Oh, Damn You, Dame Judi!

I just finished watching this movie, Iris, at work (It's quite nice to be able to watch movies at work). Kate Winslet and Judi Dench are very very good in it. Kate Winslet's joie de vivre is infectuous, I feel it in all of her work. Dame Judi Dench plays the vulnerability of losing one's mind to Alzheimer's so well. I think generally she's a very tough, sharp actress, amazing but formidable. Here she is tough and intelligent in the first half of the movie, but lost and alone towards the end. Always amazing.

Anyway, I didn't intend on writing a review of the film, I wanted to comment on how, when I see really great films, and actors working on something that you can see the love of their job and the creativity involved in the job, I get jealous. To watch Kate Winslet revel in the joy of words and emotions as Iris Murdoch, I wanted to steal her body, or just a little of her soul for a while. I want to experience the fulfilment of her creative drive that the movie so obviously brings her. I feel like I never find time to do the writing I want, to the extent that I want. And with that outpouring, I'm going to shut up and get to it. Nothing like a good film to get the envious creative juices flowing. And soon I'll be home for the weekend.

The worst part of my day:

God, bad grammar!! I just had to edit something that read "Come All Ye' Baker's!"
Ummmm, that is so wrong. Why do people toss around the apostrophe like it's a decoration?

Thursday Morning Vacation

Last night as I was leaving work for my grad class I took two steps out of my office and slipped. I don't know if it was on the hem of my pants which still haven't been taken in, or the fact that the shiny linoleum is also slippery, but I busted the hell out of my $4 gray thrift shop heels. I limped brokenly down to the bus and called my mom. I call her whenever I want to whine and bitch and my friends don't want to hear it. Like when I get a paper cut on my way to give an oral presentation that I'm not prepared for, or when I tear my heels, both of which happened in about five minutes last night. She commiserated and asked if I wanted her to bring me a new pair. Ah, the perks of living at home!

But of course, since I was worrying about my oral presentation this gesture of kindness only served to annoy me when it was carried out. She texted me three times to ask what black heels I meant. I only have one pair. She brought three of my black shoes with her, two pairs of boots (neither of which have heels) and the one I'd asked for. When she got to the metro, and just as I was walking up to the car she pulled away, like she was playing some cruel joke. She said she didn't see me and was just moving out of the way for the other car, but I had my suspicions. Then she accused me of smoking, which was doubly unfair because for once I hadn't and had just walked past a man who was, so the smell lingered on me. At least accuse me of it when I actually have been! And when we stopped for dinner in the middle of rush hour and didn't go to a drive thru. I was convinced I'd be screwed, and by my own mother!

But once I got to class my mood improved. I didn't have to go first after all, as I had feared. And my kind professor had brought goodies for us all, including a bottle of wine. Why hasn't someone included wine in oral presentations before? Maybe because after I had only about an inch of wine I could feel it in my face, and started worrying that I'd be slurring my way through my speech. Fortunately, the tipsy feeling passed and I got up and speed talked my way through my ten minute presentation, coming in at 9:30, just as I'd timed it. I think it went well.

I gave myself the day off today--I'm still at work, but not worrying about anything. I'm going to do the crossword, read blogs, maybe watch some tv. I don't have too much actual work today so I'll be taking it easy. (Incidently, I'm really started to get annoyed by the TV companies who won't give in to the writers. Enough already! I want my Tina Fey back!!! The Broadway producers gave in, why can't you??)

Moral Majority & Me

My boss has just been sitting here talking about his children and their many successes in life. I like my boss, he's a nice guy and I'm sure his children are nice too, but I don't want to hear about how all five of them are doing well in life, and are all married, even the ones around my age. The thirty year old is making 6 figures, the next one younger is a very successful horticulturalist and architect or something, married to a woman who just got her PhD. in Molecular Biology. When they moved to Chicago so she could continue school he had jobs lining up to hire him. The youngest was a government employee by the time he was in college. Because he was so good at being a receptionist(!?), they offered him a job.

I sat and listened and thought about my family, my friends, my life. My thirty year old friends don't know what they want out of life, and they certainly aren't married. My family is a mess. My resume does not reflect any brilliant flashes of cubicle cohesion. My GPA is only a smidgen above average. If I ever even saw an out of town job offer I'd be so confused I'd probably throw rocks at it. My boss' family reads like the Christmas newsletter families I barely know send my mother to make us feel bad. I wondered where the black sheep of the family is; was there a sixth child who was disowned because she was single and working as a waitress? Did the youngest drink once too much in that GMU frat house? Did any of them ever try drugs? This family sounds nice, orderly, conventional and boring.

