I live!

Just barely.

One foot injury and subsequent trip to the hospital, two Chem exams, one Bio exam, one enormous final project and final choreography later, I return! (Come on, I'm a Smithie; it's my job to complain about how much I have to do.) Don't know if I mentioned, but I injured my foot in some mysterious way that kept me from dancing for the last two weeks of ballet... and it's still not better! This is infuriating particularly because I was (indirectly) accused of faking it. Clearly you don't know dancers if you think a dancer would fake an injury to miss out on a performance.

Physical damage aside, I've had a rough finals period. Yesterday I took my Chem final, and this morning was the Bio exam. Now I'm completely done, and I have a day and a half in which to pack and hang out with Alice before she embarks on her fabulous adventures abroad. After the exam I had so much pent-up anxiety and stress and exhaustion (seriously, I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a good week and a half. Too many stress dreams about oversleeping and not studying enough and missing my exams, plus my window faces east so I wake up with the sunrise.) that I climbed up the many flights of stairs and collapsed facedown on the bed without even taking off my glasses.

Today my friends and I had a picnic to celebrate the end of the year and the good ol' summertime. Unfortunately, none of us checked the weather before picking a date, so we had our picnic on the Baldwin porch, sheltering ourselves from the rain. It was still really fun, and between the five of us we assembled quite a spread. Alice and I made my mother's summer salad: avocado, corn, tomato, and lime juice (we also added cumin, though I'm pretty sure my mother doesn't use it). Squeezing the limes was fun, specifically the part where my hands were covered in lime juice so I licked it all off. Mmm, delicious limes. We ate the salad as a salsa, scooping it with blue corn chips. Erika and Steve each contributed pasta salad, although Erika bought hers. Now that I think about it, I consumed three different pasta salads today. It is a warm weather favorite. Steve also made fried zucchini, and Adriane made chocolate chip cookies. We sat on the porch, drinking sparkling pomegranate flavored juice beverage, munching, and goofing around. I love my friends so much. That picnic was really great, rain, ants and all.

This evening, I packed all the things. Life lesson: never trust storage material found in the free box. I have a kind of staggering amount of stuff, exacerbated by the fact that I'm not storing anything in Baldwin. I've given a lot of stuff away, but it still looks like moving out on Friday will feature a pretty hardcore game of Tetris.

I'm still kind of wound up, but I'm looking at my almost completely packed-up room and listening to She & Him's new album, and it feels like I'm coming down from a very bad trip. (Not that I would know what that feels like.) I'm going to miss my friends a lot, but I'm ready to go home. I'm ready for Farmer's Market Saturdays with dogs and that awesome fiddle player, Mum's homemade yogurt, reading the paper in the backyard, big bikes with Dad, biking to Allentown by myself to browse in Rust Belt Books, Buffalo Pride, Thursdays on the Waterfront, family beach trips and birthday parties, Mass at St. Joe's, Anouk and the kittens and the allergic reactions they give me, weeding in the backyard, Garden Walk, volunteering at Buffalo ReUse, picking every kind of fruit, helping Aunt Grace make jam, long evenings with my parents watching movies, making dinner, goofing around with Marty and Joe, dance classes at Miss Lisa's, milkshakes from Louie's, picking basil from the backyard, Alison Krauss and the Allentown Arts Festival. There's so much to love about Buffalo in the summer, and these are the happy thoughts that have been keeping me going through all this mayhem.

This Week's Lineup

I'm still alive! Here's the breakdown. This is mostly so I can organize my thoughts; I apologize for the dull format and will post like a normal blogger (if such a thing exists) after the show.

MONDAY
Class from 8am to 10pm. There's technically rehearsal this evening, but I won't be there because making up labs is really complicated and it has to happen the same week you missed your own lab section. Way more hassle than it's worth, especially since I need all of my spare afternoons for studying. This week's lab is business as usual, nothing too exciting.

TUESDAY
Pretty sure we have a lec/dem but I don't know where exactly.
I had a Bio paper due last week, but when we turned them in, our professor let us peer review one other paper for extra credit. This Tuesday, I'll get my revised paper back and have the afternoon to write it over. I did my best but I'm sure I'll have to do a lot of it over again. No matter what, I will never meet anyone's standards, and I need to just accept that.
In the evening, there's a tech rehearsal! Costumes, props, lights, and sound: the whole enchilada.

WEDNESDAY
Another long day ending in the last tech rehearsal.

THURSDAY
Prospie weekend! I'm not hosting but my friends are.
Another lec/dem, maybe? I'm not really clear on our schedule.
Final draft of the case study paper due today!
OPENING NIGHT!

FRIDAY
In the afternoon, I'm doing some baking for the show (bake sale during intermission). I think I'm going to make homemade oreos and cupcakes decorated with words from the show and bees. There's another show in the evening, after which I plan to sleep, possibly before I even get home. I might just curl up on one of the benches on set.

SATURDAY
Collaborations! There's a picnic lunch on Chapin lawn and people do presentations of research projects. I have to attend two lectures relating to Biology for some more extra credit and if I have time, there's an interesting-looking presentation on gender in choreography that I'd like to attend. I doubt I'll get to that, but it looks good.
My mom is swinging by NoHo from Boston on her way home, and she's stopping by to see the show! I'm so excited, it'll be great to see her. After the Saturday show, we have strike, then the cast party, which I haven't heard anything about but I'm sure it'll be nice.

