Vacation Inn - Niagara Falls, Ontario
There are things they don't tell you about pregnancy.
Breakfast, like dinner, was sub-par but tasty. Tacky restaurant, tacky diners. Lots of older people. I can only imagine how demoralizing it is to work there, most of their business must come from packages with this hotel. Free meals = no tips, I am sure.
It feels colder today, not inviting to walk around. We dressed warmly but not warm enough. I didn't bring a baseball cap which was dumb because I need to keep my head warm, even inside.
Today was a perfect day for a slow start, we'll do one or two things before our 8:30 dinner at the Skylon. Toni will need a nap in a few hours, anyway. She was feeling pukey after breakfast.
Must take photos of Niagara. My favorite spot, where the falls meets the wall, is frozen! Strange tendrils of ice, pointing in odd directions, like coral. Beautiful.
Ever since the plumbing in our bathroom at home got f*cked up, the most decadent thing imaginable is a bath. We took one together last night, I am running one for myself now.
I have decided Toni and I should do anything or nothing on this trip. She is far too susceptible to nausea or weakness and it's too cold out, it wears us both down to spend too much time outside, if only to scurry from place to place.
She wanted lunch at the Victorian Park Restaurant, where we had lunch in 96, but the restaurant is closed during the winter.
So we had a buffet (Toni dislikes buffets) at the Table Park complex, right next to the falls. Then we went to the park greenhouse. And now we are back, and Toni is napping. See? Perfect.
There was a striking red-head at the restaurant, like a cross between Bjork and Donna from "That 70s Show."
Looking out the window, at the falls, with ice coating everything ... must wreak havok on all the man-made construction, the mist, the ice, the freezing, contracting thawing. I don't know how the trees make it, let alone the buildings.
A greenhouse in winter, lots of frisky birds. I love that. Now I will settle in and read "What Is Theatre?" a book by Eric Bentley Dad gave me for Christmas."If you were the playwright, wouldn't you rather have a critic take issue with your play than be so ecstatic that you can tell he's making it up?" - Bentley
No, of course not, don't be arrogant. You are free advertising, if you cared about improving theater you would be in it and not whoring yourself to a media conglomerate.
Vacation Inn - Niagara Falls, Ontario
Back in Niagara after 4 1/2 years, now for New Year's Eve. After last year's millennial bash, I vowed this year would be private, just Toni and I. And where better?
It's cold, not as cold as it has been, though. We took off after 1:30 PM, had to stop at an Applebee's - we tried to find a local place,the weather and Toni's pregnancy blood-sugar was prohibitive. Got here after dark. Homely motel, not bad, great, wide tub. Excellent deal. Two nights, free breakfast and dinner at the Skylon, tomorrow night. This is nice.
After dinner at Biffy's we drive down to the falls. Iced over at the edges, the mist leaves stalactite-type icicles on everything. Spidery or tentacle-like.
We took a horse ride, and then came home and defrosted with a bath.
Last October, as Roger began directing 'Compleat Works', he shared with me some ingiht into his anxiety about the project. We had just opened 'Sin" at Bad Epitaph, and there he was, with me and Nick and Al, Don McBride, and he was panicked - how would we do this show? How could he get everything done? There wasn't time for this!
And then he stepped back and realized he was still in Tech Week from 'Sin.' This show wasn't about to open, we had some five weeks to get it done. Five weeks is a long time to get anything done.
I have been in Tech Week for months now, and I do not know how to get out of it.
I suppose a great deal of this has to do with my actually fulfilling the promises I made to myself years ago. I have my own company, and all the stress that comes with (how do I produce an entire season right now, during Tech Week?) Or that I have a part-time job doing web design for the ACLU (I work five hours a day there, but they can't expect me to charge their entire website during Tech Week!)
And the baby. We are trying to get pregnant. And she's going to have a baby tomorrow. Because it is Tech Week. And the house isn't ready for a baby yet.
Nine months is a long time to accomplish anything. Tech Week isn't.
I am wearing a sweater Toni picked out for me from land's End. It's cozy, warm, a nice, homely cotton sweater. In green. I used to hate green. When the baby comes we will paint one of these rooms green for it.
In April 2011, I HATE THIS will be produced at Cleveland Public Theatre. These will be the first public performances in Cleveland since 2004, and the first time I have performed the show at all since 2007.
The events described in the play occurred ten years ago, and at the time I kept a journal. I will be providing edited version of these journal entries on the I HATE THIS blog through next Spring. - 8/27/10
We are trying to get pregnant - that needs to be on my list, to read the 'pregnant books.' Sometimes I think she cannot be serious, and there she is, wearing her fecundity medallion every day, the one Nicole lent her. The things we trust in.
