I was a gender-confused four-year-old.*

*Part one in a series of 'Things that have no bearing in my adult life and really don't give a shit about one way or another but continue to talk about because I think they're hilarious.

So. I went to a Jewish private dayschool from the age of two through eighth grade, and anyone who has any experience with the world of Jewish dayschools will know... there is a lot of pageantry involved. Little mock festivals where every kid has one or two lines of dialogue, and you sit in a row and basically go down the row and say your line. Fun times. Your parents go and pretend to like it but really, they're wondering why they're paying ridiculous tuition so their progeny can mumble badly-written verse about the Founding Fathers/The Pilgrims/The Ten Commandments/Whatever Have You.

My pre-k class did one called Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat where, as the name might suggest, everyone's grandparents were invited and a lovely time was had by all. We made teddy-bear cutouts with a Hershey's Hug in one hand and a Hershey's Kiss in the other and it was all rather adorable, right? (Why do I still remember this in such vivid detail? Seriously, inquiring minds want to know.)

Well, it wasn't adorable if you were me. You see, Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat was themed around figures from the old testament. Every kid was assigned one and then you had a line about it. So there was an Adam and an Eve, a Noach, an Abraham and a Sarah etc etc etc all the way down the line to Moses/Miriam/Aaron. The girls had these really pretty brightly colored shawls that, in retrospect, were just chiffon handkerchiefs but god damn it I wanted one.

Except I was a twin, so I didn't get to be one of the four mothers or Eve or Miriam or even Dinah. No,  when pre-kindergarden Judaica teachers get ahold of a pair of twins, their year is basically made. Said Twins will be constantly referred to in relation to Jacob and Esau. When Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat rolls around, those twins are definitely going to be Jacob and Esau. Even if one of those twins is a girl (even if both of those twins are girls, I bet).

So, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, good. Esau, bad. Jacob, pretty. Esau, ugly. Jacob, sweet. Esau, bad tempered rhinoceros. Jacob's costume was, like, a bathrobe and a shepard's crook. Esau got an itchy red shearling vest, because Esau, as everyone knows, was a hairy redheaded brute. I mean, let's not even kid ourselves, the guy was a temporally-displaced Viking.

Guess who was Esau. I'll give you three chances but you only need one.

She's got two thumbs and she's sitting right in front of you. That's right, Leez was Esau in her pre-kindergarden Bubbe-Zeyde shabbat! I was not happy about this serious case of miscasting. Why didn't I get to be a pretty girl? Didn't they know my brother and I weren't identical? I definitely sat through the whole pageant with a sour look on my face. There wasn't a temper-tantrum involved that I recall, but there should have been. I wanted a goddamn scarf!

But there I was, stuck next to my brother who got to be the good twin and was just so satisfied with his lot in life and I was the only villain on the whole line-up. I got to be the idiot who traded their birthright for a bowl of soup. But for some reason, the worst injustice to me wasn't being forced to crossdress in a school play at the age of four, wasn't that I had to play the biggest dumb brute in the whole Torah, wasn't that I didn't get a pretty scarf (although the pretty scarves were a close second) - it was that they got our birth orders wrong. I'm the younger twin. I should have been Jacob!

I don't know how I ever grew into a functional adult. But somehow I managed.

/sarcasm mode off.

I think I must have been really over-tired and kind of loopy last night, because when my roommate handed me a packet of cold meds I apparently proceeded to look up every single active ingredient, proclaim, "THEY ALL DO MAGICAL THINGS," go downstairs to take my pills, and sing about how "Advil is my one true love, it always makes me feel better."

I also dimly recall proclaiming, earlier in the night, "OH LADY GAGA, YOU ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY HOW I FEEL," which I can only hope made more sense in context.

I also didn't notice that we had a huge new television in our common room until after I'd been watching spanish talk shows on it with my roommate, who was explaining to me who the hell all these people were, for ten minutes.

"WAIT WHERE DID THIS TELEVISION COME FROM?!"

At least the cold seems less terrible today.

On the downside, they're testing the fire alarm so it's been turning off and on since roughly 7 AM. :|

There's a torch day skit responsible for this, I swear.

And then I single-handedly managed to dress like a twelve-year-old. Would not be surprised if I get mistaken for a freshman. Because this.

Lou.

Lou Lou Lou Lou. This name is just so right for her. There's something in the abruptness about it that fits her so perfectly - almost like it's been abridged, like there's a piece of it missing, but it's not any weaker for it. Lou doesn't sound like a nickname - it just is. Truncated but no less whole.

I write a lot of motherless girls, and I'm sure there's a real Freudian reason behind this but really... I rarely find a mother character who is interesting to me. It feels like there's more tension in writing fathers and daughters (which is probably Freudian in its own right) and this isn't to say that I've never written a mother character - there has been one in and out of different drafts of Other People's Garden Gnomes, and All The Pretty Hipsters certainly had one. My screenplay project last semester had a mother-protagonist, but that felt like something distinctly different. I guess the issue is that I'm reluctant to write an abusive mother, because I worry that it might make people think badly of my mother, who is nothing if not amazing - but if I wrote a mother-daughter relationship like what I have with my mom, there'd be no tension.  So I avoid the topic altogether and write motherless girls.

