Consumed

Nick, I let your post linger at the top for a few days, and I feel like I want to exorcise it. Burn some incense inside those paragraphs, watch the demons that are idling in CA trickle out. What else is there to do when support is so far away? There is always the mail, as I learned in the past year. It is no replacement for the quiet moments two people share, but it can substitute for some time. So in short, you'll get some mail soon. You're so...resilient.

As an experiment some time, everyone should click the "Next Blog" button at the top. The plethora of vegan/vegetarian/baking blogs is pretty humbling. And yet the veg ones are nice to read. I feel like I'm back in the community cabin. Everyone here is accepting/accomodating of my eating habits, but it's not the same without tasting kale and quinoa that other people cook and offer to you.

Brian's brother and his fiancee asked me to make them a cupcake spread for their wedding. This happened yesterday. The wedding is on May Day. Lots of work, but lots of love, and I was very excited and honored. Lately I've been stuck on cupcakes.They seem so approachable compared to my fondant/krispie/sponge cake animals.

I like eating food that other people make me. But I love making it and sharing it more. I love reading books that other people write. But when I try to write one it just doesn't happen (see National Novel Writing Month 09). Does anyone feel the same way? I know my career path provides for the flexibility of writing (see Beverly Cleary, children's librarian and novel-writer extraordinaire), but maybe I need something extra to really enter author territory. I fill notebooks, but only with snippets and blurbs. Where is the grand design for it all? Maybe I'm lazy.

I think this blog should be required as part of the Life After Americorps packet. Venn Diagrams. Five Year Plans. Real, true, freaking out post-service. I think that non-Americorps people say a lot of things during service about sacrifice and how wonderful it is to "give" a year to something bigger than yourself. But you (I) don't realize how much you actually gave until after the fact, when you can do the comparison of where you were vs. where you are and how you got there. When you're in it, you're in it, but afterwards the reflection is much deeper.

I had dinner the other night where a current Americorps member talked about living in the woods and how the water at their campsite was completely turned off for a few days before Christmas break. I didn't know other people lived in the woods. On the other hand these people have a vegetarian meal cooked for them 4 days a week, and not lodge-style vegetarian. A ping of jealousy flared there. But now I have multiple veggie cookbooks from Christmas and a full kitchen. So I can't complain. Even simple things like sliced tofu slightly fried in a cast iron skillet and smothered in ketchup and garlic are still appreciated.

Gratuitous pictures:

I


Christmas cupcakes. Chocolate cake, white frosting is egg nog flavored buttercream with cinnamon dusting, Chocolate frosting is Bailey's Irish Cream frosting. Except for the one in the corner which is straight up chocolate (not everyone in the family is 21, and the alcohol in both of these buttercreams was dizzying.)

Contrary to popular belief my life is not all about food...I just like talking about it a lot.

I could use some kettle chips.

California is Kicking My Ass

Yeah! I'm glad people are finally updating again. I come here all the time to read about your lovely lives and am too often disappointed by the lack of info.

This is a picture of me in the last play I did ("The House of Blue Leaves"). This was taken during a dress rehearsal - so it's before I got my hair cut army style. But you can still get an idea.

I really do like this area. The abundance of theatre is incredible. I love the shows I've been doing. The city is really cool and holds a trove of wonderful little places. The people are really cool. My job is a lot of fun.

But things have not been easy for me out here. California being one of the worst states in the recession, it took me far too long to find work. The time I spent unemployed basically depleted my savings. Now that I do have a job I get paid far too little. My position is as a substitute aide. All that means is that I fill in for any staff member who is sick or in any classroom that just needs extra help. Basically I do the same job as everyone else and get paid half as much. When they hired me they said that substitutes usually get a permanent placement after about 2 months of being there. It's been 2 months, and I'm the next sub in line to move up - so hopefully that will happen soon.

Since money has been so tight (the cost of living out here is insane!) I have had to turn to some creative ways of making money. I sold my ipod on craigslist for some extra grocery money when I really needed it once. I sold a bunch of books and all 4 seasons of "Weeds" at Half Priced Books (I'm still holding on dearly to "Six Feet Under" though).

