The Not-So-Christmasy Confederates

This was supposed to be my Christmas story, but I never finished it...

My roommate, Marybeth, worked at the Oak Grove Plantation Historical Site five miles west of the center of Poquoson, Virginia as a tour guide, ushering tourist groups through the expansive house and grounds, reciting a litany of facts and trivia about the Peninsular campaign of the Civil War. Marybeth swore that she would die at the age of one hundred droning, “…we are now entering the Palmetto Room where Mr. and Mrs. Hembree would have held their more formal social engagements…” Two years before, when she had first started, Oak Grove had been a living history museum run from March to November, a haven for rowdy school groups and senior living facility day trips. You paid ten dollars at the estate gates and entered 1859 (or so the big wooden sign above the entrance claimed). Mr. and Mrs. George Mason Hembree and their four strapping sons and three Scarlett O’Hara daughters greeted visitors from the white porch, while the house was run primarily by black students from the neighboring colleges and tech schools.
But there had been a slave uprising and two of the house slaves filed and won a sexual harassment lawsuit against the owner, Jim Brodie. He was forced to downsize the expensive living history operation into a milder, albeit less profitable year round historical site. The seniors and school kids still came, they just didn’t stay as long. Marybeth certainly didn’t miss the costumes or carrying trays of lemonade for predominantly white visitors. “Orly, let me tell you. Black folk don’t wanna relive history...especially not that one. We got enough trouble as is,” she had told me. Jim with the roving hands had opened up the plantation grounds several years earlier for the now annual Christmas in the Field Civil War Reenactment.
It was Christmas in the Field that brought Dervane Magruder to Poquoson the first Christmas after the death of my husband, Travis, a man, no, a boy who had scarcely been my husband long enough for the word to come freely off my tongue. Travis had been a whirlwind who had swept me off my feet and dropped me unceremoniously on the gravel in a period just under three years, who loved me and hurt me fiercely. Travis had been killed in January, and I had left my hometown of well-wishers and overly sympathetic, gossiping relations by the beginning of February.
I went to see a psychic reader recommended to me by a cousin, who told me that I was supposed to go to Virginia and that it was there I would find peace. She told me that I would meet three angels, who would deliver me back into the arms of Jesus. I informed her that I had already been saved twice, once as a Presbyterian, and then as a Baptist when I had first met Travis. She said that there was more than one kind of salvation. I asked her if she was the first angel. She said no.
I felt pretty sinful after leaving her house, mainly because I had believed her. I felt even worse pulling out my dad’s old road atlas when I got home. I faltered only slightly when I found that Western Virginia was actually located on a different page from the rest of Virginia adjacent to Vermont, and then turned to the two page spread of the rest of the state. I closed my eyes, held my breath, raised my whole hand into the air, and slammed a finger down onto Newport News, Virginia. After a few hours of research on Newport News housing, I shifted my finger ten miles east to Poquoson where rent was cheaper. Fate only takes you so far. Sometimes you have to step in and rearrange your own stars.
But fate must have had a hand in bringing Dervane Magruder to my doorstep, because never in a million years would I have thought Marybeth had it in her to bring home a scraggly, middle-aged Confederate soldier. Granted he did have a certain ruggedly handsome quality for a man his age, and practically impeccable, almost unbelievable, old Southern manners. But I get ahead of myself.

“Orly, would you listen to this! You listening?” Marybeth was in our pitiful excuse for a living room reading the morning paper. The Newport News News had given us a six-week trial, and ever since, Marybeth had been keeping me updated on all the sad and disturbing events of Queen Anne County. Every day brought us tales of violence and heartbreak, as if we didn’t have enough of our own.
“I’m leaving you some coffee, okay. Don’t forget to turn it off when you head out.” I poured the thick sludge that kept me functional at six a.m. into the baby blue thermos that said “It’s a Boy!” on the side. It was one of Marybeth’s Goodwill finds. For twenty cents each, we had several cups and mugs that made Marybeth laugh and me shake my head: “Happy Birthday, Peg,” “Greatest Dad in the World,” “Forty is the new Thirty,” “Bitchy and Proud of It,” and the like. I ran cold water onto the dregs in the coffee pot until it was a suitable dark brown instead of bluish black, swished it around, and placed it back on the machine’s burner.
“Fine. Listen to this. You just won’t believe this,” Marybeth said. I poked my head around kitchen doorway. There were all sorts of things that Marybeth thought I wouldn’t believe.
“Try me,” I said, playing along as usual.
“Newport News resident, Sandra Kronsky, 29, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with first degree child abuse after beating her three-year-old unconscious, unconscious is spelled wrong believe it or not, with a two foot rope of cherry licorice. She had bought the candy as a stocking stuffer. Bond was set at three thousand dollars.”
“My god!” I said. This one definitely took the cake. I had been expecting a gruesome spousal murder or a bad case of road rage. “A Twizzler?”
“A big ass Twizzler. That’s a white woman too. Kronsky. I thought white people believed in time outs and stuff.” She knew that this wasn’t true around here, but Marybeth loved making snide remarks about crazy white people. I had long since stopped letting it make me uncomfortable in my own white skin.
“That’s just terrible,” I said, trying not to imagine.
“Merry Fucking Christmas.”
“Marybeth, you gotta quit reading that stuff,” I said, plopping down on the couch beside her.
“In a few years, this is gonna be my job, hon.” Marybeth was in the first year of her social work masters, having recently finished up her bachelors in psychology. Marybeth was no stranger to that world. She grew up in and out of foster care and children’s homes. She was one of those rare creatures who beat the system only to return back to it in a different role. She was the kind of person the Lifetime Original Movie people picked out as movie subjects. She put the paper down.
“How you holding up?” she asked, as she had practically every day of my life for the last nine months, ever since I had told her my own story, the answer to the “so what brought you all the way up here, anyway?” question. I found I couldn’t lie to Marybeth, even if I had wanted to. So I told her what I was running from. What I had always been running from.
“Eh, you know,” I shrugged. This was my usual response to this question. Some days I wanted to throttle her and tell her to mind her own business, and some days I wanted to burst into tears. But most days, it was just a small comfort. A moment of blessed connection.
“Yeah, I know. You’re gonna be late,” she said, after a pause.
“I know. It’s so cold out there. I wish had one of those automatic car starters.”
“I’ll get you one for Christmas.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’d instantly double the value of that car.” This was true enough. The beat up Datsun wagon that had gotten me from Snelda, South Carolina, now just barely got me back and forth to work. Each day was a gift from God. Since I had quit going to church, about the only praying I did in my life was for that car to make it into the parking lot of Val’s Diner and Motel, my place of not-so-gainful employment.
“I just want to crawl back in bed. Don’t make me go,” I whined. Our local weather team had been going crazy all week, talking about record lows, predicting ice and snow and all sorts of things that had no business going on around here.
“You got three seconds to get up off that couch, or I’m gonna find me a Twizzler. One, two—“
“Alright, you win,” I said, pulling myself up off the couch. I found my bag by the door, stuffed under a few jackets, and fumbled around for my keys.
“That’s what I thought,” Marybeth said, picking up her paper. “Hey, you should drop by Oak Grove today after you get off, come see a bunch of crazy white guys pretending to kill eachother. It’s really something to see. There’s a cool little craft fair too. They sell these cool wooden ducks that have little leather feet that flap around when you pull it behind you. And cork guns. Stuff like that.”
“I’m working a double today. Anyway, I don’t think Civil War reenactments are my thing. “
“Well, I should hope not. “

