GOBSMACKED!!!!

For those of you unaware of British terminology, gobsmacked means absolutely thrown for a loop. Your gob is (in really vulgar slang) your mouth...and in England, really big jawbreakers (oh, come on - we all ate jawbreakers as kids) are known (again vulgarly) as gobstoppers, the etymology of which should be obvious. So gobsmacked means feeling as if you've been suddenly, out of nowhere, smacked in the mouth. Here endeth the first lesson.

Off I trotted to my horrible seminar job this morning in the dark at 6:10 am (please - bring on the end of daylight savings for those of us who far too often have to leave home at weird hours) and had a deeply frustrating and annoying day. 1. The instructions were unclear for how this thing was to be run. 2. The lady who was speaking was oddly uninvolved in the process...usually these people are all over you to tell you a lot more than everything. 3. There was no cell phone service where I was sitting.

Let me repeat that. I will repeat that while we are all remembering that I am a member of SAG who does background work, and that every single day I submit myself for at least 3 or 4 jobs. Are we all clear? THERE WAS NO FRIGGIN' CELL PHONE SIGNAL WHERE I WAS SITTING.

And, therefore, C&G Casting called me. Of course. Could anyone imagine anything else? Naturally. The upshot of this is that I've got Ugly Betty for Monday, but the downshot (is there such a word?) is that now I'm going to have to rejigger things all over the place. If you're all keeping track, Monday was the day that the cleaners were coming around noon, and my first rehearsal for Tsunami (my one woman show) was supposed to take place at 6:30 pm. Since I have no idea (and won't until after noon on Sunday) when I'm shooting...yes, well, you can imagine that a lot of rescheduling will have to take place here.

Meanwhile, to even talk to Deanna from C&G, I had to go down two floors in an elevator to get to a place where the goddamn cell phone worked. Is this any way to run a hotel, for God's sake? Sheesh.

Finally, this way too long day ended. Did I mention that at one point when I was running around trying to get a damn phone signal, the elevators quit working? Oh, yeah. The hotel guests seemed perfectly happy to stand around for however long it took, but then, they're not New Yorkers. I hiked up two LONG flights of stairs, leaving them behind, placidly mooing. Well, they were pretty much all cow-sized.

Finally, I got to the subway. That would be the #1 train - 50th to Christopher Street. I had to stand until 42nd, of course, but I got a seat at 42nd, settled into it, looked casually down the car, and...

OH, MY SWEET JESUS GOD. SWEET CHRIST ON A STICK. OH, MY GOD!

I leaped out of my seat and ran down the car shrieking...not as easy as it sounds. The shrieking part is easy, but running on a moving subway is kind of iffy.

And I jumped all over people...the people being my cousin Cass (well, Cathy, but I wasn't too good with TH when little, so she's always been Cass or Cassie), her husband Charlie, their daughter (either Susie or Sandy, but I think Sandy - they have two daughters and, in my view, should have started their names with two different letters so I wouldn't get so confused all the damn time), Sandy's husband (or Susie's), David, their two children, and David's mother and father.

THEY LIVE IN CHICAGO. Yeah. My idiot family, who tend to be lackadaisical about family relations (me, too), had actually planned to tell me they were coming but they hadn't quite gotten around to it. This, I may add, is fairly typical. Usually they call out of the blue and announce, "We're here! We'll be over in an hour!" This doesn't bother me because my entire family housekeeps the way I do, and nobody gives a damn. Also, an hour usually means two hours, at the very least - I am the ONLY member of my family capable of being on time.

Turns out that David, who is a...oh, hell, a what...trombonist, right. (I had to run through some saxophones and French horns and oboes to get there...I knew it had a reed.) Anyway, he's playing at Juilliard tomorrow night. He and Sandy (or Susie) both teach music. Sorry...are highly degreed professors of music.

Well, I mean really. Wouldn't you be somewhat thrown to find a very large amount of your out of town family suddenly sitting in your SUBWAY CAR? When you didn't know they were anywhere near your town?

At any rate, I am delighted, because these are some of my absolutely most favorite family members ever.

But as bizarrities go (I think bizarrities is a perfectly good word, and I shall copyright it when I get a minute)...you've got to admit - one of the best.

I'm going to take several deep breaths and, I think, run to the deli for just a little tad more beer.

Maybe a LOT more beer.

Yours in complete disbelief...

Love, Wendy