What I like about Lou already, even so early in the writing process, is that she has very little angst. I think she has a fair degree of anger and frustration, and a drive to rebel and to succeed, but I don't think she spends a large amount of time pondering her lot in life or moping about feelings - she just does things. On of the things I'm really trying to do is have her be a character who moves in a straight line. She's the kind of person who walks into a room and knows exactly what she came into it for. A little bit manipulative, yes, because she only asks questions that she thinks she's capable of getting answers to - hence why she's never asked Marcus much about super powers, because she doesn't think she'll get an answer.

I'm still toying with her first proper scene with Carson, and how she acts in front of her dad as opposed to when he's not around, but I get a sense that there's a fair bit of difference. Just like Marcus has a facade, so does Lou, and they play them against each other. Initially Carson probably sees a good deal more of their "true selves" than either sees of each other's, which is something I would like to play up, because it's a loving and familial relationship but it's one built on lies and presumed ignorance.

Anyways, that's just a sort of introductory idea of the character. I'll probably put something up for Marcus and for Carson later one, although most likely not this weekend. I'm doing a 24-hour play festival - which is something I've really wanted to do for a long time - but it will be sort of hectic. Fun and hectic and just the way I like my life.

So that's Lou. More on her later.

And we're back

Starting tap over from the beginning has actually been a really good experience. I never really realized how weak some of my fundamental technique was (also I'm out of practice), and it's been fun and going well so far. Even the fact that it's at 8 AM is pretty good because it wakes me up. And I'll be ahead of things when we get to stuff like drawbacks and perrididdles, but for now I'm just really impressed (in a bad way) in my inability to do slap-toe drops with my left foot.

It reminds me of something my tap teacher in high school used to say... "Left foot is retarded." :)

I've started real work on my full length play for this semester. It's a project I'm really excited about and have done a lot of drafting/planning on, so it's good to finally be working on it in earnest. I didn't have a title when I pitched it last Tuesday, but since then I've hit on something that I really like... So unless I think of something better, it's going to be Boy Wonders (and I'm starting a tag for that). At first I thought it might be a bit too camp, but I tried it out with a few different people and got a good response... and it's not like it isn't fitting, since most of the drama revolves around things that happened to my leads when they were superhero sidekicks!

I'll probably admit some plot details as I get further into the writing process - it's not really good to put stuff all on the table when you're just starting. So in the next few weeks I'll probably toss up some character summaries and such.

This is going to be so fun, though!

YAY.

This is what I made for dinner and it was amazing.

Onions/green bell pepper/cucumber/mushrooms/black beans sauteed in olive oil, with goat cheese for variety.

YUM.

(This is kind of one of my go-to recipes.)

So it's about ten at night...

And I am finally settled in to my dorm! A lot of people thought I was crazy when I described my place for this year as a "Single Bedroom Triple" but it's really not so bad! It's bigger than any room I've lived in so far and is super-quiet and has AMAZING VIEWS. WINDOWS ON TWO SIDES. SO MUCH NATURAL LIGHT. It took me longer to get unpacked than I would have liked because I wound up helping my friend try to assemble an IKEA shelf unit at his new apartment and... we were not handy enough. But the place is literally the size of a shoebox so it doesn't surprise me that we didn't have room to maneuver. Also he's probably paying more a month than I am and besides the part where I have two roommates I think I definitely win, because his place is dark and awkward and basically a glorified hallway. I mean it has windows but they're airshaft-view. :|

So that's just me checking in! Had a really delicious dinner at a little Japanese place in St. Marks - a big Buddha's Delight style udon soup with like a metric ton or mushrooms and sliced carrots and tofu and scallions - even had enough left over to take some home to eat tomorrow (which is good because I haven't bought groceries yet! Oops!)

Let's not talk about the nervous breakdown I nearly had moving my stuff over from storage, ok?

:)

-Leez

One sleep and then I'm there~

So I head back to NYC tomorrow! This is terrifically exciting except it reminds me that I never typed up my pitch for my play idea and class is on tuesday and I really ought to probably do that tonight. I'm really looking forward to this year, though. I'm excited about basically every single class I'm taking - the pair of anthro courses should be awesome because basically the earlier back in human history it is the more I like it and one is paleolithic archeology and one is human evolution so COME ON THIS SHOULD BE AMAZING. And also Playwriting II is going to be the most incredible thing ever, not even exaggerating, and FSA should be cool, and I AM TAKING A TAP DANCE CLASS, HOORAY.

Got my hair cut two days ago... it wound up too dark and my bangs are still kind of uneven and a little too short but it's better than the shaggy shaggy sheepdog look I was rocking. They'll grow out and look a bit better, whereas before it was just sort of like "Well, okay, I can't see."

So, what else...

I got the disk drive in my MacBook replaced because the original stopped reading things, and since it boots the disk drive when the computer starts up my computer makes a completely different noise when it boots now?

I need to email the internship I was trying to get and find out what's up?

I need to get on the ball with AUSA stuff?

And etc.

OKAY COOL.

NEW SCHOOL YEAR GO.