Val’s Diner was your typical small-town grease-pit. Everything from the triple chili cheeseburgers to the green and yellow linoleum floor was saturated in saturated fats. Sometimes I thought that even the spray-bottles of lemon-scented industrial cleaner had been spiked with the dregs of French fryer oil. While the diner and the six-room strip motel were owned by the same person, they performed independently. Though to say that the motel performed at all would be mostly a lie. Rarely had two out of the six rooms been occupied at the same time. I had opted for Val’s after a few days at the local telemarketing firm. The pay was about the same, and you didn’t get yelled at as much. Mr. Feivel Arbejewski, the owner, had an ill disposition, to be sure, but there was only one of him to contend with, and truth be told, I didn’t mind him all that much, and he seemed to be as fond of me as he was of anyone, meaning slightly left of indifferent.
Mr. Arbejewski was a Polish Jew who had immigrated to New York as a small child in 1949. I had never bothered to ask the “what brought you here” question to him. It seemed beside the point. Mr. Arbejewski was as out of place in Poquoson as a Simpson’s episode in the midst of the Massechusets Bay puritans. No one knew what a Polish Jew was doing in backwater Virginia, much less running the most un-Kosher diner in history. Pork chops with white gravy and the triple-chili-cheeseburger were Val’s claim to fame.
The name of the diner itself had raised several eyebrows in town. It became a favorite pastime to imagine the story behind it. Most were scandalous. None were accurate. When anyone asked, he would grunt and mutter, “Just a name, you gonna order or what?” But for some reason, when I had asked after about a month of employment, he just shrugged and said. “My brother. His name was Walenty. Val’s easier.” I hadn’t pressed further, understanding that the name had outlived the actual person. I knew what it was like to only be left with a name to poorly fill in the space left behind.
That day, when I pulled my car into the lot, I noticed several tattered-looking cars parked in front of the motel behind the diner. I lingered in the remants of warmth in the car, watching the wind sweeping though the street, carrying sand and bits of trash and a church car wash sign from almost half a mile down the road. The weather was behaving like it did when we got the remnants of the big hurricanes that always hit Cape Hatteras to the South, except the wind chill was around 10 degrees. I turned back and saw Mr. Arbejewski standing by the window, tapping his watch.
“No room in the inn today. Ha Ha Ha,” he said, mechanically.
“What?” I asked.
“What? You don’t know your own Christmas story. I know your story better than you do?”
“I know the story. But…”
“Yeah we are all full. First time in twenty years, since the body of this missing man washed up on Bindy Beach and all these TV people came. No Vacancy. Except I don’t even have a No Vacancy sign. I used to have one, but I don’t know what happened to it.” This, I thought, was probably a good thing. A Vacancy sign would seem like a bad joke. As if the place could be anything but vacant.
“So who washed up this time?” I said, washing my hands in the basin by the flat ranges.
“Confederates,” he said.
“I thought they camped out at Oak Hill.”
“Me too. But I hear that the hotels in Newport News are all full too. Maybe it’s some special anniversary.”

Cardboard Boyfriend

I peed my pants laughing. I used to have the same cut-out.

It's not you

So I just finished an intensely sad song, which is actually kinda fun to sing in a really depressing way.

It's not you

You told me I was closed up like a box of secrets
and that you couldn't find the key,
or even a hammer to break me open,
but if you did, you would only find me broken

it's not you, my love.
My skin is made of sand
and every time you touch my skin
you tear my castle down.

I waited for the moment when I could be silent
and listen to the beating of our hearts.
But all I heard was whispers 'bout my shame...
couldn't hear you calling out my name

it's not you, my love.
My heart is made of wool
and every time you wash me over
I shrink away and fade.

I couldn't find a place to hide your love in my body
even if you broke through every bone.
It would slip away and fall 'fore I could say
"Sew me up and throw the needle away."

It's not you, my love.
My hands are made of flowers
and every time you hold them close,
you bruise their gentle viens.

The things I learned at Cooper's Hardware

There were never more than two people working at Cooper’s Hardware Store, my Uncle Lorn Cooper in the back, and Debbie Ann Freeman at the register. When Debbie Ann had her babies, she’d be replaced for three months by some recent high school graduate, but she vowed she’d quit after five, and when I walked into the store that afternoon, she appeared to have kept her promise. Everybody knows that a hardware store is the life blood of a town like Walhalla, so when you got in line at Cooper’s you’d better be prepared to wait a good long piece while Mr. So and So and Debbie Ann talked about Mrs. So and So’s prize-winning petunias, or got caught up on who all got saved at the last tent revival at Walhalla First Baptist. You’d know the conversation was just beginning if you saw Debbie Ann’s head bobbing up and down, nice and polite, like a marionette with her head-string cut loose. You’d know they were right in the middle of the good stuff if Debbie Ann put her water-retaining hands up to her Bashful Pink lips, and gently patted it while inhaling dramatically, like a Cherokee warrior about to hoot and holler. And you’d know it was your turn soon when Debbie Ann started fiddling with the cash register and rearranging the bleached-blonde haystack she called hair.
Debbie Ann’s was nodding away when I came up to the register, so I know not to be in a hurry. This old man and I came up to the line at the same time and we have a moment. You know the moment I’m talking about, before I could tell if he should be before of after me. He’s doing a little dance shuffle change shuffle change so that his pot-belly moves jerks around like an armadillo in heat. He looked more pregnant then than Debbie Ann had ever looked. It was the kind of belly that you’d have to fall in love with to keep it. I’d like to have seen him do the cha-cha.
He looked me up and down, like a slow motion version of Debbie Ann’s head bob. He smiled with only one side of his mouth curling up. Go ahead darlin', I ain't in no hurry. His beard looked like over-cooked grits, crusted around his chin, stark white with peppered spots. He continued his belly dance as I edged forward, ducking my head in appreciation. If I had been a man and been wearing a hat I would have touched the brim, but as a girl, meekness was the only appropriate response to chivalry.
I had a small load, sticky mouse traps and a set of spark plugs Uncle Lorn had set aside for my dad. I was fifteen and had just gotten my full license and was grateful for any small errands to run on the weekends. I set my things down on the counter as Debbie Ann made preparations for her Indian war whoop, knowing that it would still be a while.
I feigned interested in the automotive magazines by the register, until his dance halted and he stood still long enough to slide his thumbs underneath his suspenders and slap them against that enormous mound of flesh and muscle. He asked me about school, resuming his frantic sway. On a small child, the movements would have fit, but here was a grown man, grown old, that child still trapped inside. I answered in no and yes sirs.
He never finished school. I reckon you don't really need to 'round here. He motioned toward my purchase, his hand flicking in amusement. He smiled with teeth stained from sweet tea and chewing tobacco and patted his belly, grounding himself. All you need to know 'round here's that Mexican’s are afraid of your dogs, black kids can’t swim, and girls, sure as hell
don't buy spark plugs.

