#grannyhasapresent

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE VERY BEST COMPLIMENT EVER

Picture it: Del Rio, Texas, 1985. Classic border town. It’s 1985 inside our New York City tour bus, but it’s 1955 out there all around us. Nevertheless, the food and the weather are fantastic! A completely unprepared young ingenue finds herself on tour...

It was the glamorous and exciting mid-80s. Not even kidding, this was an amazing time to be a young artist in New York City. Ed Koch was the mayor, people were wearing a lot of black with neon, you could still afford to go to the movies on the Upper West. Starbucks didn’t exist yet and the City was littered with Greek coffee shops and Chock Full O’Nuts shops. Please, in the name of sweet bleeding Stephen Sondheim, stop me before I get down to reminiscing hardcore. “I found it at the Colony!!” Lordy, those were the days, hipsters.

(There was also an awful new emergent disease, taking from us some of our brightest and best young gay theatre artists, while in Washington, D.C., the Reagan Administration turned a blind eye. This is not that story. But I was there for that story.)

Among the crazy things that happened in 1980s Manhattan, was that time that some people cast me in a non-Eq national tour of “They’re Playing Our Song,” as leading lady Sonja Walsk. In a Hollywood-generated storyline, or at least a Hallmark-generated one, this should have led to incredible stardom, marriage to a total hottie with money, and my own Emmy-Award-winning TV show. It did not (as far as I can tell). It did, however, lead to some adventures, including the night I got the best compliment I have ever had in my life.

Our tour bus – or rather, the airport van that is being used as a tour bus, because this isn’t a big cast and our producers may not be the most lavish spenders in terms of cast comforts -- pulls up to the local high school, where we move ourselves into the Girls Cloak Room and the Boys Cloak Room, and prepare to perform our professionally-touring two-act musical comedy in the cafetorium.

The cafetorium.

Like, they had to move the Texas flag and the U.S. flag and the podium out of the way before we took stage. We were lit only by oldschool red, white, & blue striplights from above and a pair of follow-spots from the front. The follow-spot operators went to school there and were legit seeing the show for the first time ever as they lit it, an epic feat of intentional theatre. It was also at times hilarious, at times frightening, for the two of us onstage. One false move and we’re dancing in the dark! Then the light! Then the dark!

(TPOS has 2 leads and 6 backup singers. It’s a terrific show to produce in a city where everybody has other gigs besides the show. Out on the road, it’s a big fat BORE for the backup singers and an all-night workout for the Vernon and the Sonja. It is also a super cute show that deserves more love.)

Anyway, cats and kittens, you have to remember that way back in the last century there was no internet and precious little cable tv. People needed entertainment, same as always, but compared to what is available to stream now (if you have decent broadband), we were closer to being medieval bards, traveling town to town with our loadbearing animals and our colorful outfits, to do our Passion Plays for the townsfolk and perhaps receive coins and food. When we came to places like Del Rio, the house was always sold out and we felt kind of like Elvis. Or the Beatles. Or Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, featuring me as Annie Oakley. We were the only show in town that night and it felt like the whole city had turned out to the cafetorium.

So I’m backstage after the show, removing my Act 2 wig & toweling off sweat and like that, when someone told me that there were a couple of people there who would like to speak to me. I threw on my robe or something, and stepped out to meet this couple who immediately just touched my heart, simply by existing. They were clearly poor as dirt. They were careworn from years of hard work. This husband and wife were not familiar with Zabar’s, H & H Bagels, West Side Dance Project, or anything else from our fancy NYC milieu. And that’s when the husband gave me the greatest compliment I have ever known in my life, before or since. Don’t laugh. It’s not a punchline.

The man took his hat in his left hand, and shook my hand with his right, and said, “Ma’am, we ain’t never seen no shows or nothin’, but you’re the best thing we EVER seen.”

Cats & kittens, I could have died on the spot. I have never felt more like Dolly Parton in my life. We had a few minutes’ chat, I thanked them so much for coming, and there were doubtless some of those little cliches: “How you remember all those lines?” and so forth. But it was the naked sincerity of his statement, the unvarnished honesty of that moment. Holy Toledo. I do wish I could have internalized it better at the time. Life is a journey, not a destination; sometimes we carry a lesson with us like a good-luck charm, a pebble to remind us, and this moment has been one of those for me. “…you’re the best thing we’ve ever seen.”

Not gonna lie, I truly wish that the depth of their admiration had been enough to propel me with confidence into a hotter next chapter. But the biz is tougher than anything, and lots of really good performing artists never make it even as far as I did, so this isn’t regret, that’s not where I’m going with it. Someone else can write that book. This is about appreciating that little moment, from over forty years ago, and how it has come to matter more and more to me over the years.

Let me share this pebble with you: You don’t know it, you don’t know who, but you are in all probability the best thing someone has ever seen, or perhaps heard, or read, or met. Yes. Even you. Stop it. Look at me. OK? OK.

This re-invention phenomenon I have been observing? Well, isn’t his part of it? After this period where life itself lost meaning for so many of us, it feels like maybe, just maybe, Springtime is actually coming for us. And maybe, just maybe, if you’ve had those times of “WTAF am I here for anyway?”, sometimes known as Existential Dread, sometimes diagnosed as Major Depression, always a bummer; maybe you just keep shining your light and being your best available version and you will be the best thing someone else ever saw. Heard. Read. Was inspired by. Whether they tell you or not.

We may live in times of darkness, but maybe you and I are part of the Light.

Recently, a couple of friends have said things to me that tell me I’m not far off. That I’m kind of nailing some of the things they are experiencing in their own lives and paths. I do not pretend to hold a medical degree, nor one in clinical social work. If you need help, you go get you some. MamaCat is nobody’s shrink. I’m just this plump granny doing the Reinvention Tango on the regular, same as you. But I am also, and cannot help but be, your cheerleader.

I know perfectly well that there are those who do not wish to grow, change, help, benefit, share, etc. This is not for them. They’ll never find this blog and read this post anyway. And I think we all know that some day there will be some obstacle past which you cannot get, and one past which I cannot get, and that’s just how it goes. But in the meantime, while we’re here, I want you to know that I don’t have to define what good you and your story are doing for anyone, to know that you & your story ARE doing good.

And I’m very proud of you.

