It's Always the Cereal.
How is the west coast different from the east coast? That is the one question that’s easily been asked of me thirty times since I’ve come out to California and I don’t really know how to answer it. I’ve actually been contemplating this topic for quite some time and couldn’t quite figure out what to talk about in relation to it. What I’ve seen of the west coast so far is limited to mostly four cities: Sacramento from the airport, Marysville from when I stayed over at the Runyans’, Grass Valley, Nevada City and a lot of the area in between the latter two. Anything I’ve experienced of this part of the country is largely skewed because of the community I am living in. I freaking live with Quakers. What isn’t different? And even that isn’t very fair and/or accurate. This community takes the Quaker value of simplicity and the “educated liberal, tree-hugging” philosophies of saving energy and combines them into one big simplicity, liberally tree-hugging load. So really, the question you should be asking me is how is living with these Quakers different than living with anyone else?
Well. Let me give a few bullet points:
- There is about a minute of silence before every meal, class, business meeting, major outing, party or gala event.
- There are committees formed to deal with every single little problem you could think of. There is a shit ton of discussion before anything ever happens (and even then you need community approval).
- Half the community talks in NVC language.
- There is ‘Garden Happy Hour’, which takes places Monday through Friday in the main garden, from six thirty to eight (which is more than an hour), and consists of weeding and the picking of various fruits and veggies.
- The kitchen is strictly vegetarian. A lot of the food comes from our garden. Almost everything is organic. All extra scraps of food are composted.
- There are cloth napkins for dinner and cloth towels in the bathrooms, to minimize the amount of waste produced.
- Some community members ride bikes wherever they go and shun the use of vehicles as a waste of energy and for polluting the environment.
- Clothes are dried on clotheslines or racks. Dryers are rarely used.
- The hot water in the dining hall is heated by way of the solar panels on the side of the building.
- For all buildings on campus, the only air conditioning is a fan and the only heating is a wood stove.
- Two of the community members applied for and received a $10,000 grant from BGE to install solar panels on the Administration building for electricity.
- Everything that can be recycled, is recycled. Paper with print on only one side is reused within the office for photocopying on the clean side.
That’s really just the start. And that’s really not what I was going to talk about when I addressed this issue of what life is like out here… I sort of got sidetracked. What I was going to talk about is my suitemates and good friends Daniel and Dana. It’s more Dana that I am going to talk about actually, but Daniel is still a silent partner to what she preaches. Long story short, she is basically against my entire existence and it all started over Cocoa Puffs, my breakfast cereal of choice. Let me explain.
It was about a week after I got here, most likely on that first Sunday morning, and I was sitting at the breakfast bar in the Stone House. I was, in fact, eating my breakfast - the delicious, yummy, chocolaty goodness that is Cocoa Puffs. I believe my spoon was in the air, filled to the brim and chocolate-ified milk dripping, when I heard someone walk into the kitchen. I look up and see Dana, baby Tuui on her hip, with an absolutely horrified look on her face.
And so it began.
I got to hear all about how Cocoa Puffs are ridiculously bad for me (and how they’re the only thing Dana’s ever eaten that made her physically ill). There was a huge diatribe about the corn syrup and chemicals and genetic alterations to the corn and how I don’t even know what I’m putting into my body. And then she got on to how the milk I had was not organic, and how I should never buy milk or eggs that aren’t organic.
Little Bro: do you eat fruit loops?
Little Bro: hahaha
InKatYears: I eat Cocoa Puffs and boooooy does she give me shite for it. lol
Little Bro: hahahaha
Little Bro: it's always the cereal
Today after a meeting, Dana and I got into a discussion about shaving our legs. She doesn’t and I do, both equally happy about it. She asked me why I shaved. I said why not? And that I liked the way my legs feel better when they’re smooth, that I do it for myself and not anyone else. She kind of smirked then, and said she knew I would say that. She told me that when she was in the shower the other day and saw my shaving cream, she started thinking about what reason I’d give for shaving and that I’d said exactly what she thought I would say. She said I don’t do it for myself, that I was conditioned to believe that I had to shave my legs to get men to like me. She asked me if I’d still be shaving my legs if I wasn’t trained by society to think I had to.
