Life on the Sanctuary
Life has been mostly good, but it never seems like the right time to write. To sum up:
*The living situation:
I'm loving it. Yes it's isolated, but it's really beautiful and I get views I'd ordinarily need millions to call my own. I have this gorgeous patio in which to enjoy leisurely weekend breakfasts or weekday teas, surrounded by sunshine, my own secluded part of the estuary, and a good book. Living in a historical Victorian home in a peaceful nature sancuary is incredible, especially at night when I come home to my sanctuary, and it's peaceful and dark and isolated. Plus, I'm fulfilling another childhood dream by living here: living in a museum. Just like Charlotte Doyle made me want to run away to sea, The MIxed UP Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (anyone remember that one?) made me want to run away and live in a museum. In fact, when I was ten and my brother was six we had very serious plans to run away and live in the Smithsonian in D.C. Picked a date, looked up bus schedules and packed and everything. And for awhile I was trying to figure out a way to live at the Huntington Library without getting caught. So, now I live in a historical home that used to be used as a museum and still is furnished as such. And every time tourists wandering around the site try to get into my home and can't, or ask me if they can go in and I say it's private, I get happy. Because I live in a private museum! Yes I do live my life according to the whims I got from reading children's literature, what of it. Oh, and I really like my two housemates, one of the other interns and the stie's ecologist.
*Moving back to Berkeley:
However, although I love my nature break, I'm looking forward to moving back to Berkeley and being a part of the community there. I visit on the weekends and it serves as a reminder that I have people to go back to, and that's where what I moved up here is for. I had a good time there this weekend. My sailor women and some friends and I went to go see the pirate movie, whic we wer eonyl watching for the boats. I knew it was going to be a bad movie, and I hate the idea of pirates, but any movie that involves tall ships, I will watch. Plus I know peopel who worked on this one. Of course we couldn't be sober and watch it, so after delicious Mexican food and plenty of margaritas, us and our bottle of rum settled in for the movie. I was not nearly drunk enough for how terrible it was. Their mangling of nautical language was fairly hilarious though. The next day I led a workshop about birth options at this day of radical women's health my old housemates were putting on. I was a little nervous, because I was supposed to tlak for an hour about a subject I haven't studied or thought about in years. But it was like riding a bike. I am so glad I fianlly made it up here to the bay; I think I found the place I'm supposed to be right now, a place that could actually hold my interest for an extended period of time. But I'm enjoying my nature hiatus while it lasts.
*The job:
Continues to be awesome, although I still have issues about knowing the least about science out of all the staff. But the kdis are great, and I have moments every day of wonder at the fact that I get paid to do things like hike, hide in a field of grass, and play in the bay.
We have this salt water aquarium in our classroom - we colect stuff form the bay each week and fill it up. And I love it, because so many people have their fancy fish tanks with their fancy fish they bought in stores, and we have this teeming aquarium full of sea life we got from nature, where we will return them to at teh end of the week. We also, instead of buying fish food, forage for them. I took my campers out to locate tiny beach crustaceans for the pipe fish, and then a coworker and I went mussel hunting - for our crabs and shrimp and fish. It was so much fun - we wandered all over the beach at high tide, crawling over rocks and getting soaked up to our necks. We also high-fived and did a little victory dance over getting paid for it. Finally we waded way out to a rock and found a bunch, took them back and smashed them with a hammer. It was very strange for a vegetarian of more than a decade to kill creatures, brutally smashing them up, but my critters needed food, and I felt, for a second there, a glow of pride of hunting, killing, and providing. New experiences all a round.
*The boy:
So, a month after I sent him an email telling him I had to cut off all conatct with him, the boy calls me, leaving this message that we hand't talked in a while and he just wanted to drop me a line. That's his response to my expression of painful emotional honesty? So, after a round of phone tag we got a hold of each other. I'm angry sounding because hey, he chose not to sacrifice any of his independence to be iwth me but wanted to keep me on as a pen pal (or something, waht he wanted is still unclear to me), didn't respond to my email, and then calls me a month later just to talk, therefore blantantly ignoring my need to end contact. He's furious, and again, not sure why. But we shouted a bunch, even though he suddenly didn't want to talk to me because, "Obviously you just want to fight. You just want closure." Well yeah. And I deserve that. Anyway, we hung up but I said I wanted him to call back so we coudl finish discussing this. Which he did, but I missed it, and I called back and left a messagesaying I was calling him back but I was unclear why were talking. I had told him I had no desire whatsoever to be his pen pal because it didn't work for me, and that if he had something important to tell me or if he wanted to tell me what all this meant to him to call me, but otherwise I have no desire to just talk. Pretty much he's not going to call back. And for awhile I was feeling good - like I ended things on my terms and was calm and collected. But I do have a bunch of questions I really want answered, and I kind of feel I want to end things with a conversation. So, although it would have been stronger and clearer to just end things with the message telling him to leave me alone, I emailed him a list of questions and asked that he call back, so he can have time to think about his replies. I completely don't expect him to reply, and that at this point don't care. It's frustrating; I had gotten over him, and mostly even got over the anger, and then out of the blue he calls and it's been emotionally fucking with me ever since, and I can't figure out what the hell he want or why he wants it, and the fact that he sounded self-righteously angry and not guilty and apologetic really pisses me off. I mean, if he didn't want to get back together we shouldn't have been in contact this whole time, leading me to believe we were getting back together. Then I would have gotten over him by April. So hey, I can do that now. He's too conventional for me anyway.
And that's my life right now. I work, I bike ride, I enjoy myself, I visit friends, I get emotionally fucked over by boat boys.
