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Marching (flying, dancing) with The Go Game in the 2009 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade
I haven’t blogged for three and a half months. I think I had a good reason: I put my entire life on hold to pursue a dream. I told my freelance and pet sitting clients I’d be away, I let my awesome roommate/landlady find a new renter, I put even more of my stuff in storage, loaned my car to my mom, said goodbye to my friends, and headed off to San Francisco for the summer. Why? Following my stated goal of kicking up my acting career, I applied for the 2009 Summer Training Congress, a seven-week professional actor training program through San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater. To my great surprise, I actually got in! I set off for two months in a huge, new city, to spend my days steeped in what I love most: acting. For me, it was a dream come true, and a life so different from my usual Colorado ramblings that it felt like a dream.
Knowing that, with nine-hour days of extremely active training, plus rehearsals, plus getting lost and overwhelmed in the biggest city I’ve ever lived in, I let the Nomad blog slide all summer. Instead, I kept those friends who were interested updated with Facebook and Twitter updates (I could handle 140 characters occasionally, but not a whole essay). As with my trip to Portland, this adventure brought out the paradox of blogging an unusual life: When life is at its most interesting, I’m too busy living to blog about it.
It was an amazing summer. I made wonderful new friends and impressive contacts, learned more about acting and Shakespeare and voice and speech and text and the power of movement to communicate than I ever thought I could cram into my being in two months, fell head over heels for a San Francisco novelist, lived in two fantastic apartments and one awful one, got to know San Francisco’s many neighborhoods, marched as Batgirl in America’s biggest Gay Pride Parade… and I may someday write about some or all of these adventures.
For now, though, I’d like to start processing my challenge of the moment: Having put one’s life on hold, how does one ever get it going again? After a summer of tuition and San Francisco prices, my non-retirement savings are nearly gone (and I’m still not touching my retirement funds, no way, no how!). My freelance and pet sitting clients have learned how to live without me for two months. I’m now sleeping in the storage-stuffed guest bedroom at my mother’s house. My car has been diagnosed with a terminal case of “Chevy Metros weren’t designed to last for more than 188,000 miles. It’s time to let it go.” I haven’t knitted in months (!) and I’ve lost my guitar callouses. I still don’t have a play to act in. Some of my Colorado friends know I’m back in their state, some don’t. My long-distance friends have fallen out of touch while I was overwhelmed with theatre thoughts. For the first time in years, I actually have a steady, fairly awesome love life, but it’s a long-distance one—as my mom likes to sing while giggling at me, “I left my heart in San Francisco.”
Still, life looks good to me, not just because I’m still high from my summer of acting and adventure, but because this life is full of possibilities. In the next few months, I will have to find new work, a new home (or rebuild my house sitting lifestyle), and a new (to me) car. I plan to jump start my art life: land some acting roles; publish more articles, stories, and knitting designs; and finally learn to jam on my guitar. I plan to reconnect with and better appreciate the people I hold dear, and keep in touch with all of the new friends and admired acquaintances I met in San Francisco. Oh, and I plan to convince one adorable novelist that, once he finishes his MFA in San Francisco this fall, what he really wants to do is move to Colorado. Hey, it can all be done, and given my list and my life so far, it’s sure to be an interesting ride.
Intrigued? Welcome back to the blog. I promise to post about updated on my life’s reconstruction, plus some related (or not so) great ideas from the rest of the world, with new posts coming at least once a week, and usually more often. Thanks for reading.
The Eye of the Tiger
I spent this weekend cat sitting again. No, I’m not on the move already. It’s just that I miss having cats around, since we have no pets here in my comfy home. My roommate/landlady tells me I can get a cat if I like, though she’s not a fan, herself, and so I’ve been thinking and reading web sites about getting a foster cat. That would mean taking in a kitty who lives at an animal shelter, but for some reason is not ready for adoption—she has an illness or injury to recover from, or he’s been in the shelter so long he’s forgotten how to play with people—and loving him or her until it’s time to go back and find a forever home. I’m also still open to sitting for local clients, especially those I know well. Besides, I could use some extra money, as well as the extra fur.
This weekend, I was in Longmont with two cats in a home I’ve stayed in for many weeks during my full-on-nomad days. It was refreshing to pack for just a three-day trip, easily finding everything I might need in my own closet, dresser, and shelves. It felt like a vacation instead of a total home move. In fact, I was surprised to see how calm and productive I was all weekend.
