Welcome Summer!

Today as I walked down the front steps of my building I knew - Summer is here! Maybe not on the calendar and maybe it wasn't even the hottest day we've had, but the damp thickness in the air was unmistakable Philly summer. Even in the mid-day rain that showered my trip to the co-op for quinoa salad, the knot in my solar plexus that tries to protect some part of me from having to endure chill was gone and I did not grit my teeth against the friendly drops that speckled my clothes and bejeweled my hair. At my sister's this evening, my niece was clad in nothing but a diaper, the way a summer baby should be! What a fitting start to the weekend that begins the official season of pools, the beach, and the ice cream truck!

Boot Camp

I am taking a 6 week writing course through Temple and my first class was tonight. I've already gathered some good tips and heard some good stuff from other students but... Dude! We're supposed to do timed writing exercises, beginning with 10 minutes or so and adding 10 minutes a day until we reach an hour! One hour per day by next week! I realize this is absolutely dumb coming from someone considering writing as at least a partial vocation, but I still have to write year end reports from my old vocation and line up some stepping stones for other parts of my new one. So either my posts are going to become earth-shatteringly stupendous or they'll look like this:
May 26th -
Woke up, ate eggs, wrote, ate a sandwich, called a farm in California to ask if I could help them pull turnips and sleep in their barn, wrote, drank a meal through a straw while writing, fell asleep on my computer.
Wait, my phone is ringing...
Hello?
It's reality. It says when people do things for a living, it takes up the majority of their time.
Thanks! Good to know!

Lasts

I am coming into a season of lasts as I get ready to leave Philadelphia. Tonight was the last concert I will put on with my current students. I have been moaning and groaning about all the logistics involved in planning such an event, all of which obscure it's true goal: to look back on the mountain you have climbed, enjoy the view and know that you are richer for your efforts.
This view was spectacular! My company on the climb was without equal! The hike was only difficult when I forgot keep the goal joyfully alive for the troops.
I don't think I will miss teaching. At least not for a while. I will miss greatly the children that I have taught for the past five years. They are some extraordinary people; look out world! They are also dear friends. That's why I can't teach them anymore. You can't instruct your kindred spirits in a classroom. The things we learn from eachother are the kind of things discovered over tea, on a long walk, in the course of good conversation. There are some wonderful parents and teachers in this community too, but the ones who carry my heart are the students.
I will miss you, but just as I am excited to see what my own adventures will bring, I am excited to watch you continue to become the great people that you are. Maybe some of you will visit me. Maybe someday you'll choose a college near me and I'll have you over for a home-cooked meal when family is feeling far away. Maybe you'll dance at my wedding and some far off day I'll dance at yours. Maybe you'll babysit my kids. Even if the last picture I have of you is this very Philadelphia spring and I never get an update, I consider myself so lucky to have crossed your path.

The Box

For some reason I have always liked to find categories that I fit into. If I'm in an established box, I know there are others like me, I don't have to explain myself, I know I belong somewhere, I am less likely to be misplaced by the universe. I have enjoyed the comfort and safety of my family box, the Waldorf box, the Norwegian box, the musician box, the American box, the teacher box, and many more.
The trouble with the box system is that sometimes I let something slip that doesn't belong in the box of the moment. I get embarassed and defensive, trying to justify myself, to explain why I still deserve a place in that box. One of those moments happened tonight. I was with a bunch of good friends playing games when I said that I had seen The DaVinci Code. Well nobody at the theater thought I was stupid for paying $7.25 to see it on the big screen, but everybody there sure did! I was pretty surprised at the reaction I got! I couldn't say much in my defense, but inside I struggled to reconcile the movie with the friends. The perfect solution came on the drive home: I need my own box.
When the box I'm in is mine, defined by me, I can never be wrong for being myself. I can continue to enjoy the company of other boxes, but I make my own rules. Afterall, there is nobody exactly like me in the entire world and isn't kind of interesting to explain yourself? I definitely belong somewhere, but it's not the same place all the time, and the universe always knows where I am. So here is a brief description of what's in my box so far: I am my parents' child, a former Waldorf student and current Waldorf teacher (or at least for the next 3 weeks!), of 1/4 Norwegian blood, a singer, an American, I'm right handed but left eyed, I don't have a TV, I do have an iBook, I don't wear anti-perspirant, I do shave my legs everyday, I do eat organic when I can, I like whole milk and I prefer it raw and I think it's better for you that way, I only recycle when it's convenient, I enjoy hollywood films (sometimes truly vapid ones, which the DaVinci Code was not), and would rather see them in a theater of my fellow human beings than in my tiny, dark apartment where there's no dvd player anyway, I enjoy the company of good friends and the playing of Turbo Cranium and badminton, and so many other things both known to me, unknown, and yet to be discovered. There is nothing that I am that doesn't fit in my box, and yet I'm the one who tried to cram me into someone else's.