SUNDAY
Much as I would like to sleep for the entire day, I will get up early to see my mother off and shut myself in a very public part of Neilson (the more people are around, the more work I get done because my shirking is obvious. Nothing like shame for a motivator!) to study all day long. I will get everything and then some finished so I can land on my feet on Monday.

As it was written, so it shall be.

Waterworks

What with stress and hormones, I had a rough day today and kept crying at the drop of a hat. This is a seriously annoying habit of mine that dates back to my birth; I cry so often that when I was little, my teachers would send me home with notes that said, "No tears today!" because those were pretty momentous occasions. It was especially frustrating because it always looked like I was trying to get attention, but I really was as sensitive as an orchid petal and virtually anything made me burst into tears. Now as an adult-in-training, I know just how inappropriate it is to frequently cry, but I can't control it any better than I could as a kid; the difference being that an adult crying looks manipulative rather than simply attention-seeking. I'm honestly not trying for some kind of effect here! Today I left Biology and after trying to call both of my sisters, I sat on Chapin lawn and cried with my face in my hands because I'm sure I'm going to fail Bio, won't get into graduate school due to mediocre grades, and never become a physical therapist. I thought about how my dream was going to die and it's not like a B.A. in dance makes me qualified for anything! Luckily, this was late afternoon/early evening, so there weren't many people around and I could have a cry in peace, but the worst part about hormonal stress tears is that you feel just as bad afterwards as you did before your crying jag.

I don't want to alarm anybody here; I really am okay and my problems are not nearly as serious as I'm making them sound. Even the part about a degree in dance isn't true; there are tons of (not particularly well-paying) jobs I could get with my future degree. Today everything felt horrible and I was depressed all day and cried in front of my professor AGAIN so now he probably thinks I have some sort of chemical imbalance, but I can fix it. Things will be okay, I will make it work, and if all else fails I can always become a Rolfer or a masseuse. I mostly just wrote this post to put this anecdote in perspective:

Today was a terrible day, but as I was taking a shower I noticed how shapely my calves have become. It's a testament to my incredible vanity that I actually thought, Mediocrity won't be so bad if my legs look hot. 

Venturing into the belly of the beast

A few weeks ago, I went to the Lazarus Center (Bringing your career back from the dead since March 2012!), also known as the Career Development Office. (It's named after an alum, not the Biblical Lazarus, but I still can't hear the name without thinking of one or two snarky quips.) The Lazarus Center sends hella emails that nobody actually reads about how to ace an interview/score an internship/arise from the mailroom, and since I have a keen desire to succeed, I made an appointment with an advisor to discuss my Future. He turned out to be unbelievably kind and supportive, gave me a ton of really valuable advice, and directed me to some very helpful people. It was a really great experience!

Today, I went to another super-helpful resource that I had not previously given much thought: the Jacobson Center. The Jacobson Center helps with writing assignments: you make an appointment, upload your essay a few days in advance, then go in to get feedback from someone other than your professor. I admit, I didn't go of my own accord; my Bio professor assigned us a case study paper and one of the essay requirements was a visit to the Jacobson Center. There's a person who specializes in science writing, but she was swamped, so I just made an appointment with someone who was available when I was. He was a very pleasant man; though he admitted to being out of his element, he gave me some very helpful advice. I know how to properly use footnotes now! (My high school insisted on MLA and parenthetical citations regardless of the subject, so I'm shaky on other citation styles.) Because my paper was only a page long, our appointment was pretty snappy, but I feel good knowing that my argument is logical and coherent and that the joke I made at the end is amusing.

I wonder what my next adventure will be. Maybe I'll go to the Center for Work & Life. I'm not 100% sure what they do, but I could explore.... still, that might have to be an adventure for next semester. The year is rapidly coming to a close (why yes, that is extraordinarily nerve-wracking! Thank you for asking!) and I'm trying to crack down and focus on what's right in front of me.

The Year of Personal Growth

I'm easily guilted, and it's a real problem. There are times when people have made announcements asking about, say, a broken computer, and I immediately wonder, Did I do that? Sure, I've never seen that computer, but what if I stepped on it in the dark the other night? I could have broken it while sleepwalking... It's a little too easy for me to accept blame and assume that something was all my fault.

On the other hand, it's easy to assume that something had nothing to do with me. I try to avoid this mentality because it's a mark of maturity to accept blame, but when a situation gets messy, sometimes you just want to tell yourself, "I've been nothing but kind and considerate, so why is everyone blaming me?"

My aunt has dubbed this the year of personal growth, and what that really means is that this is going to be a tough year. Personal growth is a response to trauma at least 50% of the time, so I haven't really been looking forward to growing. Growing and changing is hard, much harder than getting a strong pointe position or learning how to do a cartwheel. I expected to start growing right away, but like developing a strong pointe position, the changes are gradual and it's not until you look back that you realize how far you've come.

I've thought for a long time that taking the blame is a mark of maturity, but a really mature person knows when and to what extent they are at fault. I'm trying to reconcile my happy-go-lucky side with my guilt-ridden side, and trying to see myself from several points of view. I'm not perfect, but my flaws don't make it acceptable to assume the worst of myself. This isn't an easy attitude to adopt, because it means I have to come to terms with some uncomfortable things, often while people are telling me I am not at fault or I did everything wrong. I think it's worthwhile, though. I'm working hard, and though my perspective will never be perfect, it will get easier to maintain this point of view.