I was more surprised at how irritable I was when I got home last night. My roommate was out for the evening, but I twitched at every little thing that had changed while I was gone. How dare she run the dishwasher (Quite nice of her, actually.) and not unload it immediately? What was a clothes drying rack doing in the office (folded neatly, right next to the washer and dryer)? Why was the door to the unheated basement left open, sucking warmth from the rest of the house? Then I took a moment to be surprised at myself. My roommate is wonderful, actually. She’s easy going, rarely home, and charming and interesting when she is around. After knowing me for a week and a half, this woman baked me a cake for my birthday. I couldn’t ask for a better roommate, and I wouldn’t trade her in for another…well, maybe for Christian Bale or Kal Penn, but it would take quite a lot.
After giving it some thought, I realized that I was bothered only because I have a roommate, any roommate. I’m not used to living without cats, but more than that, I’m really, really unused to living with people. Even the sweetest roommate is a lot to get used to. I’m not used to doors being open when I haven’t opened them, trash being created by anyone but me, tiny spills on the kitchen counter that I don’t recognize. I’ve been far too isolated for too long, and I’m still not used to all this humanity. That’s why packing an overnight bag and running away for the weekend felt, more than anything, like going home.
I’ve just discovered the marvelous blog “Mudflats: Tiptoeing Through the Muck of Alaskan Politics,” which, I think, has a lot to teach all American citizens who are trying to decide whether to elect Alaska’s governor as our understudy for a 72-year-old leader of the free world. I have to say that, while I want to thank Sarah Palin for all she’s done to prove that women with glasses can be sexy and fashionable (though my hero, Tina Fey, has done much more for myopic ladies like me), the more I learn about what Palin actually stands for politically, the more she scares the hell out of me. I’ve been hoping to hear more from the people who have real experience with Palin, though, so I was delighted to read Mudflats’ coverage of the “Alaska Women Reject Palin” rally, which immediately followed Palin’s “Welcome Home” rally in Anchorage on Sunday, September 14. It also kicked that rally’s butt, with a conservatively estimated 1400 supporters attending, compared to a generously estimated 900 at the pro-Palin shindig. [Note: The photos on this post are copied from the Mudflats blog, which gave permission to share them if I included links back to their blog. Thanks, Mudflats!]
As an Alaskan woman, I’m very sorry I wasn’t able to be there. Oh, you didn’t know I was Alaskan? Well, according to Sarah Palin, I am. You see, my parents met and married in Anchorage, and lived there until August of 1973, when they hopped a plane and moved straight to Colorado. I was born in Denver in January of 1974, so, according to Palin (and an upcoming resolution on Colorado’s ballot, which also scares me), my life had begun and I was a person in Alaska for about four months. I just didn’t get to enjoy the view.
Does this explanation sound ridiculous to you? Well, try charging rape victims for the “rape kit” procedures that collect the evidence of the crimes, as the city of Wasilla tried to do while Palin was mayor. How about a pregnant 17-year-old’s mother continuing to tell the country that abstinence-only education works? How about a person living in Alaska, watching the weather change and the glaciers shrink and the tundra melt, and telling the world that global warming isn’t a problem? Yes, Palin scares me. Apparently, the people who know her best are scared, too. I’d like to thank the majority of the women of Alaska for standing up for me, and to say: Even though I’m not really an Alaskan woman, and even though I’ve never been to your beautiful state, I wish I were there to stand beside you. Thank you for speaking up.
For more from outspoken Vagina-Americans (as Samantha Bee called us on The Daily Show’s 8/29/08 episode), check out this essay by Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler.
From Voodoo Doughnut, Portland, Oregon
I try to collect small, interesting souvenirs. I’ve got quite a few smashed pennies, from the California redwood forests, Haight Ashbury, Disney World, the outer banks of North Carolina, and most recently from Twin Falls, Idaho. Since I’m addicted to knitting, I also like to collect some-assembly-required souvenirs, like the shawl I’ve finally finished knitting out of yarn hand dyed by a woman I met in Vermont. There’s a very interesting yarn shop here in my neighborhood in Portland. At Yarnia, I can choose colors and fibers and have a multi-ply yarn custom blended just for me. I think I’m going to end up with a hat in a few months, made, partly, in Portland.