Editor's Note: Blogger spell-check was not working at time of post. Spelling errors large and small undoubtedly exist!

IIRFA (Is It Really Friday Already?)

So I'm sitting at my computer, feeling way to mellow to put together a good post and yet pestered by the urge to put something into the world, when I remember...it's Friday! Here's my random 10 to get the weekend started (I feel like a dj. I'm imagining I'm the voice of the only radio station in a small, backwoods, New England town and I'm gonna shake the locals out of their sleepy bitterness and teach them how to love again with by showing them the jewels of wisdom hidden within my edgy musical selection)


1.After An Afternoon, Jason Mraz (Tonight, Not Again; Live At Eagle's Ballroom)
"I bare my windowed self, untamed and untrained"

2.Anna Begins, Counting Crows (August And Everything After)
"If you don't want to talk about it, then it isn't love"

3.Be Be Your Love, Rachel Yamagata (Happenstance)
"Everybody's got the way I should feel"

4.Something's Missing, John Mayer (Heavier Things)
"...a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate"

5.Everytime It Rains, Charlotte Martin (On Your Shore)
"Love me 'cause you can and not because you should"

6.Zombie, The Cranberries (No Need To Argue)

7.You're Beautiful, James Blunt (Back to Bedlam)
"I saw your face in a crowded place and I don't know what to do"

8.On Love In Sadness, Jason Mraz (WFMRTC)
"Love is a brittle madness, sing about it in all my sadness"


9.Jet Airliner, Steve Miller Band (Steve Miller Band:The Best of 1968-1973)
"I don't want to get caught up in any of that funky shit goin' down in the city"

10.Life Is Wonderful, Jason Mraz (Mr. A-Z)
"It takes no time to fall in love, but it takes you years to know what love is"


Jason Mraz sandwich!
Instead of repeating the same stats, I picked a line from each song that I either agree with, wish I had written, have considered shouting from the rooftops, or all of the above.
Which of these things just doesn't belong? #6. It's damn hard to find a line that I can relate to in a song about violence and death in Northern Ireland, and for that I am grateful.

You'd Think It Was Illegal!

