Instead of my own tonight, I'll lead you to something new and exciting -- Hannah Sullivan (who plays my daughter Kylie on Chapin Circle) - has started her own blog.  I know it will be every bit as beautiful and inspiring as she is.  Check it out.  And if you have teenaged daughters?  Have THEM check it out!!!  SHe's an awesome young woman.  Can't think of a better person to inspire young women.

http://hannahsullivan.tumblr.com/

Talk at you soon!!  (And you guys had better start talking back one of these days!!)

Michele

So I just turned 50.  Literally.  I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so at 10:05 p.m. tonight PST, I completed a half century of life on this earth.

I have been waiting for it, "the 50" fearing it, since I turned 49 - but I am here to assure you who have not yet reached that number - "the turning"?  Is not in the least bit scary. Especially when you compare it against the year prior to it - when it seems every moment has been spent evaluating your life as lived 'til now, it's worth - what "worth" really means...

Which has brought me to this.  I think the defining word of my life up to now really has to be "love".  I HAVE LOVED  Fully.  Eagerly. With complete abandon.  When I was young, sometime stupidly, but - hey we all make mistakes.  But for the past twenty years I have loved the man who is my husband, I love the friends I have made over my lifetime (my first birthday message tonight was from a woman I grew up on the same BLOCK with - we moved into that house when I was 2!!  We reconnected through Chapin Circle - she watched it, recognized me - and we're back in contact!).  I love my work, my family - my nieces and nephews are constantly renewing "gifts" as they grow and change... My brothers, who at one point only annoyed me (except for my older brother GG, who I have always worshipped) - now they are all - even the two younger ones - great friends.

I didn't at all "achieve" what I thought, at 30, I would by 50.  I have never created a successful show for television.  That was my goal back then - and although it may seem ridiculous to anyone who has not had that goal, for me, it's been a journey coming to terms with that.   I've spent a large portion of my life trying to do that.  In the interim, however, always reaching for that goal - I have done incredibly interesting things.  And made great friends.  I produced tours for the USO, traveling to places I would never have gone - I went Guantanamo Bay long before it was a terrorist prison - and on that trip made a great friend-  Mauri - another producer on the tour - she helped me produce my first movie and we stayed great friends until she died (way too young) of colon cancer at the age of 37 (by the way - if you have colon issues and your insurance won't pay for a colonoscopy because you're too young?  Get it anyway.  Mauri was 33 when she got sick - her doctor said her chance of having colon caner was 3% - she died from it 4 years later after 17 separate rounds of chemo) .   I ended up working for Martha Stewart, writing the first season of her show (and making two of my greatest life friends, John and Sue, because of that); being the Chief of Staff and Speechwriter for the first lady of Virginia (because she was my great friend LONG BEFORE that) - coming back into her life at a very seminal time for her, getting to know her kids - was one of the best things I've ever done.  Even my greatest "TV" achievement - the Mansion Show, which I developed for Lifetime with Nancy Cotton and Larry Gilbert... yes, it was a great pilot.  It should be on TV now.  It's not.  But Larry is a co-exec-prducer on Chapin Circle - his insight and intelligence helped make the show what it is. And his friendship - and the friendship I still enjoy with Nancy - no TV show on earth can surmount that.

So you expect certain things from your life  - and you get what you get.  And sometimes, if you think really think about it in "the grand scheme", you realize that you got WAY more than you could have ever hoped for.  Not in the exact package you thought it would come in - but the package - that's just gift-wrap.  You throw it out the next day.  The gift is what's INSIDE... and the best gifts are always a surprise...

Happy (my) Birthday.  My gift to you today?  LOVE - who you know, what you do.  It makes 50 seem not old at all - it just makes you want to stay around 50 more to keep on loving.

So I promised myself a summer – and – as you may have guessed – I have given myself a summer (which is why I haven’t posted a blog in over a month).  Aside from prepping pitches for TV and writing an insanely annoying pilot script that I can’t seem to get a handle on (but won’t give up on because now it’s ME against IT – and IT will not beat me!) I have “vacated”.  I have been cooking farmer’s market produce, doing yoga (and I WILL blog A LOT about that in the next few weeks), traveling a bit and seeing old friends, many of them from my college years in the Theater Department at Marquette University.  We got together because, well, we’ve all reconnected on Facebook this past year – and we’re all getting older, so virtual connections still seem pointless without actual face time… So if any of us happen to end up in the same time zone, at a place where we can all get to…  we assemble.  In two’s, three’s, four’s… for a meal, or drinks – mostly both.

