Happy Halloween!

Today is my absolute favorite holiday - Halloween! It just so happened we were filming on stage today which made it a bit fun for Halloween. Not only did several people on the shooting crew dress up in costume, some of the office guys dressed up too. The craft service girls all wore mustaches and mustache shirts. The wardrobe girls all dressed as gangsters and Tyler in the office dressed up as Dan the office PA. I wore my Halloween pregnant skeleton shirt and got some good laughs from it. I had bought the shirt last October when I was pregnant with Nolan.



On Halloween of last year I was 13 weeks pregnant and through with my first trimester. We had decided that once we were passed the 1st trimester we would tell people so I wore the shirt and we went to a pumpkin patch and Marshall had taken pictures of me in the shirt. We then used one of the pictures to announce via email and Facebook that we were pregnant with Nolan. This year I'm already 20 weeks pregnant and we announced some time ago that we were pregnant again, so the shirt was really just a Halloween getup. At least I got two uses out of the shirt! At least several people got kicks out of taking a picture of my T-shirt, including Claire who not only snapped a shot of me but posted it on her instagram.


The craft service girls had decorated their table with pumpkins in honor of the holiday and they served my favorite - taco bar! Happy Halloween to me! I love taco bar days at crafty. We all also received from Showtime personalized certificates for our contribution to Homeland's Emmy for Best Drama. It was nice to be personally recognized for all our hard work and long hours.

We were about to delve into a really big scene with Claire and Damian when Damian's back went out. He was barely able to move, so they sent him to the doctor. Unable to shoot anything with Claire while Damian was gone, we moved to another set and shot with the Brody family in the interim. Eventually, Damian came back all shot up with some pain killers and we finished the scene with him and Claire. You could tell he was in a lot of pain still though. He was truly a trouper to come back and muster through it so we could finish our day.

We wrapped some more characters today as we said farewell to Morena, Morgan, Jackson and Diego for the season. We should see them all at some point next season, so I guess it is really only goodbye for a few months. Morena and Morgan both told me to keep instagramming so they could keep up with the pregnancy through pictures and eventually see the baby when he gets here. It was great working with all of them as they are so much fun. I always look forward to working with all of them as they are always prompt and professional and make my job so easy. They never give me the run around when I go in to correct them about something and they always listen and fix whatever continuity note or dialogue change I give them. It's truly refreshing to be working with so many great and talented and easy to work with actors.

Due to the shifting around of scenes and the visual effect shots we had to do, the day ended up being a long one. Although fun, I was exhausted. We went in at 9am but didn't wrap until 11:30pm. Marshall is in Macon, GA, filming on the pilot Witches of East End that he's been working on. They had to shut down for a few days while their director had surgery on his shoulder after he fell on set. Fortunately for Marshall, they are only in Macon a couple of days as there apparently is nothing to do there.

Boys Will Be Boys

Winter appears to have officially set in to Charlotte, NC. It was cold again today. Thankfully, we were filming inside a restaurant/bar to start with called Ed's Tavern. Although there was no room inside for the large video village, they did set up a small monitor and a few director chairs and that was good enough for me. As long as I didn't have to be out in the cold, I didn't care. Right before lunch we made a company move to our character Estes' house.

We've filmed here a couple of times before and it's a really nice house with a detached in-law suite out back. However, until today I never noticed that they had a zipline out back. But today during lunch a bunch of the guys got together to play a game on the zipline. The objective was simple. Try to make it all the way across the zipline without being nailed with a ball. All the guys that weren't currently on the zipline had to grab a ball and throw it at whoever was riding the zipline. The one rule was if you threw a ball, you had to take a turn on the zipline. They did, however, give me amnesty to this rule stating that they would allow me to throw a ball and not ride the zipline. As nice as their offer was, I chose to just watch and laugh at them being boys. I guess we all have to unwind throughout the day somehow and boys will be boys, afterall.

It being our last day of filming at the Estes house also meant it was our last day of filming with David who plays Estes. It was a very bittersweet farewell to David as this is not only his last day this season but forever on Homeland as he will not be back on the show next season. He's a great actor and an awesome person to work with and I'm so sad to see him go. I know Homeland is just the beginning of lots of great things to come for him though and I hope I get the opportunity to work with him again in the future.

