A Something Random Guide to..

“Most men, they’ll tell you a story straight through.  It won’t be complicated, but it won’t be interesting either.”

Ed Bloom knew what he was talking about.  Like all other characters in the movies we romanticize into real life, this quote from Big Fish is the only way I could think to try to organize my thoughts for today.  Organization however, is probably the last thing needed in telling today’s story.

It wasn’t as if today was chaotic.  It began like every day since Sunday: The battle of the alarm clock vs. the girl.  The alarm won again.  Add in 1 part morning shower, 3 parts internet stalking (facebook, myspace, AIM), and 19 people taking part in morning devotions.  Typical, yes I know.  But today we traveled 100 blocks downtown, returning to place we had all interviewed at: Alma Matthews House.

Lauren tried warning the group before we left of the horrors in the subway by painting a picture of the Sahara Desert.  Prepare for at least 120 degree temperatures, no exaggeration, she proclaimed.  And it will be crowded, especially because we’re going downtown.

The subway isn’t new to me anymore, especially because every station I’ve been in has been consistent.  It wasn’t dark, but it was dingy.  It was the kind of place where you didn’t really want to touch anything.

With still no coffee in my system, the ride downtown seemed much more uneventful than the ride back.  Instead of leaving Alma Matthews as the giant group we entered as, they entrusted our street savy skills to get us back uptown.  The distress was clearly visible in other’s eyes, as they questioned each other if they knew the way back.  Don’t worry I’ve got it, I told them.  Walking down the stairs, 7 others were following me with a false sense of security.

There’s probably something I should have told you, I whispered to roomkate as we walked in front of the group.  It is always a bad idea to ask or follow me for directions.  I usually don’t know where I’m going, and tend to make it up as I go along, but pretend that I do.

It was too late, they all were trapped.  I was leading a group of missionaries to their untimely doom in New York.  We still had the world to save, and I felt slightly guilty knowing I’d be part of the reason injustice could continue to perpetuate by single handedly destroying 7 of the GBGM’s most valuable assets this year.  8 if you include myself.  In this case however I don’t think you would.  Who includes the cause of catastrophe with the helpless as a resource?  No one to my knowledge was really sticking up for Katrina, or the tsunami, or all those other guys who look like Waldo in Where’s Waldo that aren’t really him just to piss you off.

We weren’t doomed.  Dumb luck saved me again, and the dumb must have been shiningly brightly above my head as we approached the fruit stand by the subway corner to pick up tonight’s final items for dinner.  The man ignored me for a while, until I strategically shifted places 3 or 4 times.  And pulled out my money to show I was serious.  Team Breakfast decided we would get two cantaloupes, at a 1.50 a piece, to compliment our meal.

Can I help you?

Yes, I’d like two of the cantaloupes please.

We’re running a special, 3 for 5 dollars.  Would you like that instead?  No change necessary.

Wow, yeah that would be fabulous, thank you.

I turned back to group, excited for our special.  And then the math hit.  It was a moment I had wished I had on the GRE’s: realizing that the obvious is not right, I’m a tourist, and this guy was trying to rip me off.

You said 3 for 5, right?

Yes, I picked out some good ones for you.

But if they’re only 1.50 a piece, wouldn’t three be 4.50?

They’re not 1.50, they’re 2 dollars.

Oh, I thought your sign says 1.50.

I tried being polite.  Maybe it was an error in communication, or a long day of work that caused him to have a slip of mind.  I pointed to where the piece of cardboard with black magic marker was.  He had knocked it over in picking out the cantaloupes, and the back of the cardboard had prices for tomatoes and watermelon.

What sign?

The sign right there, it fell over.  It says cantaloupe on it.

He walked behind the stand, and strategically held it up to not expose the cantaloupe.  It was quickly turning into a declaration of war, and I had no problems with that.

There is nothing about cantaloupe on this sign.  It is watermelon and tomato.  Cantaloupes are 2 dollars.