Lists on lists on lists

Things to do this weekend

1. Go to JoAnn Fabrics to get materials for my Spelling Bee costume. (I have to get fabric suitable for a cape and some felt for making finger puppets. I want to make a panda puppet and an alligator sock puppet.) 
2. Write two one-page papers for Dance in the New Millennium. One is about Wayne MacGregor's development process, one is a cultural "text" helping a viewer to discern the cultural elements in a piece of choreography. 
3. Write out Biology notes
4. Draw data maps for Biology
5. See Carmina Burana performed by the Glee Club and Chorus; I'm working as an usher so I get to go for free!
6. Spelling Bee rehearsal on Sunday, 1-5
7. Biology tutoring session on Sunday evening; quiz #5. 

Things for the train

1. Overachievers book from Forbes (About high school students who have to push themselves to the breaking point to get into college.)
2. iPod. I don't usually use it, but the wifi on Amtrak is patchy, so Alice gave me a ton of new songs to listen to. 
3. Study for Biology and Chemistry! Wooo.....
4. Work on finger puppet. I doubt it'll take long so I might make something else with the extra fabric. 

Things I want to do over spring break

1. Play with kittens! (For the record, this includes Anouk, our older cat. All cats are kittens, didn't you know that?) 
2. Cook delicious Sicilian food for St. Joseph's Table
3. Scout around for a summer job. I have some connections that I'm hoping to use so I can get a job as a cook somewhere. 
4. Make my Spelling Bee costume
5. Make pretzels with my dad.
6. Go to yoga with my mom. (I'll do it, I give in!) 
7. Take lots of walks. 

Things I have to do over spring break

1. Write a paper for Dance in the New Millennium on one piece of 21st century choreography
2. Start choreographing an experimental work
3. Research plantar fasciitis on a cellular level and organize data
4. Make data maps for Biology
5. Chemistry problem set (hasn't been assigned yet but I'm just assuming, based on the fact that we have assignments every day.)
6. Lab report for Chemistry

Baby's first LecDem

Today was Dance in the Community's first community performance!! We danced for half of the 5th and 6th graders at the campus school. We technically had a gig on Sunday, but we didn't do our full program and the goal was just to entertain rather than entertain and educate, so I don't think it really counts. I have a lot of experience with community performances; I joined my studio's performance group when I was 10 and we performed on a semi-frequent basis. The most elaborate gig we ever had (in my seven years of performing) was pretty simple. It's a toss-up between the day we performed Peter and the Wolf three times in one day and the day we did two completely different ballets for one school. The latter was more fun, because it was one of the only times we danced at a city school, the kids were hella smart and asked really intelligent questions, the program was more varied than usual, and they bought us pizza. Actually, the triple show was at a city school, too; interesting coincidence.

We danced for an arts festival, terrible community theater productions (that's right, Towne Players, I'm looking at you), a few nursing homes, for fundraisers, and a girl scout precinct meeting (I don't think that's the right word, but it was all the troops in a hefty chunk of suburb, so there were a ton of people there), but my favorite venue was always the schools. Fun fact: Suburban schools in the Western New York area all have the exact same floor plan, and by my third year, I had it memorized. The campus school is laid out in much the same way, and when I walked in, I almost swooned from nostalgia. It was so familiar! The only thing that was missing was the super-elaborate movable set from Peter and the Wolf (which included a house frame to which a gate attached, a wall that several dancers had to stand on/dance on at the same time, a wooden tree, a fake potted ficus, and a pond) and the costumes made of spandex, feathers, and faux fur.

Our lec-dem was much less elaborate than Peter and the Wolf. Every dance has to be explained, and we had to sort of...stall at times where the program wasn't as well-developed or thoroughly rehearsed. First we had to introduce ourselves, then we started with an African dance called "Funga Alafia." (Coincidentally, I learned the song in elementary school when a group did a lecture-demonstration for us! I don't remember if they did the dance though.) Chelsea, a lovely girl who taught us the dance originally, talked the kids through the song and told them about African dance, and we had them sing while we danced and Marilyn (our professor) drummed. It got a little awkward when their clapping didn't exactly line up with the drumming, but they fixed it rather than give up completely, which was impressive.

From there, we went into "Steam Heat" from The Pajama Game. That was my baby, so I got to talk about it. I'm really proud of my speech, but it requires some backstory. When we did Peter and the Wolf in schools, my teacher Lisa had a speech that she'd go into beforehand, breaking down every character and the distinctive way they moved that made them look like whatever they were supposed to be. (For example, the bird had feathers that she fluttered, but the duck held her feathers in a different way because she swam.) I knew this speech by heart by the time I graduated, and it really was well-made. It was designed to engage the kids (who were often just shy of babies, like 3 or 4 years old) at the time and to keep them engaged throughout the dance. Children tend to get bored if they spend a long time watching something without words or anything specifically designed to get their attention. When Lisa showed them the movements, even with the narration to tell them what was going on, they could think, "That must be the bird! Look at the feathers! I bet that's what birds do when they're scared. I hope she doesn't get eaten!" and feel like they were a part of the story. I wanted to do the same thing, so I told the kids about Bob Fosse having a kind of weird body, and told them to look for round shoulders and turned-in feet while we were showing them the dance. I think it worked! They definitely seemed really interested, and a bunch of them were already familiar with the dance, so they got super charged up.