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE TWO EXCITING INTERVIEWS

Happy Tax Day, Darlings! Told you I’d talk to you Monday.

Here is a photo of Amy Farah Howler, doing what HusbandCat says she does whenever MamaCat's not home: staring at the back of the couch and waiting for me to come home. ❤️

Here I sit, sipping afternoon coffee and wondering how bundled up I’m going to have to get to walk Amy Farah Howler. It’s frikkin 36 degrees Fahrenheit outside, in late April, when I am really good and ready for Springtime and planting, for tiny plants and baby animals. Meanwhile on NPR former secretary of state John Kerry is making me very sad indeed regarding the future of humankind due to climate change, while in Russia, a madman pretty much has us all by the – you know. It’s a weird time to be alive. Bloody terrifying. And I still have to walk the dog.

And yet, in the spirit of denial that has gotten humankind through even its most knowledgeable moments (so far), I want to talk about the future. About “Coming Out of the Dark” (you can skip to video in :05); about choosing to act as if moving forward with one’s life is really ok after all. You may recall, if you’re following along, that I have alluded to being stopped in my tracks by a rehearsal injury that followed my dog getting killed on a gig that followed being injured by another actor in the show before that. You may recall also that it was during this weird time of crumbling that I met and adopted the lovely and talented Amy Farah Howler, which was a very good thing for us both. You may or may not further recall that I was one of those people who had what the triage nurses were calling “some really nasty new flu” before the thing was named Covid-19 and widespread testing became available.

My physical therapy treatment and Worker’s Comp for the NYC dance injury ran out while we were all in lockdown, and such is the healthcare delivery system in this country that I could not access further care, and seem to have been left a wee bit entirely on my own by the system. So while we’ve probably all been depressed AF in general over the course of the past two or three years, those are the sidelights on what made my personal lockdown journey unique to me.

If there’s one thing I have learned, it’s that literally nobody I know has zero sidelights on what makes their lockdown journey unique to them. We absolutely, positively all have something to tell. Something put weight on us, or messed with our sleep patterns, or made our homes perhaps tidier, perhaps messier. Everybody has a story, it’s the one religious belief I can swear I hold to. Everybody. Has. A. Story.

So why am I telling you so much of mine?

Because, like Carlotta Campion, I’m Still Here. And look, so are you.

The other day I had a great coffee meeting with someone with whom I’ve wanted to do theatre for quite a while. Yes, of course, I’ll tell you more later. What was so cool was that, after just more or less bumping into each other around the theatre community environs for years, there was finally a chance to just talk. About a specific project, yes, and that part’s exciting indeed; what they’re working on aligns with what I’m on about and may lead to human laughter occurring.

But we also just yakked, in general, for a couple of hours, regarding all the topics.

Well, no, in strict fairness, I don’t think we discussed the merits of fish emulsion fertilizer for garden container pots, for example. But we could have. Personally, I am pro-fish-emulsion. But it was just the nicest, most normal coffee klatsch in literally a few years. That’s enough right there, cats and kittens. The fact that there is also very cool work to be done is just lagniappe.

But wait, there’s more! The next morning I had something I haven’t had in years: a legit broadcasting-job interview. Holy Toledo. Because it was an actual job interview, and because I believe in both professionalism regarding the interview process AND the superstitions regarding showbiz, that’s literally the whole extent of what I’m going to discuss about that. I just want to the world to know that I got an interview! And to be involved in a professional discussion of an industry I truly found fulfilling both personally and professionally, after years away and after the Pandemic Blues, was maybe the most hope-igniting thing I’ve experienced in a while. Which is great for me, right, but again, what’s the point?

The point is that because years in broadcasting formed in me a pattern of seeing issues and occurrences in terms of their impact(s) upon larger groups, I tend to think that if a social pattern is affecting me and mine, it may well be affecting “X” number of others as well. So I tend to look to see what I can see. Actors are taught to observe people, doncha know. As I continue to build my own little renaissance of audio goodness at this end, as I reach out to more people and increase the size of my world, the social pattern I’m experiencing in the microcosm is Re-invention. Re-Invention is the Word.

It’s the one thing I am finding common to all, across demographics, across the nation, across the social media platforms with which I participate. Not just older people like myself, who are re-inventing because we live in times where our previously planned retirements are simply not going to work out. Similarly, not just with older people who can afford to retire but are not willing to stop feeling relevant. I mean, young and old, various levels of education, various backgrounds and backstories. It appears to me to be a predictable side effect of the Great Resignation; it’s the Great Re-Invention!

I’m just spitballing here, but it looks like people are really over the previous models. True, it may just be the way the algorithms bounce, too. But I’m not just seeing it online, it’s in the F2F world too. So if you feel like it’s happening in your life as well, please, just know that I’m only going to support that sort of thing. Go get reinvented with yer bad self, baby, now is apparently the time! I think it’s good for us, in much the same way that spinach is, and madmen with nukes are not.

I know, I always bring it back to the downer: we cannot control what we cannot control. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the Heroes.

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMACAT GOES TO WASHINGTON

In Which MamaCat Admits That She is Only An Egg

Here I sit at the very wonderful Ike’s Clubhouse at MSP, every traveler’s dream of why we arrive early to the airport. Having a delicious breakfast and traditional pre-flight Bloody Mary, to calm the nerves and fuel the day ahead. They have the good taste to include a great deal of David Bowie in their music service. Steve the bartender is the soul of Minnesota Hygge. My flight boards in 45 minutes. That’s right. They held an election two days ago, and HusbandCat has already sent me to our nation’s capital to represent. Look out, y’all.

Wouldn’t it be great if that had literally anything to do with me going into Government? Hilarious.

Nope, I am off to be about something even scarier than the United States government. I am on my way to Washington to meet strangers, and talk to them, and learn from them. To explore strange new worlds, to boldly go where no MamaCat has gone before, the Mid-Atlantic Voiceover Conference. That’s right. It’s my second-ever voiceover conference and the peculiar mixture of excitement and social anxiety is a genuine thrill ride.  When I attended VO Atlanta last spring, it was like stepping out onto a new planet. Planet VO. A huge multicultural planetary system of genres, formats, and styles; techniques and tech… and from what I can tell, a lot of fresh, nourishing oxygen in the form of wisdom, wit, and joy. Yes, frikkin joy!