20 Weeks

I'm over halfway there - 20 weeks pregnant now! For a normal pregnancy I would be halfway right now, but since I will be induced 3-4 weeks early, I'm over the halfway mark. Since Marshall isn't here with me, I took a picture of myself and sent it to him. Other than the normal anxiety that comes with being pregnant, I haven't felt myself overly anxious. I'm feeling the baby move quite a bit now, but not frequently enough yet to start doing kick counts. Once I can start doing that I'm sure every time I feel like I haven't felt the baby in a few minutes I will freak out. I wish there was some way to not be so anxious about the baby, but I think until we have a healthy baby born this is just going to be like this.

Frozen Flowers

Last night I had very strange dreams. I remember having some bizarre dreams when I was pregnant with Nolan too. I don't remember what I dreamed last night, only that they were really odd. It was as if they were work dreams, only I wasn't working. I was with a bunch of people from work in my dreams, though. I woke up at 12:45am freaking out because I was late for work. I was convinced I had to be at work in 15 minutes and the set is 30 minutes away from my apartment and I still had to shower. How on earth am I going to make it work on time! I jumped out of bed, my heart pounding, washed my face, brushed my teeth then realized as I was using the bathroom and the shower water was warming up that it was only 12:45am, not 6:45am! I still had a good 5 hours of sleep left before I had to get up! Geeze! I turned off the shower and went to lay back down. Eventually, I fell back asleep but not until after some tossing and turning.


It was freezing cold today. Perhaps the oddest thing I saw was first thing this morning when I got out of my car. While it was frigid outside, on the bush beside my car the flowers were still blooming brilliantly pink. They were so beautiful yet odd. We were shooting a big scene today with lots of extras. It involved a lot of visual effects shots. It was our last day working with Timothy who plays Finn Walden. Unfortunately, for him our 1st AD Ken doesn't make a big deal of actors finishing up for the season so he didn't get a big round of applause or hugs goodbye as nobody really knew he was done for the day, let alone for the season.

Girl time

This morning I ventured back over to the Noda house to water the plants. Our burning bush that was totally green when we first planted it has now turned completely red and looks amazing! I wasn't so sure about the bush when Marshall first wanted to plant it, but I really like it now. Afterwards, I met Kelly and Melissa at the local coffee shop - Smelly Cat for some java (decaf in my case) and some girl talk. It was fun to hang out with just the two of them without the boys around.

I decided to head home afterwards and watch the Panther game from the comfort of my own couch. Unfortunately, I only made it through the first quarter before I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up the Panthers were winning! I had to leave to meet my friends Jaime and Lori for coffee, so I missed the last quarter and thankfully so for the Panthers ended up losing...again. I thought they were going to do so much better this season than they have so far.

Both Jaime and Lori had babies this past March. Unlike Nolan, their babies were born healthy and alive. I have yet to meet either of them, but today I met Lori and Aaron's baby girl Emily. What a cute and happy little girl she was. She was so good the entire time we were there, but eventually she started to get antsy as she was tired. So Lori left and Jaime and I decided to stay for a bit longer and catch up. I haven't seen Jaime since Marshall and I were engaged and she was pregnant with her second child, Caroline. She was unable to attend our wedding because she was due with Caroline the same week as our wedding. It's crazy that it's only been 3 years and in that time she had Caroline, got pregnant again and had her 3rd child, Brody. It was great to see both of them and catch up. All three of us went to high school and college together and although we don't see each other much, we stay in touch through email and Facebook. I'm not sure if I will be able to see them again before I leave town, but I would like to so I can finally meet Jaime's two youngest children.

This weekend wasn't as productive as I had hoped, but I rather enjoyed my retail therapy and girl time. I think it's imperative to have devoted girl time and I hate that so many women get trapped up in their relationships and don't allow themselves to go and have alone time with their girlfriends. I think it's equally as important that men have guy time. You need that camaraderie, especially when you go through difficult times in your life like we've experienced this past year. Our friends and our family are the reasons we are making it through and we've relied on them way more this year that we ever have in the past. Marshall spent the day with his favorite girl too - JoJo. I know he's been glad to spend a lot of time with her lately as she is getting older and who knows how many more years we might be able to have with her. Hopefully, she will stick true to the breed and be one of the longer living dogs. She certainly is pretty spry for being almost 12, especially now that she seems nearly 100% recovered from her ACL surgery last November.

Retail Therapy

This was one of the first weekends I've been in Charlotte by myself in awhile. I decided to indulge a bit this weekend since it would also be one of the last weekends I would spend in Charlotte by myself this season. I started it off right by turning my alarm off last night and allowing myself to sleep in as long as I wanted. Despite my several wake ups throughout the night and early morning to pee, I finally found myself laying awake in bed around 10am. I talked to Marshall for a bit and then finally decided I should get up and enjoy the rest of the day.

