Things I plan to bake in the next two weeks:

Sugar cookies

Spritz cookies (my favorite)

Thumbprint cookies - some with mini hershey kisses and some with raspberry jam

Lemon squares

Magic bars

Cardamom braid

A gingerbread house

Oreo balls

Other things I want to do:

Find a job

Sleep

Watch more home movies with my family

The Little Things

They're back!

It's funny the little things you miss when you're away from home.

While I missed my parents, my sister, the friends I don't see at college, etc. I missed the little things more.

I missed cuddling with my dogs when lightning or loud noises scare them and they come to my room because they're scared.

I missed driving.

I missed watching the Big Bang Theory with my parents.

I missed Starbucks where the red cups are back!

Creative Gratitude

Flo, Irma, Mrs. Potts, and Millie

The curtain has fallen for the last time.

8 weeks of hard, tiring work culminating in 4 amazing performances

And now, it's all done.

So before this chapter closes for good,

Thank you to the cast!

Thank you to the crew!

Thank you to the director!

Thank you to the audiences!

For the fun times in the green room

For the photo shoots in the dressing room

For the curling iron burns and the innuendos

For the music sessions and the disney dancing

For the cake cuttings

For the jokes and the wonderful awkwardness

For the intercom craziness

For the random dressing room phone calls

For the antidote to lonlieness

For the tremendous growth

For the dramatic (pun intended) changes

For the crying, for the laughing, for the anger, for the love

Thank you, for everything, you are more wonderful than you can know!

And now it's over. But nothing really ends, these moments will go on and on, the past 8 weeks may be over but the lessons we've all learned will continue on into all our futures with constant renewal. Soul and creativity never get old, they never end.

Neither will this gratitude.

Theatrical Questions

Let's be honest folks, I love the theater.

I love watching it, I love being in it, I love the people I meet, I love the lessons I learn, I even love the hair and make-up (crazy, I know).

For the past 8 weeks a group of 15 other students and I have been working our tails off to put together a production that we like to think is of a professional caliber. Tonight is opening night.

As a play, it has a bit of everything. Romance, comedy, love, tragedy, family, conflict, even things that, to our conservative college community, may seem highly inappropriate like sex, drinking, and even a big fight scene.

With so many themes and elements that can, all over, seem rather depressing, we, as a cast have been forced to ask ourselves "What are we actually giving to the community with this performance?"

With a story centered around a beautiful young girl who cheats on her boyfriend and a slightly older couple who can't seem to find lasting happiness, will this play just depress everyone or is there something bigger that we can leave the audience thinking about?

Here is what I've come up with:

What does age really mean?

Does love have an age limit?

How closely related is love to physical attraction, to sex?

Is there a use for beauty? What is it?

Does infatuation play a role in happiness?

What happens when your happiness depends on another person?

Now, these are not easy questions. And this list barely scratches the surface of this issues this play covers. But it often feels like our campus, as a whole, takes the easy way out. That we excuse things and use "Sunday school answers" to difficult questions that, in reality, require much more critical thinking.

I hope everyone in the cast feels good about their performance tonight. I hope the audience gets the jokes and takes the drama seriously. I hope the crew and tech run smoothly, without hiccups or mistakes. I hope no one misses a cue or misplaces a prop.

But, most of all, I hope this play leaves the audience with serious questions (just as it has for the cast) and that no one gives an easy answer to their quandaries and goes home to focus on other things.

Curtain is in an hour, time to get my hair done and finish my make-up!