And if you’ve been following along for the past eight months, then you know that this is high praise coming from Food Poisoning Girl. If you haven’t been following along, I decided to kick-start myself last spring by going to VO Atlanta, to find out what the industry of voiceover had morphed into while I was off doing theatre and we were all off doing Pandemic. It completely changed my life, no big deal, even though I missed half of what I signed up for due to the aforementioned gastrointestinal dealio. Since then I have actually started building out my little production room, launched my own little podcast (“Granny Has A Podcast”), initiated a new playlist on my YouTube to practice inflicting my own content upon the public (“Granny Has A YouTube”), met a lot of really interesting people on LinkedIn, and shed layers of Pandemic Depression like so many unattractive scarves.

So this weekend I’m going to learn as much as possible and meet as many MORE interesting people as possible. From theatre to radio broadcasting; from radio broadcasting to theatre; a movie here, a movie tvoicehere, and now I’m just this student practitioner. At 64.

I know. It’s only rock and roll. But I like it. Like it, yes I do.

Meow, darlings. I’ll check in from the land of CJ Cregg and Let Bartlet Be Bartlet later on.

[kittywildegrrl]

Back when I was A Spotted Cow, with Spotted Cow. 2017, as Bessie the Cow in "Jack and the Beanstalk," dir. Kent Knutson.

[kittywildegrrl]

That time I was at that movie opening in actual Hollywood and I was actually in the actual movie with an actual role. 😎🎭🥂🍕

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT: OFF THE LEASH AND ON THE LOOSE AGAIN

Good morning, darlings,

That's me with Cardboard Dean Phillips. Human Dean Phillips was not available for this photo op. He's a busy man.

It’s really beautiful out today and I shall a-gardening go. Amy Farah Howler will be there too, tethered on her leash, basking in the sun as is her wont. I, however, chewed through the leash about a month and a half ago and I show little sign of staying in the yard or on the block. So today we write a little, we cook a little, we do a wee bit outside. Today, the weekend is on Wednesday.

So the Original Topic, if any, was that at first glance, it would appear that the entertainment programming for my cohort has largely disappeared, and where’s the fun in that? We can’t go on watching Golden Girls and Boston Legal forever, even though both have Betty White. My friend Renee in the ATL is busy completing a degree and working in broadcasting, but we also want to create a podcast together to address this content gap. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired behind my two non-lucrative showbiz injuries and went to a voiceover conference. There was food poisoning, comedy, and enlightenment, so from a strictly therapeutic POV it was 100% successful.

Then I got home and started taking action on new plans and I was just about THIS CLOSE to telling you about some strategic planning I’m developing for fun and fab content when BAM! The cat got sick, two weeks went by, and oh yes #SCOTUS, doncha know. That should bring us up to yesterday.

Meanwhile, back at the future: what on earth can MamaCat mean by strategic planning??

IKR? 🤣

For much of the past eleven or twelve years, the furthest out my strategic planning could reach was the next round of annual auditions. As an unknown, older woman actor seeking musical theatre employment, I’m really into a tiny little niche market. Really tiny little. My particular talents, look, voice, etc., are extendable to an extremely thin slice of pie, and there are certain roadblocks over which I as the actor have zero control. I can practice good outreach and work on my skills, but the entertainment world was not, in fact, running short of brassy character women when I returned, and it wasn’t as desperate for me as I’d hoped it would be. When I was young, the Industry told me I’d work when I was older, because I’m a character woman. I worked in radio and other things. I got older. I came a-knocking once again, but the Industry seemed to have a girl my type in every port already.

Much the same can be said of marketing myself for film and TV. As a certain very legit casting director in New York told me in class, he loved what I did with the scene, but it’s not a role for which a network will read an unknown talent. It’s the type of role written for established, iconic women actors of a certain age, for numerous reasons. I didn’t like the numerous reasons, but I get it. Let’s be honest, cats and kittens. Are the people gonna binge stream ten episodes of Diana Wilde? Or are they gonna binge Christine Baranski? There it is. On the other hand, in the Indy Prod world, you never know when someone’s going to need a Poor Man’s Kathy Bates at friendly reasonable prices. I don’t see it as impossible; I just recognize that there are parameters over which I do not have control.

As an original content creator, I control a lot more of that, because I’m setting the standards, writing the role for Me And Me Alone; I can’t help but fit the casting parameters if I’m doing the casting for the Diana Wilde role as interpreted by Diana Wilde. And as I have been researching the state of existing content for my demographic, along with research for upcoming travel, I have seen the future and it is me. I’m going to take you with me when I travel. I’m no Rick Steves, but I can promise you the fun I am able to find and the knowledge I am able to share.

There are many fine tour guides out there in YouTubeLand. There are many guides to singles hotspots and family activities. There are retired folks with cruise advice. And there’s a fine storyteller in Scotland I’ll be doing a fangirl tribute to soon, because Bruce rules. But there are bloody few sassy broads willing to act the fool when the opportunity presents. And I still can’t find the sassy broad who is helping the older, single, woman traveler who is not with a group and is walking the road less traveled, to find her own independent way, perhaps for a first time. The secret ingredient, the sassy broad with the hilarious improv skills and the penchant for talking to strangers…

That may be me.

I’m actually heading to LA in a few weeks for the first time in years, because I have waited a very long time to see myself in a screening at a film festival in actual Hollywood. It’s a small role, many of my best bits may never have seen the light of day in post, and I think we can all agree that I really don’t care – although I do hope some of the driving bits survive. There’s a real Galaxy Quest story here. I never gave up. I never surrendered. Let us take inspiration from one another. Sassy old broad takes long weekend on the Coast to admire her awesome badass self.

I haven’t heard from any of the other Minnesota actors involved, so I have no idea if anyone else is going, but at age 64 I am not going to blow off the chance to be in the room when this happens. It’s been more than a minute since I saw myself on the big screen at all, let alone in an iconic location among industry pros. And here comes a golden opportunity to interact with many brilliant people in the Indy film scene. You may be tired of my saying this after seven years and numerous plot twists, but I am STILL NOT throwing away my shot. Let there be networking, and perhaps a side visit to Santa Monica.

I see myself in Santa Monica, in fabulously upscale cotton gauze resort attire for which I did not pay retail, walking along the beach, and suddenly I start hearing the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme in my head. I’m pretty, pretty good with that.