Boring is one word that does not describe my family. In fact, in polite society we are normally referred to as that Byrd Family. It used to bother me when I was younger that we were always the odd ones out. We never had matching fluffy towels and didn't live in a McMansion with beige carpets which my prepubescent self thought was so important to decency and moral order. We had an old manse house where the pipes froze one winter, forcing us to place jugs of water by the toilet for flushing purposes, and go over to neighbors for showers. We had a minivan whose upholstered roof began to unstick itself and hang like a curtain, brushing our heads. Eventually we removed the upholstered part altogether and rode around with the metal frame of the roof as our only barrier. We were the ones who didn't have a television until I was ten, so we created epic storylines with our Barbies, constructing tent houses for them out of those mismatched towels, and imagined dust angels swirling around our ankles when we stepped into the silty creek bottoms and knew every child safe movie made up through the Seventies, because that's what we were allowed to watch. We were the ones who lived in an old house behind the McMansions, with a chair lift for my grandmother that all of us kids would ride simultaneously for the fun of it.

Boring is not a word that describes my friends, either. Pouring dishsoap into fountains to see what happens, having spontaneous Chinese dinners, serving microwave s'mores at 2 am, sewing clothes while sitting around in her underwear, moving to Europe for the experience, moving to another country for love, getting yelled at by Belgian conductors, taking road trips up to New York for the hell of it, or to the mountains to capture the perfect summer day, these are not the things of normal people. These are not the things my boss would be bragging about if it were his children, but these are the things that will save us from the life he does brag about.

All of my favorite people are a little unusual, they do things a little oddly and laugh a little too loudly. They plan poorly but execute splendidly. Anyone who gets anywhere does it by not being conventional. Think about it. What actor, writer, inventor or artist gets where they are by being a conventional person? Since I don't plan on living a life of convention why would I care to compare myself to the people who do? Nothing wrong with those people, but I don't want to be one. Now that I've been unconventional for so long I've gotten used to it and I think I'd like to continue. It's more fun here, on the fringe, where you're allowed to dream about being an artist and make up your own games. I want us to keep being the strange ones, the ones without a plan, but having a lot of fun. Let's burn burn burn and never settle down. We'll be Jack Kerouac, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde and Pablo Picasso all rolled into one.

What A Girl Wants

Ha. Ahem, Hmm. Just when I think I'm growing up and getting better at the man game I get thrown for a loop. A Fruit Loop. My new gay best friend, Jason? Turns out we're best friends for a different reason--because he's bi and has a crush on me. I mean, this guy seems so gay he's got pink flames shooting out his fingertips and he has a crush on me? First off I'm flattered. When I think of men, or women that would be attractive enough to make a person go in a certain direction that maybe they don't always go in, I am not on the top of that list. Secondly, I'm curious, partially for the reasons stated above, why am I of interest? And also because he's 35. I kinda feel cool. Thirdly, though, I'm worried that he'll make a move that I can't reciprocate and I will lose a new friend.
I know generally women bemoan the fact that a cute, cool guy is gay, but today I'm bemoaning the fact that he's not gay enough. Because then I wouldn't have to worry that I was going to hurt his pride, feelings or anything else. I don't really have a problem dating a bi guy (umm, I've done it before, without great results but that's not my fault, I don't think.) but I'm not interested in Jason in that way, and I feel like I've just been stuck with an adorable puppy, one who brings me my slippers and waits for me to get home, but I'm just too much of a cat person to appreciate it.

I'm wondering if we can just keep this a friendship. Of course, I was also wondering that last night, when I was picking out what to wear tonight when we go out for sushi. I was trying to tell myself that it's just because I don't want to look schlumpy in the city after a day at work and around a new friend, who since he's a little gay, has a good style. But part of it feels like this is a date, and even if it's a date with a gay man it's the first date I've been on in so long that dressing up for it is fun.

He came over after Thanksgiving, when all my friends had stopped by to escape from their families, and hang out with friends. He brought his Wii, which made the party, and extra alcohol, which helped. Then he stayed late to clean up with me, take out the trash and put away leftovers. Aja, who was still there when he took out the trash just looked at me with a smirk. I knew what she was thinking but I didn't want to believe it. Now, after discussing the possibility with The Pea as well, I think I have to face facts. My new gay best friend is in love with me. Sigh. Maybe we could get a spot on Sally Jessy Rapheal.

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

I just watched this Grey's Anatomy episode online, since I have no work to do. It was all about how we never really get over high school, even as we grow up and move on as adults, a part of us is still stuck in the mold high school shoved us into. I guess that is partially true. Whenever I get together with people I knew then, gossip about high school and what's happened since reigns. It's like nothing else will be as big as high school, until maybe we all start having kids. I don't know if it's just an American construction, or if it's because high school involves a bunch of different kids living through their formative years together, like a huge petri dish, but it does stay with you.

