Sunday I took my books back to the Beverly Hills library.  On the way home, we stopped at our Beverly Hills 90210 Franklin Park, where Zyla had made that Fairy House video so many years ago.  It was a beautiful, breezy day as we made our way around the man made lake, loving being in nature.  You could forget about the city, almost felt like we were up in Big Bear, almost.  The baby turtles in the pond were cute, one just out of the water for Zyla to pet.  Made it home in time to nap for a bit before going to the Palm Sunday Mass where Zyla Alter Served.  We had steaks for dinner then settled in to watch Jesus Christ Superstar.  Well, I was up dancing and singing along to this musical rendition of Christ life.  Holy Week had begun.

I had some time off with not much to do since I had thought I would be working on that pilot.  I decided to have a German film festival courtesy of Netflix, watching Everyone Else, Bedways, and Into Great Silence.  Everyone Else was ok.  I had expected more, something completely different from the description, but it was enjoyable.  Bedways was exactly as I had thought it would be, even better.  I felt I could have written the story, it hit close to home, really enjoyed this one.  Into Great Silence, was listed as a German movie, but actually was French, about the Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse and the silent life of the monks there.  The movie was over 2 ½ hours long, sort of reminded me of The Artist, with the quiet sense of it, but I never got bored.  I found it fascinating to watch these monks and see what would happen next, what would they do.  It was a very spiritual, meditative movie, and the chanting pieces were deeply felt in my soul.  I felt connected to the Source, it was beautiful. 

Ed and I received The Way from his parents for Easter.  It was starring Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez.  It was all about the Road to Santiago, "El Camino de Santiago"; I was so excited to see it.  Ever since reading Paulo Coelho's pilgrimage on this same road, I have wanted to travel it myself.  But I had only imagined in my mind what it must look like walking from France to Spain by Way of St. James.  This movie showed the landscape and my heart yearned to go even more.  All the new episodes of Switched At Birth were available, causing Zyla to put Kyle XY on hold to catch up with her favorite show we all watched together in the evenings.  Weeds Season 7 came from Netflix.  I love Mary Louise Parker's ~ Nancy Botwin and the whole New York vibe she had going on this season.  Jessica's called with a stand in job for Wednesday.  It was a camera test for The Smart One over at Warner Brothers.  Zyla and Ed were starting their Easter Breaks on Wednesday, so I picked up Zyla at noon, fed her lunch, then finished getting ready for set.  Ed got home as I was leaving for set and I had a feeling it would be a short day and I would be home soon to enjoy the vacation time with them.  I was right.  I was only needed for 2 ½ hours, getting paid for a full day, gotta love that!  I was needed to walk through a living room into kitchen scene in daylight and set for nighttime.  The director was Michael Fresco from my Better Off Ted days!  He introduced himself and I reminded him I had stood in for Andrea Anders.  It was funny because today I was standing in for Portia, who had co-starred on Better Off Ted as well.  The DP, Tony was awesome, he bought me a coffee since there was no craft service for our short day.  Everything went smoothly, Michael said it was great seeing me again, and that he would see me on set.  I did not know anything about that.  I was hoping this meant I would have a new stand in job on this show, I wasn't sure if it was picked up yet, or just a pilot.  I wrapped out at 6pm, heading home to dinner with my family. 

I found uploaded to youtube the entire German version of Hideous called In Vitro.  I loved watching it, hearing German come out of my mouth!  Made me feel like an authentic foreign film actress!  I thought the actors that did the voice overs for us were all very impressive and actually enjoyed the film more in German.  Since the entire film was shot in Romania, it just gave it a more European feel to have us speaking German.  The remainder of my Holy Week went well.  Zyla Alter served the entire Good Friday Mass and Stations of the Cross.  Easter Sunday she was back up on the alter serving before we got all dressed up to go to the Renaissance Faire.  It was pretty warm, low 80's, so I bought a parasol I had always wanted of black lace and red flowers.  We enjoyed our favorite Washer Women show, those girls are brilliant!  On Tuesday we flew out to Iowa for a visit with my mom's side of the family.  The weather was 20 degrees cooler, very enjoyable.  Played basketball, went for walks through the town, the park, the covered bridges.  Wild lilac trees were everywhere scenting the air.  Showed Zyla the Back To the Future trilogy, which always reminded me of the square in Winterset.  Survived the tornado scare, dodged hail, enjoyed the dramatic thunderstorms, laughed at the Lion's Club vaudeville show, celebrated my grandmother's 87th birthday, kissed my mommy good-bye.  It was all over before I knew it and we were flying home.

