Love Me Do 9

Be patient with a loved one who continues to rebel or ignore you, and simply restate your boundaries.

That loved one is my son who decided to run away and live in the woods.

I had an audition today so my 20-year old niece, who had her two half-sisters visiting, came over to stay with Son for me. Daughter is still at Boot Camp and I am already spoiled by having a free sitter in the house. Niece, a true doll, pinch hit.

My younger Niece and Son were playing video games and having a grand old time when I returned so I told older Niece to go to her meeting and leave younger Niece with us for a while. Which was great until I interrupted the video games for dinner. After dinner there were disagreements about what to do, where to play, etc. Son and Niece finally decided to go back to video games but Son flipped out when Niece got upstairs and started the game before he could get there. He came downstairs, put on his flip-flops and announced he was running away to live in the woods.

"OK," I said. "But do you want me to pack you some food? You might get hungry."

"I'll eat trees and leaves," Son growled. (I hate it when writers use words other than 'said' but he really did growl.)

"Um, you didn't even like the one green bean I made you eat for dinner," I said. "I don't think you're really going to like trees and leaves. Are you sure I can't pack you some food?"

Son, recognizing my logic, wavered. Then started crying.

"How about I just have some chocolate milk."

He drank the chocolate milk then informed me that his life was still terrible (seriously, this is a boy who played Lego Indiana Jones on the PlayStation 3 for no less than 4 hours today. What the hell does he have to complain about?) and that he was going to live with his friend, M.

So I called M.'s house. No one home.

Fine. Son says he will go live with E.

I call E.'s house, praying that no one is home again but E.'s mother answers. She's a good friend and I haven't seen her in a while as they just returned from a trip. As she is recounting the adventure to me, Son leans forward and says between clenched teeth:

"Cut to the chase."

HOW am I supposed to keep from laughing at this? It's all I can do to keep it together while I change the topic and tell E.'s mom the real reason for my call. She gets it immediately and says that E's older brother eats non-relatives at midnight. She's awesome.

Son and I have a long discussion about why his life is so bad here. He's basically tired of riding around in the car to ice rinks because of Daughter's skating (and who can blame him? I'm over it myself). I tell him that I'm working very hard to keep him out of the car and that Daughter really appreciates his patience because she knows it's been hard on him.

"Yeah. She told me that once."

I simply restated my boundaries. "I love you and will cry every day if you leave."

Those are my boundaries and I'm sticking to 'em.


Audition Update #2

The waiting room was filled with "business" people. Only two were talking and the rest of us eavesdropped on their conversation about working on the movie sets here in town and which stars are difficult to work with. (Oh, Ellen Page, I'm sure you are just misunderstood.) I auditioned with a gentleman (insert throat-clearing) who spent 7 1/2 minutes trying to work out his character's motivation, attitude, history and what he had for breakfast.

Part of me wanted to say, "Dude, it's not brain surgery. Move on." But another part of me wondered, "Am I supposed to be asking questions about my character's motivation? Do I not look like I know what I'm doing because I'm just sitting here and smiling?"

As far as I could tell, my character REALLY wanted everyone to understand that they only had 8 WEEKS to complete the assignment, so I just concentrated on sounding as nice, yet insistent, as possible while I said my lines.

Got home, got a call for another gig that the agency wanted to submit me for. Some thing's gotta hit. Right?