Dana has very strong and passionate opinions. She hates hospitals and how babies are given due dates, and how newborns are traumatized at birth by all the bright lights and noises, and how the mothers having painkillers is just the most awful thing ever. She and Daniel got rid of their cell phones and their car, don’t have a computer and make jokes about me using all three. They think marijuana and ‘shrooms’ are okay because they’re from the earth and perfectly natural. I don’t think marijuana is okay or healthy, I don’t use it myself and I don’t especially think it’s the best idea for people to use either - but it’s none of my business if they don’t agree, nor is it my job to make them “see the light.” They don’t agree and I’m perfectly content with that. They will also probably say I only think it’s bad because the government has made it illegal. Will they go to the extent of encouraging me to try it and tell me it’s not bad for me? I think that would be the point where I get fed up.
It feels like everything I like/do has some issue or some horrific detail that she feels compelled to inform me of, for my own good. To be fair, I give her an equally hard time about her giving me a hard time, but I sort of wish she’d find a new project or person to convert. I know she’s just passionate about it because she only recently started living the way she does and feels like she had been “lied to her whole life” (her words, not mine) by society, the government, her family, and just life in general. She’s only a year or two older than me. She’s excited about knowing the truth and wants to spread her newfound knowledge on to everyone. She cares about me. She wants me to be healthy. It couldn’t be further from her intention to insult me. But I honestly don’t appreciate being made to feel like everything I do is wrong. I don’t like being smirked at, like she knows better than me or like I’m completely ignorant about the “truth of the world.” I don’t like that I feel like she thinks I’m some brain-washed zombie created by the Lie That Is American Society. I also didn’t quite realize that I was this frustrated by their attempts to “fix me”. Or maybe I did. Perhaps I should say something..
Alas. At least Ryan jokes about it with me, cause they kind of give him a hard time about his food choices as well. Except his cereal of choice is Honey Nut Cheerios. He said he’d defend me to the end about leg shaving. But that’s only because he doesn’t like hairy legs. Which is slightly proving Dana’s point, but I’ll take what I can get.
Earlier this weekOnce upon a time, Ryan and I were in the office working and John came in to ask Ryan a question about something that I don’t quite remember now. He didn’t answer right away, and John said, “Come on now, cat got your tongue?” And seeing as I am going by Kat now and the cat/Kat jokes are still amusing to me, I said, “Hey now! I do not.” And there was much laughter. The End.
I suppose it’s been a busy few weeks for me. I finished up with following the students to classes last week and this whole week I’ve started my actual work as an Admissions Intern. I’m actually leaving for my first outreach trip with Kathy and Ryan on Tuesday, September 18th to Sacramento. It’s all sneaking up so fast; I honestly can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by for me. (I think it’s to make up for how slowly 2006 went. lol) It’s amazing.
My first solo trip is the first week of October, to the North Bay area of California (Marin County mostly, if that means anything to you). This whole week I’ve been searching the internet for high schools in that area, finding their websites and locating any teachers/admins/counselors that would make good contacts for scheduling a visit. Yesterday and today I’ve been starting to send out introductory emails to those contacts, which is sort of exciting. I haven’t gotten any responses yet, one way or the other, but I’ll let you know when I do.
My next trip after this one starts at the end of October and ends the Tuesday after Thanksgiving weekend. I know I had originally told everyone that I’d be making two separate trips to the east coast, but the plans have changed slightly now after looking at the budget and figuring out that it was silly to send me on two trips to the east coast within two weeks of each other. So, surprise Mom, I’m coming home for three weeks! Can you pick me up at BWI October 30th? lol I’ll be traveling a lot - I’ll be hitting up Philadelphia, Maryland, DC, and North Carolina all in this trip - but I’m definitely excited to have my home base with my family (who doesn’t even know yet, haha) and friends. Well, Tommy knows, cause I told him today. We got to talk online for a while before my internet connection cut out, which was nice since I haven’t talked to him since the day he moved in at CP. He makes me laugh, that boy. I think I like him, a bit. Understatement.
My first recruiting event as an Admissions Intern is actually this Saturday. Some of the students wanted to go to Power to the Peaceful, a concert-slash-demonstration to promote peace, being held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. This is my excited face!! Not only do I get to practice talking about the program before being sent off on my own, but I get to go to San Francisco for free. (I’m really excited for next May to arrive, to have my best buddy Jack with me and my car and travel around California and see the places I’ve only seen in movies. Road trip!) Ryan and I are going to be at the table the whole time, but Kate (the world issues teacher) will also be around, as well as some of the students when they need a break from wandering. I’ve been warned not to accept any “brownies” from strangers there, as they’ve been known to contain illegal substances. Crazy Californias.