Then in November, I’m attending another VO conference, this one in Washington, DC. The weekend after the election. I’m doing a lot of political volunteering in the meantime, so I fully expect to walk off the plane and directly into an episode of West Wing (but with updated costuming and everyone has a phone). It’s about six months after my first adventure to VOAtlanta, so I have some benchmarks & accomplishments I’d like to log in the meantime.

And then, in the autumn of 2023 [Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise], HusbandCat and I have jolly plans in the works for our 15th wedding anniversary, in the U.K.! This is a very big deal for us, and we would both be grateful to the world and the politicians and the crazy people if they would please not destroy everything in the meantime, as we have worked really hard for many years and it’s time we took a legit vacation.

My personal shutdown started around Labor Day 2019, when I was released from my contract in New York and sent home with my torn gluteus medius, ending my musical theatre days for everything but park-n-bark, and breaking my heart completely. When our shared shutdown came in March 2020, my access to Worker’s Comp services was permanently interrupted, which ultimately left me shorter, heavier, and so discouraged there are no words. I thought I was at the end. Just… waiting. I worked for the Census, I picked up the odd contract job here and there, but I felt like a fat broken old lady without a clue, all direction gone. I even had to give away an entire wardrobe that will never fit again.

Compared to folks who cannot move or get out of bed, I am wealthy with obscene riches, that I can walk and talk. Compared to moving back to New York and forming our new household on the East Coast with lots of gigs and no pandemic, well, bummer. And, oh, yes, somewhere in there I dealt with a little bit of skin cancer, that was festive. It was a lot, y’all.

Then I randomly bought a ticket to a nourishing event and forced my inner Jason Nesmith to get back out in space and Peter Quincy Taggart the living daylights outta this.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am going to put on a whole lot of sunscreen and a large hat and go be one with the springtime.

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE SUDDEN, AMAZING, COMPLETE LACK OF CONTENT

I swear, I thought I had the greatest start to the next post, and then everything went wonky. Good afternoon, darlings, so sorry to have been so very absent. I mean, look at this, what a great start I was off to! What with the optimism and the reflection and all:

MAMA CAT AND THE PAST THREE WEEKS

Good afternoon, darlings. Here I sit with one eye on the clock and one eye on the phone and delicious afternoon coffee, my second favorite coffee of the day. I think I figured out why I was so amazingly tired last night. About five minutes ago, I opened my calendar ap (as opposed to my sleek paper date book), and realized that it was only three weeks ago that I took off for VO Atlanta, partly as an act of professional curiosity, the desire to re-connect with an industry with which I have not participated in a while, the desire for a career reset in the wake of the worst of the pandemic.

I had seen two LinkedIn posts from people whose opinions I value, researched the event, asked myself why I’d never been to this thing before fer cryin’ out loud, and booked a flight. If you’ve been following along, you will be aware that, among other things: an unfortunate sandwich rained on my parade; I contributed the gift of singing improv to a breakout session whether or not that was strictly necessary; and although I missed all of the parties, I did gain great benefit from the sessions I attended, and managed to meet some great people in spite of eating mostly saltines all weekend.

I also did this partly as an act of sympathetic magick.

Don’t worry, we’re not about to go down some weird rabbit hole regarding comparative religions and religious devotions. But just as I still serve my blackeyed peas with collard greens every New Year’s to bring good fortune, I feel like maybe I cast a little bit of something like a spell with this trip. For behold, I was stuck like a truck in the muck, and now I have completed many action items on my list  

************************************************************************Look at that – without so much as a punctuation mark to show its completion. I hopped up to respond to something, be it door or pet or other – and then suddenly it’s been 40 days and 40 nights since Diana Went Down to Georgia. Where did nearly two more weeks slip away to, and how? I had all these exciting ideas to share and whatnot.

We had a great deal of veterinary excitement regarding lovely Domino and her thrilling, original ways of attracting attention to her feline dental needs. There was a bit of a row with the SCOTUS apparently poised to start erasing the rights of American citizens. And I had some profound trouble sleeping, which resulted in a great deal of writing to which you, dear reader, may or may not ever be treated. There were two letters written, one to a service provider, one to a business for which I as an individual had provided services.

MamaCat may have had a breakthrough.

Like I said, I was having trouble sleeping, a crazy unusual patch of it. I had also been having regular heartburn, like clockwork, no matter how gentle and bland my food choices. One morning around 1:30am, I was suddenly sitting bolt upright in bed, wide awake, and feeling like maybe I had eaten five chili dogs (I do not eat chili dogs). Like I had swallowed a basketball. Not like when I got food poisoning, in Atlanta; not like a stomach bug had gripped me; and no, I wasn’t having a cardiac anything. I was just, inexplicably STUFFED.

And I realized I had to write. Right now.

It was like I was stuffed full of Word Tacos and Rage Burritos. I had wanted to be very direct with the service provider (an individual, not a corporation) about why they wouldn’t be receiving my business anymore. I had also wanted to be very specific with the business, because there had been an ongoing dynamic which had more or less forced me out, and it required addressing. And every time I had tried to focus on either of these bits of unfinished business, I had found it far too daunting and blown it off.

I went downstairs to the studio, turned on RadioFreePhoenix, and I wrote for the next ten hours. S.F.D.s, second drafts, revisions, finished work. It was intense. Let us not overwork the symbology of my feeling stuffed, and let us not descend into conjuring images of the icky. Let us merely mention in passing that, yes, my digestion improved throughout the experience. I had not realized how incredibly hard I was working to stuff down my reactions and responses to the persons and incidents I was now addressing to the very best of my vocabulary and abilities.

Not gonna lie… when I read that back, it does sound a lot like Ralphie’s ecstatic daydreams about writing his Red Ryder BB gun essay and thereby thrilling the literary world, or at least his teacher.

Not gonna lie… accurate.

You know, I like to think I’m all cool and evolved and have all the answers sometimes. I know, that’s hilarious, but it’s fun when the feeling comes along. Like when those quiches came out so perfectly a while back, I was Queen of the World for a minute there. So I like to think that I can work out my process stories smoothly and effectively, and look good doing it, too! But these two issues had my body literally doing everything it could think of to tell me, no, no, you have tried to lay these issues aside unresolved, and this is not acceptable. Therefore you cannot rest until you deal. You’re going to feel weirdly stuffed and bloated until you deal. You’re going to eat Tums like M&Ms until you deal.