I stopped by our house in Noda to check on it and to water our new bushes we planted a couple of weeks ago.  My friend Melissa met me there and helped me and then we went to grab some lunch at Three Amigos. I've been craving Mexican all week, so I was excited that Melissa gladly agreed to have Mexican for lunch. I haven't had a ton of cravings with my pregnancy, so it's fun to indulge in the ones I do have when I can. Three Amigos had been suggested to me by a coworker on Homeland and while it was good, it wasn't the best I've had. My favorite in Charlotte is still Azteca as of now though.

Afterwards, we rode up to Concord Mills and went shopping. Our plan was to go to RCC western wear store and shop for boots. On the way, Melissa stopped in to Carter's to shop for her nephew, Finn. Of course, I couldn't help but peruse the baby boy section. I did find a cute little outfit for Dino's son Dylan who is turning one next week. And (don't tell Marshall) but I got a couple of cute little boy tees for our baby that were on clearance. Melissa bought our baby a crab finger puppet that matches the Carlos the Crab that Stacey painted in the nursery. We finally made our way to RCC where Melissa found herself some tan boots. I didn't find any boots in the store, but I did find some rocking red boots in the catalogue that they are going to call about on Monday for me.

I couldn't possibly leave Concord Mills without buying something so when we happened upon the Nine West store, we both went in to look at the pocket books. My current pocket book is also a Nine West purse and I love it, but I've been carrying it around for awhile now and was looking for something new. I finally settled upon a bright red purse. When I sent Marshall a picture of it he texted me back, "is it a purse or a suitcase?" Okay, so yes I like big purses. I don't know why really but I do seem to keep buying bigger and bigger purses. At least I know I can always fit a bunch of stuff in my purse when need be. That also comes in handy for Marshall too when he has things he doesn't want to carry around and can put them in my purse instead.

Before leaving Concord Mills, we decide to stop by the frozen yogurt place and indulge in a little treat. After making ourselves some good treats we sat down and enjoyed them. It was a great way to end our shopping adventure.

When we returned to my house in Noda, it was nearly 5pm and I was exhausted from all the walking. I stopped by Harris Teeter on the way home to pick up some stuff to make tacos and headed home. It was great to spend the night making dinner and watching Glee and hanging out on the couch. Sometimes a good day of retail therapy is all you really need to revive yourself from a hard week of work. I definitely feel rejuvenated and ready to take on the rest of the next 7 days of Homeland. The countdown is officially on. I can finally see the end of Homeland and I am so ready to be done and to focus on my pregnancy and baby.

Morgan's 18th Bday

Happy 18th Birthday to our little actress Morgan! She was working today so everyone was able to celebrate with her. We gave her a cake on set and sang happy birthday to her. The camera department decorated their truck for her and gave her some 18th birthday paraphernalia to wear. I think she was pretty excited to share her birthday with everyone on set. She's only been counting down to her birthday all season. She wasn't the only one to receive a gift today though. The cast and crew also received a present from the producers of Homeland - a black and gold stadium Homeland blanket. If I was an Appalachian State fan it would have been the most perfect blanket as it was their school colors. Nevertheless, it was a nice gift and I'm sure it will become handy in the future.

Burgers and Balls

We were shooting only about 10 minutes from my apartment first thing this morning, however our crew parking was near downtown which took me more like 20 minutes to get there. Then I had to take a 10 minute van ride back towards where I just came from to get to set. On days like this, it makes me made I just can't park near the set. It would have saved me 20 minutes in drive time and another 10 minutes of waiting around for a van at crew parking. We were, however, shooting near right next door to Zack's Hamburgers. Unfortunately, we left our first location right before lunch so weren't able to stick around and have lunch there. But, Rob our 2nd 2nd AD sent one of his Pas over there and got us and our writer Meredith some Zack burgers while we were at our 2nd location.

Our 2nd location was a printing press. As soon as I walked in there I knew there was no way I was staying in there and a lot of the crew had the same reaction. The fumes were so strong in there, I was not taking the chance of something happening to my baby because I stupidly sat in there. I made it known right away to our 1st AD that if they couldn't put a monitor outside for me then they needed to call Dan from the office and get him down here because I wasn't sitting in there with the fumes the rest of the night. I am usually not one to say anything or complain at work and I'm definitely not one to usually stand up for myself when it comes to working conditions. Today, I knew I had to have the balls to say something if not for me for the health of my baby. Fortunately, our writer/producer Meredith totally had my back and made them put one video village outside for herself and me. Claire ended up sitting out there with us as well as she didn't need to be in there any more than I did.