Last Friday I went rafting on the Yuba River with the students and some faculty, as part of the environmental science class. Jess has the students working with a local nonprofit group SYRCL (South Yuba River Citizens League, I think), and this trip was their training and introduction to the river. They were actually learning about the salmon issues in the river, so they can turn around in about two months time and teach the same lessons to local elementary school students. It was definitely a fun trip and I enjoyed being in boat rowing again. Our guide was a guide-in-training and she was pretty bad/nervous, and definitely not a good coxswain, but even so we never tipped over, only got grounded accidentally once, and ran into things… well, a bunch of times, but it could happen to anyone I suppose. (This is me, being nice.) I’m not really sad I’m going to be missing the salmon breeding in November, cause it sounded really sad. Apparently the female fish beat themselves bloody/to death in their need to create a safe nesting ground for their eggs. So sad, such motherly instinct. I got sunburned that day, even though I applied 50 SPF sunscreen twice. I’m pretty resigned to my eternal fate of being sunburned. I tried Mother, I tried!
In the evening I went with Ryan into Grass Valley for some Coldstone Ice Cream, because he had a giftcard. It just occurred to me that I forgot to pay him for that. Hm. Anyway. Daniel met up with us after he dropped a group of students to hang out in Nevada City, and we chilled out and talked for a while. (I feel like a traitor to Brusters for having eaten the enemy’s ice cream; I also don’t feel particularly guilty because Ms. Gina eats there too.) We were pretty deep in a conversation about our various reasons for taking a break from college or (in Daniel’s case) having no intention of going back, and it must have been around ten thirty PST when my phone started ringing; I was really confused because I didn’t know who would be calling me. I thought at first that it was Dana calling for Daniel, but then saw ‘Peter Tzeng’ on the caller ID with his face looking up at me. I knew then that I was about to talk to a very very drunk Asian boy. And boy, did I ever. Oh Peter.
Sunday I went with Lynne, Amy and Susan to their monthly Scrabble group. There were about twelve people there and I was easily the youngest one there by a good twenty-five years and it was wonderful. Don’t let their old age fool you, they were hardcore Scrabble players - some I would even call cutthroat. I lost so badly. I can spell my heart out and have a vocabulary probably better than yours (haha, well wasn’t that arrogant of me; don’t worry, I just thought it sounded good), but geez.. spelling correctly or knowing a lot of big words doesn’t mean shit if you don’t know the tricks. It’s the tricks you have to know, all the two letter words and how to cleverly arrange them and being able to hit the double/triple letter/word squares. It definitely didn’t help that my fingers are apparently attracted to vowels. I got sixty points total the first game; I was so embarrassed. I did better the second game with a respectable 116, but I still came in last place. I’m not completely disheartened though! This past Wednesday during our weekly game with just the four of us, I came in second place! I had a few clever plays, with those tricks I’d learned on Sunday, and was ahead for most of the game until Amy came around in the last few rounds. I’m still quite proud of my performance though. Hopefully I will not embarrass myself as much at the next monthly tournament. Here’s hoping.
Today I wrote a small, newspaper-esque blurb on one of the students for the Sierra Friends Center newsletter. astraevirgo edited it for me, like the dear that she is, because newspaper writing couldn’t really be more of an unknown for me. I tend to make up my own rules when it suits my needs, and I suppose that would have been fine in this case, but the perfectionist in me demanded… well, perfection. I’ll post it later, perhaps.
Bob Runyan asked me yesterday if I wanted to play soccer on the indoor league team he and a few of his fellow Quaker friends were starting. Um, YES. We’re going to be called The Earthquakes, hahaha, and it’s going to be fun. One of the students, Bryce, is going to play, as well as Kathy and Bob’s twin sons, Mark and Keith. And speaking of them, I went with Kathy and Bob to go see those two play in their soccer game Tuesday night. They’re on the JV team for Marysville High School and were playing against Bear River HS, which is close enough to Sierra Friends Center that it wasn’t out of the way to take me and drop me off again afterwards. I felt so bad because their team was kind of bad - not because they didn’t have the skill, but because they couldn’t work together for the life of them. They easily had more skill than the other team, in terms of being able to play creatively, but there was no unity and hardly any passing because of it. There was a lot of frustration and bickering too. I was shouting more than the parents, being all encouraging-like. I’m going to be a soccer coach eventually, I’ve decided. I think I could have done a better or helped more than their coach was doing and I wanted so badly to be the one giving them a pep talk and pointers during the halftime. He seemed really frustrated as well, so I guess that’s where the team gets it.
