Although I hadn’t anticipated a change of plans last night, everything turned out just peachy.  I had put the last coat of mascara on my eight eyelashes, blush on my cheek and a spritz of hair spray to secure my new ‘do,’ standing in front of the mirror thinking that I looked pretty damn pretty when the phone rang (an hour or so before my expected first date in MANY months).

“How are you?  I’m exhausted,” he said.  NOT a good beginning.  The source of his exhaustion, you might ask?  Sitting out in the “hot sun by the pool” for EIGHT hours at a local RESORT for an “all-day planning session” with his business partners.  “That IS exhausting,” said I, beginning to realize that he had no intention of going on a date with me that night.  The blush on my cheek darkened as the steam rose from my head.

I found myself saying stupid things like, “We’ll just do it again sometime, no problem.”  You can guess what my ‘post edit’ went like as I kicked myself and boinged my forehead with the palm of my hand.  We’re always SO much more eloquent AFTER we’ve hung up, aren’t we?  When I told Sal what had happened, she raced into the bathroom to put on her own face, got all dolled up just like me and off we went to the Four Seasons Hotel bar for martinis and apps.  And, we had the BEST time! 

It wasn’t until we returned home and turned on the TV that I discovered another of the reasons I had been blown off in such an embarrassing manner...the first game of the NBA finals.  I pictured the man ‘in question’ cozied up on his couch, beer in one hand and remote in the other, cheering on his favorite team, jumping around pounding his chest like a Neanderthal  over a Dwight Howard slam dunk (yes, women like basketball too!).  He’s happy as a clam and oddly alert again.  Hmmmmm.

Middle age obviously brings me no more intelligence or good judgment than rejection did in my twenties.  I’m just more polite on the phone is all.  But, my middle-aged ‘post edit’ did NOT include beating MYSELF up over a silly silly man who missed out on one incredible woman...her presence, her wit, humor and attention.  Tsk.  Tsk.  Tis a wonder to me even still.

KK

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Jerk.

Okay, my life has been one ‘change of plans’ after another.  When I was little I wanted to be a nun or a hobo.  I wanted to hop trains but then I found out in elementary school that you can’t do that in a nun’s habit.

In high school I wanted to be an artist and paint canvasses, but in college I found out that my place was in the theeahtah.  I walked into a theater with a friend in Santa Fe and was asked to help with some backstage stuff.  Uh, oh, I thought…. I think I just wasted four years of college classes in painting, printmaking, sketching and sculpture only to find out that I belong in this dusty, black box filled with raggedy seats and weird people dressed in black on a wooden stage going, “MWAAH, MWAAH, MWAAH.”  The bricks on the wall were fake.  The curtains were torn.  I was hooked.

Change of plans.

I have a part in a movie right now that is really fun.  I get to die and be blue and have vomit wiped off my face by a cute, young actor from LA.  He plays my son and even though he does a bad thing, well… you’ll just have to see the film when it comes out.  Can’t wait.

I thought I was going to come to Austin and continue to teach Method For Film and do a lot of indie films but…

Change of plans.

I ended up as one half of the craziest pair of comedic mavens to hit the scene since Lucy and Ethel moved to Connecticut.  We’re taking up the mantel and holding it high with martinis in our left hands, a tri-pod and camera, and facial expressions that rival those of Jim Carey playing the part of an orangutan.

This is the most fun I’ve had since I played a sleepy pigeon in a ComCast commercial.  But here I get to do it with my KK and have my Smirnoff before we leave the set.

Second chances are great but you’ve got to get up off your ass and make them happen or you wind up with up with nothing but a cross-word puzzle and reruns of ‘Wheel of Fortune’ as you trudge through life regretting the changes of plans you were too afraid to make.

Will there be another change of plans for me now?  Yeah.  KK and I have got great futures waiting for us to catch up, and we are on the highway from writing and video camera to our likenesses bigger than Auto Park American flags pasted on the sides of Warner Brother’s studios and on every bus-stop bench in Hollywood.  Never mind that thugs will paint mustaches on our faces and birds will poop on our air-brushed hair.  We’re on our way!

SalGal