Before I had a job, I sold my camera on ebay. That one was hard to part with - it was my most prized possession - but in the end it was only a possession and I really needed the money. I sold the whole package - camera body, two lenses, memory card, tripod, camera bag, etc - all for about $600. A good deal for the buyer, but still hugely beneficial to me. I had never used ebay before. I had to set up a paypal account and learn how to do everything. Once I made the sale I received an email from paypal telling me that the buyer had paid the money, but that they wouldn't put it into my account until they got confirmation of shipping from me. So I mailed the package and gave paypal the tracking #. A few days went by and I still didn't get the money - which I desperately needed at that time - I did get a few emails from paypal explaining the delay though. And then I got an email from paypal stating that, since I was a first time user, I wasn't allowed to accept a payment under $1,000. They said that the buyer was willing to make the $1,000 payment, but that I would need to wire them $400 to make up the difference. That's when I realized that this was completely not right. I sent the emails to paypal who confirmed that they were indeed a scam. Apparently someone can send an email that says it's from paypal in the address bar and looks legit and everything and is completely fake. Needless to say I never saw my camera again or any of the money. Great.

Because money has been so tight I could no longer afford the apartment I was living in. So at the beginning of December I had to make a move. My last apartment was two miles from work, and I had to move 27 miles away. That's about a 45 minute to a one hour commute in the mornings due to horrendous traffic. That is by no means the worst thing about my new living situation though. I am renting a room from a middle aged woman who lives on the living room couch smoking cigarettes and watching tv all day. She has about 10?, 15?, 20? feral cats living in the house. The whole place reeks of cigarette smoke and cat piss. I can constantly smell it on my clothes and on my skin. I only hope that other people don't notice. It's also incredibly dirty. Almost every time I've wanted to take a shower I've had to clean cat shit out of the bathtub first. The woman's stroke victim mother also stays in the living room when she is not at the hospital. She is hooked to machines that beep when she needs something. I am often woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of the woman screaming obscenities at her mother because the beeping is keeping her awake.

On Christmas Eve I had a blast. One of my co-workers (California's very own Ms. Toccara) invited me out to karaoke for her birthday. I figured that she just invited everyone at work (or most people anyway), but it turns out that it was just three of us from work (including her). That made me feel pretty special, and we had a lot of fun.

Christmas day was not nearly as fun. I spent it with my friend that drives me crazy. He hasn't been as bad lately, but still. He invited people over to his house that he knew were going to be alone for Christmas. I didn't know the other two guys that came (and he only sort of knew them), but we all pitched in and had a nice dinner. All of the other guys really like to play board games and strategy games and card games. If it's not charades or pictionary or something like that then I'm not really that into games. But I acquiesced and played a couple of long and terribly boring games with them. Then we decided to go see a movie. Now, I have been waiting to see "Nine" for about a year now. Maybe longer I don't know. Ever since I knew it was going to be a movie I have been dying to see it. I love "8 1/2" and I love the stage version of "Nine" - so even though the movie isn't getting great reviews, I'm pretty sure that I will still love it. I was, however, outvoted and forced to see "Sherlock Holmes". That movie sucked.

For the last week or so my car engine has been doing some funny things. So I have been trying not to drive it too much until I could get it looked at this next week. Because of that I didn't drive to my friends house. I just drove to the closest BART station (local rail system) and took that to his house. We got out of the movie too late for BART to still be running so my friend drove me to my car. When we got there I found out that my driver's side window had been busted out and my car broken into. Merry Christmas! They stole a tin full of change and my sleeping bag from the trunk, but there wasn't anything too expensive in there for them to steal.

Now I still have to get my engine fixed AND I have to replace the window (which is not covered by my insurance). So once again its the end of the month and I'm wondering how I'm going to make rent (even in this shit-hole room). It doesn't help that this is all happening during the 2 week school winter break where I DON'T GET PAID AT ALL. I'm sure everything will work out though. It always seems to.

Emily, don't let this scare you from coming out here. It's still lots of fun, and you should definitely come - even though none of the bars seem to have Blue Moon, even when they have a picture of it on their wall.

My name is Nick. I'm feeling stressed, but still happy. And my goal is get my car fixed and find a nicer place to live and someday own a grumpy bulldog. Go one.

The weather here has been...decidedly un-Georgia like. It snowed in early December, then again on my birthday, and only the rain last night finally started to erase the accumulation on the ground. I always wanted snow on my birthday as a kid, and I only really got that once. For the past two years snow on my birthday has been a pain. That's how it goes, right?

