Last Moments In My Own Private Idaho

Good Lord, I am busy. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Incredibly exciting things are happening. But, they're happening all at once so the juggling act has reached epic proportions. My day job during the day; final edits on Dancing With Crazy at night; The Whole Shebang (ridiculously amazing things with that - details as soon as I can give 'em) also knocked out on nights & weekends; shooting a pilot for a major cable network (again, details given when I am no longer under contract to be silent); raising money for Facing East ; this past weekend I attended the Utah Entertainment & Choice Awards then ran down to southern Utah to MC the 1st Annual Equality Celebration held there; still teaching acting classes; dating a man that makes me incredibly happy; and tending to all my million and one single mommy duties. I don't think I've seen a single friend that isn't involved in some aspect of my work since last fall.

Sigh.

All that having been said, I am ever-so-grateful for those of you that have continued to check in with this blog - even though I have chosen to merely entertain with Stoopid State commentaries and funny videos and photos. This has been, yes in part, to my busy schedule - but, more honestly, because (as I wrote a while ago) these are my last few months of blessed anonymity. I get that I am not exactly anonymous at this point - but it's nothing compared to what lies ahead with the release of my book. My guts will, once again, be splayed for all to see, scrutinize, enjoy, judge, hate... Many will appreciate it and many will crucify me for it. Oh, well... It is what it is. I'll hunker down with my friends and my Popcorn and weather the storm.

In the meantime, thank you for being patient while I hide and enjoy my last months of privacy.

In a few months... Oh, Internetland - the party we are going to have!

* * *
Related Posts:
In Between

In Between

If you're reading this I'm already dead...

Kidding.

If you're reading this you are numbered among those wonderful enough to keep checking in even after I vanish. Bless you. I have a million excuses for not blogging lately. Just the fact that I am a single mom who started a new job while working on several large projects should buy me a few weeks vacation from the burn out of - blah, blah, blah...

But, honestly, none of those reasons is the real and true reason I haven't blogged lately. I haven't blogged because this blog is basically a narrative of me: my life, my thoughts, my feelings and my oh-so fabulous every day life. But, for the past while now I have found myself living in the land of In Between and still haven't quite figured out how to write about it.

How does one adequately describe that place between waking and sleeping while one is still in it? How do we wax poetic or humorous when we find ourselves, yet again, half gooey dying caterpillar half brilliant butterfly? There are literally no words to describe the experience of curling up in the darkest night of the soul while concurrently spreading one's wings in the luminescence of resurrection morning.

That all sounds so flowery and self important. It's not. To put it in more simply: it's been impossible for me to write a 500 word essay while simultaneously having open heart surgery and multiple orgasms.

I am changing in big ways. I am becoming. I am allowing. And I am healing. Still. And I've been far more interested in experiencing it than narrating it. Life is just so damn cool - even when it's not.

Also, it looks like my book Dancing With Crazy is, at long last, going to be published by a new publisher (details forthcoming) and I have found myself pulling back into, however illusory, blessed anonymity while I still can. Being famous in a weird little pond primarily because of what has been said about me by other people has been... interesting. And the reason I even started writing this memoir in the first place was because I was done having other people speak for me. Done having other people tell their versions of some of the most important chapters in my life story. One of them was given permission. The other wasn't. Whatever. It is what it is.

And now it's my turn and that is both thrilling and terrifying. My guts are about to be publicly splayed again - but this time it is by my own doing. And in vivid Technicolor. There will be those that will be touched and moved and changed and entertained by it while others will judge and hate and dissect and blog and point mean fingers. And I am okay with it all because that is what I have chosen.

So there you have it. I am emerging from In Between Land a more whole version of myself and fun things are happening. Thanks for sticking with me through my silence. I'm back. (I think.) And you totally rock.

Friday Video: My Big, Fat Talking Head

Extraordinarily Cool

So, late last fall I got a phone call from Gibbs-Smith the publishers of my children's book Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed. A company called Snacklogic decided to turn children's books into interactive iPhone applications and chose mine to kick things off.

They bustled me into a recording studio to narrate and voice some characters and next thing you know - BAM! - it was done and up on iTunes where it's getting rave reviews.

It's incredibly cool - each page is narrated and has targets points to click that make it come to life. Kids can create their own scenes and play with characters and objects from the book and then email them to friends. And, at one point, they included me singing in goofy voices from Pirates of Penzance - which I only did in the studio as a joke but is now forever on the list of embarrassing things I have done publicly. (Not nearly as bad as the How To Lambada Home Video but, nothing is that bad!) Speaking of which, we need to play 100 questions again - that was fun. But I digress...

Ordinary Mary is now an interactive iPhone application! Totally cool. And we have overhauled the Official Website. And there is now a Blog not only for parents and educators but a place where I can leave my smart ass self where she belongs - in the tub with her pie - and give voice to the part of me that loves stories of human kindness, good and selfless deeds, Mister Rogers and videos of heroic dogs and wild lions that make me weepy. A place where I can share things, not only about the book and school program it inspired, but report on people and their creatures that are making the world better than they found it.

So, there you have it. Ordinary Mary. Wow, that little chick is really getting around. If she makes out with Gerard Butler before I do I will kill her.

* * *
Related Links:
Talk About Extraordinary

Breaking The Rock

I love the image that was used in the speech (below) by Patricia Clarkson at the HRC benefit in New Orleans - taken from the quote by Tennessee Williams "The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks."