Are there actually laws about what you can do while operating a motor vehicle? Could you conceivably get a ticket for eating a salad with a knife and fork from a bowl on your lap while driving? My family has been perfecting the art form of multi-tasking while driving for decades, mostly because we are always late! My sister has worked hard to rid herself of this habit, but the rest of us are still going strong! I have changed my clothes at the wheel, painted my nails, eaten meals (amateur stuff), and performed other tasks that at the moment elude me. My hero in this sport is Stacey Duvall who, while commuting to Manhattan as a new mother, pumped breast milk on the road!
On Monday I had a crooked wisdom tooth removed. I spent the night at my parent's house the night before and my mom drove me so that if I had to be sedated, I wouldn't be stranded at the Oral Surgeon's until the drugs wore off. Our plan when we went to bed was to leave at 9am, leaving time to get gas on the way. I needed to finish my laundry before we left. At 7:00 am I dragged my bleary-eyed self out of bed to pput one load in the dryer and start another in the washer. I reset my alarm for 7:45 to do a final transfer and went back to sleep. At 8:24 the delayed load of laundry, that included the only pair of pants I had with me, went into the dryer and I went back to sleep...again. My mom was out delivering flyers to the neighbors about the workshops she's teaching in the summer and getting gas. She'd be back at 9:15 to collect me. At 9:09 I shot out of bed after realizing the time, brushed my teeth and put on as many of my clothes as I could (pants still in dryer). At about 9:15 I heard the beeping of a car horn and when Mom came inside, I hopped out of the bathroom pulling on my socks and said "It could be worse, but it could be better!" While I retrieved my dry pants and collected my belongings, Mom made herself a breakfast salad (salad with eggs). I loaded my heaps of dry clothes into the car in such a way that I would be able to reach them for folding on the ride and in the process I crushed the poster Mom was planning to put up in the post office about her talk on the evils of sugar. I tried to get out of the car to iron the wrinkled poster and she told me not to be stupid.
The first time I looked at the clock once we were underway it read 9:36. My appointment was at 10:15 in Devon. This was totally do-able, but we still had to get gas! Mom grumbled at slow drivers and speed traps and ate her salad and I folded clothes. If we had been in an accident I would have found myself with a gut full of wicker.
"You know I think you may be the only person who would stand for this" I said to my mom.
"What's to mind?" she answered.
"Well it's a little distracting having laundry flying around in the seat next to you, and my piles are encroaching on you space."
"You're talking to a woman who's driving with a knife in her hand!" she said.
Every 10 minutes or so I would check the clock and reassure us both that we would totally make it!
We pulled into the parking lot at 10:07.
I come from hearty Viking stock. Our ancestors took one bath a year on Christmas. They yanked that sucker out with only a local anesthetic. I could have driven home myself, but then I would have missed out on the post-mother's-day bonding with the only woman who can match my eccentricity at the wheel. And my clothes would be wrinkled, because even I am not up to folding from the driver's seat!

The Best Day

My sister is of a sanguine temperament, meaning that like the blood in our veins, life is always being renewed before her eyes. She can frequently be heard to say that she is having the best day of her life. This doesn't mean that it is actually better than yesterday, but that she is so present in the joy of the moment that other days have ceased to exist. I admire this in her and find that it is a contagious way of being; her best days often turn into my best days too!
Today I had a best day all by myself. I was not alone, but instead of soaking up someone else's, I was the source of my own enthusiasm.
I woke up before my alarm, but lounged in bed past the time that it told me I should get up. I was leisurely with my preparation for the day, and could have panicked when I got into the car 20 minutes after I was supposed to be at the May Fair at school, but I didn't. When I pulled into the drive, the maypole was not even up yet and I realized it started at 11, not 10! At this point I could have lent a hand to set up, but I opted to drive up the road to InFusion for a decadent, large iced mocha! I arrived back at school just as families were lugging their picnic blankets to the field. In years past, I had been frantically making scores of sandwiches or rounding up musicians or leading group singing, but this year I was responsible for nothing...and it felt great! I joined my students in playing the recorder for the maypole dancing and then I actually got to dance, a new feature of the celebration! I had a delicious sandwich that someone else had made, and soaked up sun. When adult conversation fizzled, I joined the 6th and 7th grade girls playing baby-in-the-air, do you remember that game?
Around 2:00 it started to rain and I headed back downtown. I called Shay and suggested we meet for an old-fashioned soda at the Franklin Fountain in old city. I had a rose soda with vanilla ice cream!
Then I announced that I was going to South St. for a famous $10 haircut from the Chop Shop. I only really decided at that moment that I would do it. I asked the hairdresser for a wedged bob. As I sat in the chair and watched her take the buzzer to my shoulder-length hair, an ancient desperation welled up in me. "It's going! They're taking it! You can't spare it! It's yours!" it shrieked. I quieted the wailing by repeating to myself that hair grows and no haircut is forever. It felt like I lost 500 lbs. in the 1/2 hour that I sat in that chair. It was not only the weight of thick hair, but the need to hold everything so close.
On my way back to the car I stopped in at Pearl and bought a tube each of ultramarine blue and lemon yellow oil paint.
Once home I took a short nap and then went to meet some of my student/fans at Comedy Sportz, an interactive improvisational comedy show. It was very entertaining and I just love to enjoy non-school things with these kids, they are such lovely people, especially when they are not behind desks.
The night was young when they went home to bed, so I called Shay whom I thought was salsa dancing nearby, but she was going to the movies with her very funny friend Nadiv and I shot across town to join them.
I end my day pleasantly tired and lightly sunburnt. Even the chilly wind that was beginning to blow as I walked from my car does not dampen the glow of my best day.