Jealousy

My job is becoming more and more Nanny Diaryish as the weeks go on. There is so much jealousy in this house between parents, and now it seems I am contributing my own. I don't know if I would call it jealousy exactly, but a fierce Mama Bear mentality that I'm not actually entitled do. J and D have stopped fighting with eachother and are now fighting over poor S. Its like they are both tugging on her arms and for a while she thinks it is fun, but then it starts to hurt. And I just want to stand up and yell "Don't you dare hurt my baby." Lately they've taken to coming down to "play" with S at random times during the day, and I find myself growing jealous and resentful, like I'm having her stolen from me. I've been at this job for 4 months now, and while that may not seem like very long, I am totally and completely attached to this kid. Lately I've ditched "naptime" and started just taking her into her room and holding her and singing to her until she falls asleep in my arms, perfectly peaceful, and perfectly safe. I have the primal urge to protect her from all this tension raging around her. I keep feeling that I really need to detach myself, but I don't know how, or even if I can.
And then I came to a realization tonight of what the psychology behind my actions is. In a way...in the back of my consiousness...S is actually me. I have this intense desire to be nothing but a place of love for her, like a shield against everything out of our control. That maybe if I can just love her the right way for even a little while, she'll develop an immunity against what I can only see as a troubled life of privilege, appearances, and expectations. It's terribly presumptuous of me, I know. Who am I to judge? I'm the one that is already premeditating a cold, calculated, and heartless abandonment of this same child that I "love."
Sigh.

Cheerio!

I’m sick of being here. I mean, part of me loves it here. London really is a fascinating city. But I am so in need of some space. I am about to start my period, so I am restless and irritable in the first place. But I just want to get back into a kind of routine where I am not “on” every second. D and J have not stopped partying and shopping since we got here, which means that Stevie and I have been pretty much on our own (or following them around…worse) every day from when she wakes up to when she goes to bed. I haven’t had a day off in 10 days and I really need my time off so that I can feel refreshed and okay with being a house elf. I guess part of my craziness comes from my PMS (I’m really not myself), but I am so sick of J and D. Their idea of spending quality time with Stevie is by having me and her tag along while they go into trendy boutiques with blaring techno music or into dull modern art shows. And poor Stevie is just bored out of her fucking mind. But mostly they are just bugging the shit out of me with their lofty attitudes and superficial lifestyle. I shouldn’t say this really, they showed me a little compassion today and let me off for 4 hours alone while they did more shopping with Stevie. I went to the Imperial War Museum (which was AMAZING) and the Sherlock Holmes Museum (which was quaint but nothing crazy). There are so many beautiful and interesting places in this city, and parks to die for…and they spend all their time spending money at expensive designer stores identical to the ones in New York. I don’t get it. I’m not looking forward to our 8.5 hour flight home on the crappy Air India, but at least home is at the end of it. I can turn on my music, check my email, call my family and friends, shut the door and curl up in bed with a good book. I’ve been so isolated here. I can’t sleep because I know that Stevie is in the next room, and usually D and J don’t get home until 3 or 4 am and so I sort of anticipate their coming even though it doesn’t matter really (I can just relax more).
Oh, and what am I getting for my troubles? An extra 100 dollars added to my paycheck on Friday. Whoop-de-fucking-do! Sod it all, as they say. Maybe they’ll let me have a long weekend. I think they know I am annoyed. I try very hard to be nice and polite and helpful, but I do have passive-aggressive tendencies, and my face is an open book (or so I am told).
Stevie broke a little candle holder in the apartment today. It was just a little glass thing but it shattered all over the bathroom floor. So of course I feel totally responsible and miserable. It probably cost this guy like 2 pounds at a junk shop, but I still feel shitty about it, even though it was just an accident. I spent an hour picking up teeny little glass shards.
I don’t know why we aren’t just staying at a hotel. I mean, these people are loaded. But the apartment is D’s good friend from Oxford. He actually dropped in on Stevie and me the other day and was super nice. Actually all D’s friends that I’ve met are really nice...his Oxford chums. And D has been very inclusive of me, which is actually nice. Most of them are history and anthropology types and so I’ve had some interesting conversations with his friends. It’s a nice break from being a wallflower.

Grrr...

I had a bad week. I guess it just started off rotten. Leah told me about Jarod which really knocked me flat even though I almost knew before she ever came. But worse was that I couldn't feel the pain of his death the way I thought I needed to. I had a few moments of release, but mostly I just felt cold and numb, like I was in an over air-conditioned room trying to sleep with nothing but a sheet to cover me up...restless and grouchy. It was much easier to feel with Leah beside me, partly because I feel the loss most strongly because of her place within it. And then my other life just came pouring back in. J and D called me at the train station and wanted me to come babysit because her parents had surprised them. And I've been irritated with them since. But I've always gotten like this with the people around me when I'm dealing with a loss...like I just want to throttle them and yell "would you stop complaining about the way your wine glass cabinets are designed and open your fucking eyes!" And S has been teething and cranky all week, and somewhere in the back of my mind I just wish that she'd show some sensitivity to my state of mind...which is ridiculous. Whenever I get frustrated with S and feel incompetent, it is never really about her, but about something her parents have done. I can totally deal with a cranky baby in a great way. Put when her parents are being obnoxious or unsupportive or distracted, I get irritated with their stuff and have a harder time handling S's more understandable troubles. (Don't worry...they can't read this...I did a google search and my blog doesn't come up in any obvious searches.) Something that has really gotten to me this week is the way that they hate to be at all inconvenienced or annoyed by S. Several times when S has been in the least bit cranky (she's usually angelic) during the two hours that they are up with her in the morning, they refuse to just deal. They'll just say "she's really tired," give her a bottle and plop her down in the crib to scream herself into exhaustion. I think parenting for normal people is not "perfectly enchanting" at least 50% of the time. Let's say for our average person, parenting is 10% perfectly enchanting, 30% banal, 30% tiring (in positive and negative ways), and 30% frustrating. Well, since these people have a full-time nanny (me), and confessed (only partially in just) that "we don't change our lifestyle for S," they expect parenting to be at least 70% perfectly enchanting, and once they've put up with the 30% other, they just can't handle it. I mean, S isn't exhausted and cranky 2 hours after her 12 hour sleep! She's just a normal baby who isn't totally wonderful and angelic 24/7. You can't just plop her down in a crib and let her wail pitifully just because you are bored. Whenever this happens, she's totally shaken up for the rest of the day, even if I sneak in after her parents leave and calm her down and put her to sleep properly. It DRIVES ME CRAZY!! Rant over. Well not quite. They've also asked me to babysit tonight in addition to last night, the excuse being that her parents are still in town (don't they have lives). J committed the most obnoxious sin yesterday when she read the slight annoyance on my face (open book), and said "Thanks for being so flexible with us, Maura." There is nothing I hate more than being thanked for something I didn't willingly give. Remember those teachers who would say (in sweet voices) "Thank you for being quiet" when everybody was loud. Oooo, I hated that.
Oh and the other thing (now that I'm on a roll) is her her parents. They have been here for the better part of a week and have spent less than 5 hours with S total. I mean, what is the point? They live 1000 miles away, but they don't bother to spend quality time with their only daughter's child when they are in the same city. They've been doing the whole socialite thing, visiting museums and going to parties. I mean, if I was living a thousand miles away and had a baby and my parents came to visit me for a week and didn't find it necessary to actually get to see my baby, I'd be heartbroken. Not that that would ever happen. In my case, I'd probably have to whine and fuss just to get to hold my own baby. They were the same way in aspen...only affectionate if it was convenient or there was nothing better to do. I guess it makes sense that J would be similar.
Okay, now I'm really done.
I'm off to go enjoy my weekend (what's left of it after I've slept most of the day away.