I hated high school. Hated it. I thought it was a major waste of my time, not because I didn't think I needed an education, but because I didn't think I was getting one. I was mostly getting busywork. I would never want to repeat it, even if I could go back in time with my current knowledge. I'd still feel like a mouse. I spent so much time and energy re-inventing who I wanted to be that I'm sure people thought I was strange. I was seeking that magic combination, the one where I instantly transform into someone who doesn't care what others think, and is also admired by everyone. I think that was important for me, I discovered who I wanted to be, who I was, and who I could never be. That is something I still have, a knowledge of who I am and who I could never be.

At the same time, I don't think I'm trapped by it. I think some people can be so traumatized by how they were treated in high school that they can't see what they've become. They can't see what everyone who has met them since sees. I guess that's why realizing that my friends are not only cool looking but also cool people made me so happy the other night. Sometimes I stop and observe and without realizing it, compare them to high school. That's when I notice how far I've come. In high school I would have never dreamed I could have such friends. I would have felt inadequate and shy. And because they're older I would have felt that difference much more than I do now. But I also think that the really cool people, the coolest ones out there today, were not the ones you thought of as popular or hip in high school. So maybe my friends that I think of as cool and stylish and smart and funny would have been just as awkward as I was then. We've grown into ourselves and the changes are nice. It makes us better people.

Now I can make friends and feel like they want to be my friend for a reason. In high school I never thought that. Or at least, I was always a little suspicious. And friends that I've made since then, that I knew in high school, but never spoke to, have revealed themselves to be different than what I expected. I don't think I live in a clique, like Grey's made it out to be. I think that I do have a circle of friends and there are some people that aren't part of that circle, but because we don't have that friendship chemistry. We're not of the same tribe. They have their own circle. I don't think anyone looks at me and thinks, I wish she'd be my friend, but she's a popular snob. If you fit with me I'll be your friend. I spent too much time in high school worrying about being "cool" and missing out on great friends around me by not talking to them.

High school remains an important part of our lives, sometimes it is to our detriment, sometimes it is for our betterment. But I don't think that Grey's has it exactly right. I think we do get past it, we do move on. Even if we keep the friends we had then we can add new ones, ones we wouldn't have had before. And we grow into people who are fascinating because of the differences that high school points out so clearly.

Wrap Up

Ahh. Ohh. Ugh. I am totally wrecked after this weekend. I planned on it being a calm, sleepy sort of time. Nothing too much to do, no big plans like Boston or New York. Just hanging out. Most likely in Reston. That didn't exactly happen. I hung out at Matt and Mark's on Friday, with a group of their friends, mostly from high school. Aja and I ended up on the couch giggling over boys and their ridiculousness, after the old high school friends left and it was just the normal group still there. Paul brought over s'mores to make in the microwave, and then treated us with ginger snap cookies he'd also made. Jackson, Matt's new friend who fits right in with the group, and his ex girlfriend from West Virginia, Scarlett came over and made a nice addition to the group.


Saturday I've already mentioned. Sunday I went to dinner with Spencer, my friend from high school. We went to Thai and talked faster than our brains could keep up. I don't remember it all, but it was philosophical and deep.


Monday I was tired and scratchy at work. My voice is almost gone and I didn't get nearly as much sleep as I planned this weekend.

Tuesday I stayed home sick. I got as far as the Park & Ride on Whiele and got off, called my boss and went home to bed. As soon as I'd be happily drifting off something would wake me up. First it was Sadie coming to join me, then it was Jason calling to chat. Finally I gave up and got up.

I spent the day relaxing and cooking. I've invented a new recipe, pumpkin pie baklava. I brought over the remainer of my test batch to Matt and Mark's where Scarlett put us all to work making Chinese and Vietnamese dinner. Paul came over and then Alan, their friend from high school came by. He'd just gotten home from L.A.

Today we get to leave work at 2, so I'm wrapping things up and excited to go home. I still feel sick and I need some more sleep.

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old.

Last night I went out with The Designer, Matt, Mark, Jackson, Scarlett and Paul to Be Bar in DC. I didn't plan on going out, I went into DC to get my hair cut at Urban Style Lab where my friend Jackie works and then I hung out with Chris Nixon for the rest of the afternoon, going out to eat, hanging at the place where he's dogsitting. Then, I went to meet up with everyone in DC. I didn't plan on going out, but I always plan on looking good, so it wasn't too much of a problem, except that I was wearing my beautiful wedge heeled boots. Beautiful, but not practical for all night dancing. I also forgot my ID and wore the stylish XXX for the evening.

Be Bar is fun and pretty, and filled with pretty people, but not too pretentious, just a little pretentious. And, about 95% gay, as I was sad to discover. It was mostly gay guys and fruit flies. But the dancing was good, and the DJ one of the best. I had a great time despite my underage status.