After jazz, another girl from the class demonstrated some ballet. She had never rehearsed this and didn't have any music, so she was really nervous. We were all there with her and we called up some students (several of whom were dancers. You can always tell from their gait and hair.), and all things considered it went really well. She did the positions of the feet and I did the positions of the arms in French and English, getting the kids to repeat the names back to me. Thank goodness for the Grade Four exam. I have a feeling that CCA exam theory is going to come in handy in this line of work. I think I've mentioned before that I get sort of wise-crack-y around children, and that happened again today. Dry humor, a sort of "let's be frank" attitude...I think it worked, though. I definitely got a few laughs and everyone was paying attention, so I call it a winning technique. I was sort of amazed that everyone was so excited about ballet--even the boys!

Next on the program was cheerleading. Lisa is a mover, not a trained dancer, but she was a cheerleader for three years and we all wanted her to show off her stuff, so she taught the kids a routine and showed them some jumps. That was also not very rehearsed, but she works with those kids so she knows them well, and came across really well. To close out, we did a hip-hop dance to "Baby" by Justin Beiber. I feel really stupid doing that dance, but it is really fun. Everybody loved it! They all wanted to come up and dance, and Jaritza did an amazing job getting everyone excited and energized.

This was just our first gig and I loved every second of it. The people in my class are so talented and chill, and in a few weeks we'll be really outstanding. No wonder Marilyn does this for a living--I'd love to do this every day!

Changes

This week there was an article in the Sophian that (in the typical manner of the Sophian) had one main idea and spent about half a page rehashing and rephrasing it. (I know they have a lot of space to fill and rarely much material to work with, but it's the literary equivalent of processing emotions, which is an unfortunate motif for a newspaper. I like the Sophian, and it makes me sad that such high-quality writers are reduced to this.) This article was processing the notion of winter burnout and how the cold and dark makes fools of us all, so to beat the winter blues, one must vary one's routine. Any other time, this notion would be abhorrent to me, as I love routine more than any other abstract concept, but I could use a little variation right about now. Joining an org was my first big step outside my comfort zone (and it was one of the best decisions I've made all year), and this weekend, I took a few more steps in a different direction.

Every weekend, the Smith Events Committee screens recently released films, and they're often pretty good, but I've never been to one. On Friday nights, my friends and I usually stay in and hibernate, but recently, Friday night has turned into date night. Erika and Steve went out (separately, thank goodness; there's a layer of drama safely avoided) and Alice and I went to Weinstein Auditorium to see Moonrise Kingdom.

My dad likes to rant about how the students in his "Lawyers in Movies" class always watch the movies on their computers and thus miss out on an integral experience of film, and I'm going to make his day by saying he's absolutely right. I've watched many a movie huddled around a computer and many more movies on a TV, and there's no comparison: watching on a TV is better, and watching on a big screen is best of all. There's nothing about Moonrise Kingdom that I don't love, and watching it in a chair (rather than on the floor) without having to squint was a really nice experience. It was also interesting because I laughed out loud at a lot of parts I previously didn't find funny, because everyone else was laughing and that made my interpretation of the movie become more relaxed. I usually take everything as seriously as the characters, and it was a totally different viewing experience when I took that step back.

The article specifically stressed the importance of studying in a different place as a good way to keep it fresh, and I've been doing just that. My usual study spot is a soundproof room in Josten library, but since Valentine's Day I've spent a lot of time studying in the Campus Center Cafe. The booths are really comfy and I usually get a lot done when I'm there, plus my new location has given me the chance for another new experience. Yesterday I went to Smith To-Do! There are crafts offered every Saturday evening, and I've never been, despite the fact that the crafts are usually kind of awesome (making lava lamps, Chinese fans, and decorating wooden animals are some examples). Yesterday the craft was decorating T-shirts, and I took the opportunity to make part of my costume for Spelling Bee. My shirt was bright orange, and I added a green leaf decorated with puffy paint and a bear face with enormous paws. It was so much fun! I've missed crafting.

Hibernation is over. It's time for me to come outside all skinny and chilly with tousled bed-fur to experience the world. So far it's been pretty good.

E-lim-i-nate the negative

It's a sad truth that no matter how well the rest of your life is going, you feel compelled to complain. I'm going to ignore that urge today and focus on the positive. Good Lord it gets exhausting. I still don't really think of myself as an optimistic person; the majority of my life has been spent feeling sure that something horrible lurked just around the corner and it's only recently that I've tried to ac-cen-tchu-ate the positive. It certainly takes practice and the songs aren't nearly as good. Right now I'm getting kind of tired of keeping the ol' chin up, but I don't want to slip into the Slough of Despond just at the moment, so let's brainstorm.