I understand the side of the sign you are showing me says that, but the cantaloupe is on the backside.

It’s not, there is nothing on the backside.

Then show me the backside.

There is nothing on the backside.

Are you sure, we saw it fall over.  I’d just like to see the backside of the sign.

He stood there, glaring at me.  I turned around to my army, perhaps not happy with their fearless leader (who by this point had already almost led them into doom, and now was bringing them into a war over .50 cents), looking for support.  Everyone was speechless.  I took the lack of words as a signal for what I needed to do.  Immediately, I started mimicking how to flip over the sign.  If words didn’t do it, I’m sure a friendly game of charades could.

There is nothing on it, there is nothing to flip.

The motions got bigger.  It was like I was possessed with a hunger for a giant cob of corn, and had to keep turning it to get my fill.  But it was cantaloupe we were after.  I almost lost it.  If not for the fear of being judged by these missionaries who I still had some sort of respect for me because they didn’t know I almost led them into their doom, I would have jumped the fruit stand and flipped the sign myself.

He eventually did flip it, but for a split second.  Enough to let the sunlight coming through the tall buildings glimmer on the words cantaloupe, 1.50.  The truth was inscribed permanently on cardboard to be disposed of later.  The victory had been won.  He returned to the front of his fruit stand, taking the long way perhaps to reflect in the shame of trying to scam a girl obviously under dressed for the village, and her army of followers with backpacks to confirm that the war wasn’t fought on our home turf.

If you don’t want them, fine.  You won’t get them.

The peace treaty was off.  He reached to reclaim it from my hands, and rip it up into pieces small enough for the pigeons to digest.  The world moved in slow motion, with other customers waiting in line at the stand staring at me.  The man in the front gave me a patriotic look to say that I had done well, fighting for the good of non-New Yorkers everywhere.  The woman behind him looked like she wanted to hurt me.  I gave in.

You know what, its fine.  Take it then, whatever.

I forked over my five dollars, and he boldly told me to come back tomorrow for more.  We walked away in defeat, knowing a great shame had been committed today.  I wasn’t fighting for the .50.  I was fighting for the principle.  But I couldn’t come back home empty handed, dinner relied on these 3 bagged fruits.  This better be some damn good cantaloupe, I muttered as we found ourselves squeezing onto the express 2, uptown.

It was here we again realized a difference between the locals and deployed soldiers returning home.  I sat next to a woman who laughed at our conversation when we told roomkate we thought we lost her getting onto the subway.  It was crowded and into different doors we lunged, deciding the loss of a left arm wouldn’t be so bad if it meant getting home twice as fast.  Roomkate said if she was ever lost from the group it would have been done intentionally on her behalf.  The woman beside me laughed.

New Yorkers don’t laugh on the subway.  They just look pissed at those who disrupt the ordinary quiet ride home.  When she laughed, I knew she was on my side and not some Cantaloupe con artist.  She told me she had just been hired for a job, and had a week to find an apartment before starting.

We shared a few more laughs, the next stop came, and she was gone.  Her replacement discredited Ben Fold’s lyrics- And life barrels on like a runaway train, Where the passengers change, They don’t change anything, You get off; someone else can get on.  There was a change.  She was visibly annoyed with our subway chatter.

Needless to say, we cooked one heck of a breakfast for dinner.  Abby and I were veggie cutting machines while David and roomkate had a bowl of 48 whisked eggs between them, utilizing the common resource for scrambling and french toast.  With a little saute action, bacon crisping, and powder sugar powdering, dinner was served.

And yes, the cantaloupe was delicious.

As I devoured my slice, I thought back to the day’s classes- privilege.  Class was left out with the challenge to consider who it is that we are step on to live the life that we have.  Class started differently.

We were handed a sheet of paper with a fill in the blank wheel asking us to answer questions such as our favorite color, a skill we need to improve on, a favorite food, our number of siblings, etc.  Then we shared answers.  A second sheet was handed out, asking us to list our “Ability, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, Spirituality, Class, and Age.”  It was a lot harder than the first, because the directions were ambiguous as to what things like ability meant.  Again, we shared answers.