Health Insurance Roulette and the Air-headed Klutz

For the 2 years before this past fall, I was without health insurance and without incident. This year my school decided even part time people need a break and I got health and dental. With my upcoming adventure, I will again swim the "dangerous" waters of the uninsured. In anticipation of this blessed event, I've been making the rounds of my chosen health care providers. My dentist has referred my to an oral surgeon so I can finally get my crooked wisdom tooth pulled, all was well at the crotch doc, and my PCP, after declaring the weird bump on my arm a benign skin growth about which nothing need be done, ordered routine bloodwork to make the most of my insured state. He gave me the paperwork I needed and I had only to get myself to a participating lab and lay open my veins. That was a few weeks ago. This morning I drank plenty of water and had a nice fried egg sandwich and finally walked to the lab on North Broad St. I sat in the waiting area feeling really good about crossing this task off my list. A large gentleman came in, huffing and puffing and leaning on a cane. He sat down next to another man who appeared to be an acquaintance. They began to compare notes on prostates and what they were in for today. One had been asked to fast, and the other had not. Hmmm, I said to myself, I was supposed to fast! So I crossed my name off the sign in sheet with a little note about my air-headedness, and went about my day, the task still weighing down my list.
Tonight as I was coming home from watching Alias with my parents (Vaughn is totally back and Evil Syd is toast), I began to cross the street even though a car was coming down the block. I picked up my speed as it neared and, in a moment of unprecedented grace and elegance, lost a shoe and fell on my face as the car slammed on its brakes and my life flashed before my eyes. Well it wasn't really my life, just my Goodwill purchases of earlier today, flying out of their bag. I tried to act cool, gathered my things and got out of the street. Now I realize I maybe should have waited to cross and that my spill held up traffic, but I would have thought when someone eats dirt in front of you car, you'd roll down the window and ask if they are ok! No such courtesy for me!

Directions

My little niece was finally born at dawn on Sunday. She is just as beautiful as can be! Her parents are so proud and I am so proud of them. It was an honor and a thrill to be involved in the birth and I was really excited to write about it, but now that the baby's here, I feel like the story belongs a little less to me. It was definitely a life-expanding experience, and I'm sure this expansion will come out in my writing over time.
It's funny to set about my own small life now. This city seems less and less like home, and the my routine feels outwardly imposed, like when you take an exit off a highway and you realize fairly quickly it's not going where you want to go, but there are a series of turns and secondary highways you need to navigate before you get back on your way. Sometimes while you're finding your way back to the main road, you happen on the perfect little spot that you would never have found without the detour. Maybe it's ice cream or a super-clean bathroom or a new perspective on an old landmark.

Birth

Since the wee hours of the morning, my sister, Jamie, has been bravely submitting to the strength of her own body and laboring to bring her child into the world. 2 midwives and a doula gently and confidently attend her. Her husband Scott takes tiny breaks to tell us how things are going, but has otherwise been at her side since her water broke last evening at supper time. Mom, Dad and I are all gathered here at the house where she is giving birth. All we can do is sit around, prepare, serve and consume food constantly, wish we could do more, and love my sister fiercely as we hear her groans from upstairs. I think we all (at least Scott and I, the novices) imagined the process would feel more like a celebration. It is more of a vigil, a sacred and solemn watch for something so amazing we can't even look forward to it properly.
Soon everything will be about our tiny new family member. Right now Jamie is both priestess and offering.