Do I smile a lot? Cause several people here have mentioned that they love seeing me smiling all the time. (Did I mention yet that people are really open with their feelings here? lol) Either I’ve never noticed I’m a smiler or I’m just happy here. I don’t know, but I still think I’m slightly scarred from that time in fourth grade when Mrs. Hannon yelled at me for smiling too much. (It’s over ten years later, and I still remember that lady as a bitch. If I ever become a teacher, that thought alone would make me want to do the job right.) But yeah. Apparently smiling is my favorite.
I really miss my car and the autonomy that it gives me. This whole asking for permission to take a school vehicle is really starting to chafe at my sense of independence. Oh well. Soon enough, the Baby will be here and I can be patient until then. And speaking of, I’m making a conscious effort to start planning for and gaining permissions to bring my other baby, Jackadoodle, back here with me in the spring. I miss him, and am excited for November to be with him again.
John went to the Strawberry Festival last weekend and brought me back strawberries, and all because I had jokingly asked him if he would before he left. He didn’t even get them from the festival, cause they didn’t have any, and had stopped at a roadside market on the way home. I shared them with everyone, but mainly Tuui, who had decided his ten month old baby ambition was to become a strawberry himself. He was absolutely covered in strawberries. He was red. It was hilarious. And adorable. It’s occurred to me that I’ve never been around a small child for an extended period of time before now, and I really am becoming quite attached to him. He’s just so happy. He has the sweetest smile you’ve ever seen; Dana told me yesterday that I was a good Auntie. It made me feel a little bit of warm fuzzies inside.
I also feel like I should clarify about earlier in this post, that I really like Dana and Daniel an awful lot. Most of this “fixing” and “lecturing” is done in a joking manner, even though we’re both perfectly serious and stubborn in our own ways. Those topics hardly take up all our discussions and are hardly the basis for our relationship. The four and a half of us in the Intern Wing of the Stone House (Daniel, Dana, Ryan, Tuui (the half) and myself) get along really well and often stay up late hanging out in my room and talking. It’s a pretty great/social living environment and I’m really happy with it. It makes me happy to know I’ll be going away on outreach trips and coming back to a place where people enjoy my company and will actually miss me. It’s kind of like home.
And speaking of home, I finally got the package my mom sent me like two weeks ago. Yay for having the clothes that didn’t fit into my suitcase! Thanks momma, for the candies and the bag - it’s absolutely perfect. Life Is Good, indeed.
Well. Let me give a few bullet points:
- There is about a minute of silence before every meal, class, business meeting, major outing, party or gala event.
- There are committees formed to deal with every single little problem you could think of. There is a shit ton of discussion before anything ever happens (and even then you need community approval).
- Half the community talks in NVC language.
- There is ‘Garden Happy Hour’, which takes places Monday through Friday in the main garden, from six thirty to eight (which is more than an hour), and consists of weeding and the picking of various fruits and veggies.
- The kitchen is strictly vegetarian. A lot of the food comes from our garden. Almost everything is organic. All extra scraps of food are composted.
- There are cloth napkins for dinner and cloth towels in the bathrooms, to minimize the amount of waste produced.
- Some community members ride bikes wherever they go and shun the use of vehicles as a waste of energy and for polluting the environment.
- Clothes are dried on clotheslines or racks. Dryers are rarely used.
- The hot water in the dining hall is heated by way of the solar panels on the side of the building.
- For all buildings on campus, the only air conditioning is a fan and the only heating is a wood stove.
- Two of the community members applied for and received a $10,000 grant from BGE to install solar panels on the Administration building for electricity.
- Everything that can be recycled, is recycled. Paper with print on only one side is reused within the office for photocopying on the clean side.
That’s really just the start. And that’s really not what I was going to talk about when I addressed this issue of what life is like out here… I sort of got sidetracked. What I was going to talk about is my suitemates and good friends Daniel and Dana. It’s more Dana that I am going to talk about actually, but Daniel is still a silent partner to what she preaches. Long story short, she is basically against my entire existence and it all started over Cocoa Puffs, my breakfast cereal of choice. Let me explain.