This all segwayed into a conversation about a “white culture.”  Or lack of.  I had never heard of the term “white privilege” until today, when we discussed what “white culture” meant in terms of racism.  To begin to understand racism our facilitators had us understand how self-destructive it is to not have a culture to identify to.  And the so called “white culture” that myself and perhaps many of you readers (if anyone actually reads this) are a part of is difficult for us to define because of the many systems in place that restrict us without even recognizing it:

The media.  Advertising.  Romanticizing of other cultures.  Family History.  U.S. History.  Schools.  Money.  House Segregation.  The Church.  Grocery Stores.  Dolls.  Band-aids.  Language.  Political Rhetoric.

Culture implies tradition.  In society, “whiteness” has come to define “normal.”  All that is normal can’t exactly be traditional, when the standards are based upon what is “desired and right.”  Peggy McIntosh said, “I learned early on that racism was meanness because of the color of skin by one or more people.  I did not learn that it was a position to dominate, because ‘white is ideal.’ “

And then the article happened: “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack.”  Peggy wrote a list of 26 conditions that are “privileges” attached somewhat more to skin color, than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location.  Take a look at a few of these:

• I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

• I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

• I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

• If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.

• I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my own race.

• I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

• I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got i because of race.

• I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

Peggy then continues to write (and this is important): If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

I mentioned “white privilege” before.  But the thing about privilege is that we tend to think of privilege as being favored, unconditional to whether we earned it or if it was by luck.  But looking at the listed privileges, we can see that privilege “simply confers dominance” because of one’s race or sex.  Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.

Not only are we distorting the humanity of the ignored groups, but also of ourselves.  Racism (although our classes for tomorrow) is just as much a problem when it comes from invisible systems as when it comes from conscience thought.

Appropriately, the article ended with the question, “What will we do with such knowledge?  It is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily-awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.”

If I haven’t lost you yet, see if you can get to the place where you can let go of what you know you know, and lead yourself into vulnerability.  Who are we stepping on to get ahead?  Are we more willing to pay 50 cents for a candy bar that uses cocoa beans imported from a country who had children pick them, 84 hours a week, or spend an extra dollar or two and get the fair trade bar?

Starbucks, by the way, does not support fair trade.  The 4 dollar cup of coffee isn’t that way because its benefiting the world.  They have bags of fair trade coffee, but they are tucked away in the back room.  Don’t count on getting one.

This blog has been my most intense by far, and if I made you feel uncomfortable, I’m happy.  It is because of our fear of being uncomfortable that we don’t talk about these issues, and they need to be discussed.  You could attribute my discussion to my US-2 program, and I wouldn’t deny it.  Before all of this, I too only knew the first definition of racism that Peggy quoted.  Now that I know the rest of it, I don’t know how I’m supposed to not act.  I am angry and frustrated.

The article I quoted in this blog was written about 20 years ago.  And not much has changed.

So now that you know, if you’ve made it this far, I challenge you to look at your privilege.

I’d love to hear all of your thoughts, and just from you in general.  I miss you all.

Always~

I said you almost forget you’re in the city when you’re sitting in the park.  That is aside from the tall buildings, the local subways rumbling of the ground, and the nearby highway that roared with thousands of cars audaciously speeding in two directions.  I couldn’t tell who was coming into the city, and who was trying to escape it.  And all of its madness.

We sat in the grass at Riverside Park talking about the day’s classes.  Ten minutes before, Mariellyn, Lindsey, Roomkate and I were walking out of Barnes and Noble.  Roomkate went back to River to make a phone call.  I ripped up patches of grass in front of me.  The US-2’s got out of child abuse a little early, being that we didn’t have to hear about laws pertaining to international malevolence.  A half hour remained in our break before the late afternoon discussion.