After the bar closed the party continued. We made our way to Annie's Steakhouse, where we were greeted by the rest of the underground late night partiers in DC. When I went to the bathroom a coiffed drag queen in ruffled teal blue stepped out with a sneer, leaving me facing the toilet seat in its upright and locked position. "Thanks, lady." I muttered.

Jason, my new friend that I met at Be Bar, and I sat at the bar while everyone else, and some extras crowded around various tables. We exchanged life stories and made friends with the flaming bartender, Julio, who livened up the early morning crowd with his extravagant personality, and sang for us along with the stereotypical gay disco music playing over the speakers.

I love going out when I don't expect it, and making good friends in the course of a night. I love feeling like I fit into the decor of a pretty place, and I love looking at my friends and realizing that they are hot shit. It's vain, I know, but it's an ego boost that I used to never imagine possible. It's part of the fun of being an adult without yet acquiring most of the responsibilities. I love crawling into bed as the sky lightens, after dancing until my feet ache.

The Thinker

So apparently my friend The Designer has nicknamed me "The Thinker" and our other friend The Pea. Well, as my brother always says, that's better than "The Stinker."

Tomorrow: My trip to Boston and New York. For reals y'all.

The Sun Shines Through

I had a feeling of doom laying low in my stomach for much of yesterday. It rested there and wasn't bothered by the bouncing of the bus as I made my way to Mason for my conference with Professor Jann. It was bothered slightly by rambunctious children in their costumes, riding the bus with me, but not enough to go away and leave me. I was early for my meeting and so I killed some time in the Fenwick library, the library on campus that makes me happy and comfortable in its dusty world of knowledge and mediocre mid-Sixties design.

I made my way up to the English department on the 4th floor of Robinson A. As I clomped up the stairs I was reminded of something one of my professors said while struggling up to the top floor, where they'd ensconced the literary nuts like him. It made me smile. Standing outside my professor's door, eavesdropping on her conference with a classmate and reading the fliers, comics and political statements of my previous professors, made my heart stop racing.
In Professor Jann's office her commonsense and cheery disposition frightened the feeling of doom away. Listening to her comments on my paper, which were pretty good for a rough draft to receive, made me feel capable again, and her ideas and way of listening to mine made me feel intelligent and almost like a peer. She laughed at my description of my Halloween costume and when I told her a friend couldn't believe I had a conference on tonight of all nights.

Leaving her office full of determination and focus I marveled at how hearing someone's experienced opinions could calm me. When I'm all alone with my fears and inadequacies I tend to burrow into them, letting them cover and suffocate me without fighting back. Professor Jann and other professors I've had, are like a bright light shining through. She's like my Gandalf, if you will, shouting down the Balroq (Oh man, that's so geeky). And now I have an amusing vision of this thin, fairly plain, older professor with twinkling blue eyes (very much like Gandalf's!) in a robe and carrying a staff.

Here's some quotes about failure to cement my position as today's resident literary geek:

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid." -John Keats

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed. ~Lloyd Jones

Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it. ~Henry S. Haskins

I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side. ~Katharine Butler Hathaway

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. ~Henry Louis Mencken

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. ~George S. Patton

Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. ~Brendan Francis

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. ~Andre Gide

I woke up this morning thinking 'Ack, Ack.'

I went up to Boston this past weekend to visit my good friends Corey and Chris. (You'll hear all about my trip when I download pictures to accompany it. And once I write it.) Corey and I walked around Harvard a little, and talked about grad school a lot. He and I are both preparing to go next fall, but I feel like he's a teensy bit better prepared than I.

During my trip up to Boston I read scholarship guides on the bus. Corey and I compared notes on the GRE Lit. test, which I took a few weeks ago, and he's studying for right this minute. We discussed potential references and talked about where we were applying. I'm going for University of Oregon, University of Texas at Austin, and three in London. He's a little more ambitious, applying for Ivy League schools for his M.A. and tons for his Master of Fine Arts (as he explained, so few accept MFAs that you have to cast a wider net).

Back home I scheduled my application deadlines into my Microsoft Outlook calendar, read over the requirements for entry once more.

And then, right on schedule, I had a panic attack.

I'm terrified that I won't get into these universities; that they will take one look at my sub par resume, my unconvincing recommendations, and my academic writing sample and they will laugh, wondering why I would ever consider graduate school.

Part of me wants to blame my lackluster GPA and academic performance (coming in at a paltry 3.2) on the fact that I never considered wanting to go to graduate school until I was in the real world and realized that my education was not complete. I missed the classroom, and not just because it was safer, but because I missed feeling alive and curious and studying literature. And now that I am volunteering with Higher Achievement I know that teaching is something I want to do, that I love doing. So, now I'm trying to salvage what I can of my undergraduate performance, shine it up and pass it off as Acceptable at the very least. But I don't feel Acceptable. I don't feel like I've worked hard enough or been dedicated enough to my studies. I compare myself to other students who seem to do it so easily, who never procrastinate, or always get the professor to like them. To all those students who understood math and took the SAT prep class. I feel like a fake and it makes me nervous.