It was about a week after I got here, most likely on that first Sunday morning, and I was sitting at the breakfast bar in the Stone House. I was, in fact, eating my breakfast - the delicious, yummy, chocolaty goodness that is Cocoa Puffs. I believe my spoon was in the air, filled to the brim and chocolate-ified milk dripping, when I heard someone walk into the kitchen. I look up and see Dana, baby Tuui on her hip, with an absolutely horrified look on her face.
And so it began.
I got to hear all about how Cocoa Puffs are ridiculously bad for me (and how they’re the only thing Dana’s ever eaten that made her physically ill). There was a huge diatribe about the corn syrup and chemicals and genetic alterations to the corn and how I don’t even know what I’m putting into my body. And then she got on to how the milk I had was not organic, and how I should never buy milk or eggs that aren’t organic.
Little Bro: do you eat fruit loops?
Little Bro: hahaha
InKatYears: I eat Cocoa Puffs and boooooy does she give me shite for it. lol
Little Bro: hahahaha
Little Bro: it's always the cereal
Today after a meeting, Dana and I got into a discussion about shaving our legs. She doesn’t and I do, both equally happy about it. She asked me why I shaved. I said why not? And that I liked the way my legs feel better when they’re smooth, that I do it for myself and not anyone else. She kind of smirked then, and said she knew I would say that. She told me that when she was in the shower the other day and saw my shaving cream, she started thinking about what reason I’d give for shaving and that I’d said exactly what she thought I would say. She said I don’t do it for myself, that I was conditioned to believe that I had to shave my legs to get men to like me. She asked me if I’d still be shaving my legs if I wasn’t trained by society to think I had to.
Dana has very strong and passionate opinions. She hates hospitals and how babies are given due dates, and how newborns are traumatized at birth by all the bright lights and noises, and how the mothers having painkillers is just the most awful thing ever. She and Daniel got rid of their cell phones and their car, don’t have a computer and make jokes about me using all three. They think marijuana and ‘shrooms’ are okay because they’re from the earth and perfectly natural. I don’t think marijuana is okay or healthy, I don’t use it myself and I don’t especially think it’s the best idea for people to use either - but it’s none of my business if they don’t agree, nor is it my job to make them “see the light.” They don’t agree and I’m perfectly content with that. They will also probably say I only think it’s bad because the government has made it illegal. Will they go to the extent of encouraging me to try it and tell me it’s not bad for me? I think that would be the point where I get fed up.
It feels like everything I like/do has some issue or some horrific detail that she feels compelled to inform me of, for my own good. To be fair, I give her an equally hard time about her giving me a hard time, but I sort of wish she’d find a new project or person to convert. I know she’s just passionate about it because she only recently started living the way she does and feels like she had been “lied to her whole life” (her words, not mine) by society, the government, her family, and just life in general. She’s only a year or two older than me. She’s excited about knowing the truth and wants to spread her newfound knowledge on to everyone. She cares about me. She wants me to be healthy. It couldn’t be further from her intention to insult me. But I honestly don’t appreciate being made to feel like everything I do is wrong. I don’t like being smirked at, like she knows better than me or like I’m completely ignorant about the “truth of the world.” I don’t like that I feel like she thinks I’m some brain-washed zombie created by the Lie That Is American Society. I also didn’t quite realize that I was this frustrated by their attempts to “fix me”. Or maybe I did. Perhaps I should say something..
Alas. At least Ryan jokes about it with me, cause they kind of give him a hard time about his food choices as well. Except his cereal of choice is Honey Nut Cheerios. He said he’d defend me to the end about leg shaving. But that’s only because he doesn’t like hairy legs. Which is slightly proving Dana’s point, but I’ll take what I can get.
Earlier this weekOnce upon a time, Ryan and I were in the office working and John came in to ask Ryan a question about something that I don’t quite remember now. He didn’t answer right away, and John said, “Come on now, cat got your tongue?” And seeing as I am going by Kat now and the cat/Kat jokes are still amusing to me, I said, “Hey now! I do not.” And there was much laughter. The End.
I suppose it’s been a busy few weeks for me. I finished up with following the students to classes last week and this whole week I’ve started my actual work as an Admissions Intern. I’m actually leaving for my first outreach trip with Kathy and Ryan on Tuesday, September 18th to Sacramento. It’s all sneaking up so fast; I honestly can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by for me. (I think it’s to make up for how slowly 2006 went. lol) It’s amazing.