In both cases, the underlying dynamic was ageism, and ageist perspectives. I fired my massage therapist and walked out on an at-will contract because I was chased away by a combination of stereotyping, ageist language, Othering, unkind words, and all the other microagressions that grow in the culture of ageism like bacteria in a Petri dish. This dynamic was present in both cases -- one where I was paying for services, and one in which I was being paid for services rendered. Both cases involved finding myself treated differently, poorly, because of negative perceptions around what a 64-year-old woman can and cannot comprehend. In both settings, it was shown by word and by deed that those with whom I was interacting hold the preconceived notion that gray hair equates with diminished mental faculties. Both experiences contain humans who would tell you that this is not so, these things did not happen, and that the old lady is projecting (I know this, because it was said directly to my face, but with far less direct language).

Both situations found me walking away, because I can replace both the massage therapy services and the revenue stream.

But my physical body rebelled when I thought that I could ghost either party. That’s when the weirdness started, and I didn’t even associate the bothersome symptoms with my unexpressed truths at first. It took time for me to realize I was feeling so rotten at all, let alone what the symptoms were and where they may have come from. They came on slowly, so a person would just think, well, I’m getting old, stuff like this is gonna happen…

See what I did there, cats & kittens?

Ageist within, heal thyself. 🤣🤣🤣

I slept eleven hours last night and woke up naturally at about 5:45am. I felt refreshed for the first time in a couple of weeks. And if you’re still with me, then get this and get it good: It’s not just an older woman resolving her anger issues with her ageism encounters. It’s anytime a problem with the way you were treated, when you realize that you should have advocated for yourself and didn’t, when you were treated as Less Than and you allowed it to be; when something like this has kept you up or made you nauseous or brought on a headache or distracted you while driving. It’s like the feeling you get when you find out that there are nine unelected monarchs of America, the majority of them seemingly ready to un-do any unenumerated Rights which may be inherent under the 4th and/or 14th Amendments.

It's the absolute necessity to realize you’re in a midterm election year, and that you absolutely must advocate for yourself and your liberty now. Liberty which strips rights and creates second-class citizenship and denies bodily autonomy is not liberty at all. The freedom to be chattel, the freedom to be closeted, the freedom to be underground and hidden away… those are not freedoms. Check your voter registration. Volunteer for candidates who make sense. Be a part of the solution.

So that’s where the better part of two weeks went between that super start to my regular posting, and today’s update. MamaCat promises to be a better correspondent. We were really cooking for a minute there and I’d love to keep up the momentum.

Oh, also, I’m going to Hollywood in six weeks because I have a film coming out.

Did I forget to mention that?

Old people. Honestly. 😎🎭🛫🥂🎉

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT IS JUST PLAIN TIRED TONIGHT

Doncha ever just get tired?

I’m super glad to be this kind of tired tonight. It’s the form of tired which corresponds to directly to the phenomenon of having dates in your datebook again. Yes, that is correct, I still use a paper datebook as well as my Android calendar aps.

Here we are barely 16 weeks into 2022, and I actually have multiple appointments booked for multiple reasons. It’s exciting. And tiring. So I’m going to serve dinner and call it a night early, and I hope that you and yours can also have dinner and call it a night early. If you like.

Here is a photograph of my table setup at the Caffe Reggio on one of my many visits. It’s been in place for nearly 100 years. I haven’t been in the place in what feels like 100 years. Here’s where you’ll find me if it’s a random time of day in New York and I don’t have to be somewhere else. Here’s to returning there later this year. “Salud Chindon!”

Meow, darlings. 🎙️🎭🥂💖☕🎧

[kittywildegrrl]

Good morning, darlings, and Happy Easter or other Spring holiday of your choice. One is composing on the fly and on the phone at the moment. You can tell by the look on my face here that I am not for one moment amused by the new sound guy's advice to dress my mic down to THERE. But Team Player Me, I did as I was told and that was the night that the production photos were taken. So all my production photos from Follies 2018 have my mic crawling down my forehead like it's trying to escape a bad relationship with the lace-front there. The sound guy suggested we try it a different way the next night. 🤣 This little selfie came crawling across my Google Memories this morning. I actually can't avoid thinking about this show every single morning of my life, because this was also the show in which a careless actor permanently injured my left shoulder and neck. He was doing a running exit; I was frozen in place, blocked to look directly upstage. He was literally not looking where he was going. A sturdy young man in his 20s tackled me -- a lady who had just celebrated her 60th birthday -- to the ground, knocking that gorgeous wig into the wing, knocking me out of my shoes, during a performance, in front of 450 people. I could hear the gasps. I landed on my left shoulder with all my weight, and am forced to think of this show and that person every day of my life, due to chronic pain. He went entirely unpunished. The AEA PSM didn't stop the show or call me an ambulance. I received some really lousy P/T from some people who couldn't get it through their heads that no, I did NOT "have a fall," even though I was clearly old enough to be their mother. I couldn't get the narrative understood, that this was an injury caused by another person, not a slip-and-fall on ice. My only revenge -- I mean, my only recourse for happier living 😉 -- was to literally stop the show, every night, with my "I'm Still Here".🎭🎉 Each of my last two stage productions had a mixed Union/non-Union work environment. In both productions, I was employed as a non-AEA actor, hoping to benefit from the presence of Equity personnel, hoping this would raise the health-and-safety bar for all concerned. In each case, I was permanently injured. In neither case did I receive an ambulance or sufficiently prompt medical attention. The attention that I did receive was insufficient in the long run. I had no idea in either case how seriously I was injured, how life-altering the longterm effects would be. The moral of the story is, make noise if you are injured. The show must not necessarily go on. And then too, I may have strong opinions regarding the non-union theatre and/or the mixed AEA/non AEA environment. We are probably going to discuss this someday, cats and kittens... 😎 So ffs #AskIfItsEquity and maintain much skepticism about accepting a contract if not. I was once, not long ago, about to get my life and career to a place where I could take my Equity card and move back to NYC with HusbandCat and play at that level... two injuries later, I'm Plump Granny with an audio studio, and just grateful it wasn't worse. 💔😪 HumblingAF... OK, HusbandCat is making brunch. Gotta go. And yes... I'm Still Here. Meow, darlings. 🐈‍⬛🥂🎭🎬🎙🎧☕🤓����

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT IN PRAISE OF THE ISLAND OF DISCARDED WOMEN

Scenes from the before times: some random evening on the streets of Manhattan.