This week, I came across a new souvenir idea, and one I quite like. The souvenirs would be practical, portable, adorable, quirky, and I wouldn’t have to show them to anybody I didn’t really, really like. They could make sharing a dressing room in a theatre a lot more fun. What’s the idea? See the picture, above. Cute, aren’t they? I picked these up at Portland’s own Voodoo Doughnut, which is famous for unusual flavors (like their maple-bacon bars) and for running afoul of the FDA by mixing doughnuts and drugs to create hangover cures like the Pepto-Bismol doughnut. No, you can’t get a Pepto doughnut there anymore, but you can get souvenir t-shirts with their logos “The magic is in the hole” and “Good things come in pink boxes.” Better yet, since everybody has too many t-shirts with silly sayings, ladies (or anyone who likes to wear bikinis, I suppose) can get their own souvenir, sweets-themed underpants. (Yes, the saying on my panties is about doughnuts. What were you thinking? Sicko.)
I love this idea. I wish I could find souvenir underpants in more places. The only other tourist-trap knickers I recall seeing, so far, were at a seafood restaurant in Baltimore, where I dined on steamed blue crab (a huge novelty to a lifelong Coloradoan like me) five years ago. Their logo went well on panties, too: “Got crabs?” Now I wish I’d bought a pair to add to my collection, and I sincerely hope that I’ll see more fancy panties as I go on with my travels. Surely there will be some Shakespearean knickers at Oregon Shakespeare Festival? I’ll be deeply disappointed if there aren’t. Ole’ Willy has far too many good dirty jokes to waste. And maybe I can get some hipsters that say, “Moab kicked my ass”? We’ll see. I hope I’ll be able to get a week’s worth soon. This is so much more interesting than “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday …”
I did, in fact, get to have lunch with my buddy’s buddy, Ted, and yep, I still have a crush on him. It’s not a dangerous sort of crush. I don’t feel the need to jump all over him. I don’t even mind that he’s happily married. I just feel all warm and comfortable when he’s around, and I so I want to hang out with him as much as possible. As I’ve said earlier, I think Ted has this effect on everyone, or at least on a great many people. I don’t think he’s even aware that it’s happening. (Unless, of course, Ted should start reading my blog. If so … er, hi, Ted. Please use your power for good, not evil. Well, of course you’ll use it for good. You’re Ted!) Ted, himself, clearly doesn’t always feel warm and cozy and comfortable. He has doubts and frustrations and worries and grief just like anyone else. It seems unfair, really. Ted deserves to have the Ted effect washing over him, too. If only he could turn his aura in, and enjoy having a mild, cozy crush on himself.
Our mutual friend, Brian, has a similar phenomenon going on: Brian radiates an aura of calm, at least to me. When I’m around Brian, my worries, my doubts, the big angry fight I’ve just had with someone else (this really has happened) all just wash away, and I feel calm and relaxed. For this reason, I like to drag Brian out to open mic nights: In addition to hearing Brian play, (He’s an excellent guitarist and songwriter.) I get to perform with his aura of calmness washing over me, so stage fright can’t touch me. With Brian around, I’m sure I can do anything! Sadly, Brian doesn’t have this effect on himself, at all. In fact, Brian is often very nervous. He worries a lot. He has trouble sleeping. I’ve decided that Brian is an anxiety absorber. If only Brian had another of himself around to calm him down …
Anyway, I’m gathering a lesson from all of this: One of my goals now is to be more like Ted, and more like Brian. I’d like to have a positive effect on everyone around me, to make people feel better, braver, more welcome, intelligent, and calm, just for being in my presence. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t think I could learn by asking Ted or Brian directly for, as I’ve said, I don’t think they even know that they’re doing this. Still, it warrants further study. And that’s a great excuse to go hang out with Ted again. Aaaaah … so warm and cozy …
Ah… I’m in my favorite Portland coffee shop, The Fine Grind. No more hair bands on the stereo. Gillian Welch is singing “Elvis Presley Blues” here.
Yes, folks, I’ve been in Portland for three days, and I have a favorite neighborhood coffee shop. Heck, I even have a neighborhood, a backyard, neighbors that I’ve met, housemates, and, for this week, a cat. I’m still doing a lot of touristy activities, like tours, museums, and getting lost on the bus (a required tourist activity, I think, for any big city), but I think I’m getting a taste of what it would be like to live in Portland. Right now, it tastes like a tomato, cheese, and avocado sandwich, washed down with a vanilla latté and Gillian Welch. Aaaaaah…
How did I get this lucky? I answered an ad on Craig’s List. I looked through the “sublets and temporary” section of the Portland Craig’s List, and I found a lady who wanted to rent out her attic bedroom while she was on a week-long business trip. She had a two fuzzy photos, which she admitted were taken before the room was redecorated and redone, and I couldn’t come see the place before renting, as I was in another state at the time. I was to send a $50 deposit by PayPal, and when I arrived in Portland three days later, to simply let myself in, as nobody ever locks the doors at this house.