Writing this I can see that it doesn't seem so huge, but the universities make me feel like it is. They're like these scary dragons who are waiting to judge me on every little flaw, rather than humans who make mistakes and take wrong turns too. They don't seem like sympathetic professors excited to pass on their love of learning to me.
I've been staring out my office window, contemplating the blueness of the Potomac and the silvery shine of the Air Force memorial by my building. The white marble of the city spread out before me and the grim reminder of the Arlington Cemetery in its neat white rows. It doesn't seem so big in the face of that landscape. I just need to take a deep breath and breathe. I've found meditation actually works in the face of my panic attacks, which seem to be growing as the deadlines approach. But today it's not working. I called my mom and she made me drop everything and go for a walk. I stood in the parking lot breathing deeply and wondering at how my body reacts to this sort of thing, and what will happen when I'm faced with other huge decisions. And I wondered if I should get medication. I think I am going to call my doctor about it because winter is just starting and I only forsee this getting worse. Maybe it will help to take Prozac or some other calming drug.

Things I hoped they might be thinking about me when I was...

9 - What a charming little girl! She's like a fairy princess and so sweet!

11- She must be walking around in that old timey white dress and talking to herself because she has such a lively imagination! Maybe she's talking to fairies. She's probably the time of little girl who will write a book at 12.

13- She is so pretty and cool. I wonder why she isn't an actress in some teen drama. Maybe she'll be discovered someday.

15- It's so cool how she eschews fashion trends and wears those men's pants. And her men's red Doc Martens are so anti-establishment!

16- She must be reading 'The Bell Jar' because she has such a deep and sensitive understanding of our facades as a society. And Sarte's 'No Exit'? She's so intelligent I bet she even knows how to pronounce his last name. I'd go over and discuss his existential crisis if even I knew anything about existentialism.

18- The way she nods her head in time to the rythym of the song she's listening to on her CD player obviously shows that she's got a real understanding of whatever it is she's listening to. She's probably a musician herself. A girl musician, that's so cool.

20- The pictures she's proabably taken with that camera! She's such an artistic soul! I bet she always captures the very essence of the issues. We should invite her to our party, or rock show.

22- It's so cool how she never seems to be concerned about boys. It obviously shows she's self confident enough not to need a man in her life. I wish I were like that!

24- Hmm, the clothes she's wearing say 'young woman going to the office', but she's also reading 'Howl'. She must be one of those hip, young writers or poets paying the bills at the office but is also writing the Next Great American novel. I should go talk to her about Ginsburg. I hope she doesn't mistake my Salvatore Ferragamo suit for being a sign of 'The Man', and let me take her out for a drink.

Charlie Brown as a "Symbol of My Soul"

"This is my depressed stance. When you're depressed, it makes a lot of
difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold
your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get
any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this."

"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'. "-Charlie Brown

Sometimes I get the 'death moans' and everything seems black. My failures seem great and my goals look more like a wall. With some barbed wire around it. And maybe a spot light. And it's really, really tall. This morning was one of those days. I woke up and sat on the edge of my bed like an old woman taking a moment to conserve her strength before she can stand. My pants looked too short in the mirror and I had stayed up worrying about what my statement of purpose was. Not in a philosophical sort of way, but for my grad school applications. I don't know what I want to study but I'd better come up with something fast. And not too tired.

It could have just been the early hour, or the fact that I hadn't heard back from this boy I asked out, or the fact that I was thinking about grad school while my sister had her boyfriend over, but I could feel the blues sneaking up, undetered by the speediness of the bus, or the oblivious morning commuters trying to impose their comforting humanity on me. I got to work and just felt like today was one of the days I should have called in sick. I should have stayed home and drank tea, watched shiny movies on AMC and felt miserable for myself for no apparent reason.

But life doesn't work that way. Somehow, despite all my resistance I'd be forced out of bed and taken on a cupcake adventure, or a discovery of mountains or to the bookstore to read celebrity magazines (because even though reading them makes me feel like I've eaten too much candy, I always feel better that at least I'm not being photographed at every corner.)

I decided to combat this in the only way I know how, reading. With my blue scarf wrapped around my neck like Linus' security blanket, (how wise I was to put this on, I thought I'd only need it for the physical cold today!) I looked up some quotes about depression and discovered the ones you see above you. And then I got on here to share them, but before I could get to my blog my eye caught this: the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks and I found myself laughing at the witty snarkiness of people who can't stand bad grammar but love irony. And that led me to this one: Crummy Church Signs and I also checked out this one: Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century for my friends Corey and Megan.