The weather is lousy...but nice if you're indoors. The grosser weather becomes, the more fun it is to stay indoors with a cup of tea making playlists and doing homework. (Especially when your professors have a sense of humor and put jokes in your exams.) Today I sacrificed breakfast for 15 extra minutes of sleep, so after Chem when I found myself downtown in the disgusting sloppy rain, I went to Woodstar and got a bagel and hot chocolate. They drew a heart out of cream on my hot chocolate, the bagel was delicious (and I think it was homemade), and if I had had a copy of the Times I would have been completely at peace. All around me were folks having late breakfasts: trim older ladies wearing neutral-toned fleece, twentysomething guys with laptops, one or two fellow Smithies, and several people taking their coffee at a leisurely pace over the morning paper. It was very pleasant. I rarely get to people watch in the morning, and in any case people watching at a college isn't very interesting because people have similar things going on and there isn't much to wonder about. I'm far too cheap to frequent coffee shops, but when I do get to one it's a nice change of pace.

Yesterday, a restaurant downtown that's going out of business held a tag sale, and I got a 10" cake pan (no springform, unfortunately--I was so close, but it was already sold.) and a large saucepan that's completely metal and won't melt in the oven! Before you say anything, family: I'm going to enter the Friedman lottery in my senior year, so these purchases are a lot more practical than they seem at the moment. Plus, restaurant-quality kitchenware isn't something you get for $3 every day. In honor of our new purchases, Alice and I are planning a dinner party a few weeks from now (scheduling is tentative). I'm so excited, partly because we haven't had a dinner party since last year's Emily's-going-on-med-leave shindig, and partly because for the first time ever, we don't have any crazy allergies to work around! We can cook whatever we want! More details to follow; I'd hate to give everything away all at once, but suffice it to say that I'm very excited for how it turns out.

Looking ahead, I have a good day before me. Today is ballet class and Dance in the New Millennium, then in the evening I have hours in which to study forever, alone or with my friends or maybe both. Tomorrow I have an exam that I'm bringing my A game for, Leading Ladies dinner, and a run-through of the first half of the show. I get to sing my song and clown around and generally have fun with nice people. It's a great way to end the day.

There we go, I feel much better now. What do you know, this optimism stuff really works!

Ailing

Hello lovely world! I have had a very long week, despite having the day off today. (Hooray Rally Day!) On Monday I started to feel sort of terrible, and by Tuesday, lo and behold! I had the flu. My friends (but especially Alice) are wonderful and beautiful and took such good care of me, checking in, bringing me food, and just being super nice in general. The fever's gone but I'm still feeling pretty rotten. My friends are all out getting pizza right now, but I'm not sure I could get downtown without collapsing, so I politely declined and am going to bed early. Today in rehearsal, I thought I was feeling better than I really was, so when we learned a dance I did it full-out and promptly felt worse.

Speaking of rehearsal, they're going well! I still can't believe how nice everyone is. Thursdays before rehearsals we have dinner together in Northrop, which is a small, less-frequented dining hall (technically just for residents of the house, but since the cast has several I guess it's chill?), and today was the first one. There were two other ladies there, and they were extremely nice. I quickly got over feeling intimidated and had a great time. Even better, I'm really having fun with the character. Being in Leaf Coneybear's head is awesome: he thinks everything's funny and has his own little world to play around in, even though he knows everything isn't really perfect all the time. It's nice to explore.

I had to miss all my classes on Wednesday because I was too exhausted to move, and now I'm anxious about making up everything I missed in Chemistry. I'm going to speak with my professor tomorrow but it feels like I'm dangling right now. In the lecture I understand everything perfectly, but once I sit down to do my problem sets, I have no idea what to do. It feels like I'm doing everything wrong! I really like/need the class, and it's frustrating to be confused all the time. I think I need to give myself more structure.

New things

I had a red-letter weekend. It started out with a wonderful snowstorm, Bananagrams, chocolate chip cookies and How I Met Your Mother. Then on Saturday, my friends and I went sledding by Paradise Pond. It was frozen solid, but I was still wary of sledding into it. Luckily, that fate was avoided (although Erika gave it a try and wound up in a thicket of bushes). Alice went sledding for the first time, and she wasn't crazy about it, but she tried, so props. After sledding for a while, we walked to the island in the middle of the pond. It had clearly been visited a few times before, as evidenced by various messages scrawled in the snow. I made my mark with "Under Me," but nobody got the joke. Everywhere, people were enjoying winter: there were some people making an ice rink, an older couple snowshoeing on where the path ordinarily lies, cross-country skiers, and Smithies sledding on everything from garbage bags to plastic storage containers. (I like garbage bags; they give you a faster ride with the added perks of distributing your weight and smoothing out the hill.) It was very picturesque.

Yesterday was also an exciting day, but before I describe it, I must admit that I've been holding out on you. I secretly auditioned for the Leading Ladies spring show this week. I decided to do this about a week ago when auditions were first announced, but I decided not to talk about it. I'm a very superstitious person, so partly I didn't want to jinx anything, and I partly wanted to avoid the awkward posts that I made last year when I systematically got rejected from every a capella group for which I auditioned. I figured if I didn't make it in, no one would be the wiser (except for all of my close friends).

