"No, today I'm a chicken."

I start my day between 6 and 6:30 a.m. with cement trucks, tractors, pounders (okay, I have no idea what the real name of the "pounder" is) and beeping waking me not so gently from my slumber. At 7 a.m., I stumble onto my patio with my coffee to breathe in the fresh scent of tar. At 8:30 a.m. I am at the theatre as 52 kids stumble into the dark theatre. At 8:40, an 8th grade student takes the stage and performs small plays for the students.
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"Do your Darth Vader play, Christie!" shouts a crowd of high school guys.
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"No, today I'm a chicken."
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And she was - for twenty minutes - a chicken performing in The Magic Fishbone (I knew Charles Dickens should have had a chicken in his story!). She performed as suggestions were shouted out from the sleep-eyed students and the more scarily alert ones.
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Is it a wonder I am craving "simple?"
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In May I wrote in my blog of my desire to live in a villa as Frances Mayes does and go to my terrace to pick baby lettuces. And now that it is July, I may. I transform my brain - as only a former actress can - and see my villa and my terrace.

My arugula - ready for picking.

Baby green lettuces - to be transformed into salads. But simple. After a morning with my squirrelly chickens, I have been coming home to adapt Pride and Prejudice. Twenty-seven characters (yes, I cut quite a few) and twenty two scenes - I want simple.

Arugula with shaved Parmesan. Salt and pepper and bit of oil and vinegar and done. Summer on my lips, simple, breathing in the spicy scent of the leaves - taking me to Italy.

Devoid of chickens.

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And again - simple - but a wee bit sweeter.

Roasted-honey fresh figs atop my baby lettuce with some sauteed prosciutto.

The simplicity of the dishes revives me. A glass of Pinot Grigio soothes me. And I fall into bed ready to do it all over again.