After following the advice of Benjamin Gladstone who said, "If you are cold, tea will warm you; If you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.", I made myself some tea, and thought about how one good cure for feeling sorry for yourself is doing something nice for someone else, and how I'm going to volunteer tonight and teach girls about literature, and without so much as a warning my early morning blues dribbled away.

Because the Charlie Brown quote reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, and because I love quotes just a little too much I'll leave you with this one:

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."

Oops!

I forgot all about the fact that it was Blog Action two days ago and now I'm feeling guilty. But, as my mom has taught me, better late than never. (I'm proving that point extra well today, I overslept and got to work late.) So, in honor of being slow, I present the Slow Food Movement portion of Blog Action Day. What is Slow Food? Is it extra dumb cattle? Or a dim cucumber? According to Slow Food USA we are participating in the Slow Food Movement when we shorten the distance that our food travels to get to us. It's good, clean and fair food. By being informed about how our food is produced we are taking responsibility, not only for how our planet is used, but also for what goes into our bodies. We become a part of the production process, instead of mindlessly consuming our food. It's not just about the environment, but also about what we eat, for our own health, but maybe more importantly, for our own enjoyment.
Ever wonder how we have strawberries in December? Or vine ripened tomatoes when everything else is brown? That's because we rely on our modern methods of transportation to get ripe food here fast, but somethings aren't meant to be enjoyed in winter, they aren't meant to be served fast. Strawberries, for example, have become less flavorful because they must now be produced in a way that makes them heartier, and able to withstand the long distance that they must travel to get to our grocery stores.
Most fresh market tomatoes are grown hydroponically, which enables greenhouse growers to have a longer growing season and produce an average of 15 times more per acre with a greater percentage of marketable fruit (because who's going to buy a tomato that doesn't look bright and red, despite its flavor?) but the taste of these tomatoes are mealy and bland. Think of the tomato you get in your QuarterPunder. You'd hardly know you were eating one. Why are things like this? Two reasons; we want cheap food and farms want cheap labor. Another blogger, at Gristmill says this about why it's so easy for us to ignore the probelm:

"We need our food supply as cheap as possible to feed low-wage people; we need
lots of low-wage people -- farm worker,s slaughterhouse workers, clerks at our
number-one grocer, Wal-Mart, and so on -- to sustain our cheap-food system.
Whatever else it does --and it works pretty well, if you're a major shareholder
in transnational corporations --this cycle consumes enormous resources and, yes,
severely damages the environment."

AND

"Last year the federal government cut checks to commodity-agriculture producers
amounting to $23 billion -- roughly equivalent to Bolivia's GDP. In those terms
alone -- never mind steep environmental and social costs -- cheap food is
actually a pretty pricey proposition. "

He goes on about some more stuff too and I know that's a lot to read, especially if you're not an
amateur chef like me, who cares about the flavor, but even if you just care about the environment, or the people who labor to bring you the cheapest foods possible. If you don't really care about all that above you should still check out The Sustainable Table for ideas about how you can make changes in small ways, like learning how to 'eat seasonal'. When we 'eat seasonal' we're not only cutting down on the damage done by shipping this food all over the country, we're also supporting our local farmers, people who in turn invest in other aspects of our communities. Most of those food subsidies that Gristmill talks about above aren't going to the organic farmer hippies you see at the farmer's market, they're going to major agri-business farmers, like the ones who had the E. Coli epidemic last summer.

I'm guilty of this stuff too, sometimes it's hard to remember the larger costs when faces with the grocery store budget, but in the end the cost is going to be much greater. I just have to keep telling myself that. We're not going to solve this environmental crisis tomorrow, it's going to take little steps from millons of people. We should probably start right now.

