I tend to make a habit of blogging when I’m sick and, well, I’m under the weather so here we are.

My insides are fighting each other for whatever reason and, as I made myself a boiled egg and a bowl of brown rice– it really hit me that my life is totally different. For example:

Food: I mean, come on. You know I love food. I blog about food. I am constantly going on about new recipes and all that stuff… but it wasn’t until recently that I realized how much of an impact my daily intake of food actually has. I mean this in a lot of ways. Cupcakes make me happy. No surprises there. But it’s been really frustrating/entertaining/educational to really think about what it is I’m eating and how it makes me feel. Especially before show time. My stomach loves to freak out and bloat itself out for fun… so I’ve had to be really diligent about what I eat and how it makes me feel before I squeeze into sequin gowns every night. The results of this observation are mixed. Basically I’m in this spot where I eat really healthy (and mostly clean) and then I get home and transform into a garbage disposal for delicious, high-sodium, processed food.

I mean, I can’t eat the shit before the show! I feel like this if I do:

And I don’t look nearly as amazing.

And give up crappy food completely?! Heck no. It’s (apparently) too important in my life to be gotten rid of entirely. My best solution (so far) is to give myself a cheat day. It normally starts on Saturday night, when Napkin is around, and I/we eat snack foods until I feel like i’m going to die.

By Monday– I’m miserable but back to clean eating. Sort of. Yes I feel awful for two days after my cheat day but… #Priorities. Also #Yolo.

Sleep:  This is a weird one. For years, my job started at ten PM, at the earliest, and so I was done with my work day at three in the morning and in bed by four. Most of the time. I think your body just gets used to dirty clubs and zero noise filtering. I got to a point where I was just excited enough to get through it– and just exhausted enough by the end of it to hit the hay IMMEDIATELY after turning the lights out. These days? I’m done at ten. When I get home, I have this surge of energy (probably because my body flips the ‘work mode’ light on) and all I can do is clean my bathtub for the fourth time that week or play with Molly until she hates me. I’ll never be a morning person– but my days start a lot earlier now and when I go run errands before noon I feel like an alien who’s never seen mid-morning sun before. And now that it’s spring I’m totally groggy all the time.

Luckily, everyone in Murl Beach acts like an alien (groggy or just gross) one way or another so I fit right in.

Molly: Oh man. MY BOO IS THE BEST. And everyone knows it… because now? She’s all I talk about. I don’t remember if I used to do this with other roommates but I talk about Molly ALL THE TIME. Between talking at people about my cat constantly and being called out for a ridiculous amount of cat printed clothing (I had no idea, okay?!) I have, officially, been named the cat lady of my theatre. She’s my favorite, though! And I see her EVERY DAY! So that makes it normal, right? And seriously, dude, she’s there for me through thick and thin. Ever since moving here (and the crazy near-death experience we had) she has come to terms with being my side-kick and is next to me constantly.

Everywhere. Even next to the bath tub with a too-tall glass of straight whiskey.

When Napkin is here, I get called out for singing songs to her. Songs that go like, “You’rrreeee my baaaaabbbyyy, the beeeessssstttt baaaaaaabbbbyyyy” while Molly follows me because she knows that, despite the humiliation of my singing to her, she will get a treat out of it so WHATEVZ. (Looking back, this may be something that I’ve always done… maybe this isn’t a habit I’ve picked up since moving here? Whatever. She’s the best, okay?)

Fashion: I’m not even going to try and tell you that I even really have a sense of fashion. I read fashion blogs. Those girls know what’s up. I’m basically in whatever is weather appropriate and not-thought-provoking. This translates into a lot of t-shirts. But I have noticed that I’m into patterns more? This could be because I’m wearing costumes that I wouldn’t think twice about outside of the theatre. But I’m wearing them six days a week so they’re starting to rub off on me. And my taste in house stuff! My home has always been about cool, neutral colors and very few patterns. But the beach apartment? TOTES BOHO CHIC AMIRITE?!

See? I’m really proud of turning this ugly, golf themed, furnished apartment into some place actually live-able and not embarrassing for visitors. Also, I’m wearing stripes in the above photo. CHANGES.

Napkin: Whew. I miss my dude. Being without him on the reg is hard for tons of reasons. There are things as small as my having to scale my own kitchen cabinets so that I can reach something on the top shelf. There are things like my waking up in the middle of the night, totally certain that I’m about to be kidnapped and learning, after an hour of paralyzing fear, that it was the ice maker. Normally, I make Napkin get up and save us from certain doom. And there’s just the lack of his presence. I miss the normal routines of eating a meal together, planning together– being a team.

I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all bad– I think it’s put a lot of stuff in perspective to be apart from Napkin. I’m really grateful for things I took for granted before, you know, like, being saved in the middle of the night and him reaching for the mixing bowl on the top shelf.

But I’m also really, really excited for the days when we are back together in the same space, making decisions together.

And PS: I know that, somewhere inside of him, he secretly misses my Molly songs.