These are people I knew years ago, knew well – we were in a theater department together - we spent 12-16 hours a day together.  We knew each other’s strengths, weaknesses, secrets… (Or at least we thought we did…)  Twenty-some years later they are not only the friends I knew back when, they are brand new people I am meeting for the very first time.

Margie.  The breakout “star” of our theater department is a mom with two teenage kids, who still looks like a teenager herself (and still has the greatest “out of nowhere” laugh) – but has so much wisdom and intelligence and political and cultural savvy that she makes me feel like a neophyte.  She’s also funny and fun and has no idea how truly amazing she is.  I never really got to know her in college – now I wish I had.   She still is, and always will be a “star”.

Jim.  The greatest, most likeable guy, the “glue” that kept us all connected even before Facebook - went on start up a HUGE little thing called Comedysportz here in L.A. (http://www.comedysportzla.com).   It’s an incredibly inventive group of improv actors and comedians that he heads up, directs, produces… and sometimes he even appears in some of the shows!  He’s James now, to others, but to us he’s always Jim – the one who cared enough about the “original experiment” to keep it going…

George.  The serious actor with the wicked sense of humor, who, at some point during his four years at Marquette (I can’t remember the exact moment, undoubtedly due to too much beer and Nacho Doritos), decided to become a Jesuit Priest.  I went to his ordination in Minneapolis, many, many years ago.  He is now a Jesuit Priest  working with the LaMama company in New York and is currently producing “I Fioretti In Musica”  ((Little Flowers in Music, an Opera in Dance), an interdisciplinary opera that imagines St. Francis as a character in modern New York, But he is always, and will always be George – incredibly funny and fun – the guy who remembers everything, in enormous detail – should my memory ever lapse in old age – he’s my first call.

Nancy – one of 32 freshmen who came into the theater department the same year I did – one of four who graduated with me – a great friend throughout college, one of my two roommates senior year.  She remembers everything too, and is now telling it all as a professional STORYTELLER.  It’s all true, and all funny… you can catch her next show by linking onto http://web.mac.com/NancyDonoval/iWeb/CDD6F20F-4BD6-48E1-A0A1-865A7B81D5EE/Nancy%20Donoval%20Home.html.

Robert (Benny) – a tremendous actor back then, left the craft (after grad school at NYU and an actual lucrative career in theater) to become a physician’s assistant – has stories about walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to get to Ground Zero on 9/11 that I am still hearing in my head.  Here’s the rub - Benny wrote a play – and it is GREAT - I actually think he might be the next Landford Wilson.

And last, but certainly not least – only last because I didn’t actually see him this summer, it was more like January of 2010, but he HAS to be included here because the “knew” and the “new” could not BE more different…. MIKE.  I met him my freshman year in college.  He was a sophomore, the “best-friend” to a guy I had an enormous crush on.  Mike k new it, he didn’t care, he loved me, he even fostered the crush I think, just to stay around me.  (And that’s not me bragging, it was real, he confirmed it.)  Mike ate, primarily, from whatever was available at 7/11, the student union – it didn’t matter.  He had no palate.  That’s totally changed.  He’s a total foodie, now a pastry chef teaching for the Cordon Bleu school in Chicago… and touts his chocolate croissants as the best in the U.S.!  I’m trying to get him to start an online bakery!!

So what’s my point?  I am more than halfway through my life.  The thought of making new friends makes me want to stay home (even though when I go out and actually do it, it’s always good).  But this year, I made new friends with friends I thought I already knew – but as it turns out, I did not know them at all.  It was hugely rewarding, I reconnected with them - and through them, myself…

Give it a try.  Call an old friend from high school, or college – or do what I did – reconnect on Facebook.  You may just rediscover them, yourself and the meaning of friendship…

Here’s to reconnecting!  Let me know how it goes!

Summer's here today - and CHAPIN CIRCLE is celebrating by releasing a NEW EPISODE!!  It's a great one - so if you haven't seen it?  Watch it.  NOW.  It's definitely my favorite episode so far this season.

