Calgary is all sunshine and blue skies again, as though she never even had her bad moon.”Was I grumpy? Was I tempestuous? Oh bother! What’s a girl to do if she can’t have her moods! I don’t even remember that! Here, have another summer day, take a bite out of that pretty apple you harvested in a hurry as the snow fell, and tell me you still love me. Oh don’t be cross!”
My sister’s kitchen counters are full of bags of root vegetables she hurriedly pulled out from under the snow. We eat the last of the battered brave lettuce. 
This is the city where I learned right from left. Where my father took me outside to look at the horizon and told me, “the mountains are West”. Where Chinook always broke midwinter despair. Every gig I’ve had here has been great. Optimism. Optimism. Maybe it’s the big wide open sky. Maybe it’s oil money. But there’s always a sense of hope here, despite the ups and downs.
My cold has gone full blown and stormed my entire body. It feels like my head is inside a huge Dep gel jar. My director is saying something to me through the murky goop and plastic shell…”Come in…come in hotter off the top of the scene…” This makes me chuckle. I have a fever. I already feel way way way too hot. I am dizzy. I have to sprawl on the backstage ottoman. Thank God for the lavish furniture in Act Two. Poor director. But soon. Soon I will make that scene jump like a firecracker, I promise. When I can stand up straight. Thank God I’m dead soon and can go into the green room and blow my nose and lay down my dizzy head. This cold is going through the cast but I seem to have it the hardest. Why? Why? Why? Oh probably because I’m just so damn happy my body was open to anything.
I wake up with a snort and a drip – end of Act Two! Time to go. I am “broken” for the day. I feel a little better having had a hard nap. Good enough to take the bus home. I walk out of the tower and think, “If I knew as a kid that I’d be working IN the Calgary tower one day, I’d think I was super cool.”
Riding the LRT I see the mountains in the West. I feel warmth return to my bones. I feel my head starting to clear like the big blue sky. Optimism. Optimism. Keep the head high.