Crickey ;c(

Steve Irwin died yesterday. That sweet, loud, passionate Aussie who we all knew was off his rocker. We all knew that a croc was going to gobble up his head one of these days, but instead he died when a large sting ray pierced his heart, something so rare and unlikely that we can't even say he had it coming. As someone who has become slightly addicted to Animal Planet, I'm really going to miss him. Maybe his spirit will find a crocodile to inhabit.

Boudoir

All of my pictures look like boudoir shots, and well, they are. I think I am developing a narcissistic (sp?) thing. I just can't stop taking pictures of myself. I'm currently trying to copy The Half-Blood Prince on to my computer (my old one, not this one) so that I put it onto my ipod. So far I have 5 disks (out of 17) because it is so incredibly slow. I haven't taken my computer into the shop because, as luck would have it, it hasn't frozen up since I talked to the Apple guy. I've had a dull labor day weekend. All my friends that were in the city are now back at Bard, and my one friend in the city has family in town. So I've done pretty much nothing. There aren't even any movies I want to see. I went shopping today. I went all the way out to the Target in Brooklyn and then didn't actually get anything. AND I accidently exited the subway when making my transfer, so I had to pay twice to get there. I then made the rounds of cheap places in NY, only having luck at Old Navy where I got three nice looking fall shirts (50%off) and tanks to go under them, only to find out when I got home that one of the shirts was not the size I thought it was. Grrr. So I'll have to take it back maybe tomorrow before they are all gone.
I had a funny little interlude in the checkout line at Guitar Center. I bought some picks and a string winder thingy, and then I dropped a ten dollar bill into a poster box that was subdivided into little not-hand-sized slots. So the guy at the register stuck the gum that was in his mouth onto a rolled up poster and retrieved my money. I was so impressed. I mean, what good quick thinking. So we laughed a bunch and talked a little about music (he plays mandolin) and he gave me his number (in a totally non-creepy way). So who knows, maybe I'll add to my very short list of friends. I went to Burlington Coat Factory and tried to find a rain/fall jacket with no luck. All I could find were these big puffy winter coats that I DON'T need...yet, at least. I will need one, perhaps. I'm afraid I wouldn't be very NYC sheik walking down Park Ave in my big red coat with my name embroidered on it, and my big furry bear coat won't fair much better. I did buy batteries today for all the things in my life that need batteries (one unmentionable thing in particular). So all in all, a decently productive day. Mostly I just needed to get out and couldn't think of anything better to do. Tomorrow I may head to central park and go get a sunburn before winter comes. I am dreading it, even though I know it won't be as bad in the city as it was at Bard. Fall is so short.
Sept. 11th is coming up this week, and it feels strange to be in a city so affected by it, and not really be a part of it. There is such a huge difference between those of us who watched it all happen on TV (and now movies...thanks Hollywood) and those who really lived the horror and lost loved ones and breathed in ash for weeks on end. There has been a lot of 5 year anniversary stuff going on here, and it reminds me of how particularly vulnerable NYC still is. I certainly don't feel safer now that we have pissed off everybody and their brothers. I mean, lets face it, nobody is going to crash a plane into Liberty, SC or Bard College (unless it is an accident of course).
On a much lighter note, I think I have a crush on Cesar Milan. Lets not get into the psychology of that.

More fun with PhotoBooth: me, my room, guitar

Funds

I'm drowning in material satisfaction right now. I have my new mac laptop and a new super pretty guitar. So starting next paycheck, I'm going to start really saving. It's really hard to live cheap in the city, but I'm working on it. My library fines are paid so I can stop frequenting Borders, and I also have to limit my movie intake (at 12 bucks a pop). I would be absolutely ashamed if I did not save tons and tons of money when I am making what many people are raising large family's on. But it is so easy. It would be easy as pie to lay down 100 dollars a day in this city. Coffee, a movie, dinner, a book, a CD and you are set. I gave some money to MaterCare today. I'd rather support smaller, more specific charities than the big ones like Red Cross. I'm going to try to give every two months. I just think it is a habit i should get into especially now that I am actually making some money.

Here's some pics I took with the camera in my computer.

Mostly for Leah's Benefit

Okay, so I'm going to start blogging again, as I start this fairly scary part of my life...or at least I hope I start it. My newest prospective family failed to call me yesterday, which makes me nervous, and the stupid agency hasn't called me either! Slackers, all of ya!

I am getting really antsy here...tired of being in the dark about the next year and a half of my life. It feels like such a purgatory, a place of being where all I have the power to do is worry and stress. I am definitely not enjoying my downtime. It would be totally different if I had a job lined up. I could relax, take a trip to the beach for a few days. Write. Watch movies. Play with the dogs. Instead, all of my actions are transitory and my place here on shaky footing, libel to change at any moment. I never know what the next day has in store for me. No clue. This does not suit my personality, as we all know.

I just finished this really great book called The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Neffenegger (or something to that affect. The premise is...When Henry meets Clare, he is meeting her for the first time, but Clare has been meeting him since she was six years old. Henry is a time traveler who can move backwards and sometimes forward in his own history or the history of those he loves (ie...Clare). Clare is his wife in Henry's adult present, but in his adulthood, he visits the child version of his wife. Anyway, it's really mind boggling, well-written, and very emotional. I've got a list of about 12 books that I would like to read. I think I'll start with the Nanny Diaries, since everyone has been telling me I HAVE to read it before becoming a nanny in NYC.