TLDR: You have GOT to listen to this: https://www.islandofdiscardedwomen.com/

OK, where were we before the VO Atlanta, food poisoning, the Sassenach thing, and the corned beef & cabbage? Aahh, yes, the Invisible Target Demo. Creating the content for the Elder Goddesses, the real live golden girls of our society, acknowledging the potential for human women to still be actual people after the childbearing years.

I knew if I kept looking hard enough, I’d find someone has beaten me to it, because as Goddess is my witness I have never had an original thought in my life. In fact, the secret to my listener success in radio (whatever that was) may have been the fact that I’ve never been the one to create the next big thing, but I usually had my finger inadvertently on the pulse of the zeitgeist. It’s a gift. And a curse. You have no idea how much I identify with Mr. Monk and in what ways.

First of all, whoever came up with the title, “Island of Discarded Women,” congratulations, here’s to you, that’s brilliant and I openly confess I wish I’d written it. It’s Right up there with the “Last F*ckable Day” video. I hear you. We hear each other. I’m going to go right out on a limb and say that I think most likely, the host and creator of “Island of Discarded Women,” Sue Scott herself, probably wrote that line.

Secondly, if you don’t know who Sue Scott is, she is one of the most successful people in radio, which incidentally put her in the movies, too. She’s someone I have admired for a long time, like since I was married to my first husband and living in Denver, listening to her work on that long-running radio show on public radio. If I had a wonderful career, she’s still having a legendary one. I can’t touch her level of success on my best day, but I do get what it’s like to have been “that lady on the radio,” as one of the bits in her show’s opening sequence says.

It was awesome, in many ways. Terrifying in others. More on that later, whether in today’s post or a future one.

Anyway, here, listen to their pilot episode. It lays the whole thing out. Seriously, her discussion of what she’s good at, what she’s done for years as her profession and identity, is like she’s reading my mind. No, go listen, it makes so much sense right around :08:00 - :08:12 in. She’s literally discussing, in a beautifully produced pilot episode dated May 6, 2019, the things and ideas that I began toying around with about a year and a half later with lovely Renee in Atlanta. When they were recording this pilot episode, I was about three months away from the rehearsal injury in New York that would shut down my musical comedy work.

Which just tells me that my odd talent for inadvertently having my fingers on the pulse of the zeitgeist, of being just far enough behind the curve to sound involved, is just as sharp, just as peculiar, and just as useful as ever. It tells me that the Invisible Target Demo is, in fact, capable of becoming visible to itself.

We are an interesting animal, O My Sisters Over A Certain Age.

I don’t have a blueprint for aging, a template, a role model. The women in my family weren’t exactly sharers. Certain of them leaned towards being walking talking Tennessee Williams tragic figures, but none of them were into passing on Elder Goddess wisdom or anything like that there. And (knocks wood) so far, perhaps attributable to much dancing and fairly healthy eating, I show signs of good health. So I’m in unexplored territory here. Growing older without a family roadmap or living elders to relate to, I do a lot of looking around for good examples – for me, for you, for us all who have washed up upon Sue’s Island.

This is a marvelous show, way over my paygrade, highly produced, well written, with guests and features and MUSICIANS AND EVERYTHING!!! They incorporate humor, pathos, issues, entertainment. It isn’t the show I want to do, but it’s a show I’m glad I found. It isn’t a show I’ll imitate, because (a) that’s called plagiarism and (b) let’s face it, these ladies sit at the cool kids table. I have never been there.

What it is, is a show I would not have you go one more minute without. Please enjoy. Turns out somebody is creating content for ladies of a certain age, and here is some which is very good. You shouldn’t have to go looking for it. Here it is.

They’re probably on Facebook. I’m still not going back to Facebook.

But if you find them on Facebook you should reach out and support them. You can tell them MamaCat sent you.

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT HASHTAG SASSENACH

In which MamaCat navel-gazes a wee bit, and reckons with history itself.

Here I sit, enjoying my nice spring onion quiche, listening to Harry Belafonte instead of ugly reality, and realizing that yes, I have in fact finally achieved the perfect balance of eggs to dairy to vegetables this time. This is damn good quiche. This is the Firefly-Big-Damn-Heroes-Sir of quiche. This is the quiche that put the Bomp in the Bomp-Sh-Bomp-Sh-Bomp. The Quiche That Launched a Thousand Brunches. I would like to thank Nonfat Greek  Yogurt and the other members of the committee as well for this clear-eyed moment of personal victory in a world gone mad.

So are you like me, did you get so very INTO the “Outlander” series that you wondered what your own backstory might be? And then you dug into your own genetic heritage and found out that after all these years of thinking you came down from the Irish and the Celts, you’re actually some kind of ancient Briton Pict Iron Age Bronze Age Broch Builders Culture throwback? And literally the whitest person you know, FFS?? Yeah probably not. But I can be a little bit on the obsessive side.

Like for example, as a kid, I used to read Archie comics or Disney comics out loud into the mic of my little reel-to-reel tape recorder in the 1960s, when the other kids were probably outside playing and having fun and building social skills or something. I would master all the different voices (according to a first grader’s sense of voice acting mastery), so that when I completed the recording and played it back, I could pretend it was the olden days and I was listening to live radio entertainment. I would practice my Eva Gabor, my Phyllis Diller, and my Julie Andrews on any adult who would listen, to the point where I actually forgot which accent was mine for almost a whole minute. I was about eight when that happened. Blew my little mind. Later I had a fifteen year career in radio broadcasting, including mastering a bunch of different voices, both literally and metaphorically. Obsessive.

I went back to doing theatre on the side while I was a broadcaster, mainly community theatre, as I was usually working full-time on the air. I kept telling everybody, “I’m really an actor, this whole radio thing is just to keep busy between gigs.” For fifteen years I told people this, and sure enough. The day after CBS Minneapolis joined in the great CBS Radio Job Elimination of 2008,cutting many productive, highly skilled professionals permanently loose from careers and positions eliminated in the shareholders’ best interests, I went back to work as an actor. For the next eleven years. Even when I was also in business school, and/or working two jobs, I just kept saying, well I’m an actor, this is just between gigs. And so it comes to pass that in the summer of 2022, I have a movie coming out. Obsessive.