I was nervous as I drove closer to Oregon. It seemed quite possible that the house, at the address she’d given me, wouldn’t exist at all, or the doors would be locked and the housemates behind them would have no idea who I was and no interest in letting me stay with them, and so I’d be without a place to sleep and out $50. I printed off Google Maps directions to the nearest Super 8 motel for a plan B, and tried to convince myself that gambling was fun.
A slightly worse worst-case scenario had also occurred to me. I didn’t know these people. If I were a serial killer, it might occur to me to use Craig’s List to lure people far from their homes and anyone who might miss them, into my house. Heck, in Colorado, if someone walks into your house without an invitation, and you feel threatened, you have a legal right to kill them. Really. It’s a controversial law, usually called “the make-my-day law,” but it’s on the books. I don’t know whether Oregon has a similar law. After I’m dead and buried in the back yard, how could I prove I was invited? And how would that help me?
I vented all of these fears on the phone with my dear friend Rachel while I was driving across Idaho, ever closer to Portland. (Ah, the miracles of cell phones, national call plans, and hands-free headsets! Hooray!) “I think it will be fine,” said Rachel. “In fact, I have a problem with people who see demons behind every door, especially when traveling.” She pointed out that it was by far most likely that these are nice, normal people who trust the world and would like to make a bit of extra money instead of leaving a comfy room vacant.
I knew that was most likely, but I was still quite nervous when I found the house at 9:30pm in the pouring rain. It did exist, the doors were unlocked, and to rattle my nerves more, nobody appeared to be home. My greatest fear was that I was walking into the wrong unlocked house, and some poor, terrified neighbor would be completely in her rights to shoot me. I carefully peeked around every door, as if I did expect demons to wait there. I felt a bit better when I got to the attic room: It looked a lot like the Craig’s List photos. I was in the right place.
Just then, two of my four housemates returned home from the grocery store. They were expecting me, and were gracious and welcoming. It’s been a beautiful setup ever since: I have a very quiet, comfortable, homey room in a cute, 100-year-old house, with use of a kitchen, living room, full bathroom, lovely back yard with an apple tree, and comfortable front porch, all for $35 a day. My four roommates are interesting, artistic people about my age. Having just moved here (one couple from Minneapolis, the other from the Washington, D.C. area), they tell me about all of the sights and tastes and interesting quirks they’ve discovered about Portland—and about this cute coffee shop a few blocks away, which has free wireless internet and acoustic folk music on the stereo.
I am so glad I took my chances with the demons. I realize the lady I rented the room from, along with her housemates, is more trusting than I was, to let this strange drifter into their home. I hope they’re as happy as I am with how the gamble turned out.
Look! I’ve finally updated my header photo! This is the waterfront of the Willamette River, of which Portlanders seem to be very proud. They should be, I suppose. Folks can run, bike, skate, or just eat lunch in a sidewalk cafe (It seems that the weather is almost always perfect for sidewalk dining here.) while watching picturesque sailboats float by. Being from dry, dry, Colorado, I’m particularly impressed. I haven’t seen so much water in one place for years and years … since my last road trip, actually.
While I’m in total road-trip mode, my header will probably always be a few days behind me. It will be in Portland while I’m at the seashore, on the beach while I’m watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Ashland, and in Ashland while I’m hiking in Moab.
Ah, the sad fact of blogging is that, the more interesting my life is, the less likely I am to write about it. Here’s how my past five days have gone:
Friday: Pack my Chevy Metro full of snacks and my iPod full of audiobooks, then drive out of Colorado and most of the Wyoming east to west. Sleep in the Metro in a tiny, truck-filled parking area by the side of I-80.
Saturday: Drive all day, across a sliver of Utah and into Idaho, while listening to Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Lullabye. Check into a Super 8 motel, which feels incredibly luxurious after the I-80 parking lot. Toss and turn through some very strange dreams. (Chuck Palahniuk can do that to a girl.)
Sunday: Visit Twin Falls, Idaho’s main attraction, Shoshone Falls. I’ve seen these waterfalls before, about ten years ago, when I was in Twin Falls for a college theatre conference. I think I’m more impressed now. I take lots of pictures and squash a souvenir penny before hitting the road again. Gaining an hour as I pass into the Pacific time zone, I pull up to my house (for this week) in Portland at 9:30pm. To my slight surprise, the roommates I found on Craig’s List do not kill me, roast me, and crunch my bones. Instead, they welcome me to Oregon.