After we finished our work at the printing press, we had some process trailer work to do downtown. While we were out filming on the process trailer the rest of the crew was playing their gambling game LCR. We did end up wrapping by 11:30pm, which was much earlier than I had anticipated.

No More Cabin

This morning it was a bit chilly at the cabin on Lake Norman. We ended up having some downtime before we started shooting as we had a late actress. So while we were waiting I hit up the craft service table for some breakfast. What did I find but donuts! I usually don't indulge in donuts, but I figured why not? The season was almost over and I rarely ever buy donuts for myself. So I had not one but two donuts! I figure one for me and one for baby! That's fair, right?

Before lunch we moved to our second location of the day down the lake and at yet another cabin. This one was no where near as nice as the first and it didn't have the beautiful dock that the other cabin did. We had some night work to do at this second location so it was yet another late night for us. It was our last day at Lake Norman for the season though. No more cabin work! Hopefully, the rest of our locations this season will be closer than an hour away!

Lake Norman

Today we were back at Lake Norman filming working with Claire and Damian all day. It ended up being a nice sunny day, so I spent my lunch sitting out on the dock and enjoying the scenery.  Our call time was 7am, which meant I had to leave my apartment at 6am to drive the hour drive up to Lake Norman. I didn't arrive back home until 10:30pm after the hour drive back home. It was a very long day and we are back at Lake Norman tomorrow. I have a feeling we are going to have some very long days on this episode with it being the last episode and we don't have any chance of picking up the scenes at a later time. At least we will be making some overtime!

Apple Boxes

Today marked the first day of filming on the finale episode for season 2 of Homeland! Granted most of our episodes are 8-10 days and I think this one is going to be more like 12, but still we are officially in the home stretch of this season. Yay! At lunch today we had our last cast read thru for the season since we were filming on stage. And we found out officially during that read thru that we are picked up for Season 3, not that anyone was expecting us not to be. Later in the day they announced that to the rest of the crew as well.

Signs are going up all over the stages signifying the end of the season. Notes from accounting about getting in all your receipts and petty cash, notes from production about walkies, but my favorite was the grips' note about their apple boxes. For those who don't know what an apple box is, they are different sized wooden boxes that we use for a variety of things on set. Sometimes actors stand on them to make them a different height, sometimes we put them under tables or chairs to raise them up into the shot. The boom guys sometimes stand on them in order to raise their microphone out of the camera's frame line. They come in full apples or half apples, quarters, and pancakes. I had to laugh when I saw the grips' notes posted on every door imaginable at the stage - they certainly do take their apple boxes seriously.

Sunday Traveling

Sundays are always the worst. When I'm working Sundays either mean I have to leave to head back out of town or just the inevitable, that I have to actually go back to work tomorrow. The hardest is when I have to leave to go back to Charlotte for work. I don't know that people really understand how difficult working in the film business can be. Not only do we work a minimum of 65 hours a week, getting maybe 6 hours of sleep a night if we are lucky, we are usually going home every night to a bed that isn't ours and an empty place far away from our family. If we are lucky enough to be able to travel home on the weekends we spend an additional 8 hours during our weekend to drive home and back. Not to mention sometimes our travel time to work every day can be an hour there and back that is not included in our 65 hour work week. So travel and work included we can spend a minimum of 85 hours away. Most people spend 40 hours away, plus maybe 5 hours drive time a week and return home every night to their families and bed. We work twice as much in a week than most of work force. That is why we can work 6 months out of the year and take the rest of the year off. We've worked the same amount of hours in 6 months that most people do in an entire year! Granted, most of us don't only work 6 months out of the year though we work more like 9-11 months a year.

And people wonder why we have no lives, no time to spend our money and no time to take care of personal things like doctor visits. When we take a day off, we take it off without pay. There is no such thing as paid time off in our business and most people in the film business do not have the luxury of taking off just a few hours out of the day for a doctor appointment. If I have to go to an appointment, I must take the entire day off without pay. Needless to say with all the doctor appointments I have coming up, it will be virtually impossible for me to work. But since Marshall will be returning to work on Army Wives shortly after Homeland is over, we have decided that it would be best for me to just stay at home and take it easy. We are both concerned about this pregnancy and not having any answers as to what went wrong last time, we aren't taking any chances. We wanted to make sure that during my 3rd trimester I was able to focus on all my doctor appointments and my health and the babies and doing so meant I would be unable to work.

