Those are the opening lines to the show, and they’ve been pretty much playing in a loop inside my brain for two weeks. I am currently swimming in this show, surrounded in work.

The copyeditor’s notes arrived today on the novel. It looks like a completely different language. I have to dive into the novel yet again to accept or reject changes. I have about two weeks to do it.

Then there’s recaps and anime scripts and meetings and new scripts and I’m still trying to finish the novel because my agent’s asking to read it but I wanted to edit a first draft first…

So I’m finding myself wishing to escape to movies.

No. Screw it. I don’t want to write about movies. I saw Chicago and it was really good. I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did. But aside from Zellwegger being way too Kewpie for me I really liked the production. Really. I can say “Really” again, if you’d like. I’m such an awesome writer, aren’t I?

Catch Me If You Can was the perfect amount of sugary-sweetness for a holiday film that you see with someone’s mom.

Solaris. Yeah, so I watched a bootleg screener copy, so there were about nine different stamps across the screen making it difficult to see Clooney’s bare ass… but I think… it… was worth it.

Totally.

Far From Heaven. I’m glad I saw it, but I really don’t ever want to see it again. It was like getting through a classic novel just so you can answer the Trivial Pursuit questions later.

No more talking movies. I just want to watch them and let them be. Movies are good. No more discussions. Anything I would have complained about lately, Sars just did much better than I could have. I want Mullen’s head on a stick. He ruins a good twenty-five seconds of my life every single week.

I’m so tired.

Fourteen women. Two music writers. Musicians? Composers? Whatever — two guys who write music. One lives in New York. A producer. A producer higher up than him. A producer higher up than that producer. A lighting designer. A techie. Another director who uses the space one night a week but has somehow absorbed all of the possible time with the stage and the techies so that by the time I get there they look like they’ve gone through war and the last thing they want to deal with is me and my crew of dancing girls.

I have a new sentence that I say at the end of every note. “You’re very pretty.” It seems to work, to soothe the wound. “I don’t want you to do it like that,” I’ll say. “But you’re still very pretty.”

Fellas, take note.

“I need you to cut that bit. It’s not working. You look really pretty in that dress.”

I think everyone close to me is sick of hearing me go on and on about the show, but there’s nothing else to talk about. I think about this show constantly. I have to go and pick up my headshots in half an hour. These are the first headshots I’ve had since I was in college. That’s sad, how few times I’ve auditioned for things, isn’t it? That I haven’t needed new headshots until now? There’s something about them that’s so silly. Giant pictures of my head. It’s absurd.

And the songs are running through my head, and I need to send an email to the cast to talk about ticket prices and I still have to get headshots from some of them and there’s a rehearsal here at my house in three hours and another one tomorrow afternoon and another one tomorrow night and then probably more on Thursday and then I’m at the theater all day on Friday until the show goes up that night.

So, I’m not around here all that much this week, except maybe I’ll come here to vent or blah, blah on. Because all I’m doing is bathing in this show. I’m sick of my own brain about it. I’m driving others crazy.

“Can you do me a favor?” My boyfriend asked yesterday. “Can you stop singing that song? Until Friday? Just not in the house, okay? I can’t take it anymore. It’s in my head constantly.”

I can’t sleep thinking about blocking and lighting cues.

The silly thing is this show’s usually no fuss. But since it’s moving to a real theater, we’ve had to step up a bit, step up to the plate, as one of the cast members put it, and make it look a little more polished than we normally do. And so there are new cast members and additional bits and lights and sound cues and things we never had before. We’ve memorized our pieces and we have costumes and costume changes. It’s become a real show, and coming out of the holidays with so little time was probably a bad idea. If the show was opening next weekend I wouldn’t be so frazzled.

I just try really hard to not let them see me get frazzled. That’s when you lose them, when they see the fear in your eyes. Everything’s fine at all times. That’s how I have to appear. She’s not here yet? That’s fine. That girl just had a breakdown backstage? Of course she did. She’s got the flu? She’s feeding her newborn baby backstage? She broke a guitar string? That’s what was on the schedule. Cast on stage for notes, please.

It’s kind of like I’m becoming Anne Heche because I’m thinking about her constantly. I’m starting to understand the breakdown, the string of bad choices that lead to someone taking too many hits of Ecstasy and dancing topless in Fresno. I can see why it’d be appealing to tell everyone it’s no big deal — it’s just God’s will. Hey, hey, here come the aliens. No more lesbians. Hello, peace and calm.

This is my punishment for creating a show about a woman’s breakdown. This is what I get for thinking I’m so clever and funny. I get chaos.

I get it, Anne.

Touché, my fragile friend.