I just want to be out of here. There is too much not being said.

Maura Hugs

So I'm writing a court statement for Kayla's aunt Ellen. I've known second hand about this aunt for a long time and heard some real horror stories about his awful abuse.. (ex. once her soon-to-be ex-husband took her outside and tied her down while he dug her grave in their front yard). Evidently she's left him about a dozen times throughout their turbulent 27 year marriage, but this time it is for real. Anyway, Kayla and Mattie asked if I would help her write her court statement, and at first I couldn't understand why Ellen would want a perfect stranger to do that, but I soon found out. I soon found myself to be the caretaker of twenty handwritten pages that represents the saddest marriage I've ever come across. In these pages she has listed every horrible detail...when her husband beat up their pregnant daughter, or how he'd humiliated her by calling her a stupid whore in front of her family when she expressed interest in going back to school, or how he'd refuse to give his wife money for food and then bring home take-out and eat it in front of her hungry kids, or how he pulled a gun on her when she served him divorce papers. The list goes on and on, peppered with heartwrenching comments like "he made me feel like I was nothing" or "I prayed to God to get me away but no help come" or "I did love him. love he killed. destroyed my love to him."
Ellen wrote out all these things the best way she knew how. Every other word is misspelled. She can hardly constuct a coherent sentence. And here on these pieces of paper is more pain and anguish and heartache than I will probably ever have to feel. 27 years of fear and anger and self-loathing and hunger and hurting. I feel like I've got a big dirty secret in my hands. Something I don't have a right to touch because of my place as the advantaged in this land of poverty. I'm glad I can help her. Use my education to help other people take her suffering seriously. But it has been a big wakeup call.
When I met Ellen, I felt really out of touch...or like she needed me to be super professional so that she could trust me with this secret. Mattie introduced me to her and said: "Here, you come over here and get yourself a Maura hug. Ain't nothing feel better than a Maura hug." Mattie is always gushing about me. I spend most of my time with her blushing. Usually she introduces me as the one who made it all the way up to NEW YORK (and she says it like that...capital letters). But she didn't this time. And I realized that I wasn't needed there as a hero or someone to sweep down and show them how it's done. Ellen needed a friend who could help her out. I just needed to be myself. I've always been able to get in touch with my strictly trashy side when I'm with Kayla's family. We sat there in her kitchen and giggled over great stories. Mattie told everyone about her experiences watching two live autopsies. Mattie, Ellen, and Brendie talked about the penises they had encountered in their lifetimes. Kayla's ugly mut pooped on the table and we all squealed in disgust. Mattie insisted that we all depart with a load of cherry chocolate ice cream. And Ellen took me aside and threw her arms around me and said "thank you for doing this for me" real soft in my ear.

In the same vein...Jeff talked to me about being a bridge person. In a town like this, when you make it out, you are supposed to be able to come back and be impressive. They want you to come back with money, a fancy education, a successful Yankee boyfriend, impeccable style. If you don't, then what's the point. If you don't fit the mold of hometown girl making it in the big world, then they still pretend that you do. And you feel obligated to fill that expectation or follow along in the farce. And there's always a fine line between making everyone proud or getting too big for your britches. I feel like I'm always toeing that line and have small chance of feeling whole here.
And yet, there are so many expectations up north too. I'm supposed to be the charming southerner. "I LOVE your accent." (just once I'd like to reply "yeah, I can't stand yours") People are surprised at my successes when they find out where I am from. As if brains are more impressive when you come from a land of mass ignorance
But that's not where I'm from. People aren't stupid here. And I'd take ignorance any day over arrogance.
I don't really know what I'm saying. I just feel a little lost now, like I'm not sure where I'll ever belong. I'm sick of the attention in both worlds. Why can't I just be the girl that gives great hugs?

My last paper of my undergraduate career....

and I plastered it together in about 6 hours and handed it in with an apology. Hopefully Andrew will understand. I think J may have talked to him, because he was really nice to me today. I needed it.

Weakly Wayward Women:
The Harlots and Cross-Dressers of Revisionist Westerns

Time magazine calls Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, the first “revisionist” western, a movie that sought to subjugate and then revise the types and themes of the traditional western that dominated the first half of American film history. It was critically acclaimed as having truly revised the western genre in a way that none before it had. Unforgiven reveals the face of the Western imagination that other westerns had not dared to show. The gruesome realities of life on the frontier and the consequences of lawlessness are presented without filter. In Unforgiven, whores get beaten and cut up, horses get shot, pistol-whippings cause long-lasting and live-threatening injury, people die slowly without dignity, killers have consciences, and heroes cry.
Especially noteworthy in this film is its women. Unforgiven’s whores in Skinny’s saloon are at once brutally victimized and yet hold a very important, albeit shaky power over the events of the film. These “wayward” women do not reap the benefits of their waywardness, nor do they hold any hopes of being able to be accepted as “proper” women. This is very different from the roles of wayward women in previous films, where waywardness is generally a quirky accessory to an ultimately feminine and moral persona. Unforgiven breaks ground for a new Western, one that follows the familiar, beloved plot-lines while simultaneously depicting more complex themes and essentially upsetting the hegemony of white males in the frontier myth.
Unfortunately, the ensuing revisionist Westerns following in Unforgiven’s wake have generally been disappointing in comparison. These films tend to concentrate on people who aren’t typically included in Westerns, or dramatically revise the traditional narrative climate of the Western. Some of the revisionist westerns to follow Unforgiven were Posse and Tombstone ( both in 1993), the former including an almost entirely black cast, and the latter highlighting the modern gang-like qualities of two sets of villains. In finding marginalized subject matter for the “new” Western, the most obvious was to create a film about women in the West. The early nineties saw the production of several mainstream Westerns representing the lives of women on the frontier. This paper focuses on three of these movies: Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), Jonathan Kaplan’s Bad Girls (1994), and CBS’s Emmy award-winning Buffalo Girls (1995). Primetime television picked up and profited greatly from this new Women’s Western trend, as evident in the enormous (and lengthy) success of CBS’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in 1993 and (though less “Western”) Christy in 1994, as well as popular mini-serieses like Buffalo Girls (1995) and True Women (1994).
This paper examines these “new Westerns,” all written in the shadow of feminism and women’s rights, and featuring women in leading roles. In analyzing these films, I attempted to uncover what these films are doing differently from their Hollywood Western counterparts of the first two-thirds of the century. My answer, in looking at these three large-budget theatrical endeavors is…precious little. Many of these earlier Westerns which feature interesting female characters at a time when audiences and filmmakers were not particularly interested in addressing modern feminism are equally if not more complex given their audiences than the new feminist Westerns of the nineties. Although these recent films do succeed in expanding the station of women in the form, the characters themselves are less interesting and at times repulsive to a post-women’s liberation audience. The following section, “No Town for a Girl Like Her,” briefly examines three classic Westerns with compelling female characters: John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) and David Bulter’s Calamity Jane: the musical (1953). While still unabashedly maintaining feminine stereotypes, these three films comment on the “wayward” possibilities of the Western women in credible (at least to their audiences) ways. Their contemporary counterparts, The Ballad of Little Jo, Bad Girls, and Buffalo Gals, seek to highlight the realities of Western waywardness, and yet seemingly return to the same feminine stereotypes of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.
The essentialist view concerning women of the American frontier (i.e. all women are naturally good and moral, all women have a primal inclination to be mothers, all women want to be loved and cared for by men) manifests itself in all of these earlier films’ female characters, and is taken for granted by their original audiences. The feminist movement, which coincided with the demise of the traditional Western in the 1970s, began to dispute these assumptions. It has gradually become possible (though the process is incomplete) for women to be judged on the same moral scale as men. Woman’s place as the keeper of the moral flame has been demystified to some extent. It has become somewhat acceptable for a woman to say, “No, actually I have no interest in being a mother.” Equal relationships between women and men have begun to replace prevailing “Breadwinner/Homemaker” relationships. It has now become possible for a women to assert that not only does she not want to be taken care of by a man, but that she wants to transfer her sexual desire to another female, or to reject her own biological sex altogether. So with many of these assumptions laid bare by feminism, and an audience that is already well aware that women can be just as important or strong as men, why do these films persist in exploiting these earlier essentialist assumptions? With exceptions and complications, all the Wayward Women of these three contemporary films reinforce the statement that in every “bad girl” waits a housewife, waiting to be let out.
I have no answers, only hypotheses. The first is that American feminism has not, in reality, transformed traditional gender roles as much as it seems. Audiences of the past and the present alike have put stipulations on waywardness. Women are allowed to be wayward as long as they are feminine on a deeper level, just as audiences have a hard time identifying with a adulteress/adulterer unless the offended spouse “had it coming.” My second or additional theory is that the American West as a myth (created in part by these earlier films) is much harder to revise or undermine, than other aspects of American culture. So much of American identity is based within this frontier myth. These contemporary filmmakers have encountered the problem of, as Richard Slotkin writes, creating “the West as both an actual place with a real history and as a mythic space populated by projective fantasies.” The frontier, populated by headstrong men and the women devoted to them, is a hard myth to debunk.

