There is Paint All Over My Hands Again

I finally started working a real job again. FINALLY. I really don't know what I would have done if I didn't start working now. I'm pretty much going to run out of money around the time that I get my first paycheck. Maybe even a little before. Yikes. Things are working out though.

I'm back in the classroom. I'm at a school for special needs kids - kids on the autism spectrum, mental and physical disabilities. At face value the job is almost exactly like that of an Inner Harbour counselor (with our AmeriCorps classroom aide/tutoring thrown in there). On paper, the duties are the same and the kids are displaying the same kinds of negative/aggressive behaviors. However, everything is manifested in a completely different way. Things seem a lot more tame here. Everything is sort of laid back - largely because the students are primarily laid back. Many of the students are non-verbal, and many of the ones that do talk don't always want to. There are students acting out; there are students running out of the classroom, but as a whole they are much more quick to de-escalate. They need a lot of prompts and redirection, but when directions are given the students just listen and comply.

I don't even feel like I can give an accurate description of how bizarre it seems. It's the exact same job with a completely different population of students. It is concurrently exactly the same and completely different. There is a staff member who looks and acts just like Ms. Toccara(only slightly more peppy). Her name is Pepper. All of the staff here go by their first names. There is also a boy named Justin who (the first time I heard anything about him) I heard described as a fashionista. His favorite thing to do is to play with the hair of one of those oversized Barbie heads made for doing their hair and makeup. Sound familiar? Boundaries is not a thing here. Mainly because a) these kids do not have (known) histories of sexual abuse like many of ours and b) many of them need to be physically moved or helped to do certain activities. What they have instead is "safe hands" which many students need to be reminded of often. Also, they take pictures of the students all the time. Mostly this was for the past two days of Halloween festivities, but it still feels weird to me that they can do that.

My play opens in less than a week. Opening night is next Thursday. Exciting! We have an all day tech rehearsal on Sunday and then dress rehearsals Monday through Wednesday. Things are starting to get a little tense - as they usually do so close to opening. I just don't like it when people start to get moody and yell at each other over stupid things (like they started to do at our last rehearsal). Hopefully they got that out of their system and things will run more smoothly from now on.

One of our actresses was diagnosed with swine flu on Tuesday. Well, that's what she said anyway. The director isn't so sure that she wasn't just lying to get out of the show. That actress missed half of the rehearsals to begin with and she wasn't that great. But luckily the part is pretty small and we found a much better actress who even looks more the part and is one hundred times funnier. So that's all good news.

Aww, listen. One of the actresses that I'm working with is writing a blog about her experiences of becoming a professional actress later in life. I knew that she had the blog, but hadn't been to it until last week. And I read some of her past entries and she had one where she wrote about me, and she was so nice. I don't know why people are so nice sometimes, but it was really touching. Here's the link if you want to see how some people are nicer than they should be allowed to be:

http://characteractress.blogspot.com/2009/10/off-book-huh.html

I'll be cutting all of my hair off in the next couple of days. I guess the army didn't do buzz cuts in 1965, but it will still be pretty short. We'll see how that goes.