My job is exhausting. And low-paying. I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of reviewing mental ledgers, and I would be even crazier about it if I weren't so tired all the time. There was something to be said for the ratio of kids to staff at IH. When there are 16 kindergarteners and two adults, you start to feel like oak tree being used as base for a 16 person indoor game of tag. Run, run away from someone who's chasing you, tell the oak tree he pushed you, run again, trip, fall, demand a spiderman ice pack from the oak tree. I like the kids. I like the potential I have in working with them, the way that they respond to books (sometimes) and crafts (sometimes) but the constant noise can wear on a person. Then again it's sweet to just sit down and draw dinosaurs, unicorns, fairies, princesses and horses for hours.

School starts in mid-January (after the day on not day off) and that's nerve-wracking too. It's crazy to me how little I thought about the scholastic side before I started college. It wasn't good, but it was certainly helpful in terms of assuaging self-doubt. I forget how to go to school, I think. My sister bought me an 8 pocket folder. My path is clear. I just wish I could merge more excitement in. I went to my orientation and marveled over how easily people walked up to each other and introduced themselves, talked about where they were from and why they were here. I keep to myself in those situations. It's always been like that. Without a check in, I can't bring myself to even say my name out loud. Thank you, name tag. Hopefully once classes begin I'll emerge from the cocoon I am holding tightly closed. If only I could commute like a butterfly. Parking is expensive.

I didn't realize how tightly wound I was until I wrote all of this down. That used to happen at IH too. I need to just cook some good veggie food and use my kick-ass new cake decorating airbrush (!) (thanks bf) to restore some self-esteem. Maybe buy some new notebooks.

I miss everyone...and Taco Mac. But my removal from Harbour food and limitless tortilla chips has done my body good. I am thinking about deep-frying some okra for my sister's dinner party tomorrow. I don't think it will be the same without everyone. Emily, if you move to the bay area I will just about cry thinking about you and Nick hanging out all the time. But I hope you do for that same reason. Frieeeeendship.

I want updates from everyone. I updated because Emily did. And it was depressing to see only one December post.

My name is Erinn, I'm feeling contemplative, aaaand my goal today is to make a really great tofu sandwich for lunch. Go one.

Back in ohio, though in all honesty it feels like I am going through the old moving somewhere new and trying to meet people stage, in my own hometown. Its alright, though im not sure how long it will last. I got a job tutoring Toledo Public School kids. mostly kindergartners but also 10th grade geometry, thats a little scary. Its nice to see that all of us posting on this site have found jobs in the realm of education.. that tugs at my heart.

Currently im staying in this big old old house alone (mansion denoting) with 11 animals while the family is away. Its very nice to have the place to myself though I am not as productive as I should be. Its time to start applying to jobs for the spring or summer.. as much as my heart is in Ohio the mountains are calling me... anyways its kinda scary though because im not in the best part of town and just a little over a month ago there was an intruder in the house (member stacy? she practically walked right into him and he fell down the stairs). The most frightening thing is he didn't steal anything and it looked as if he wasn't going to, he was just hiding out in the little girls bedroom at 10pm. Lucky the girl was sleeping with her mom that night! ahh. jeez now im giving myself the creeps.

while working on a farm in northen cal I fell for a 32 year old drunken skateboarding midget (hes my height) - though we havn't kept in touch and hes drunk all the time so it will never work out just thought it was news worthy

I traveled for 2 solid months with not once staying in a hotel. Id like to post some pics up from my trip but I'm too lazy and broke to get them developed.. but when I do...

Anyways life is great though lonely at times. I havn't started work yet and I havn't found the right project yet to fulfill me. I got back Saturday and im already bored... im such a little kid.

I think I am going to move to the bay area if I can get around to raising enough money and getting a job.

if I havnt shown you toledo is awesome...
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=115443531746326888777.000466c032373f2fb1de1

also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY

other news. im really into making my bed these days. thats new too. I have my own room for the first time since before GA. its fucking amazing

all the world's a stage

It's getting kind of late here, but I can't sleep yet. So I thought I'd update on here. I'm sure I'll regret this in the morning.

"The House of Blue Leaves" is two weeks into its three week run, and we've gotten a lot of good feedback from audiences and critics alike - although, many audience members do not know what to make of the show. It's a dark comedy. It's very funny, but parts of it are too dark for the comfort level of many people. There are a couple of parts that are just downright disturbing.