The show is 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which I've been in twice before. The first time was in my junior year of high school, and the summer after that I did it again at Unirondack, playing different roles both times. This time I auditioned for the role of Leaf Coneybear, a hippie kid with ADD who's sweet and weird and wears a cape and plays with finger puppets. The first Leaf Coneybear I saw defined the role for me; my best friend, Marty Gartz, lived Leaf. He wore the cape around all the time and carried his finger puppets in his pockets several weeks prior to the show. It helps that Marty is also a very nice and extremely weird person himself, so the part suited him exactly. When I hear the soundtrack to the show, I'm always slightly surprised that it's not his voice on the recordings. I told Marty that I auditioned for the role, and he gave me his blessing. I felt confident. My audition song was "Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear" from the Muppet Show, and I did a bear voice and a sort of awkward little dance. They liked me!

So on Sunday afternoon, I attended callbacks. From 1 to 5 pm, I sang, danced, read, and did improv exercises, trying as hard as I could to be chipper and adorable and just weird enough that I wasn't off-putting. That last part was by far the hardest; I always go overboard when I'm trying too hard to be funny and get just plain weird. Fortunately, everyone else at callbacks was friendly and encouraging, but even that wore me out after a while. The whole thing was exhausting. By 4:30 I was sure I wasn't going to get cast. I was sure I blew it. I left Sage Hall feeling very A Chorus Line.

But I got it!

I'm so excited. Rehearsals start on Thursday, and I'm going to have a great time.

Partying crazy

Starting from 5th grade until graduation, Saturdays meant rehearsals from 1-4. It was really relaxed and fun; we would dance very hard of course, but we also joked and kind of clowned around when we were offstage. In the summer we would creep on the brides getting married at the church across the street and critique all the dresses. A couple times every year, we would have to cancel for one reason or another, and I would be at a loose end all day long. After reading The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, I had gathered that Saturdays were supposed to be wild times for frolic, but usually it was more fun to be in rehearsal than driving around running errands. 

I still hold Saturdays to a sort of high standard. Maybe I secretly think Saturday night should be a time for crazy partying or something, because I get really excited when thinking about it, but then I don't do anything special. Friday nights are the real occasion for me and my friends. We watch movies and chill out and come down from the week, and it's really nice. Last night we watched Pitch Perfect and Anastasia, which (as usual) gave me a lot of former-Marxist feels that I was commanded to keep to myself. But seriously, in that opening sequence, when the grandmother is going on and on about Imperial Russia's majesty and beauty, who can resist thinking, "while the poor were dying in the streets"? Comedy gold, people. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to see Alison Bechdel and Gloria Steinem speak as part of an archives event about activism. Very exciting stuff. I'm doing all my homework today to free up Sunday for religious services and fangirling. 

Musical feels

It's been a rough couple of days. I'm never going to underestimate an unpleasant living situation again, because this one has put me through the mill and it's only been four days. I've been a neurotic wreck in that brief window; even ballet class did nothing to make me feel better. (Incidentally, I started to write about that but it turned into a rant, so I'll put that post on hold.) When I get really upset and I'm far from my family, sometimes I read books that remind me of them, but since my schedule is a little busy I opted to listen to music that reminded me of them instead.

I do that a lot, actually. For instance, at camp over the summer we had really nice Saturday morning breakfasts. It was supposed to be a good send-off for the campers, and everyone did look forward to those breakfasts, but I did not. Everyone's favorite fancy breakfast is a warm, gooey cinnamon roll, so I had to stay up late on Friday night (while everyone else was at the dance party in the lodge) and roll out a hundred-some cinnamon rolls. The next morning, I would get to the kitchen at 6:30 in the morning to proof and bake the rolls, and since that's pretty much a one-person job, I told my fellow cooks to sleep in. It sounds kind of grim and lonely and cold, and it was, but I also kind of loved those mornings when I could ease into the day doing what I loved most, all by myself. As I proofed and baked, I listened to the Avett Brothers and thought about all the mornings I had dragged my mother out of bed so I could get to chorale rehearsals. It made me feel close to her, which turned those solitary mornings into something to look forward to.

This morning I listened to The Roches album A Dove. It's surprisingly hard to find, but the songs are the stuff of my young childhood and that album reminds me of riding in our old red minivan, singing along to tapes. Man that memory dates. It's a really great album, and the Roches truly rock, but it didn't make me feel any less sad. I twitched and moped the day away until after dinner, when I settled in with Songza and my Bio notes to do a little studying. Songza is awesome (and Alice totally invented it) because it lets you choose your music based on what you're doing while you listen. I chose to study to jazz from the 50's and 60's, which is so evocative of my dad that I felt like he was in the room with me, telling me get a grip and identify the sax player. It's pretty awesome that music can have such strong associations, and I have to admit that I feel a lot better.

I think ur a contra

This is such old news, but I did a thing! I went contra dancing last weekend! My friend April who is completely lovely (albeit elusive; she's in the sciences....as am I, I suppose, though to a much lesser extent) posted on Facebook about a contra dance in Greenfield, and I decided to go. A friend of April's from UMass gave us a lift, and over the 20 minute drive I turned on my most charming personality. Apart from the driver, there were two Smithies who I had never met, one I did not know very well, one who I consider a good friend, and one with whom I would like to be friends, but that's kind of a work in progress. I really didn't get out much during J-term, so these ladies were the first new people with whom I had spoken in quite a while. They were all really nice, and most of them were wearing long, twirly skirts, which made me feel a bit like I had missed a memo, but whatever.

