Bring your pantyliners and tissues ...

Listen To Your Mother is coming to Portland!

Grab your phone. Swipe it open. Go to your calendar and pull up May. Because this Mother's Day (or thereabouts) you're gonna get yourself a ticket (and one for your mom, your grandma and every single last one of your book club/cards against humanity/runner/knitter/ninja friends) and head on over to the first ever Listen to Your Mother show in our fair Rose City. 

I know! Eeep!

I will be producing the up and coming wordy fun fest. And Carisa Miller (of Do You Read Me?) will be directing. I can't speak for Carisa, but I am pee-my-pants-excited. Listen To Your Mother has been making headlines in cities across the US since 2010, giving voice to local writers on the complexities, hilarity, diversity and the ties-that-bind of motherhood. Each LTYM show is locally directed, produced and performed, a true product of the community in which it will be hosted. And a portion of ticket sales will go to benefit a local non-profit charitable organization in support of women and children. Portland is one of 8 new cities to be added to the LTYM roster this year, hand-selected from a nation of applications. I'm assuming that because our Portland application came wrapped in artisan chocolate, we shot right to the top of the list.*

*I kid. I kid. 

I'm geeked out and honored to be a part of this, to represent the city that I fall more in love with every passing Portlandia sketch about sunbreaks and brunch lines. I'll be honest, I'm looking forward to the full night's sleep that I'll get come June. The bags under my lines are already competing with Steve Buscemi's. But I'm a mom! I can operate heavy machinery in a hailstorm while packing a lunch and reciting "The Giant Jam Sandwich" all while swatting away the fruitflies from my glass of pinot. So bring it on, mamas! Let's wipe away the eye boogies and clap our sticky hands together in celebration!

More to come! Please go right on ahead and follow my blog (and Carisa's too). I promise to keep you up to date with show information, casting opportunities, and my moments of sheer panic here, on twitter, and naturally, on that big cushy pillow I like to call facebook.

Thank you thank you thank to you Ann Imig, creator of this epic maternal platform, Melisa Wells, who will be coaching us through this process, and Carisa Miller, who will bear the brunt of this endeavor with me, like the sturdy girls on the base of the pyramid. We may be frazzled and hairless come Mother's Day, but what will be left in its wake will be something to write home to Mom about.

Til then, here's one from the LTYM 2013 archives.