and it goes on from there, except the spelling and grammar gets worse...

You can’t make an interesting feminist revisionary Western by simply featuring women instead of men. The concept that women can be both wayward and acceptably feminine was fairly novel in 1939 or 1949 or 1953. It isn’t as compelling or interesting to today’s audiences. Two choices present themselves. We can accept the demise of the Western as a genre, a difficult task considering the lingering prevalence of the Western myth in nationalist discourse. Or, we can create a new way of talking about the West that revises more that just the names, places, and genders, but the form of the Western itself.

Lost

It's lucky I can't see far with this leg!

I've missed Kira and Frantz, and I could not believe what a change a few months has brought to Kira. She likes me now. She never really liked me before. She tolerated me more than others, but that was the extent of her appreciation of all my hard work. But now, she's verbal, she's affectionate, she's interested in more than just her mother's boob. I'm all for extended breastfeeding, but it makes it hard on the babysitter. She's still nursing, but she can stand to be seperated for big chunks of time. I'm hoping to take her to the Poet's Walk tomorrow morning. But I have a meeting at 12:30, so I don't know how long I'll be able to stay. I was also going to try to give blood, but I might not have time unless I give really early in the morning.
I got paid yesterday, so I went and got a CD player and a new watch, and I signed up for an Itunes account, ordered 11 of the saddest country songs in the world, so now I never have to sit through country music radio waiting for one of these 11 songs to come on. They are all songs that make me cry.

1. The Georgia Rain--(Tricia Yearwood) beautiful melody and it reminds me of home
"...screen door flapping in the wind
same old house I grew up in..."

2. Concrete Angel (Martina McBride...childhood trauma song #1) About a little girl who get killed by her abusive father
"a statue stands in a shady place
an angel girl with an upturned face
a name is written on a polished rock
a broken heart that the world forgot"

3. Tears in the Floor of Heaven (somebody, I forgot...they're all the same) about all these people that die and look down on the people they love...VERY SAD
"Mama smiled, said "don't be sad, child...
grandma's watching you today
cuz their holes in the floor of heaven,
and her tears are falling down.."

4. 10000 miles (Mary Chapin Carpenter)...perhaps the most moving song I've ever heard...musically more than lyrically, from the credits of Fly Away Home.
"The rocks may melt and the sea's may burn
if I should not return
oh don't you see that lonesome dove
sitting on an ivy tree
she's weeping for her own true love
as I shall weep for mine."

5. Everything I own (Bread) This song reminds me of my childhood. I can't be certain but it sounds a lot like something Mama used to sing.
"I would give anything I own
give up my life, my heart, my home..."

6. Walk A Little Straighter (childhood trauma #2) about a boy with an alcholic father

walk a little straighter, daddy,
you're swaying side to side,
your footsteps make me dizzy,
and no matter how I try,
I keep tripping and stumbling,
if you looked down here you'd see,
walk a little straighter, daddy, you're leading me

7. I Love You This Much (childhood trauma #3) about a boy whose father never loved him, no matter how much he tried, who finds Jesus. I'm shameless.

"He said, 'damn you daddy', the day that he died
The man didn't blink, but the little boy cried
'I love you this much, and I'm waiting on you,
to make up your mind, do you love me too,
how ever long it takes, I'm never giving up,
no matter what, I love you this much'"

8. Whiskey Lullaby (Alison Krauss) unrequited love, self-destruction, Alison Krauss...deadly combination.
"He put that bottle to his head, and pulled the trigger
and finally drank away her memory.
Life is short, but this time it was bigger
than the strength he had to get up off his knees"

9. On the Backseat of a Greyhound Bus (Sara Evans) pregnant teen who gives birth on a greyhound
"on the backseat of a greyhound bus,
heart so full that it could bust,
staring at the rest of her life,
she never thought this would be the place
where she would find her saving grace
but she fell in love on the backseat of a greyhound bus"

10. Come Home Soon (SheDaisy) story about a woman waiting for her husband to come home from war...I really am awful. This has blatant patriotic undertones, and I still love it. It makes me wish we were doing the good, noble thing.
"I sleep alone
I cry alone
and it's so hard living here on my own"

11. Skin (Rascal Flatts) Oh my god, this song is sooooo sad. It's about a teenage girl who gets cancer and loses all her hair and her prom date shows up at the door with a shaved head so that they can look the same. SOB!
"Sarah Beth is scared to death
As she sits holding her mom
Cause it would be a mistake
For someone to take
A girl with no hair to the prom
For, just this morning right there on her pillow
Was the cruellest of any surprise
And she cried when she gathered it all in her hands
The proof that she couldn't deny"

and then later

It's quarter to seven
That boy's at the door
And her daddy ushers him in
And when he takes off his cap
They all start to cry
Cause this morning where his hair had been
Softly, she touches just skin

Avis Avian Aviate

I hope the bird flu doesn't come here. If I got it, I might die. Healthy people get sick, and peopel with compromised immune systems die. I'm not ready to die. I don't know if anyone is every ready, but I am definitely the antithesis of ready. I've been thinking about it all day, about if I got it. I wonder if I could will myself to live. Can you refuse to die. For some reason I have this idea that you can only die of sickness if you get tired of hanging on and let go. But that's not true. It can't be. You don't consiously breathe, so you can't stop yourself from not breathing either.