*The living situation:
I'm loving it. Yes it's isolated, but it's really beautiful and I get views I'd ordinarily need millions to call my own. I have this gorgeous patio in which to enjoy leisurely weekend breakfasts or weekday teas, surrounded by sunshine, my own secluded part of the estuary, and a good book. Living in a historical Victorian home in a peaceful nature sancuary is incredible, especially at night when I come home to my sanctuary, and it's peaceful and dark and isolated. Plus, I'm fulfilling another childhood dream by living here: living in a museum. Just like Charlotte Doyle made me want to run away to sea, The MIxed UP Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (anyone remember that one?) made me want to run away and live in a museum. In fact, when I was ten and my brother was six we had very serious plans to run away and live in the Smithsonian in D.C. Picked a date, looked up bus schedules and packed and everything. And for awhile I was trying to figure out a way to live at the Huntington Library without getting caught. So, now I live in a historical home that used to be used as a museum and still is furnished as such. And every time tourists wandering around the site try to get into my home and can't, or ask me if they can go in and I say it's private, I get happy. Because I live in a private museum! Yes I do live my life according to the whims I got from reading children's literature, what of it. Oh, and I really like my two housemates, one of the other interns and the stie's ecologist.
*Moving back to Berkeley:
However, although I love my nature break, I'm looking forward to moving back to Berkeley and being a part of the community there. I visit on the weekends and it serves as a reminder that I have people to go back to, and that's where what I moved up here is for. I had a good time there this weekend. My sailor women and some friends and I went to go see the pirate movie, whic we wer eonyl watching for the boats. I knew it was going to be a bad movie, and I hate the idea of pirates, but any movie that involves tall ships, I will watch. Plus I know peopel who worked on this one. Of course we couldn't be sober and watch it, so after delicious Mexican food and plenty of margaritas, us and our bottle of rum settled in for the movie. I was not nearly drunk enough for how terrible it was. Their mangling of nautical language was fairly hilarious though. The next day I led a workshop about birth options at this day of radical women's health my old housemates were putting on. I was a little nervous, because I was supposed to tlak for an hour about a subject I haven't studied or thought about in years. But it was like riding a bike. I am so glad I fianlly made it up here to the bay; I think I found the place I'm supposed to be right now, a place that could actually hold my interest for an extended period of time. But I'm enjoying my nature hiatus while it lasts.
*The job:
Continues to be awesome, although I still have issues about knowing the least about science out of all the staff. But the kdis are great, and I have moments every day of wonder at the fact that I get paid to do things like hike, hide in a field of grass, and play in the bay.
We have this salt water aquarium in our classroom - we colect stuff form the bay each week and fill it up. And I love it, because so many people have their fancy fish tanks with their fancy fish they bought in stores, and we have this teeming aquarium full of sea life we got from nature, where we will return them to at teh end of the week. We also, instead of buying fish food, forage for them. I took my campers out to locate tiny beach crustaceans for the pipe fish, and then a coworker and I went mussel hunting - for our crabs and shrimp and fish. It was so much fun - we wandered all over the beach at high tide, crawling over rocks and getting soaked up to our necks. We also high-fived and did a little victory dance over getting paid for it. Finally we waded way out to a rock and found a bunch, took them back and smashed them with a hammer. It was very strange for a vegetarian of more than a decade to kill creatures, brutally smashing them up, but my critters needed food, and I felt, for a second there, a glow of pride of hunting, killing, and providing. New experiences all a round.
*The boy:
So, a month after I sent him an email telling him I had to cut off all conatct with him, the boy calls me, leaving this message that we hand't talked in a while and he just wanted to drop me a line. That's his response to my expression of painful emotional honesty? So, after a round of phone tag we got a hold of each other. I'm angry sounding because hey, he chose not to sacrifice any of his independence to be iwth me but wanted to keep me on as a pen pal (or something, waht he wanted is still unclear to me), didn't respond to my email, and then calls me a month later just to talk, therefore blantantly ignoring my need to end contact. He's furious, and again, not sure why. But we shouted a bunch, even though he suddenly didn't want to talk to me because, "Obviously you just want to fight. You just want closure." Well yeah. And I deserve that. Anyway, we hung up but I said I wanted him to call back so we coudl finish discussing this. Which he did, but I missed it, and I called back and left a messagesaying I was calling him back but I was unclear why were talking. I had told him I had no desire whatsoever to be his pen pal because it didn't work for me, and that if he had something important to tell me or if he wanted to tell me what all this meant to him to call me, but otherwise I have no desire to just talk. Pretty much he's not going to call back. And for awhile I was feeling good - like I ended things on my terms and was calm and collected. But I do have a bunch of questions I really want answered, and I kind of feel I want to end things with a conversation. So, although it would have been stronger and clearer to just end things with the message telling him to leave me alone, I emailed him a list of questions and asked that he call back, so he can have time to think about his replies. I completely don't expect him to reply, and that at this point don't care. It's frustrating; I had gotten over him, and mostly even got over the anger, and then out of the blue he calls and it's been emotionally fucking with me ever since, and I can't figure out what the hell he want or why he wants it, and the fact that he sounded self-righteously angry and not guilty and apologetic really pisses me off. I mean, if he didn't want to get back together we shouldn't have been in contact this whole time, leading me to believe we were getting back together. Then I would have gotten over him by April. So hey, I can do that now. He's too conventional for me anyway.
And that's my life right now. I work, I bike ride, I enjoy myself, I visit friends, I get emotionally fucked over by boat boys.