My first solo trip is the first week of October, to the North Bay area of California (Marin County mostly, if that means anything to you). This whole week I’ve been searching the internet for high schools in that area, finding their websites and locating any teachers/admins/counselors that would make good contacts for scheduling a visit. Yesterday and today I’ve been starting to send out introductory emails to those contacts, which is sort of exciting. I haven’t gotten any responses yet, one way or the other, but I’ll let you know when I do.
My next trip after this one starts at the end of October and ends the Tuesday after Thanksgiving weekend. I know I had originally told everyone that I’d be making two separate trips to the east coast, but the plans have changed slightly now after looking at the budget and figuring out that it was silly to send me on two trips to the east coast within two weeks of each other. So, surprise Mom, I’m coming home for three weeks! Can you pick me up at BWI October 30th? lol I’ll be traveling a lot - I’ll be hitting up Philadelphia, Maryland, DC, and North Carolina all in this trip - but I’m definitely excited to have my home base with my family (who doesn’t even know yet, haha) and friends. Well, Tommy knows, cause I told him today. We got to talk online for a while before my internet connection cut out, which was nice since I haven’t talked to him since the day he moved in at CP. He makes me laugh, that boy. I think I like him, a bit. Understatement.
My first recruiting event as an Admissions Intern is actually this Saturday. Some of the students wanted to go to Power to the Peaceful, a concert-slash-demonstration to promote peace, being held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. This is my excited face!! Not only do I get to practice talking about the program before being sent off on my own, but I get to go to San Francisco for free. (I’m really excited for next May to arrive, to have my best buddy Jack with me and my car and travel around California and see the places I’ve only seen in movies. Road trip!) Ryan and I are going to be at the table the whole time, but Kate (the world issues teacher) will also be around, as well as some of the students when they need a break from wandering. I’ve been warned not to accept any “brownies” from strangers there, as they’ve been known to contain illegal substances. Crazy Californias.
Last Friday I went rafting on the Yuba River with the students and some faculty, as part of the environmental science class. Jess has the students working with a local nonprofit group SYRCL (South Yuba River Citizens League, I think), and this trip was their training and introduction to the river. They were actually learning about the salmon issues in the river, so they can turn around in about two months time and teach the same lessons to local elementary school students. It was definitely a fun trip and I enjoyed being in boat rowing again. Our guide was a guide-in-training and she was pretty bad/nervous, and definitely not a good coxswain, but even so we never tipped over, only got grounded accidentally once, and ran into things… well, a bunch of times, but it could happen to anyone I suppose. (This is me, being nice.) I’m not really sad I’m going to be missing the salmon breeding in November, cause it sounded really sad. Apparently the female fish beat themselves bloody/to death in their need to create a safe nesting ground for their eggs. So sad, such motherly instinct. I got sunburned that day, even though I applied 50 SPF sunscreen twice. I’m pretty resigned to my eternal fate of being sunburned. I tried Mother, I tried!
In the evening I went with Ryan into Grass Valley for some Coldstone Ice Cream, because he had a giftcard. It just occurred to me that I forgot to pay him for that. Hm. Anyway. Daniel met up with us after he dropped a group of students to hang out in Nevada City, and we chilled out and talked for a while. (I feel like a traitor to Brusters for having eaten the enemy’s ice cream; I also don’t feel particularly guilty because Ms. Gina eats there too.) We were pretty deep in a conversation about our various reasons for taking a break from college or (in Daniel’s case) having no intention of going back, and it must have been around ten thirty PST when my phone started ringing; I was really confused because I didn’t know who would be calling me. I thought at first that it was Dana calling for Daniel, but then saw ‘Peter Tzeng’ on the caller ID with his face looking up at me. I knew then that I was about to talk to a very very drunk Asian boy. And boy, did I ever. Oh Peter.
Sunday I went with Lynne, Amy and Susan to their monthly Scrabble group. There were about twelve people there and I was easily the youngest one there by a good twenty-five years and it was wonderful. Don’t let their old age fool you, they were hardcore Scrabble players - some I would even call cutthroat. I lost so badly. I can spell my heart out and have a vocabulary probably better than yours (haha, well wasn’t that arrogant of me; don’t worry, I just thought it sounded good), but geez.. spelling correctly or knowing a lot of big words doesn’t mean shit if you don’t know the tricks. It’s the tricks you have to know, all the two letter words and how to cleverly arrange them and being able to hit the double/triple letter/word squares. It definitely didn’t help that my fingers are apparently attracted to vowels. I got sixty points total the first game; I was so embarrassed. I did better the second game with a respectable 116, but I still came in last place. I’m not completely disheartened though! This past Wednesday during our weekly game with just the four of us, I came in second place! I had a few clever plays, with those tricks I’d learned on Sunday, and was ahead for most of the game until Amy came around in the last few rounds. I’m still quite proud of my performance though. Hopefully I will not embarrass myself as much at the next monthly tournament. Here’s hoping.