I knew chickens were disqusting. I'm not going to eat chicken anymore. What if the virus can be injested in chicken meat. Maybe I should just live in a bubble, or maybe move to some obscure island where nothing can get to me.

Modicum, Prosaic, Biliousness

There is something to be said about the emotional bliss after successfully completing a task at hand. I seem to suffer chronically from a desultory state of "unfinished". I have notes all over my room and in my bag, but a finished, complete thought is hard to come by. But today, I sat down and finished a book, and I mean the whole book, so that today I will be able to contribute whole-heartedly to a class discussion. I also finished the revision of my paper for Liz Frank, using a few of my newfound vocabulary words so that perhaps I may have some validation in my efforts, such as "Wow, Maura (she says Morah), that's an interesting verb you used there." Liz Frank, tangent here, has a tower of pills that she takes every morning at breakfast. I am endlessly impressed. I could have taken this thing to music class in elementary school and recieved an "E" for the nine weeks.
I've decided not to go to Washington this weekend, prefering to spend my time "not sleeping" in the NYPL. 10-6 no excuses. I took a look at some previous senior projects today, and got really excited about mine, and about how accomplished I will feel after finishing mine. I met with Geoff today, and we talked about structure and scope. My project is going to look like a wishbone. One leg will be literary visions of Pakeha identity in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the other Maori identity during the Maori renaissance of the 60s and 70s, and base will be the bicultural literary revisions of culture in the 80s, perhaps the only good thing going for the 80s, mine and Shosha's births excuded :) ...also an unfinished thought...alas

pejorative, milieu, cursory

My house smells. That's the long and short of it. There's a yeasty smell around my desk, like really really old flowers. And my kitchen is a mix of garbage stench and fly killer. The sink smells like mothballs. I would almost welcome a head cold these days (oh, I shouldn't have said that).
I can't seem to get my work done tonight. Maybe it's the dictionary I just bought...it looks menacing. I am going to improve my vocabulary if it kills me. Liz Frank said that my grammer and vocabulary were attrocious. Humph.

sdfsdfs

Ethnographic Research Project Proposal

In the coming weeks I would like to observe and interact with the culture of the elderly in full-time care nursing homes. I have several facilities that I am looking into: 1) Northern Dutchess RHCF Inc. in Rhinebeck, a non profit, government funded facility catering to the needs of Medicaid/Medicare patients whose families might not be able otherwise to afford a nursing home. 2) Golden Hill Health Care Center in Kingston, a government run and government funded facility 3) The Mountain View Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in New Paltz, a high cost, for-profit facility 4) The Victory Lake Nursing Center, a non-profit, but non affiliated facility in Hyde Park. More than likely I will pick only one center to do my research in based on how willing the management is in letting me do my research there and the environment itself.
For the purposes of this project I think I will focus less on the inner workings of the nursing home itself, but more on the individual physical, emotional, and spiritual experience of the completely dependent senior. In formulating my discussions and interviews with my informants, I will keep in mind these basic questions: How satisfied are the members of this community with themselves? their community dynamic? their relationship with family? their status in the outside community? How do they relate or feel attached to their personal history? Do they cherish and glorify the past, or resent it? In general do the informants view the nursing home community conducive to aging with grace or do they feel that it imprisons them

Standing on the sand as if it were stone

Here's my version of the debates tonight. For your information, i did not cry with anger and/or despair:

Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not. Freedom.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not. Freedom, enemy.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not, and if'n I done that is no matter. You change your mind all the time
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not, freedom, enemy, alliances, Sept. 10th, what kind of message.
Kerry: You sleazy lying sonofabitch, why don't you just go back to Texas and shove a fencepost up your butt. (okay, that was just wishful thinking).

But on a happier note. My dreams have now come true. Do you remember hearing those stories about the make-a-wish foundations where terminally ill children got to meet celebrities? Well, I always knew that if I were ever terminally ill and got any wish in the world, it would be to meet barbara kingsolver. Okay, so really I didn't meet her. I saw John Sayles too, and although I love his work and his spirit, it was nothing like seeing Barbara. Afterwards, I stood not three feet from her. our hands might have even touched. She signed my Small Wonder. I also gave her a letter that I spent the better part of two days writing (when I should have been writing my paper). it's a good thing I had the letter, because I forgot how to speak English when a actually went to talk to her. I think the words "this" "note" and "thank you" came out sounding a bit like my native tongue. She smile and said thank you back, and then she waved as I packed up all my stuff and headed out the door.
The talk itself was fine, but not really informative in that anything new was expressed that had not been expressed in their work. I just couldn't take my eyes off her. She glowed. Don't get me for blasphemy here: But imagine Jesus walking across a stage and sitting down in a chair and staying there for two hours, it wouldn't really matter what he was saying...it's jesus, and he's sitting in a chair ten feet away. Barbara Kingsolver isn't jesus (although i do count her as one of my own personal deities in my scewed version of Pagan-Christianity where you can have a big God and smaller earthly ones), but you can imagine my reaction.
And also I feel very proud of myself having mastered the city enough to be able to find my way from Lexington and 42nd to Park on 34th all on my very own...and at night too. Plus I didn't get mugged, and I didn't get murdered, and that is always a good thing. Cities confuse me, and they make irritable, and they scare me, and they give me a headache, but other than that, I really like going to NY. If I were more confident I might could function better and be happier in NY. I would never want to live there though, or at least I can't see myself living there. I've been thinking of places to settle down one day, if I decide to remain an American. And I like the northeast, but something still doesn't feel right to me. The west doesn't feel right, although perhaps if I live in a city center and not in suburbia it would feel different, and more an more, I see myself moving back down south, and for the first time the idea doesn't repulse me. I read this article in Glamour or somthing called "Where's my village?" and I want my children to have a village. I want my children to know their grandparents and really truly consider them second parents. I want them to grow up around trees and mountains and unpolluted water. You can't swim in any of the lakes or streams around here because they are polluted, and they make you feel greasy. More and more, I keep thinking about Asheville.
Must go catch the shuttle more later....