Before Saturday, the last time I went contra dancing was last New Year's, with my mom and Caroline. There was contra dancing at the Smart's wedding, and as a bridesmaid, I felt honor-bound to talk everyone into dancing. I did this at the Unirondack wedding I worked over the summer, too, but that wasn't contra dancing, so it was a little harder. The best way to acquire a wallflower, I have found, is to wear something low-cut, approach with confidence, smile a lot, and when you ask if they want to dance, appear confident that they won't say no. The only people who have resisted my encouragement are people with actual injuries preventing movement. But at an actual contra dance, everybody wants to be there, so that aspect of the evening is unnecessary.

The band was great--there was a tuba! And the caller was pretty good, too, but there was one major flaw in her technique. In case you've never been to a contra dance, when a new dance is introduced, the caller talks you through it, so you and your partner will know what to do before the music starts. It's like marking a combination in a regular dance class. I'm a quick study usually, but in the past, every caller at every dance I've attended has covered the marking parts really thoroughly. I guess all these people were regulars, because the caller kept referencing moves that I had never heard before, and everyone just rolled with it. As a result, I looked like I didn't know what I was doing (and just as the cherry on top, every one of my partners asked if I was a student and what I studied, so I looked extra incompetent). It was fun, but I got kind of frustrated toward the end. Here's hoping my first ballet class in a year and a half doesn't end the same way.

Still, the evening was really fun, I met a lot of cool people, and I think I'll go back again soon.

Die Babys

I'll certainly miss working at Sunnyside next semester. While I've never really been good at devoting five hours of a day to childcare (it's too much and not enough at the same time. I do best when I can focus my energy on one thing or several things in one day, without making any abrupt shifts. A full day or like two hours would have been better.), working with adorable children has always been great. Today I worked from 8 to 4:30 with the 4 to 5 year olds, the same age group I was with when I started last spring. I've been with slightly younger kids this past semester, and it's amazing what a difference a few years can make. I'd forgotten how articulate the 4 and 5-year-olds are, and how freaking energetic. They reminded me of the kittens, only the kittens don't shout "Come and get me, Monster!!!!!" (I earned that nickname in the context of a game of chase, I'm not some kind of tormentor.) They had so much energy, and I had a great time putting my claws up a la Lady Gaga and leering. They weren't great at tag; I was willing to throw in the towel after they made the snow home base, but they still wanted it so I still delivered. The game lasted hours. One kid, when saying goodbye at noon, actually called after me, "Goodbye, Monster!"

Because I was working all day, I was given a break of indeterminate duration during which to eat lunch. Nobody specified how much time I actually had, but I'm not much of a rebel, so I cantered to King/Scales and ate at turbo speed. The highlight of my lunch was the massive sour dill pickles that were provided with cheeseburgers. Seriously, these pickles were big enough to upstage the entree, but they were just in a bowl! Like they were something pedestrian! If my friends had been with me, I would have opened my mouth really wide with enthusiasm and pointed at the pickles, unable to articulate my excitement, but I was eating alone so I had to keep it together. I spent my lunch happily thinking of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and mulling over the many ethnic slurs I learned from said novel.

If the kids' energetic performance had in any way led me to believe that they would be exhausted after lunch and ready to nap, I was wildly mistaken. I've been spoiled by toddlers who actually sleep during naptime. These kids spent two hours whispering and reading every book on the bookshelf. What's worse, the teachers weren't even around for most of it, and at one point the other assistant left to make snack, so I had to contend with twelve raucous four-year-olds all by myself. Maybe four of them were actually asleep. They were my favorites. Quiet hours are from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, and all the kids in the place are asleep, or they should be. Since the youngest kids are literal babies, quiet is really pretty important, and I had to keep scolding these kids for talking too loudly (of course young children aren't great at modulation, so this was a common problem). The only redeeming aspect of this exasperating situation was the kids who were getting increasingly pissed off when I told them I couldn't read out loud, because it was quiet time.  It was kind of funny actually; one kid tore at his disheveled curls but couldn't say anything because, after all, I had a point. It's rare that I'm in that position (being 100% in the right and there's nothing you can do about it), and it's a testament to my pathetic position in life that I sort of relished the experience. That's right, bub. It is quiet rest time.

Little kids are super cute, and they really do say the damnedest things, but they aren't big readers. The only time I've read to one of the younger kids, it turned out to be a book called Goodbye, Papa about kids dealing with a parent's death. I was really not expecting this, so when the kid who wanted to hear the story seriously didn't get it, I was not prepared for her questions. "Where's the dad, Lily?" "Oh, um...he's not around any more. Do you need to wash your hands? Let's go do that." But slightly older kids will park you at the couch and have you read book after book, without question the best part of the gig. And the cherry on top is that Sunnyside has excellent taste in books. I've read books by William Steig (now there's a good potential HoF nominee), Frances books, Frog and Toad, and just today, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. That finished off a good day. The kids were finally worn out and, like Jinx and 13, they cuddled up to me and handed me one book after another, until it was time for me to leave.

Roundup

Here are some bits of posts I drafted but never published. Enjoy!