Today I wrote a small, newspaper-esque blurb on one of the students for the Sierra Friends Center newsletter. astraevirgo edited it for me, like the dear that she is, because newspaper writing couldn’t really be more of an unknown for me. I tend to make up my own rules when it suits my needs, and I suppose that would have been fine in this case, but the perfectionist in me demanded… well, perfection. I’ll post it later, perhaps.
Bob Runyan asked me yesterday if I wanted to play soccer on the indoor league team he and a few of his fellow Quaker friends were starting. Um, YES. We’re going to be called The Earthquakes, hahaha, and it’s going to be fun. One of the students, Bryce, is going to play, as well as Kathy and Bob’s twin sons, Mark and Keith. And speaking of them, I went with Kathy and Bob to go see those two play in their soccer game Tuesday night. They’re on the JV team for Marysville High School and were playing against Bear River HS, which is close enough to Sierra Friends Center that it wasn’t out of the way to take me and drop me off again afterwards. I felt so bad because their team was kind of bad - not because they didn’t have the skill, but because they couldn’t work together for the life of them. They easily had more skill than the other team, in terms of being able to play creatively, but there was no unity and hardly any passing because of it. There was a lot of frustration and bickering too. I was shouting more than the parents, being all encouraging-like. I’m going to be a soccer coach eventually, I’ve decided. I think I could have done a better or helped more than their coach was doing and I wanted so badly to be the one giving them a pep talk and pointers during the halftime. He seemed really frustrated as well, so I guess that’s where the team gets it.
Do I smile a lot? Cause several people here have mentioned that they love seeing me smiling all the time. (Did I mention yet that people are really open with their feelings here? lol) Either I’ve never noticed I’m a smiler or I’m just happy here. I don’t know, but I still think I’m slightly scarred from that time in fourth grade when Mrs. Hannon yelled at me for smiling too much. (It’s over ten years later, and I still remember that lady as a bitch. If I ever become a teacher, that thought alone would make me want to do the job right.) But yeah. Apparently smiling is my favorite.
I really miss my car and the autonomy that it gives me. This whole asking for permission to take a school vehicle is really starting to chafe at my sense of independence. Oh well. Soon enough, the Baby will be here and I can be patient until then. And speaking of, I’m making a conscious effort to start planning for and gaining permissions to bring my other baby, Jackadoodle, back here with me in the spring. I miss him, and am excited for November to be with him again.
John went to the Strawberry Festival last weekend and brought me back strawberries, and all because I had jokingly asked him if he would before he left. He didn’t even get them from the festival, cause they didn’t have any, and had stopped at a roadside market on the way home. I shared them with everyone, but mainly Tuui, who had decided his ten month old baby ambition was to become a strawberry himself. He was absolutely covered in strawberries. He was red. It was hilarious. And adorable. It’s occurred to me that I’ve never been around a small child for an extended period of time before now, and I really am becoming quite attached to him. He’s just so happy. He has the sweetest smile you’ve ever seen; Dana told me yesterday that I was a good Auntie. It made me feel a little bit of warm fuzzies inside.
I also feel like I should clarify about earlier in this post, that I really like Dana and Daniel an awful lot. Most of this “fixing” and “lecturing” is done in a joking manner, even though we’re both perfectly serious and stubborn in our own ways. Those topics hardly take up all our discussions and are hardly the basis for our relationship. The four and a half of us in the Intern Wing of the Stone House (Daniel, Dana, Ryan, Tuui (the half) and myself) get along really well and often stay up late hanging out in my room and talking. It’s a pretty great/social living environment and I’m really happy with it. It makes me happy to know I’ll be going away on outreach trips and coming back to a place where people enjoy my company and will actually miss me. It’s kind of like home.
And speaking of home, I finally got the package my mom sent me like two weeks ago. Yay for having the clothes that didn’t fit into my suitcase! Thanks momma, for the candies and the bag - it’s absolutely perfect. Life Is Good, indeed.