Month Old Candy Corn

There's nothing like turning 21 on October 31st in a country that doesn't celebrate either 21 or Halloween.
Luckily, some people still remember.
Not-so-luckily, the Italian Postal Service is out to get me.

I got the first one of my Birthday care packages today. More then a month after it was mailed.
I've already eaten 90 percent of the sweets contained therein.
I mean - the candy corn wasn't stale at all.
The cookie was a little stale. (just a little)
And the Halloween candy was perfectly fine, as one might expect.

I say, the sugar rush was exactly what I needed to kick it up for these last 10 hours of the week.
(that's clowning until 6, Cabaret until 7:30, dinner until 8:30, and Gianni's Tarentella class until 11ish)
- especially since I stopped putting honey in my tea. It actually made it too good. I was done with the glass before I'd even gotten back to the table. It was also the largest contributer to the 5 or 6 cup a day situation that, I think, was really dragging me down.
I hurt everywhere.
Clowning, is painful.
Physically and emotionally.

We played a "game" last night with plastic water bottles.
Here's how you play:

You (as your clown) stand on the far side of the room, between the wall and a long, thick rope that's stretched across the room about 5 feet in. The others stand at the other end of the room. You, Start. Doing what, you ask? Doing anything and everything you can think of, and several things you can not. If you are funny, they might laugh. if you are not, they start to advance. When they get to the rope, they stop again. Now, here's where it get fun. If you are still not doing anything interesting, they count. They count to 3. They give you a last chance. Do you know what they give you if you, by some miracle, manage to save your self before they hit 3? You get another 3. To do something completely different, but always to the same purpose. Eventually, you cannot do anything else. Then, they cross the rope. With their water bottles (you knew they had to come in somewhere) and Kill you. I'm not joking. If this were the bottle game, and you were telling me this story, I would be walking towards you. With a water bottle upraised.
Oh by the way,
You then repeat the game.
I had to go 5 or 6 times, because, here's something we found out about me,
I can't be funny under pressure.
The closer they got, the less funny I became.

Do you know what I finally did to get myself out of the loop?
I sang.
Cats.

...I think they just got fed up and let me go.


My clown, by the way, is a boozy floozy named Spritz (that's short for Spritzer), with an Eastern European accent of questionable origin, an over-sized trench coat, and a pair of lime green heels that are two sizes too large. She suffers (is that really the word?) from a constant state of inebriation. Ironic, really, given my current state of sobriety. Or perhaps not. The clown comes from inside you - it's the part of you emerges behind the world's smallest mask... (think about it. it'll hit you.)