So when I got into Diana Gabaldon’s epic adventures of Claire and Jamie, I remembered the extremely vague mentions of my own family history and that awful litany, “you don’t need to know that,” over and over again. I became curious… and then thoughtful… and now I may or may not be obsessed. Sixty-plus years of No Identity are quite enough, thank you. I was raised by my birth mother and her parents, it’s not like I was dumped at the very Victorian orphanage on a very Dickensian winter’s night. These people had identification, papers, history. They actually existed and there must be records. And of course this leads us in short order to saliva and DNA testing and a couple of Direct Line descendancies and…

Mostly English.

I know I said it in another post but I just can’t get over the look of those two words.

Mostly. English.

Not one bit Irish.

Around 35% Scots – that’s not the surprising bit, I was prepared for some Scots ancestry to come into it at some point. My Uncle Sandy, not blood kin but married to my mother’s sister, had come from Glasgow, bearing the same surname as did my biological father. So the possibility of shared genetic heritage was always there. But I really love it that, as it turns out, over a third of my personal genome goes back to somewhere north of Hadrian’s Wall. Like, before the Romans even built it. Cool.

But… mostly English?

I’m not one bit Irish. My friend Siobhan may have a heart attack. I’m a lobsterback, a redcoat; I’m at bloody Marks & Sparks on Her Majesty’s Secret Service in swinging London. I was really looking forward to seeing the bits of my genetic heritage that would reveal my ancestors of Jewish, African, Native American, Irish, and Italian roots, maybe even Asian, who knows? And they’re just not there. They don’t exist. I’m not even the decadent French. I’m as English as the Prime Minister’s speech about English things in “Love, Actually”. The imperialists. The monarchists. The bad guys. The whitest white people who ever whited. I am Monty Frikkin Python. Or perhaps the Dowager Countess… would you believe Eliza Doolittle?

You will understand if MamaCat was not ready for the real #sassenach to be coming from inside the house.

(MIX THAT METAPHOR!!!)

But wait, who is this in my genetic direct line? It looks like we (all of the family lines as far back as the 18th century) were actually all in this country pre-Civil War, some even pre-Revolutionary War. I see people who were contemporaries of Daniel Boone’s, right there in Kentucky, and WAIT! Who are you, good sir?? A Baptist minister? Come to save our souls? And he fought for the Revolutionaries in General Washington’s army! FOR FREEDOM! FOR LIBERTY! Against the Brits!!! He’s my 5x grandfather and he’s a Revolutionary War hero; not historic, not decorated, but he fought for this country and it fills me with pride and…

It doesn’t say whether or not he ever freed his house slave.

JFC, O my Ancestors, WTAF??

And now I have a personal reckoning with that. And with it, its reflected probability, its partner in historic crime: the probability of some of my forebears having also killed Native people here on these shores.

To say it is sobering would be a disservice to Understatement itself. I can look at my growing family tree and see us reflected on every page of history – the Homestead Act, two world wars, the Great Depression, the driving of the Golden Spike – and pretty much every page has blood on it, at least a little bit. And friend, yours may look that way too, here and there.

Hey. Have you looked up your own family tree and genetic background? When we do, we gain information. We find things out about the past. We learn, and by learning we can determine who and how we ourselves will be, going forward. We have the opportunity to examine the mistakes, the sins, of the past, and by so examining, we have both the opportunity and the obligation to apply what we’ve learned for the betterment of all humankind (if only in our own backyards). We also have an opportunity to see the good things. It’s not all hell and wrongdoing. There are gardens and babies and celebrations. Humans are very complicated critters. You take the good, you take the bad, and there you have The Facts of Life. Look backwards to look forward again.

Anyway… I pulled a thread to see a pattern and now I’ve got a completely unexpected tapestry unraveling in front of me at the speed of human life. I encourage you to do the same, if you are so inclined. You may find, as I am finding, that we are far more connected than we thought, that our paths have indeed crossed and re-crossed many times. I had thought I had a big-picture, cosmic view of humankind before, but now the only metaphor that fits is, “scratched the surface”. We go back beyond the RuneStones, beyond the standing stones, beyond cuneiform and clay tablets.

Can we not save ourselves at last?

I’ll be over here stirring milk into my Earl Grey and questioning everything. Pip pip cheerio and whatnot.

Meow, darlings. You big damn heroes, you. ❤️❤️❤️

[kittywildegrrl]

That time I was having that intense discussion with Doc Brown.

[kittywildegrrl]

Propagating kalanchoe. Because it's the Tribbles of Succulents.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE VOYAGE HOME

Good morning, darlings. Let the record show that here I sit, in the airport, yet without a delicious Bloody Mary. Lordy I love me a Bloody Mary before a flight! It’s brunch and a tranquilizer, wrapped in tomato juice and love. It’s my special travel treat to keep me from weirding out about going way up in the air in a big old tin can full of strangers. But not today, my loves. Let the record show that even conjuring up the image of a delicious Bloody is kinda nauseating yet. But the food poisoning didn’t defeat me. Courage!

So in a few hours, I will be home with HusbandCat and the actual cat Domino & Amy Farah Howler the Beagle, and that is a good and beautiful thing. Home. Big word, one syllable. Home.

When I was a little girl, and a teenager, I longed to go home… my own parents were so effing insane that I wanted to go home FROM THEM, to my real home, where I was a real girl and everything! Where the nice mommy and daddy who weren’t drunk and didn’t hit were waiting for me… geez, this sounds like “Maybe” from Annie. Barf me out to the max. But seriously, a lot of us come from backgrounds where we never had “home,” even and especially at home. It’s damaging and our shrinks are all paying off cabins & boats because of it.

As we grow and learn, we form our own ideas of Home. Chosen family. Finding your people. We heal, we try new things, we live our adult lives, we make Home for ourselves somehow. I went through two husbands and most of a pretty good radio career before I found HusbandCat, and we celebrated thirteen years of marriage last fall. Pretty good outcome, if you ask me.

But the thing that was always missing for me was, any sense of identity at all. I never heard many family stories, my questions about our family and our history went unanswered (“Oh, you don’t need to know that” was a common refrain). It took some time after my mother’s death to confirm what she had made clear all along: I was not a wanted child and therefore was made the family joke. I don’t bring it up to ask for pity; I bring it up because I knew nothing about our past or where we came from and most of the family is dead now. It’s creepy. So I went looking.

