jMcJohnson

My poor blog has suffered some serious neglect over the past month or so. Since I am leaving on Monday to drive to Florida (where I will be working for seven weeks) I thought a major update was in order!

Around the first of the month Ryan and I drove to Carrollton, Ohio (just west of Pittsburgh, PA) for two weeks of creating with the newest version of the Lovewell Theatre Project. Two great friends of Lovewell (and all of us personally) graciously offered up their beautiful farm as a place for us to work and live.

Since our friends Mats and Margie had just graduated from college as we began, we all decided a party was in order. We started with tissue paper hats:

French and Flirty

Modified Pirate

Aunt Jemima with Vodka (?)

Sadly, after the first day, I sort of forgot to keep taking pictures. I did remember to take a picture of this:

This is Katy next to the sign for Knickers Restaurant. Knickers is on a golf course and they offer shrimp cocktail for $1.99 (I had it; I’ve had better) and the name is just awesomely hilarious for many reasons. One reason: isn’t it really just named after old fashioned underwear? Who the hell wants to eat at at a restaurant named after underpants?

But I digress. We wrote for two weeks and came up with a really fun show. We did a very small reading and people responded really favorably to it. Living at the farm was challenging for me for a lot of reasons. It really made me realize some things I personally need to work on, like:
1. Going with the flow.
2. Personal insecurities/insecurities about my work.
3. My need to control my environment at all times.
4. My obsession with cleanliness/extreme aversion to bugs (actually, this will most likely never change.)
We had a great time, and I was really glad to be a part of it.

I’ll leave this section with a shot of the gray stick-on mustache that I got at the grocery store, lost, found again and put on to show everyone; only to discover no one was around. Typical.

Moving on…

After we drove back from Ohio, we were home for less than 48 hours and then we drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico for Tim Bunker’s wedding. This is a lot of driving, it’s true, but we are huge road trip people, so we were excited. Sadly for you, my blog readers, I already posted the best of my pics on my Facebook, so go there if you want to check them out. I will say that the wedding was absolutely beautiful; Stephanie looked lovely and Tim was a handsome devil. The had one of the most creative and personalized weddings I’ve ever been to; although really, all our friends have had really wonderful and unique celebrations.

Our sweet table card.

Although the wedding was great, New Mexico will always be remembered in my mind as the place that got Ryan over his fear of spicy food. He ate red and green chile like a champ and shoveled in super spicy salsa by the chip-ful. Thank god, because to me, a meal is not really a meal unless it brings spice-induced tears to my eyes.

Aside from the wedding, the best part was seeing sweet little Samaire.

Her mom and dad aren’t to shabby either

We drove back to Kansas City just in time for me to do one of the dumbest things I’ve done in at least two weeks. While we were away, I noticed that I had this little white bump on the skin above my lip. It was white (uh, just like my skin) so it probably wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me. Nevertheless, I decided that it was time to try to eradicate it from my face. I decided the most genius way to do it was to squeeze it out (keep in mind I’m not even sure it was a zit…I really didn’t know what it was).

So I squeezed.
And I squeezed and I squeezed.
Then just when I was about to give up, I squeezed some more.

The results? Nothing ever came out. And I did this to my face:

Please do enjoy my gigantic nostril

Seriously, now I have to put Neosporin on it three times a day and look like I have face herpes 24/7. It kinda looks like a burn, and Ryan told me to tell people it’s where he put a cigarette out on my face to keep me in line (good idea). It’s really quite disturbing to look at. Plus, in the immortal words of Radiohead, I did it to myself, and that’s why it really hurts.

The moral of the story is DO NOT pick at things on your face. It only leads to heartache.

I did want to show you one more gross pic of my face:

I accidentally breathed on the lens, so it looks like an ad for a porno where the lead actress has flesh-eating bacteria. HOT.

See y’all in FLA…

31 looks good on you.

We returned today safe and sound from our road trip to Tim and Steph’s wedding in New Mexico (and not regular Mexico as my dad still believes). It was awesome but I will be honest, I have missed my bed.

No one can understand why Ryan and I like to drive insanely long distances. Here are two pics best representative of the kind of stuff we like to do on the road:

I miss our trip already.

I am having one of those times in life where you want to stomp your feet and shout “Nooo!” at the top of your lungs and throw yourself on the floor and cry until someone bigger than you picks you up and wipes your face with a cool washcloth and then lays you down on a bed; and even though you are still gulping back a sob or two you can sort of start to forget about what made you cry in the first place.

You know what I mean?

This is Katy’s dog Bowie. He tired himself out on the farm today by running around, looking for squirrels and jumping in the lake.

He goes from 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds.

Isn’t he cute in whatever state he’s in?

I have been on a farm in Carrolton, Ohio since Sunday. Wireless internet is in effect, however, there is exactly zero AT&T cellular service for at least 15 miles around here. Which is strange and one more reason that AT&T is on thin ice with me.

But that’s another story entirely.

Back to the farm.

A group of us are here for about two weeks working on writing a musical. For some reason, the time I am spending here is challenging me on pretty much every level possible. I feel like I am walking through some sort of weird personal fire.

And it’s painful. And it kind of sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, this place is great, the process is great, the people are great. It all has little to do with anyone other than me. I am just having some serious soul searching moments; all rooted in some of my personal fears and neuroses being dangled in front of my face every minute of every day (by me or the universe or something).

Also, Ryan had to leave today to go back to Kansas City and I have to say that honestly; without him in times like these, I am certainly feeling a bit adrift.

Anyway.

This feels like some sort of weird vision quest. That’s really the only way I can describe it.

My hope is that all this struggle will result in growth of some sort.

If not, then I’m not exactly sure what’s happening.

I’m really not explaining this well.

I’ll just say this; I am ok. I am just having an experience of some sort.

I guess I’ll just roll with it.

How are you?