so close, yet sooooooo faaaaarrrrr.....

how in THE WORLD is it that the last seven days of this tour feel longer than the last seven months?  a few weeks ago, when some of us were conjecturing that the end would fly by, nicole had it right:  it was going to drag, and drag bad.  badly.  bad.  whatever.  

my skin is literally crawling to be home.  no one can do right by me these days, and for 90% of the people here, that's through no fault of their own.  (the other 10% are simply failures as people, so they can just stew in that pot all together.)  i'm just on edge and angry and rubbed raw, and i am done.  i have nothing left to give and no interest in giving anyway.  

i've been counting down days for about four weeks.  counting down shows for about two weeks.  today i considered counting the hours left, but i refrained, as i thought that would just make me feel a little crazier.  that's it.  i feel crazy.

facebook fanstuff

so here's the deal. i realize that you're not my fans. you're my friends. i know that. but the problem is that on facebook, they call it a "fan" page. if i could change the title to a "hey, what's going on in chelsea's career?" page, i would. but i can't. i feel a little bit like a tool inviting people to be my fans. but the deal is, that when you're an actor, you have to market yourself, plain and simple. you're a brand, and you are in charge of putting your brand out into the world for people to consume. and obviously, it's easiest to start with your friends. so be a fan. be a friend. be all of it, and suggest being a fan to your other friends. spread the love people, and i'll do the same for you.

xoxo

independence day.

here's what your 4th of july is like when you are a farmer's daughter.

you get to your cousins' house, and 35 of your relatives are already there, talking, eating, laughing, hugging. you make the rounds and say hello to everyone, and pick a chair to settle in. you catch up with everyone you can catch up with, and you load a plate with a giant burger, some potato salad, and some watermelon. you move around a little bit to try to chat with as many people as possible, and you listen and you laugh a lot. you watch the new babies swimming in the pool and remember the days when you and your generation were the babies. you watch the boys play horseshoes, you listen to the women talk about hot flashes, you pick at the dessert table. you talk a little louder to the older generation, and you admire someone's new haircut. you take the chairs out to the front lawn to get ready for the fireworks, and you watch the boys take a giant wheelbarrow full of them across the road to the canal bank. you look out at the fields and the orchards and the mountains and the perfect sky and you realize that you feel good in so much space. you snuggle under blankets with your family, and ooh and aah at the show, and pat your dad on the back for picking the best fireworks out at the store. you hug everyone one more time, and you hop in your car and go home.

and you look up at the huge, open night sky, and see so many stars you can't count, and you know that it's about as much as a girl could ever ask for.

it has to be said.

i'm sorry. but i think that people who eat with an open mouth sound like barnyard animals. and it grosses me out.

the glamourous life.

gotta be one of the best travel day stories ever:

so we all bring our luggage down to load the bus for our travel day from Columbus, OH to Charleston, WV yesterday. there at the curb to greet us are two buses: one that looks like it ferried passengers from California to Tijuana in the late seventies, and one seriously old-school bus (literally, an old SCHOOL bus). the two grizzly dudes who were driving grabbed our suitcases and put them in the school bus, informing us that we would be riding in the other (henceforward known as the TJ bus). we got on the TJ bus and promptly realized that it lacked any sort of air conditioning. being the troopers that we are, we popped the emergency hatches for a breeze and took off.

after having gone about 30 miles over the next hour, we realized that our little TJ bus didn't have a whole lot of get-up-and-go, especially when headed uphill, which is pretty common driving around in Ohio. so our magical company manager starts calling the bus dispatch for them to send us another bus, but none were available yet. meanwhile, clothes start coming off, water gets passed around, and cameras come out to capture us at our sweatiest hot-mess-ness.

not too long after that, our tranny little caravan pulled over to the side of the road. our TJ bus driver runs out, and a few of our crew guys follow. we then get an update from Eric saying that the school bus burst a hose due to overheating, because it had been pushing us up the hills. dudes. the little-school-bus-that-could had been literally nose-to-booty PUSHING US up hills. i mean, come on.

so we make it down the road about a mile to the nearest truck stop, where we wait for an hour or so for a different bus (with a/c, thank you very much) to come and rescue us.

upshot? the company bought us lunch. :) all's well that ends well.

overdue lists.

it's getting tense around here again, seeing as how we're a week away from our second layoff. once more, we seem to be all on each others' nerves and going a little bit bonkers. so here are some lists to remind myself (and some of those in doraland who shall remain nameless) that it's really not that deep.

we could do with less:
passive agressive behavior
know-it-alls
hypocrisy
power trips
small theatre anger
dreary weather in the summer
three show days
muttering under your breath
diva 'tude

we really love:
when people open their homes to us for parties!
the confetti canons (even though we won't admit it)
hotel maid service
getting a paycheck every week
the prospect of what's next
planning cast fun times
sundress sundays
people who can take a note
creativity onstage
easy-breezy attitudes
baby mosh pits
finishing a three-show day

people. relax.

a slice of life from birmingham, alabama.

so during press the other day, we had some time to stop and go to breakfast at a pancake house. i went to use the restroom, where there were two stalls: one was occupied, and one was locked from the inside with no one in it. seeing as how i didn't want to crawl on the floor to unlock the latter, i waited for the first to clear. in came a woman who worked in the kitchen, and seeing that the stall was going unused, she asked if i was waiting. i told her it was locked. she promptly stepped up onto the sink, laid down over the top of the stall, hung her torso down inside the stall, unlocked the door, and slammed it open. she jumped back down, used the restroom, and left without washing her hands.

birhmingham, folks.