The abuse watch guard I put up last night was completely unnecessary.  They didn’t abuse us, but I don’t think I really learned much about abuse either.  It wasn’t hands on (pun intended?).  I hoped for a session full of tips on how to spot abuse in its four forms, or even stories of how people went on covert missions to seek out corruption and whistle blow on the tyrants who defiled children.  Instead we listened to the church’s legal response to abuse allegations, and what would happen if these allegations were brought against us.

The Child Abuse Officer asked us for our placement sites and what we would be doing.  “Warren Village, Denver Colorado.  I will be working with transitional housing.”  ‘Oh, so you’ll have lots of children there won’t you?”

My classmates couldn’t control their laughter.

It wasn’t malicious, they just understood why I made the face I did upon hearing that statement.  A face of horror and sadness, like someone ran over the dog I never owned as a child.  And then threw their truck in reverse just because I was watching.  It was only 2 mornings ago that we had to share our biggest fear about our placement site.  One classmate spoke of leaving the country and worrying about her grandparent dying while she was abroad.  Another affirmed what a few were also thinking, about not having the necessary skills to complete their assignments.  Still others said the unfamiliar, and being alone.  My fear was direct and concise.  I had two words: the children. 

I put my face in my hands, and my head on the table.  David gave me a pseudo hug from across the room.  When the chuckling subsided Lauren said I wouldn’t be working with them, they would just be everywhere.

This will sound awful, I said as the three of us were joined in the park by Abby.  But I don’t think I’m going to want children when I get older.  Maybe a dog or two.

Why Not?

Well the good thing about dogs is that if you get tired of them, you can give them away or run them over with your car (the mental picture from the morning stuck with me) and maybe like five of your friends would be upset.  If you ran over a baby, I’m sure a lot of people would be angry.

You’re planning on running over a baby?!

No, of course not!  I’m just kidding.  But thats why I don’t think I want children of my own.  I’m fine with other’s children because I know I don’t have to take them home and get stuck wiping the snot off of their faces all hours into the night.  Everything in moderation.

I ripped up another patch of grass.  They laughed and said they bet I’d be the one to have the most kids 30 years from now because I would have a life changing experience with a child.  I suppose anything is possible.

The morning started with a session about UMC and GBGM structure lead by The Rev. Dr. John Nuessle. I write the because he likes throwing it onto the disrotations and other scholarly articles he’s written, but in reality thinks it’s a joke. John reaffirmed my crush on the long deceased John Wesley (even though I’m STILL not big on his fasting thing, but getting much better at it).  He started with a quote he said was from Gandhi- Christianity is a wonderful idea, if only it would work.

My memory can’t recall Gandhi really saying this, but to a certain extent I agree.  In this sense, my appreciation for Methodism has drastically increased.  While Luther running around in the woods and nailing a list of complaints onto the Catholic Church’s door, Wesley understood that the idea of ministry is not for reformation.  It’s not about starting a crazy movement, trying to covert the masses, or shoving a gospel down other’s throats.  Wesley knew it was about restoration.  Getting rid of the pain.  Bringing people together.  Connections.

This morning’s big idea: The most important people to you are the people you will never meet.

I believe it.  Everyone sitting around our round table did.  It was why we were gathered in the first place- to try to fight for those who will never have the chance to share their story.

The last session today was called “Walk to Emmaus.”  It was also based on the story the Road to Emmaus, and looking at other stories in a nontraditional context of oppression.  Were the practices of history changed and destroyed, or was it merely saving individuals at the expense of somebody else?  What will we learn when we are surrounded by people who are marginalized and demonized by society?  What will we learn as leaders when we too are marginalized in our placement sites?

The four hour discussion was intense.  So intense that we opted out of leaving early, and ordered pizza to stay longer.  New York pizza tastes even better when you season it with three lessons:  We aren’t supposed to explain our experiences, but tell our stories and invite others into them with questions.  We aren’t called to change injustices through intense immediate action, but to erode the practice of it.  The work of justice is prayer by our hands, feet, and lives, not words.

