Mrs. Marley fell down the entire flight of stairs, hit her head on the cement wall at the end, broke her neck, and died instantly.

I had just finished getting dressed when Mom knocked on my door. I opened it, and she stood there in her navy blue pantsuit, ready to go to a bridal shower.

"Do you have any index cards?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I have them in storage, because I use them for outlining scenes in plays, but I haven't used any in awhile. Why?

"We're each supposed to bring a recipe to the shower," she said, sighing. "I don't have any recipe cards left."

"I have cardstock," I said. "If you give me the recipe, I can type it out on the computer, print it out and cut it down to index card size."

Mom thought that was a great idea, so she grabbed her recipe for chocolate chip cupcakes. I set up the laptop, dug out my cardstock and plugged in the printer.

"Okay," she said, "1 teaspoon of salt. Just type out t-s-p."

"I've read a recipe before, Mom," I said.

"I know. I'm just running late," she said. "Four captital-T of butter--"

"You mean tablespoons?" I said.

"Don't be a smartass," she said.

I typed out the recipe as she dictated, and then printed it out. As I was cutting the card down to size, she went into the bathroom off the kitchen to brush her teeth.

I walked towards the kitchen, recipe card in hand, while Mom walked towards me. Just before we each hit the dining room, mom fell.

She didn't just fall, she toppled.

No time to put her hands out; no time to catch herself, Mom fell straight down, landing on one knee, then flipping over onto her back. I dropped the card and the recipe book and ran over to her, shouting, "Are you all right? Mom?!?"

"Shit!" she said, sitting up and grabbing at her knee. "My ankle! My knee!"

"Don't move," I said. "You might have broken something."

"No," she said, standing up. I grabbed her arm to support her. "I think I'm okay." She limped around the kitchen.

"Maybe you should sit down and put that leg up with some ice," I said.

"I hit my knee on one leg and my ankle twisted on the other," she said. "Which leg would I put up? Besides, I'm driving Carolyn to the shower. Where are my shoes?"

I looked at the shoes she had been wearing. The heels weren't exactly high, but they were high enough that they made me nervous. "Maybe you should go with flats for the rest of the day," I said.

"I have a pair of navy flats upstairs," she said. "I'll get those--"

"No!" I ran towards the front hall. "I know about bad knees. Just stay away from the stairs for awhile. I'll get them."

I got her shoes, she put them on, and hobbled out the door.

(Later, when I told this story to Stephanie at work, she said, "Of course she went to the shower! She's a Cleary! Stubborn!")

After Mom left, I calmed myself down a bit, until I saw the spot she fell.

Right next to where she fell was the doorway to the cellar. The door was open. If she had fallen to the right instead of straight ahead, she would have tumbled down the cellar stairs.

Mrs. Marley was 28 when she fell down the stairs. Mom is 62.

I shudder just thinking about it.

Thank the gods, the rest of the day wasn't as eventful (or heart-stopping) as this morning.

My last day in design! My last Sunday shift! The last day I'll be scheduled to leave the building after it's dark!

Here's what I wrote about the job when I started there as a temp on November 1, 1999:

I'm not sure I'll be able to deal with the tedium of the work involved, but at least nobody calls. Everything is done via e-mail and fax, from what I can gather.

Um. Hahahahahahahaha!

Since the past three years have been nothing but answering the phones, I was very wrong on that point.

Looking over my old entries, the most interesting thing about me beginning this job is the so-called "training" I got. I had one day of training, in which I was given a few sheets of training materials, and then I was thrown onto the production floor, expected to start working right away.

Nowadays, Laurie gives all the new hires (including temps) a full week of nothing but training, and then we ease them into more difficult presentations. Nobody has to figure out anything on their own, and we've been hand-holding all the new employees since I started training them.

The department I'm leaving is not at all the same department I started with, and I'd like to think I had something to do with that. I was on the training committee, wrote several hundred pages of training documentation, supervised for three years, and was a general pain in the ass to Dan until he made some policy changes.

I was a little sad when the end of the day came. Tamra gave me a sad little face and said, "You'll come in on Saturdays to work out with me, won't you?"

Since I generally go out with Laurie on Saturday nights, I suppose I could stop by the office, work out with Tamra, and then hang out until their shift is over.

Then again, I'll be doing a show most weekends through May, so there won't be the possibility of doing that until Summer, and by that time, I hope to be fully into triathlon training.

After I said my tearful farewell to the design department (which consisted of saying "Bye!" to everyone and rushing out the door), I had rehearsal.

We blocked Act 2 tonight, which is a lot less demanding than Act 1. However, we finally moved from the tiny rehearsal space in the back of the building to the main stage, and it's a little disconcerting to have to take more than a step and a half to get from one end of the set to the other.

Blocking went well enough. I think there's a little too much upstaging going on, but the set from the children's production hasn't been fully cleared yet, so I'm assuming that we'll have more room to breathe once the platforms are moved offstage.

I'm finally starting to get to know my fellow castmates in a significant way. I've been a little reserved up until now, though I don't know why. We're fully into the touchy-feely stage now, which is indicative of community theater productions.

One of the funniest things is that Jude (the woman who plays the ingenue) and I are basically all over each other in Act 2. When we're not clinging to one another, we're casting meaningful glances at one another, and it's turning out to be tons of fun. Will, the guy who plays the juvenile, is supposed to be her other love interest, but he's not quite as comfortable with all the physical stuff.

Maybe it's because he's straight and might have some attraction to the young woman (she's very pretty), but Jude told me that she had been discussing the show with friends the other night and told them, "It's hilarious! I have love scenes with a gay guy and a straight guy, and the gay guy and I have much more sexual chemistry than the straight guy and I do."

There's another kissing scene in Act 2, which I'm now entirely comfortable with. We're supposed to kiss until we're interrupted by the nervous maid, who is played by a woman who was out tonight, so we kept not getting interrupted for long periods of time. It got both of us terribly giggly until the last time we rehearsed the scene, at which point, when we didn't get interrupted when we should have, I simply threw Jude down on the bench and attacked her. If we're not going to get our cues, then it's not going to be a "family show" for very much longer.

It's an extraordinarily silly show, and not the best-written thing I've ever read, but it is funny, and I think my family is going to like it a lot. (I have a bunch of aunts who haven't seen me act onstage yet, and they're itching to see a show, so I'll invite them to this one.) I don't know how many friends I'll be able to coax up to Burlington to see the show, but they should. On the first night of rehearsals, the director said that he was basically doing a "90-minute sitcom." That's pretty accurate. It's funny and it's cute, and I actually feel comfortable playing the lead.

So if you're going to be in the Boston area in May, let me know if you want to see the show. If for no other reason than to see me mack on a girl. After all, I'm better at it than the straight guy!