contemplating my madeleine

I'm reading a book right now about how to write good college essays as I prepare to apply to grad schools. It has a list to help you prepare to write a personal statement essay and some of the topics to get you thinking are "Describe 3 Significant Lessons You Have Learned," "Describe 3 Memorable Experiences You've Had," "Discuss a Failure That Taught You Something." As I'm reading over these starter topics I peruse my memory for relevant events and then start to wonder, should I use my move to New York as having to do with a Significant Lesson, or a Failure that Taught Me Something. Do I discuss the experience of traveling to Cuba and Kenya? My Internship at Tribeca as an Experience, and my film career as a Failure? Then, after thinking of these past experiences for a moment I get a little sad. Sad because some of this stuff was exciting, challenging things that I have moved past but feel sad that I didn't stick with. While working as a PA and interning at Tribeca I started to realize that film might not be the career I want to stay in. I started to miss the academic environment, where my ideas were welcomed and my assumptions challenged. I missed feeling like I had something to offer, and that I was learning something that made me grow as a creative person. I realized I didn't want to stop learning about and discussing literature yet. And that the world of film, although I love the cinema, and love the stories it tells, might not be the best place for a dreamer like me. I wanted to inspire others to love literature, and I wanted to write stories that had a chance of being read somewhere, not just by an intern in a production house that will write a snarky film student critique and stop my film from being made. Usually I don't regret walking away from the endless amount of work I forsaw. I wanted to be a creative, and I wanted to stay fresh. I didn't want to stagnant. I don't want to stagnant. For a while I oscillated between wanting to be in that world and being a normal person in education somewhere. Finally the desire to teach and continue learning won out. I don't really regret it. But I do sort of wonder what could have happened if I had pushed forth. And if I had stayed in New York. In the back of my head, as I sit in an office editing military briefs that I don't care less about and worry about the money slowing being deposited in my account, and fret about my grad class and the chances of getting into grad school I wonder if I've given up excitement. Or at least for now. It seems harder to come by when you're living in your mother's house in Reston, commuting down to Arlington and not doing much else. I don't think I've given it up in exchange for a paycheck and the chance to sit at a desk. But sometimes I'm afraid I have and that I'm too meek to find my own life, find my own adventures and that they have, or will pass me by before I realize it.

Volunteering

Today I start volunteer teaching at Higher Achievement!!! I'm going to be working with 8th graders, teaching them about Literature. I'm so excited I'm bouncing in my seat. Wish me luck cause I'm also a little scared that I'll be horrible.

This October 15th is Blog Action Day.

A How-To For Investors, From Someone Who's Still Clueless

Last December I did something I never thought I'd do. I sat down and opened a Roth IRA. What is a Roth IRA you ask? I didn't know either, but having finally cracked the book a family friend gave me when I graduated high school I learned a thing or two.

So, in light of recent posts about finances and growing up I thought I'd share what I learned about the big, bad world of stocks and bonds. Please bear in mind that I know nothing about how this all works, don't give any advice about which stocks to buy and when to sell them, I'm just giving you my perspective, as a real, live, young person starting out on this path.

First of all, I decided on a Roth IRA because I was working as a freelance PA in television. As a freelancer, small business owner or anything else where your job doesn't offer a 401K or its own IRA this is a good alternative. With this you don't pay taxes until it's time to withdraw your money, and you can keep it for a long amount of time. I invested $200 dollars into it, with the idea that I would continue to invest that amount of money with every paycheck I get (if I could afford it, of course)

And then, the next thing to do of course, is invest it. You can keep your $200 and save it up, or you can be brave and foolish and use your money to make money for you. What a strange and unusual idea! Who would have thought that you can make money without working 8 hour days for it! Now, I have no clue about how exactly the stock market works. All I think of when I hear "stock market" is guys rushing around on the stock market floor waving fingers and trading little white slips of paper, like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, or guys in big glass office buildings accumulating loads of money, like Patrick in American Psycho. I get that you invest your money in companies, giving them money that they can use to grow and get better, but what shares mean, why they rise and sink, and how that increases my bottom line I don't know. In addition to the book above I used http://www.thebeehive.org/ to help me figure some of this stuff out.

Before I began all of this I happened to hear a radio report on NPR about socially responsible investing and decided that when I was more adult, and more able to comprehend what exactly a 'stock market' is, I would do that. One more way to save the world without actually having to do much.

Once I started considering stocks to buy I remembered this promise to myself. If you are a person who cares about the environment, gets angry at the way pharmecutical and oil companies run amuck and recycles religiously then why not decide where your money makes a difference by where you invest? And I'm secretly hoping I stumble on the next Microsoft because everyone is so concerned about the environment and energy saving innovation one of these companies has got to be onto something. Here's some websites where they give some good advice about socially conscious investing:

1. The Sensible Investor
2. Rethinking Socially Conscious Investing
3. Social Funds
4. New American Dream isn't exactly about investing but it has really good advice about living green.

So, there you go. I started investing money in Green Mountain Coffee Traders (GMCR), Hybrid Technologies (HYBT), SunTech Power (STP) and Evergreen Solar (ESLR). Green Mountain Coffee Traders is doing the best so far but the others are in the green these days too, literally and in my account (they use green instead of black to show the increases).

I'm getting kind of into it. I love seeing the numbers go up and down, even if I have no idea what exactly they mean. And I can even talk about this stuff and sound knowledgable, at least around my friends who are just as clueless about this as I am. It's funny to see myself doing something so adult like when I feel so much like a kid most of the time. I even got my grandmother's old account for me from my dad and started investing that too.

I've mentioned before how un-adult-like I feel, and how I don't know all of this stuff, but with this I can control it and make these decisions on my own, and it will benefit me later in life. It's one of those things that I am doing to prepare for myself the life I'd like to have one day. I think this whole growing up thing should really just be done in tiny steps. Like a toddler who repeats things over and over to learn how things work.