My homecoming was heralded by food poisoning landing me in bed for over a week.  Drained and dehydrated I blearily made my way through the days.  In my weakened state I caught the flu, taking the last of my strength.  I was thankful I was not working and had my husband's support to take care of Zyla through the ordeal.  Tony, the cameraman from Better Off Ted, was back in town working on a new movie Atlas Shrugged Part 2.  He wanted to meet up for lunch.  I texted Zack to see if he would join us, and the three of us shared a little reunion at Granville Café in Burbank.  Titanic 3D was back in theaters for the 100^th anniversary of the mighty ships fall.  It was one of Zyla's favorite movies as well as mine and I was able to take her to a screening before it left the big screen.  I cried my eyes out all over again to this tragic event of history.  I called the payroll company to find out why I never received my check from the camera test earlier in the month.  They told me another stand in that week had not gotten their check either because the pilot did not officially start until the following week after Easter and the paperwork had not been processed properly.  It was all resolved but that meant I missed out standing in on that pilot as well.  It did not look like I was going to be getting much work this month, though I had already guessed that when I made plans to leave town as well as having to book out days for Zyla's School Carnival that Ed and I had to work for service hours at the end of the month. 

As I fought through the coughing and sneezing, I picked up Lady of the Snakes by Rachel Pastan and began reading.  I randomly had found this book the last time I was at the library grabbing up others on my list.  It was funny that out of all the books I had borrowed and not gotten around to reading yet, that this stood out to be first.  It was amazing, stirring in me desires to return to my work, my novel I started last year at this time.  I had new ideas to add to the old, some things I had considered years ago but not gotten around to writing.  I was hoping all the ideas would mesh into one great work.  The library books were all due Monday and since I had renewed them once they had to be back.  I never did get a chance to the read the ones I thought I wanted and it was for the best.  I decided to leave reading for now and focus my attention solely on writing my novel for the month of May, between any stand in jobs that might arise, before my family was off on summer vacation again and I lost these long stretches of valuable quiet hours. 

Ed and I worked together Friday night, doing the Carnival hours at Zyla's school.  It made the time go by faster being there with him.  Andrew came over after with tasty treats to share.  Immortals came from Netflix, it was not as great as I had thought it would be, and took us three days to get through.  On Saturday, I returned to work more carnival hours, while Ed brought Zyla over to shadow her while she rode rides with all her friends.  I had lined up a sleep over for her that evening.  I was excited to have a new date night with Ed at the Comedy Club, somewhere he had never been.  We got there early and lined up for the Main Room.  Chris D'Elia was headlining.  I looked forward to his live comedy show after watching him for months at Whitney.  Ed and I were seated front row center.  We got an amazing group of comics, Kirk Fox, whom I worked with on my one day of Parks and Recreation creating his FB page for an episode.  Iliza Shlensinger reminded me of Ed's cousin Tiffany, she was awesome!  Ahmed Ahmed was great, Leslie Jones went off on Ed for shaving his body.  Ed got picked on a lot for wearing leather pants.  One comic called him Gene Simmons.  Some familiar faces from previous shows, Steve Simeone, Ian Edwards, Mark Ellis, Steve Byrne kept it fresh while throwing in some of their regular bits.  Barry Diamond was one of my favorites, I was dieing laughing, he is brilliant.  I liked going to the Main Room's bathrooms where it was a maze through to a black vinyl couch with orange vinyl stools in front of a mirror.  I remembered years past coming here with my friend Sonia who had worked at the Comedy Store for a while.  I bounced on the couch and made silly faces in the mirror reminiscing.  When I came out of the restroom, which was in the back of the room, it was fun to weave my way through the entire crowd back to my front center seat.  I could hear Rick Ingraham making fun of Ed all the way back in the bathroom.  He was calling him evil, but when I showed up, he decided I was out of Ed's league but he wanted what Ed had.  He moved on to pick on the drunk guy who had pulled up a chair front row once the room started clearing out.  I laughed until the bitter end, finding the room pretty much empty 4 hours later and headed home with Ed. 

The last day of April, in this month that seemed to last forever, I couldn't believe all I had done.  It was a Monday, but Zyla had the day off so her school could clear out the carnival, the rides, the food booths, the games, the stage for the live music that had filled the air.  It was delightfully spooky outside with clouds sitting low and I wanted to wander off to the woods, but she wanted to go shopping.  I had to return the library books, which just so happened to be next door to the mall, so she got her wish.  I was pleasantly surprised with a blast from the past on youtube.  Someone had posted up my appearance on Entertainment Tonight, featuring B-movie Scream Queen girls.  I remember shooting my segment interview for it at the Full Moon Offices at Hollywood and Vine back in late 1998.