11/4/12: Today I volunteered for the AIDS Care Chocolate Buffet and Silent Auction! I've done some volunteering in my time, and this was a really great experience. I began the day by writhing in pain (my body does not accept menstruation without a fight) but when 12:45 rolled around, I downed some pain meds and suited up. The email I received said to dress in "nice-casual clothes," but I've had some experience with words like that, and whenever I dressed as casually as I was told, I regretted it. I wore dark skinny jeans that look really nice as long as I sit like a lady, a taupe shirt, a black blazer, my gold cross, and red Converse. That black blazer makes me feel like I could conquer the world, and I left the house feeling chipper in a way that was unrelated to the caffeine I had just ingested.

At the event, my job was to man one of the silent auction tables. I jumped on the food & dining table and proceeded to gently harass everyone that stopped by. Some of the stuff was definitely better than others (artisan chocolate next to Starbucks gift basket. Not so much), but all of it looked good. As soon as the doors opened, one guy came to my table and bought a whole bunch of really great stuff, like a Trader Joe's bag full of organic food and a gift certificate to a steakhouse. This struck me as kind of unsportsmanlike, although he certainly got some bang for his buck. I enjoy selling things but subtlety isn't my forte, so I frequently come on too strong. Despite this, I managed to gently persuade people into bidding on a lot of things, like



12/21/12: I know, I know, it's been a long time, but tech week + Chem finals = no time to blog. I'm home at last, and it feels wonderful, even without much snow. (I believe!) I'm finally getting the opportunity to feel Christmasy: I started reading Little Women on the train home and I finished Christmas shopping today. And speaking of Christmas shopping, I'm going to share my own personal list of things I'm sure nobody will give me but I would love to get for Christmas. For birth of Christ and true meaning of Christmas, tune in next time.

TOP FIVE CHRISTMAS LIST ITEMS

1. This majestic turntable. Even the color is perfect; it looks like it's from a Wes Anderson movie and if I owned it, I would pack it in a messenger bag with a Wanda Jackson side and play music in the park while on a picnic. It's way too expensive, but I can dream. 

2. A really nice tailored suit. I dream of being dapper (especially now that all my pants have holes in them) and on the day when I have enough money to buy a decent, well-tailored suit, I will look outrageously attractive. 

3. While we're on the subject of menswear, a gray silk tie (solid color). That is my favorite kind of tie, which in my mind is sophistication itself. 

4. This is really impractical but I would love the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. Deb Perelman is one of my favorite bloggers and the photos look incredible. 

12/30/12: I must have done something really, really good, because a few weeks ago my parents sent me a box of my favorite Dutch-process cocoa. We've been working our way through a 5 lb bag of Hershey's natural cocoa that I thought would last for the next three years, but we've made a significant dent in less than one semester. I'm a huge fan of cocoa powder and think it's a really underrated baking ingredient, so today I'm going to share some information and a recipe that gives credit where credit is due.

If, like me, you look through recipes when you get bored, you've probably noticed that most recipes that call for cocoa specify either "Dutch-process" or "natural." Here's why. Dutch-process cocoa is treated with an alkali to neutralize its acids. It is neutral and does not react with baking soda, so it must be used in recipes that call for baking powder. It also has a more mild flavor. Natural unsweetened cocoa powder is not treated with an alkali, so it's more acidic and stronger tasting. When natural cocoa is used in recipes that call for baking soda, the acidic cocoa reacts with the basic baking soda to create leavening, so the batter rises when placed in the oven. There you go, you've learned something new! Before learning all about the chemistry of cocoa powder (did I mention that I'm a huge nerd?), I just thought of Dutch-process of being the nicer cocoa, and if prices are any indication, that is correct. But now you know why it's nicer, and to be honest, I've swapped Dutch-process for natural many times this semester and it's worked out just fine.

Many bakers like to diss cocoa powder because they claim its chocolate flavor isn't intense enough or blah bloo blee blah. These people are missing out on a great thing. I'll let you in on a secret: I hate gooey brownies. I like brownies with gumption, with structure and stability. I like cocoa brownies. They're also easier to make because you don't have to stress out if you're melting chocolate and it goes wonky on you. No muss, no fuss.

I've already shared with you my recipe for browned butter brownies, also known as the greatest stuff on this Earth. I've made them with natural and Dutch process, and while they are definitely better with Dutch process, they're terrific every time. Today I'll share another cocoa brownie recipe, because I like fulfilling stereotypes about women.

2013

My aunt has declared that this is to be the year of personal growth, and I've been thinking about how I can encourage myself to grow personally for the past three or four days. I think what I really need to do is learn to walk the line. I've never been very good at balance; in order to achieve my goals I tend to go overboard into "maniacally driven" territory. Anyone who's seen me in the kitchen at crunch time can attest to this: my focus narrows to just the task at hand and I don't waste energy on things like smiling. This may contribute to my reputation for being terrifying.

In high school I didn't really have to worry about balancing personal relationships and work because I simply operated in different spheres. I saw school friends at school and dance friends at dance and those friendships didn't take up any more of my time than the activity at hand when we interacted. Now things are different. It was weeks before I completely adjusted to seeing my friends during the week, outside of classes. But because it's so novel, I'm not used to sharing time between friends and work. I'm good at prioritizing when one thing can take up all my energy, but that really doesn't work in college when you have two papers and a problem set due on the same day, and of course you can't abandon your friends for weeks until you're finished. I have to work on that for sure.

I might just be thinking about this too hard. The personal growth might just sneak up on me. I think that'll be my game plan here.