Today is my C's 52nd birthday; he has now reached full adulthood according to the Mayan calendar, (although he will always be my baby.) We had an early celebration yesterday--lots of presents, food, and Michael Clayton, a great movie starring George Clooney. Mmmm!

And today I found out that the long one-act hot tub play I wrote, which is now called A Couple of Savages Up to Their Eyeballs in Hot Water (but which my friend Rebecca thinks should be called Cannibals in Heat) is getting a staged reading from the Cold Cuts Series, held at the Algonquin Theater, 123 E 24th St. in Manhattan on February 11. Yes, in just three weeks or something. It's a theatre company that mostly does readings of new plays, but if someone falls in love with the play, there's a possibility for a production. So, good news.

I've got to get ready to go to Detroit tomorrow for the production of my play Saying Kaddish with My Sister. Going to Wilderness Exchange to buy warm things--gloves, hat, better long underwear. Did I mention that it's twelve degrees there? And that my plane leaves at 6 a.m.? And that C, in a fit of loverly madness, I mean devotion, said he would drive me to the Oakland Airport at 4:45 a.m. tomorrow morning? Think of us as you turn over in your nice warm beds.

I've also got to get lesson plans copied because I'll be East on an extended jaunt through Massachusetts and back to Detroit, arriving home Sunday afternoon Feb 3rd to teach at the Writing Salon that night. Oy! I'm going to need a couple of days at Harbin Hot Springs doing nothing but soaking my ass and taking yoga classes to recover from this trip.

How does it feel to be a star? Rebecca emailed facetiously. I wrote back: It does feel good, but I have to get up at the crack of dawn--before dawn even, and I'm still waiting for the big bucks to come rolling in.

I remember working on Saying Kaddish seven years ago and wanting it to be produced so badly, wanting it to live on outside of me, the way a mother wants a child to live, with every fiber of my being. But so much has happened since then; other productions, the relationship with C, Carla's illness...At the time I wanted that for Saying Kaddish, that was all I had to hang my hopes on--my work. Everything was hinging on that star. Now there's so much more life in my life that it puts things like productions in perspective.

Still: "Revel in this!" Carla instructed me, and she's right. I've got to enjoy it, because God knows there was a lot of hard work leading up to this, and there will be more hard work to come. And Rebecca wrote, "ROLL in it, lap it up, rub it in your hair and on your skin. Look in the mirror and repeat, 'I am one hell of a smart, sexy bitch!'

So now I'm going to take my smart sexy frozen-fingered bitch self off to the copy shop and the food store for plane snacks, and the warm clothing store...I'll blog again from Detroit.