But for now, I must still work until Homeland is over. Maybe one day I will find a better career that allows me do to something I love and not have to travel all the time for work, but for now I will stick to working on Homeland half the year and enjoying the other half of the year home. Since I was at home, I was able to utilize the time to catch up on some of the personal things that tend to get neglected when I'm away for work. I took care of some bills and Marshall and I sat down and booked our "Baby Moon" to New York. Due to the cost of airfare, we decided to leave on Black Friday and return on November 28th. We had thought about staying an entire week, but decided that 5 days in NY should be sufficient and then we would like to have some time at home in Wilmington together before Marshall has to leave for work.

Mom had invited us over for lunch and to watch the Panther game so we headed over there after booking our travel plans. We decided to drive separately so I could head to Charlotte after the game from there. Lunch was great despite the Panther's losing. We snapped this week's baby bump photo in my Mom's yard before I hugged everyone goodbye and begrudgingly headed to Charlotte. When I got to my apartment I finished up some last minute work to get ready for tomorrow, called Marshall to tell him goodnight and got ready for bed. I have to be at work at 6:30am and pregnancy and early mornings do not go well together. I can use all the sleep I can possibly get if I want any attempt at functioning that early in the morning these days. For the most part my fatigue is better, but I still require at least 8 hours of sleep a night and 8 hours is virtually impossible to come by Monday thru Thursday nights. At least the end is near. Only a few more weeks of season 2 left!

Halloween Party

Today I spent the majority of day lounging on my couch and prepping episode #212, the finale for Homeland. I turned on X Factor and caught up with what I had missed while I prepped the episode. Mostly I was enjoying my new wonderful couch. I absolutely love it so much! I enjoyed it so much that I didn't shower until 5:30pm.

We decided to stop by Susan and Stacey's Halloween party for a bit. It was a chance to catch up with them and see Brian, Shea and Gloria. They were all dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Since stopping by the party was last minute for Marshall and I, we were not donning any costumes. We stayed for a little over an hour then gave hugs all around and headed home to hang out for the rest of the night. We stopped by On The Border to pick up dinner and then went home to lounge around on the couch and watch a movie. Our couch is so comfortable that we both fell asleep on the couch for half of the evening.

Flowers

Today was our last day filming with Guy Ferland this season. He is a great director and I will miss him and hope that he comes back next season for a couple of episodes. We were filming in a very beautiful mansion, but killed off a prominent character today. The owners of the house hung out and watched a bit of the filming and were extremely nice. The lady of the house asked me about the baby and when I was due and then told me all about her son. She was very sweet and told me if I needed anything to let her know. Before our director chairs were brought into the house she offered me a comfy place to sit and relax.

After we left the mansion, we said goodbye to Guy and went to the airport to film an additional scene for episode #207. Our UPM Michael Klick directed that scene which was just with one character on the phone. When we finally wrapped around 10pm, I got in the car and headed home to Wilmington, NC. Two weekends in a row I get to go home! When I got home I was greeted by a bouquet of flowers that Marshall brought home from work for me. They had flowers as set dressing on the pilot Marshall was working on and he asked if he could bring some of them home to me. It was very thoughtful and sweet of him and one was a beautiful calla lilly which was the flower we had at our wedding. I arrived home around 1am but couldn't go to sleep so I stayed up until 3am enjoying our new couch. It's only 1 month until my birthday!

F. Murray Abraham

Today was a really cool day for me at work. I had the opportunity to work with an actor from one of my all time favorite films - Amadeus! Yep, I worked with Salieri himself, F. Murray Abraham. He was so incredibly good and to top it all off he was in a scene with Mandy Patinkin. Needless to say the scene will be incredible with two such seasoned actors working together. He was only in a couple of scenes that we shot this morning at our first location, but it made this morning so much more interesting and fun. It really just made my day. To top it all off, he was an extremely nice man. He asked me about the baby and when I was due and told me children are the greatest thing to ever happen to you. I totally believe him and just pray I get to experience it. Now if only everything would turn out okay this time!

Another fun thing about this morning was that since the scene was at a restaurant we were in need of a waitress that F. Murray Abraham comments on and interacts with during the scene. Not liking any of the extras we had, our director asked for someone different. So, they solicited our craft service girl Vikki to play the part. She was a trouper about it and went along with it willingly. And she did a great job. It was fun seeing her in the scene and everyone had a great time watching one of our own play a role in the scene.