I was just a little girl when your hand brushed by my, and I will be an old woman happy to have spent my whole life with one man

One man, one town is all I need. I wrote a sappy love song last night that you may hear very soon on the country music radio.

It's called We Made


Verse 1
They’ve built a shopping mall
On the hill where once we parked,
Spinning dreams into the stars
And stealing kisses in the dark.
I know the way the dirt felt
Under the mark of our bare feet,
As we danced around your truck
Without a word to speak
And that mall, it pays the bills,
And that mall, it keeps us still,
But it won’t ever be enough to bring us back to that hill

Chorus
Where we found a new little soul,
Where we found a new pair of wings,
Where I knew I’d spend my whole life
Harboring this little precious thing
We made

Verse 2
You didn’t have a dime
And my folks didn’t approve,
As we strode up to that alter,
And swore we’d never move.
So you took a job in milltown
And I went to sewing clothes
Then meet back in our little house
And this life that we chose
And this house, it’s made of stone
And this house, it’s made of bone
And of all the tears and love it took to make this house a home

Chorus

Verse 3
Fifteen years go by,
And this one will be our last.
You hold my hand and pray
That we are still up to the task.
She’s got my big brown eyes,
Like all our children do,
But her grin we’ve never seen before
And she’s looking at you.
And this babe, is all we need
And this love, is all we seed
And in her eyes we see our own and all the ways they’ve seen

Chorus

Bridge
In the handicapped space
On that ground where once we kissed
I take your hand and cry
For this place, our genesis

Chorus

Ha! I think I am just very premenstrual. Today at nursery school I had to leave the room when Jacob's mom had to leave. She said goodbye and he started screaming and I started crying. I mean, geez! Poor Jane didn't know what to think. I always do that when I'm about to start my period. I cry at the commercials on TV with puppies. Like yesterday in the campus center i saw a national tudoring service comercial, and this boy's parents get him tutored, and low and behold a few months later he hands his mom his report card and she puts her hand on her heart and smiles proudly at him, and I just burst out into tears.
Alright...I'm off to get mouse traps, and later tonight I'm going to a old-time music jam.

Love is a Tanglewood Tree

Hmmm. Before I forget about it....I had two very disturbing dreams last night. I dreamed that I was back home for a holiday and Mama and Daddy were in the final stages of a divorce, but I didn't understand it because they were acting completely normal, and yet I knew that they didn't love eachother anymore. In my dream I cried and cried, just completely heartbroken, and Leah was there telling me that I should be happy for them, but I told her that she didn't understand. And I cried more, and I kicked and screamed and threw things but no one would listen and no one would talk to me. And as I cried for my parents I realized, in the dream, that I was actually crying for Anna because I would never see her again. And then I woke up. It was about 4 am. Then I had another dream in the early morning which came from this really violent movie I saw yesterday called Leon which was about the mob in NY. It was a game, and there were two sides and we were fighting eachother...really fighting. We lined up, and everyone had guns and knives, and then I realized that I didn't have a knife, and I was captured by this boy I knew, and I begged him to let me get my gun to make things fair, and he said "no way, not after the way you treated my people. I will show no mercy." So then I asked if I could go to the bathroom, because I remembered that there was a butcher knife in the bathroom. He lets me into the bathroom, but it really isn't a bathroom just a toilet and he watches me, and somehow I sneak the knife into my hand, and then I stand up and stab him. And in my dream, I could feel the knife in him. And I was so scared because he started laughing and said, ooo that doesn't hurt, and so I stabbed him again, and he fell. And I started crying because I had killed someone, but then I stopped crying because I wasn't sad that he was dead, but I knew I would have time to be ashamed later. But I kept thinking about it as people got killed left and right around me, and the dream ended with me alone in a room with two of the enemy around the corner, and I knew that I was going to die because they had guns and all I had was a knife. And then the dream ended with me thinking that I had a mouse in my hair. Or maybe there really was a mouse in my hair, but I think it was just my fan, blowing my hair around.

Speaking of the mouse, I'm sorry, but he's gonna have to go. I think part of my nightmare was fighting with my conscience over deciding to take action against that mouse. But I am firm in my resolve. I cannot cohabit with mice. I'm going to get some no-see traps at the hardware store on Wed. What if someone wanted to kill me, just because I was small and dirty and hungry and scuttly? Then again what if someone wanted to kill me just because I tasted good?

Eeek!

There is a mouse in my room. He keeps making himself seen, which I would rather him not do. If he's going to be there, better he just scuttle around under the floorboards. What's worse is that he is actually quite sweet looking. So I hate to do this, but I'm going to go get some mousetraps, preferably those little black box kinds. Or maybe I'll just lock the cats in my room until they have had ample time to dispose of the mice. I'm just not about to share my living space with anyone...mice or otherwise.
In other news, the coldness has come. I did finally get my window shut, so I can stop worrying about dying of pneumonia with icicles coming out my nose come December.
I had a good music week. Maggie is going to start playing banjo with us. She follows really well, and it gives us a really nice sound. She's abig Gillian Welch, and Dave Carter/Tracy Grammar, Lucinda Williams Fan, so we can jam on a lot of my favorites. I'm thinking in a few Sundays we can take ourselves to the Black Swan and blow them away.
Alright, time for a nap before a night out.

From a Walking Point of View

I'm so unbelievably tired, and I haven't even gotten to the paper writing part of the semester. From 3pm to 1am with a fifteen minute creak for instant mashed potatoes and green beans, I read 300 pages of an super dense novel (which turned out to be worth the strife) and 100 pages of a history called The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. If you think the title is impressive, try reading the damn thing. So many foreign names, so many battles, so many deaths, so much reading. It is my own fault in ways. I have penciled in too much time for my social life and not enough time for my reading life. I have, however, managed to barely complete my reading assignments for Cultural Anth. and US Lit 3, as well as writing a decent song under very odd circumstances. I am resigned to my songwriting class, although I admit the desire to rush right to the registrar and drop it as soon as I heard that all songs were cowritten. But I have succomb to the idea that maybe my professor is trying to teach me something about the process of songwriting that I didn't know before. My American Folk music and dance class, on the other hand, is the highlight of my week. Bill is a real character with little direction but much heart. He ate dinner with Leah and me last week, and I actually had a real substintave conversation with him about my work with Michele Dominy (speaking of Michele Dominy--seems as if she isn't terribly well liked by a mafority of the faculty here) where I actually had to stand up on the spot for why I thought New Zealand post-colonialism had a lesson to teach us that couldn't be found elsewhere. Mostly the conversation made me realize that I have yet to discover that reason in a pure form.
Suffice to say that I am yet again challenged and happy (despite my complaints) for my exhaustion. Better to be run ragged, than not run at all.
News on kittens....we have two now. Cassidy and DePuis. Cassidy is the most enjoyable, while DePuis (having only one eye) is a bit of a mental case.