Monday: I spend most of the day recovering from my drive (sleeping in) and sitting in a lovely mom-and-pop coffee shop, The Fine Grind, using their internet connection to plan the rest of my trip. I spend the evening drinking terrible beer with my four new roommates, all of whom have moved to Portland within the last month. I hear about their home states (Minnesota and Virginia), their plans, their job searches, and the best and worst things they’ve learned about Portland so far. I’m thinking this is much better than Super 8 motel.
Tuesday: Walking tours of downtown, two of them, about five hours worth, with two hours between—plenty of time for me to get lost on the busses and trains. I come home knowing all about Shanghai-ing and why this place is called Stumptown. I’m also wondering how the tour guide, who was the same bubbly young woman for both tours, can still stand up. I fall asleep, exhausted, at 7pm.
Wednesday: Now I’m at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which my roommates tell me is Portland’s official coffee shop. (The tour guide told me yesterday that this place is called “Stumptown” because huge forests were chopped down to build Portland, so many trees that it wasn’t worth the trouble to dig out all of the stumps, so they just build on top of them. It’s kind of a graveyard for trees. Still, it’s lush and beautiful. I kinda like what they made of the place.) I don’t like this place as much as I did The Fine Grind. The music here is loud, hair-band rock, as opposed to The Fine Grind’s acoustic folk, and all of the people here so far, in front of the counter and behind it, stare vaguely at me as if they haven’t had their coffee yet today. Still, they roast their own coffee here, and the aroma is wonderful. There’s a spot near the counter where one can watch the coffee roasting while giant mixer arms stir the beans. I suppose this place just isn’t my style. It’s mostly the music.
My most exciting plan today is to do lunch with Ted, an old, dear friend of my relatively new, dear friend, Brian. Brian and Ted both hail from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, but Brian ended up in Boulder and Ted ended up in Portland. I’ve met Ted twice when he came out to Colorado to visit, and now I think everyone in the world must have a crush on Ted. It’s not just me. My happily married friends moon over him. Brian seems to have a heterosexual man-crush on him, as do a couple of other guys we’ve hung out with. Ted just has that effect on people. I imagine Ted’s lovely wife has a crush on him, too, and having met her once, I’m convinced that she matches him. So, no need to be flustered and girly. I just get to do lunch with a guy who makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy. That, and I get to ask a long-time Portland resident what I should go see, and what it’s like to really live here. I think that’s my favorite part of tourism: sampling different lives. How would a Portland-dwelling Anita be different from a Denver/Boulder-dwelling Anita?
I hope to blog more soon. I have tons of pictures from yesterday, alone, but I’m not sure just now where I packed the cable that lets me upload them to my computer. I have several thoughts to blog about, like why I’ve left Colorado just now, and the marvelous souvenir I got from Portland’s famous Voodoo Donuts, (I think it’s the beginning of a beautiful collection!) but all of that may have to wait until later in the trip—maybe sometime when the place I’m staying at has an internet connection, and I don’t have to endure hair-band shouting as I blog. More exciting entries are coming soon, I promise!
I knew from the start that I’d want to put up a custom header photo, to make my blog recognizable as my own. Since I move around so often, I’ve decided to put up a photo of wherever I am. As soon as I get to a new place, and I’ve had time to snap a photo and upload it, my header will change to show the view I see every day.
The photo above was taken just outside Longmont, Colorado. Longmont is sort of a suburb of Boulder, a bedroom community where many folks who work in Boulder live (as Boulder is possibly the most expensive city in Colorado, and Colorado isn’t a cheap state), but it’s also the beginning of northern Colorado farm country. So, while I know that this picture could also have been taken in western Kansas, Illinois, or Indiana, this is Colorado, and this is the spirit of the part of Colorado I’m in. Enjoy!
I apologize for the fuzziness of this header. I’m just learning how to use my new (to me) digital camera, a Canon Digital Elph Powershot SD1100 (adorable, tiny little thing, last year’s model, 7.2 megapixels on sale at Radio Shack), and just learning to use iPhoto, too, along with WordPress. I’m not sure why this picture, so clear and crisp in iPhoto, and now as my computer’s desktop wallpaper, is so fuzzy on my blog. Does the size WordPress allows for headers doom me to always having fuzzy photos here? Is there a way to save larger, crisper files into headers?
If anyone out there has advice for me, I’ll be happy to hear it. In the meantime, please enjoy this hazy view of Longmont, Colorado.