Here are links to a couple of reviews of the show. I've gotten positive mentions in both of them - in case you're interested in seeing them (both of my mentions are near the bottoms of the articles, if you just want to skip to that part).

http://www.insidebayarea.com/theater-museums/ci_13755117

http://www.rossmoornews.com/articles/2009/11/11/news/arts_and_leisure/charlie.txt

For the most part the shows have been running very smoothly. I did receive a semi-serious injury during a performance though. During opening weekend I hurt my right hand pretty badly, and it is taking its sweet time to heal. There is a part of the play where my character is getting arrested. My right hand is handcuffed, but I run away before my left is cuffed - leaving the rest of the handcuff hanging from my wrist. Right after that there is an explosion (from a bomb built by my character) and we are all thrown to the ground. During one performance, the hanging part of the handcuff was left open, and when I hit the ground the open part of the handcuff impaled the palm of my hand. I literally had to pull that part of the handcuff out of my hand onstage, and put pressure on the wound for the rest of the scene to keep from bleeding all over the stage. Luckily, the rest of the scene only lasted a couple of minutes, and I was able to keep most of the blood in my hand. The handcuff dug in pretty deep, and now there is a sizable hole in my hand and the surrounding areas are all black and purple. For a couple of days, I could not even use my right hand. But now it's starting to get better, and, even though it still hurts, I can at least use my hand.

My work in this show has been noticed, and it's already landed me another role. The artistic director for the theatre company liked my work in this show, and she thought that there was a role that I'd be good for in their next production (which she is directing). So she brought me a script to look over and asked me to audition, and what-do-you-know I got the part. So now I'm in one play and rehearsing another. Nice.

The next show is "Kimberly Akimbo". It's about a 16 year old girl who has that disease that makes your body age four times faster than it should. So even though the character Kimberly is 16 years old, she is played by a 64 year old woman. I will be playing a super nerdy and gloriously awkward 16 year old who is, essentially, her love interest.

Here's a fun bit of trivia: In all of the plays that I've done, I've never had to kiss onstage. (I have for scenes in acting classes, but I don't really count that.) After all, I don't usually play the romantic lead because I don't really have the romantic lead looks. However, for this show, the romantic lead is a nerdy, unpopular 16 year old - and that's a look I can pull off. So, to answer your question, yes: my first onstage kiss will be with a 64 year old woman.

While "The House of Blue Leaves" has allowed me to use my ever-so-charming Queens accent, "Kimberly Akimbo" is set in New Jersey. So, Erinn, I may be calling you up to get some advice on perfecting my Jersey dialect.

Okay, it's now after 1 o'clock in the morning. I have to be up for work in less than 6 hours. I should try falling asleep again.

November

Alex your posts sometimes make me feel like I am failing at being a helpful, productive member of the human race. I often come home from work exhausted, and I don't make good plans for educating the roomful of kindergarteners I am responsible for in an after-school environment. I will change that. I will. Although a failed experiment on Monday taught me just how difficult it is to teach a group of 5-year-olds how to tell time. Of all the arbitrary, somewhat abstract concepts in the human race, time-telling ranks pretty high. I remember Justin on Wicasa asking why there were sixty minutes in an hour. No one could answer. It's a pretty lame thing to say to a kid. "I don't know...there just are." It's along the lines of "Why? Because I said so!" which is another thing kids really don't appreciate hearing.

November is here, the weather is lingering in the fifties in NJ. I can't remember what it felt like in GA at this point. I think I was concentrating on the fact that I was completely overwhelmed service-wise. There's nothing like walking into a classroom to observe and being told to dive in. There's nothing like realizing that most of the kids don't know how to rhyme. There's nothing like having a successful 15 minute assistance session turn into a 2 minute tantrum which turns into an empty chair next to you. I am sometimes overwhelmed here but it's so different. Everyone knows how to rhyme.

There are some kids who are difficult. One who could conceivably wind up at an IH-type place if no solutions are figured out for him. I am frustrated by him, but not in the same way other people are. It raises my blood pressure when the other people I work with call him a bad kid. It led me into a playground argument when a random mom called him a bully to his face. I risk coming off as holier-than-thou in my stance on him and other kids when I find myself thinking that the middle of the venn diagram of my four year criminology degree and my year at IH have granted me a perspective that some other people don't have. But I can't be the only person besides his mother to see the light in this kid. There are others out there, I'm sure. If I had him in a real classroom setting I would probably feel less zen about it. So I guess I should appreciate the degree of perspective I have while trying my best to not judge others for their lack thereof. (Seriously, I'm trying. Tried. Still trying.)

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.