I've been thinking a lot about summer these days, because I have nieces and nephews that have just finished their school year - and they are so excited.  No School!  Later Bedtime! FREEDOM!!!  It made me a little envious, actually.  I felt like that once upon a time - we all did.  We grew up thinking the year began in September and ended in June.  The rest - the other "almost three months" - belonged to US.   Then we grew up.  Went to work, had our families... and summer became... HOT.  And not in the good way.

So THIS year, I've decide to "take back summer" - to a place that's special - separate - and (a little bit) mine.  I started last week.  Instead of riding my bike to the gym where I swim in order to "burn extra calories and be more green" I rode my bike to the pool - just like I did every day the summer before I got my driver's license. When Lolly (Howe, CHAPIN CIRCLE'S Annie) and I decided to take our weekly walk at the beach last Wednesday (yes, we actually do walk together and not just on the show), we "barefooted" it right at the shoreline - and (maybe as a gift?) saw more little girls in "twosomes" wearing swimsuits and building sandcastles than I've seen in all the years I've lived in L.A.  And I really am feeling... SUMMER.

Try it.  Even if you're busy, working, shuffling your kids to and from this camp and that - try a little SUMMER this season.  Just for you.  Here are a few ways that pack a summer "wallop" without a lot of time...

- Get an ice cream cone in your ultimate favorite flavor and savor every lick without thinking about calories or fat grams.

- Rent a movie that came out in theaters your "favorite summer ever" and watch it - as many times as you want.

- Download a "Summer Reading List" - they're all over the internet.  Then don't read one book from it.  You'll feel just as guilty as you did when you didn't read anything from your high school summer reading list.

-  Lay on the grass and look up at the sky - try to find shapes in the clouds.  No cell phones allowed.  It'll be irritating for two minutes; it'll feel like you're doing nothing - then suddenly, it will feel like you could do it forever.  Just like when you were a kid.  (I don't think kids do this anymore - and they should - it grows imagination and a general "peace with the universe and me in it" feeling.)

- Kiss your honey outdoors on a hot, sweaty night.  Don't need to expound on that one.  My favorite summer movie, GREASE?   Said it all.  "Summer Lovin'"...

If you don't like mine?  Invent your own way back to SUMMER.  And please share!  I want to hear from YOU!!

HAPPY SUMMER.

I've never been one for makeup, except, of course, in my early twenties  - back when I also wore incredibly uncomfortable lingerie to feel "more sexy all the time", a mindset which now I can only attribute to temporary insanity.

I was an actress for awhile, so I had to wear makeup on stage and on camera - maybe that's why I chose to never wear it in real life.  And my mom never wore makeup - lipstick, but that's pretty much it.   Me, I never got the lipstick-only thing.  So basically, my face is pretty much bare 99% of the time and has been for now almost 50 years.

But last night, I had a dinner date with some friends from college and I wanted to look good.  So I decided to put on some makeup.  Did the foundation, the concealer (which was a bust - the lighter I tried to make the bags under my eyes, the more they showed).  Then it was time to make up my eyes.  But I had no eyelids.  Age, weight, whatever the reason... somehow they had just disappeared.  There was no "canvas".  But I was determined.

I  closed one eye and started to brush a "nude" color onto the space under my brow, then followed with a brushing of brown right above my lashes, blended it in, looked in the mirror and low and behold...  My eyelids had somehow gone from zero to twice as much eyelid as any human being could ever want.   I looked like one of those drug-addicted-reality show contestants.  Hello Dr. Drew...  Tried to work with it for a few minutes, but it just kept getting worse.

So I washed my face clean, rubbed in some moisturizer and went to dinner bare-faced.  No one was shocked or horrified (after all, none of them had ever seen my WITH makeup, except on stage years before) and, when halfway through the dinner I went to the "Ladies" and took a look in the mirror while washing my hands, I  thought -- no, I'm not seeing a movie star face.  I'm an aging woman whose eyelids have somehow, for some reason - disappeared.  But at least I'm seeing me.  That's got to count for something.

Here's to my mom.  Who, at 80, is totally beautiful, almost no wrinkles and still never wears makeup (I now believe they go-hand-in-hand).  Early on, I tried to NOT be like her, years later I realize I am -- and I love it.  The eyes told it.  You can "paint on a face" at any time - but it will never be yours.