Spontani -Tea

Yesterday, after we finished up a big project at work we got to go home. I got home at 1:30 on a beautiful fall, I mean summer, afternoon. As soon as I pulled into my neighborhood Aja pulled in behind me. She had recognized my car on the road. After changing my work clothes for playclothes I got an everything bagel with lox at Einstein Bagels with her and Ayana. I also got their green tea, Spontani-Tea, which would explain the spontaneity of the day. We went back to her house to eat our bagels and killed an hour reading magazines on her back porch. She started walking me home when we decided to stop by and see what Mark was up to, and bum a light for a shared cigarette from him.

Mark was playing Halo 3 when we knocked on his door and entreated Subi the dog to let us in. Sitting at the table he mentioned it was Paul's 31st birthday and he was sick. We decided we should do something nice for him. I think it was me who mentioned making cupcakes because I'd been thinking about them all day. So we found the recipe for Magnolia Bakery's cupcakes, made up a list and went to the grocery store.

Our cupcakes turned out delicious, and we iced them in Dusky Rose and Sky Blue. The icing melted onto them and they took on a strange, drippy glazed look. Once we added the black and white striped candles we bought we had cupcakes straight out of Tim Burton's Edward Sicssorhands.

Matt came home from work while we were taking turns cracking the eggs and beating the batter. Once we'd all gone home to eat something other than sugar we returned to take them over to Paul's.

The four of us show up at Paul's front door holding the lit cupcakes and knocking furiously. He didn't hear anything at first and he came down glowering, about to yell at us, when he realized the flames were birthday cupcakes. We came in and ate a few and got sick to our stomachs from so much sugar, but had fun. Paul was pretty happy because he'd been miserable and alone and sick all day. It was a nice way to end a spontaneous kind of day.

Let ME Do It!!

When I was a toddler, my parents like to remind me, I used to assert my independence by saying to them "Let ME do it!" when they tried to help me brush my teeth or wipe or anything else that I knew I could do alone. And that's sort of been my life's philosophy. I'm really independent. I've travelled the world by myself and figured out all sorts of my own problems by myself, sometimes they're problems that I created for myself but I still solved them. But as I get older I realize how much I've been leaning on my parents for help. And that's not a bad thing, but at 24 I think I should be handling somethings on my own. It's hard to let go though. I used to let my dad handle all the red tape that I didn't understand, or want to worry about. But now I feel like if I don't do it I won't know what's going on and how to deal with these things that being an adult involves. The stuff they never warn you about...

I need a primer course in all the red tape involved in being an adult. I tried to fill out my credit report information online because I don't know what my credit score is. They couldn't verify my identity when I tried to re log in so I had to call the number they gave me to verbally verify my information. She asked if I had any student loans and I said I did but I don't know the name of the company because my dad takes care of it. So she said to call back when I had that information. It was a little hard to hear her so before she hung up I asked "So all I need to get to verify my identity is the name of the company I have my student loans through?" And she replied, "Unfortunately we can't give out the information you need because it can lead to identity theft." And I was like, but you just told me, and I'm trying to make sure I get the right information, and when I come back and call you back with it, that I have all the information you need so I don't have to keep calling my father for this information.

What kills me about all of this is that I understand it's "For my protection" and I'd rather not have someone steal my identity, but at the same time I hate anyone having this huge information about me and me having no way to access it. They can easily destroy my life with this stuff and I can't even do anything about it. I hate that someone gathers this information and uses it to judge me, to decide what I can and can't do with my life. I want to be the only one who decides what information is relevant to me. I want to be in control of my life and my history. It makes me feel like this is a sci-fi thriller where someone has a file on everything I've done and it scares me. I don't want to live in that sort of adult world.

Recently I read this interesting article about Harry Potter and the transformations that J.K. Rowling uses in the books. Like how Harry transitions from a black and white world view where the people to be trusted are very obvious, into one where he's not sure who to trust and he understands the motivations of people in new ways. He grows up and into this world where tough decisions, ones that will affect his life must be made, and he can't trust the adults to do the job because they're human too, and have their own fears and hopes and agendas. That's sort of what I feel like right now, like I'm slowly becoming aware that if things regarding my life are to be done they must be done by me. And that's sort of terrifying. Because I don't always have a safety net to fall back on and I'm never quite sure what information I'm going to need or where to find it. For so long I've been running back to my dad who has all the answers, knows my SAT scores and my bank balance, knows what my credit history is like and how to apply for the FAFSA or the car loans I need. Now, I'm starting to do it on my own and even though he is still available I need to do this on my own.I'm also trying to track down my W-2s and my 10-99s so that I can do my taxes for myself. It's hard though to figure out what's necessary, and what's a fair deal when I'm trying to do it by my self for the first time. A lot of it I just try to fudge and hope it's correct.