my dad

My dad is an amazing person. Yeah we do our fair share of fighting, mostly because we both possess the same terrible quality of reading all sorts of things into what the other is saying, but at the end of the day even if our conversations are just him screaming at me, I somehow (well, most of the time) feel enlightened, as if some wise eminent being has decided to grace me with a snippet of some greater knowledge or truth.

In addition to and going hand-in-hand with this is the feeling that ever more often these days, he makes me feel like I'm a real adult. Not all of the time--and boy he lets me know when I'm not acting like one--but often enough that it's changing our relationship and the way I see myself. He reminds me constantly that probably the biggest part of being an adult is having to face the sucky parts of life, and get away from the idea that life is like a Disney flick.

That's scary to me. So what helps is Dad's firm voice saying, "Shit happens. And you have to go on."

The latest thing he told me was a story his brother, my uncle Punk, told about when he was in the navy. My dad loves to use real-life stories as metaphors for life and how to live it. Uncle Punk used to be on ships that would sometimes hit very rough waters. The ships were designed with a certain amount of ballast in the hull, with a monitor that would detect how much the ship would list during a storm. In heavy storms, the ship would often list far enough to one side that water would enter the smokestacks and engine room. The ballast was what would enable the ship to come upright again, and as long as that happened, the ship's pumps could expel the water that was taken in, and the ship would stay afloat. There were times, though, that Uncle Punk and his crewmates saw the monitor's alarm light flash on, meaning that the ship was leaning too far over to one side and for too long, and they weren't sure if the ship would be able to right itself. Happily in their case, it always did.

Dad wanted me to see that it is important to have that ballast inside of oneself--that self-appreciation and love and confidence and strength that enables us to right ourselves even when we are listing and taking on water. I like this metaphor because the ballast is within the ship. A reminder of where one's ultimate strength has to come from.

Dad, I thank you for our conversation today. I felt a little frightened when you said bluntly that well, bad and unfortunate things do happen, and they happen to millions of people every day. Sometimes I do not like to think about that. But a greater part of what I felt was solidarity with you and solidarity with the world at large, and I felt strangely comforted with this knowledge. I guess I felt that if everyone else can deal with life's pains and aches and so much worse--I mean hell, just look at Myanmar, China and our own Midwest--I can, too. Maybe I'm just a little bit less afraid, and for that I am grateful.

this just to say...

...to let the world know that I am still here, in one piece believe it or not.

I'm trying this new heath kick. It's sort of an amorphous diet consisting of me seeing just how much willpower I have. I've been having salads for lunch the last two days, minimal carbs, no soda, caffeine only in the form of green tea....I've been trying to swim every day too but I keep getting earaches. Something will have to be done about this, I suppose.

All this couldn't have come a moment too soon, as it is summertime.

I go to the lake in just about a week. I am very excited to be going. I guess I know that things are going to be different than how theyve been in the past, and different than what I expected, but it's still the lake, it's still family and it will be ok.

OH, yes.

I'm back. Stay tuned.

done

finishing up my last (3-hour only!) day at Benenden in exactly 10 minutes.

ill write about my weekend soon, when I'm back at HOME....i'll be there in 36 hours or so!

what a ride it's been.

this is odyssey signing off...

Bomb threat

Sometimes this job really is worth the monotony and boredom.

Just a few minutes ago, I got a call from a gentleman who apparently had received a small envelope from Benenden, and he's not a member of the Society. He says he's run the envelope through the scanner and that it's showing up as "positive." He tells me he find this all "very suspicious" and demandeed to "alert" someone "in a position of authority." Positive for what, I wondered--and what kind of "scanner" do you just have lying around your house? I immediately pictured senile old man watching late-night infomercials selling things like witching rods, and gaydar, and those scramblers you attach to your cell phone to keep you from developing a tumor.

Hasn't he ever heard of junk mail?

I love this job.

MAYDAY!! (yay!!)

T-minus 9 days. And on this most momentous occasion, I'm going to take the opportunity to list the things that are going my way.


My last day of of work is next Wednesday. 2 extra days of work for me (Monday is a Bank Holiday)!

My phone came in the mail

I have 2 interviews waiting for me in LA

End of an era....

No, not quite THE era. But the end of the terrible reign of Andrew the Tyrant. GONE, sleazy passes at every girl who walks through the doors of Micklegate House! GONE, the random "cell toss" (what I dubbed his ad-hoc criticisms which he would lash out whenever his morning tea wasn't enough of a morning pick-me-up)!

Fearing the possible repurcussions of Sleepy Female On Door Shift + Drunk Andrew, I stayed awake most of the night...that and Christine and I got hooked on YouTube. Either way, I went to sleep sometime between 5 and 6am, and had to wake up at 7:15. I was awake when Andrew left because I heard the noise of a suitcase being pulled down the stairs, and the big front door opening. I was groggy and didn't give a good goddamn so I just faced the wall and went back to sleep. I suppose he's on his way to Indiana by now. It doesn't bother me that he'll now be polluting America with his shady green-card presence. We know how to deal with sleazebags like him in the Land of the Free--in the words of Toby Keith, "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way."

I am at work right now, trying to get by on just over one hour of sleep. I have been managing alright, but I almost forgot to take the mail downstairs (I was almost 15 minutes late with it) and I'm having trouble enunciating at my normal level of crispness. The word "Benenden" is starting to sound something like "burger" and I'm not even bothering to try and say "medical benefits." It's all I can do just to remember where I am.

Being tired brings up all sorts of thoughts and ideas that probably would be best left unsaid. Just for sanity's sake--I mean the sanity of anyone reading this. But, you see, I spend a lot of my time here at work reading the writing of others. They run the gamut from travelogues (people I know are in Paraguay in the Peace Corps, year-long trips around the world, teaching English in Shanghai...) to observations on the benefits of meditation to deep emotional outpourings to inane online surveys asking who I last said "cowabunga" to. I just finished reading a rather long blog of a friend of mine and my warped, tired brain seems to be rather on the impressionable side today...so here I am writing. But at least he was writing about places he's traveled to; I'm writing about nothing in particular.

But no writing is bad writing. Look, this is my true writing voice. What thinkest thou?

Anyway, I have exactly two weeks left here. Well, 13 days after today. It is very possible that these will be the slowest 13 days of my existence. I am trying so hard to stop my brain from fantasizing about going home....I'm trying to remind myself that 13 days is still a significant amount of time and that I should stop getting so excited because that only makes the time go slower. I should find something to do and concentrate on that. But I can't think of anything, and I have slipped into a daily routine of go to work, come home, eat, watch a movie with Sue and/or Amit, sleep. Rinse, repeat. And after this weekend I won't even have Sue to hang out with anymore, because she's moving in with the family she's nannying for--trying it out at least.

A lot of things are going through my head at present--the fact that my great-uncle just passed away two days ago and I'm the only one not at the funeral...the news that there is a chance Erin may yet be moving to Los Angeles after all...the fact that this and next weekend are CHOCK FULL of fun things going on at home in the USA (parties, recitals, get-togethers...) that I won't get to be there for but i was SO CLOSE so it's killing me...the fact that I'm going to have to organize some sort of goodbye soiree for myself and I'm not really that energized about it--part of me wants to just slip out the door!

I guess I'll do what I always do when I can't think of anything else to do. I'll make a list.

Things I most want RIGHT NOW:
hug
kiss
bed
Family Guy
sleep
cuddle
bath

....I miss.

Tired now. That's all for now, faithful readers (What a joke. Can you hear me chortle?)