The long and the short of it is that I started researching, and so far I have found we have ancestors on both sides of my birth parents’ line that go back to pre-colonial America. I have a 5x great Grandmother who was born in Scotland, we know not where, just five years before Culloden. And the thing that floored me completely: Absolutely not Irish. All these years – 64 of ‘em so far, cats & kittens! – I thought we were of Irish stock. I wasn’t really surprised to find out that I’m 35% Scot, although I would have thought that percentage would have been higher. But the shocker?

I’m mostly English.

I’m mostly English and I have distant relations and a family history is coming together and the thing is…

I finally feel at home.

Gotta fly, cats & kittens. We’re literally boarding a plane here in a few & I gotta fly. Home to HusbandCat.

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THAT TIME I GOT FOOD POISONING

Here I sit, in my room, finishing off my tea and catching up on Family Guy, while just a ten-minute walk away from here a magnificent cocktail party is going on without me.

Well, crappity crap crap.

On Thursday, my travel day into the VOAtlanta 2022 conference, I ate two chicken sandwiches. The one at the Minneapolis airport was overpriced and fantastic. The one my door dasher brought to the hotel ten hours later in Atlanta was undercooked and/or bearing tiny life forms. Personally, I think I’ve been Smote -- or is it Smitten? -- by a vengeful Creator who knows I broke my personal boycott on Thursday night by Eating Mor Chikin. Anyway, about an hour after I went to bed, I was rudely awakened by the good ol’ fever & chills & the sensation that my tummy had turned into an adobe brick, kiln-fired and hard as mahogany. Further details will not be provided, as you know perfectly well that it was all yucky.

Thank me for sharing!

So, here’s the thing: Challenges, amirite? Yes, I am, and we both know it. Challenges.

I had a challenge on my plate (and nothing else except saltines). I had every right in the world to just lay in the room and groan, and I most definitely did some of that! And yet… ALL these amazing voiceover and audiobook production professionals, right over there at the other Hilton, and I came all this way to hear and see and meet them. The challenge, as I see it, was to find the balance between the self-care I needed, and the things I came to experience: Connecting, Learning, and the inevitable Networking (hence the awesome cocktail party I’m not at, and yes you are very proud of me for staying in).

The thing is, when you’re sick, you’re sick. You have to get well. Right? Of course. But are you like me, do you have that leftover childhood trauma where you feel stupid for getting sick because there was a parent who really disapproved of children coming down with colds? I know, good candidate for therapy and don’t think I haven’t gotten some. I freely admit it, I am a terrible patient. Almost as big a baby as your typical American HusbandCat*, for example. I always like to spend part of the first day of any given cold, flu, injury or minor owie, complaining that it’s just my fault for being stupid. I’m pretty sure this Woody Allen level of neurosis is the secret to my great acting abilities.

But then there comes the moment when you have to try to pull yourself up, and get the flock out of that door, and that’s not just for this conference or me & my little big ego. It’s all of us, all through life, when we have something in our way, some obstacle, which stands between us and the thing we want. One of the kids gets sick. The car keys accidentally got flushed. A pet destroys the gift you were about to wrap while you’re looking for another roll of tape. That doctor’s appointment didn’t go well. You forgot you can’t eat hot chili peppers anymore. Whatever. You want to bury your head in the sand, or under the covers, or perhaps in Tahiti.

MamaCat is not here to give you the formula for how to face the things and get out the door and do the things. There is no formula. We’ll probably have a long post about that sometime, too. I think it’s best expressed in the wisdom of Kung Fu Panda, “There is no secret ingredient”.

I want to speak for what happens when you do go out the door and do the things.

For me, right after the Feeling Stupid phase of getting sick, comes the Not Moving phase, and some of that is good for recuperation. But Not Moving can also turn into procrastination, self-pity, and eventually, Newton’s First Law of Motion. Inertia kills the joy of life! Bad Inertia, no dessert for you.

It took me forever to get ready to set foot out the door, both Friday and today. And I mean, seriously, crazy stuff like my left eye insisted on watering – but not the right one. I looked like the opposite of a makeover, one eye lovely and one just came out of a bar fight. So… I had to re-do the makeup on that eye like four times, because one eye done prettily and one eye crying isn’t a business look, it’s a photo shoot for a tragic PSA. And please, if you do shoot a tragic PSA using this imagery, all I’m asking is 10% off the top, thanks. Contact my representation to hammer something out.

Both days I missed all the morning sessions; both nights I skipped the parties where the real networking gets done.** But both days, I managed to get to the place, take in a few breakout sessions, meet a few people, maybe get a few laughs. Not mega-fun super-networking like I had planned, no. But I did get to meet at least three of the people I specifically came to meet, and I made a few friends. I got some amazing resources and information on the changes in the business. I learned things. None of that would have happened if I’d stayed in the room.***

I may or may not have also improvised a little rock and roll singing about Living on Ginger Ale during a breakout session, to the tune of “Livin’ on Tulsa Time,” that the world might celebrate my poor wretched tummy. Word to the wise: Never, ever, put a hot mic in my hand in front of live people and expect Normal Granny to come out of the speakers. You’re only going to get Eccentric Granny in those situations. Fair warning.

The experience was Oxygen.

I want more.

I’ll write more about this weekend, about the opportunities and the people, about the things I learned, about how amazing this VO community is. But tonight, while the soup & tea & crackers & ginger ale and I are spending a little time trying to wind down and feel better before the plane tomorrow, I wanted to get these thoughts down and send them to you: you can get past the obstacle. Maybe not the way you had originally intended. But you can do it, one way or another. It will be worth it. I can, you can, we all can. Especially if we help each other.

The tea is gone, the soup is almost finished, the ginger ale is warm. Thanks for spending the evening with me, cats & kittens. I’ll write again soon. Please tip your servers, they’re working hard for you tonight.

Meow, Darlings.

*HusbandCat is not the world’s worst patient. He’s arguably a better patient better than I am.

**And all the fun, from what I am given to understand. Remember fun? How cool is fun??

***Actually, most of the material I missed is going to be available to registered participants online afterwards, which is a wonderful benefit, IMHO.