Pajama Stories

When I was a kindergarten teacher, I found that a good way to keep 15 small children from all talking at once at the table was to tell stories, so I talked about whatever was happening in my life that was fit to be repeated at the kindergarten lunch table, and they listened! One day I told them how I had been doing laundry the previous night,in my pajamas, for want of something else clean to wear. Whilst going up and down the stairs of my apartment building I thought I might as well go out to the car and drive the 25 lb. bag of millet and enormous can of olive oil that were in the trunk, down the road 5 minutes to the school where these ingredients were looking forward to becoming their snack. Well you can imagine that the idea of their teacher at school at night in her pajamas was pretty entertaining. Thus was born an entire genre. I'd tell of funny things I'd done in my pajamas as a child. I'd even go out of my way to do more funny things in my pajamas, just to have a new story to tell them! Those children are in grade school and they still love the stories.
The other night I came up with a doozy! My friend Shay is staying with me while she's homeless (it's an epidemic amongst people I know). We planned to go to my sister's after dinner to watch Alias. There are 3 episodes left before the series finale! We thought Vaughn was dead but he's alive! Very exciting! In addition, we were breaking open the root beer syrup Shay bought last summer and making floats. It had been a long day and already we were sleepy, so we decided to put on our pajamas before we went and thus be totally comfy while watching TV and ready for bed when we came home! So on went the striped bottoms and t-shirts and we set of down the city street in broad daylight...in our pajamas. One might think this would make you feel foolish, but it's really very fun! Like when I was tiny and my mom took me to the grocery store in my pajamas! You should try it!

Naps

I think that one of the most glorious, decadent experiences on this earth is the perfect nap. And, as long as you have a bed, it's free!
Now, not all naps are created equal! If you don't have just the right conditions, you are not getting the full experience. You need enough time to drift off in a leisurely manner, sleep enough to rejuvenate yourself, and wake up gently. Different people have different ideal naptimes. I like a good 20 minutes to drift off, an even hour to sleep and another 20 to re-enter the earthly realm. It should be warm in the room where you're napping, but not sweltering, with a mild breeze from an open window if possible. Beds were made for sleeping and are therefore the superior location, but a well-designed couch or a beach blanket can sometimes surprise us. A little background noise is ok, but naps that are accompanied by the expletives of construction workers are just not quality.
I find that conversation is the most pleasant transition back into the land of the living. Since I live alone right now, I often have to make a phone call to get it. When I lived in England, my best friend and I had rooms right next to each other. In the morning I'd hear her up and about and would call out to her to come in and talk to me to help me wake up.
A light snack is nice after an afternoon nap. And a nap followed by a party a few hours later, well that is living!

Beware the Dairy Case!

A few weeks ago I had a deep-seated urge to devour large quantities of chocolate chip cookie dough. At my normal grocery stops, all that could be found was snickerdoodle dough - blech! So I filled my void with other things (pudding? sugar cereal?) and moved past the ordeal.
Today I was at Trader Joe's with my sister which is always fun! There in the dairy case was the elusive gold! But since I'd gotten past the initial craving, I figured I must not need it, so I left the store with bags of brown rice and frozen vegetables.
Need is not the name of this game, folks! And cookie dough, once encountered, is not quickly forgotten! Later, on my way home from a delicious dinner at my friend Tina's, I was planning what to make for lunch tomorrow (what better time is there to think about food than when your belly is full of it?) and realized that I wouldn't get far without onions. I was passing Whole Foods anyway and stopped in for some. Now, it is rare for me to leave WF without a treat, but so divine was my meal at Tina's that I felt sure I would make it through unscathed. But when the same cookie dough I had resisted earlier loomed in my field of vision (OK, I didn't NEED to pass the dairy case!), I caved. Sometimes when you want something, there's no way around the want but to satisfy it!