. I prefer the illusion that I and everyone I care about will live forever, and if maintaining that illusion means keeping everyone at arm's length, then that's what I will do." Not my best moments. Growing up is hard to do, especially when you keep thinking you're done. But Lewis's wife in the play said, "The pain then [later, when one person dies and the other has to handle it] is part of the happiness now. It's part of the deal."
Oh, and the actor who played Lewis was phenomenal. Real tears, I saw.
Speaking of illusions, it hit me a few weeks ago that disillusionment is a good thing. It doesn't feel good, and when I say I'm disillusioned I usually mean "I hated that." But when faced with a choice between illusion and reality, a choice we don't always have, you're not in your right mind if you consistently choose the illusion.
And I think I have some solid thoughts for my article! But before I go on to that, I'll leave on a lighter note.
The boss called my coworker at 8 a.m. the other day to tell her a plane had crashed on I-40. As she was getting ready, coworker thought to look it up and make sure it was true before getting all worked up over it. She found nothing online, so she called the county EMS. The desk worker who answered knew nothing about a plane, but coworker left a message for the director. He called her back much later, laughing hard, and said it was a crop duster. It happens pretty frequently, he said: people see the crop dusters flying very low and think they're planes in trouble. This one landed, on purpose, in a field, not by accident on I-40.
So coworker called boss to fill her in. During that same call, boss said, "Oh, and ask someone about the fire on Teachey Road on Wednesday."
I am so proud of coworker for thinking of it then and not after hanging up. She said, "Are you sure it wasn't a cookout?"
Also, I was really mad over food and drink being missing from the fridge, and then one roommate wrote me a note explaining that she'd been taking Ambien and it made her sleep-eat. The only explanation that makes me not mad! And the last one I would ever have come up with.
Oh, is God ever good.
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