It is a theme of "Dancing With Crazy" that has been a big one for me in my life - which you all will read once the damn thing is published. Sheesh. But what a glorious picture: Something as seemingly tiny and fragile as a seed - a flower, breaking through something as seemingly hard and impenetrable as a mountain - a rock.

This speaks to something so much bigger than equal rights and those who are fighting to achieve them (as important as that is). It speaks to the human soul that has been buried and covered and lost in the dark - smashed by the rock of the lies and pain of life. It speaks to the ability we all have, in the deepest parts of our beings, to not give up. To struggle and to grow and to reach for the light. To stand tall and beautiful, having fought the fight of a lifetime, with our hearts and petals open and alive in the sunshine.

There is no feeling that comes close. Except maybe love. Because that is, ultimately, what it is. Love. Love of Self. Love of Life. And, Love of that word that I have only recently begun even speaking again. God. (I think I just heard several of you fall off your chairs.)

Coochie. Coochie. Coochie.

So, I just got back from a quick trip to LA. Saw the Long Beach production of "Facing East." It was a wonderful weekend of book and film schmoozing and creating and making peace with the city that tried to kill me two decades ago. All was fantabulous until my flight home.

Okay, I get the whole "terrorists exist therefore you must get naked before boarding and not carry anything containing liquid that is bigger than a freaking pimple" but come on... Long beach is a very small airport. The happy people that worked the ticket counter, also worked the gate and had left by the time we got there to check baggage. I was not able to check my bags. So at the security check point I explained that NO ONE was there to check my bags and that I was not packed for carrying on. I was informed that there was nothing to be done and they proceeded to go through my luggage and toss out ALL my (not inexpensive) shampoo, conditioner, face wash, lotion, body spray, toothpaste, deodorant... They weirdly let me keep my gallon jug of anal lube. Not sure what that was about.

So, I'm balling and bitching to the Airline Gods who tried to appease me by giving me a seat close to David Archuleta. It was sweet of them but I really think that I had earned Blair Underwood or Johnny Depp considering the rude fashion in which they had just raped me.

Good thing I still had my lube.

Playtime

Saturday I had a book reading / signing for Ordinary Mary at the Salt Lake public library. I thought about mentioning it on here but had a feeling in my gut that it wouldn't necessarily be a party I'd be proud of hosting. I was right. My reading was at 11:00am. At 11:10 I was still the only person in the reading room. At 11:13 in walks a woman, completely off her rocker, pushing a stroller in which an 18 mo. - 2 year old baby sits eating a chocolate chip cookie the size of her head and drinking a can of Diet Coke with a straw. Koo Koo Ka Choo was immediately in my face with her cell phone snapping picture after picture of my nose while asking me how old I was and if I really wrote a book. She banged the phone into my eyeball asking me if I liked any of the pictures she had taken but before I could ask her to kindly delete them from her phone she whirled around and began to dialogue with her baby about me and my book and the library schedule and President Obama and the homeless problem and quantum physics and oatmeal.

Then, magically, at 11:17 about five children appeared and sat around me while I read to them. It was fine. There was actually one little brother and sister team that were so cute and polite and engaged. It was worth it for them. AND, it was totally worth seeing that building. I have heard forever about how amazing it is but hadn't yet taken the time to check it out. Wow. Now I know where I am taking my laptop when I need to work somewhere, anywhere, other than my bedroom.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have told you all about it. My screaming fans would have shown up and the three of us would have had an amazing time.

Change of subject. Sort of. In addressing the ongoing question of how to stay financially afloat while Book is selling and money for Film is being raised I decided that I simply cannot stomach anymore temp work. And I am tired of cleaning other people's houses. I have a few other irons in a few other fires and am still doing a bit of freelance writing but decided I needed something that would be fun, that I would kick ass at and would bring in a bit of steady money.

Long story short I am going to start throwing Passion Parties. That's right - Sister Pearson is gonna sell sex toys! I have friends that make a good chunk of money doing it and, surprisingly those parties are quite popular (and might I add, desperately needed) here in Utah. Probably for the same reason as the porn. Basically we're talking me and a room full of people and two hours of stand up comedy involving sex toys. Come on, you know you're dying to book me for your next Homemaking activity night!

Anyway, I signed up and just received my kit in the mail - a shockingly large, heavy box filled with sex toys. So now I'm thinking, screw working at all - Mommy's never leaving her bedroom again. If this is the last you ever hear from me, know that I died a very happy woman.

Dancing With Crazy Teaser

Okay, since I am sans HBO, I watched "Big Love" at my friends house just now. I expected to see it, hoot-n-holler and then come home and write a jaunty little post about what I saw and thought and what they did. I also expected to throw in some sensitivity to the TBMs because of how it must have felt to have something so sacred blah, blah, blah...

None of that's gonna happen today. I am furious and disturbed and, above all else, bugged beyond belief that Dancing With Crazy isn't out yet to help you all understand why I can, and do, rant and rave about the Mormon Church and polygamy as passionately as I rant and rave about the Mormon Church and homosexuality. I don't want to give away a big juicy chunk of my book so I will just say that once DWC is in stores, and you have all had the chance to read it, I will blog a big blog that will link back to this one to remind you of what was put on hold and you will say, "Ah yes, now we understand," and "Holy shit, Pearson!"

For now I will take deep breaths, scream into my pillow for a while and return to my porn post in progress.

Oh yeah, and scramble like mad to get my hands on every previous and brilliant Big Lovin' episode.