I came back exhausted.  Twelve hours of sessions is a long time, even if they taste great with a slice of veggie or sausage.  Like always, I had every intention of being asleep by 11pm.  Tomorrow contains a five hour discussion about “privilege,” at Alma Matthews House, lead by Susan Burton of the General Board of Church and Society.  It’s going to be phenomenal.

Day 4.  Although worn down beyond belief already (and becoming more conscience of the massive amounts of typos that exist but am too sleepy to go back and proof read), I am still happy to be here.

I miss y’all tremendously.. and I have Saturday afternoon off so come to the city and play with me

Always~ 

6:30, as expected, came entirely too soon.  Consequently, I would like to share with you a list my necessities: the snooze button.

Definitions of necessities on the Web:

• Purchases required for sustenance of life without being excessive; examples include food, clothing, shelter, taxes, etc:

Hmph, my list is voided by the definition ”without being excessive.”  I could hit that sucker maybe 2, 3, forty times in one day and still not be content.  Being deprived of it might be an injustice in itself.  I grumbled, rolled over, and stumbled to the shower.

An hour later, I was sitting in front of the group patiently waiting to share “my story.”  Nervousness took the best of my hands as I started playing with them anxiously.  Jenny once taught me a strategy to center myself- pressing my thumbnail into the back of my middle finger.  If you press hard enough, you focus your attention only on the pain instead of your thoughts.  It probably didn’t help like it should have, because now my thoughts were focused on nervousness and how to make my finger stop throbbing.

Jumping at an opportunity to volunteer, I shared my story.  I made this poster into a game, I said.  Much of my life has seemed like a game, where I’ve gotten to the spaces I stand on by chance, by a lucky roll of the dice, or by a lose a turn. And I like it that way, I said.  When people ask me where I will be in 10 years, I have to laugh to myself and tell them I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.

But in my game, I’ve had people who love me very much teach me the rules early on.

If it took 20 minutes to tell my story at a sub-par level (20 minutes goes by a lot faster than you think), I can’t imagine trying to write it out tonight.  But I’d be happy to tell it to you at another point in time, perhaps in Central Park or the coffee bar down the block, or when my bite out of the big apple leaves me full and returning home.  Plus, it involves a blizzard, an accident with a crowbar, and pissing away my life.

In common with the rest, we all had different names for the same things.

The later part of the day was spent traipsing around designated areas of the community we’ve temporarily become apart of.  Tonight was the first time I heard the word traipsing.  If I could pick a song to traip sing to, naturally it would have been Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”  Just a small town girl, wandering in NYC, she ::eventually after getting incredibly lost in Penn Station 2 days ago:: took the #1 train going to Columbia.

“Traipsing,” Lauren began to explain, “is where we ask you to go out and explore a few blocks we’ll assign you to.  Write down the shops you see, the condition of the town, the neighborhood dynamics, and any impressions after conversations you are to intentionally have with members of your specific avenues or streets.”

What happened to the singing part?  Don’t think that this stopped me from visualizing the words in my head light up like a karaoke screen as Lindsey and I wandered the square defined by 114th St., Riverside Drive, 120th St., and Morningside Drive.  There isn’t much to say about Columbia University’s main part of campus other than the abundance of students taking summer classes, and the shock of our waitress at Radio Perfecto when we said thank you each time she brought us something.

Including the 2 happy hour special cosmos, which were just what we needed after a physically and equally emotionally draining day.  The quaintness of the restaurant was only surpassed by the deliciousness of my hamburger.  Medium rare.  And a plate of endless french fries to appease today’s morning granola bar and lunch time’s pb and j sandwhich was upgraded with a banana. 

In reporting back, our group as a whole found that New York people really are just as friendly as people anywhere else, its just hidden in their lack of eye contact or acknowledgment of your existence on the streets (except when you’re in their way and they go EXCUSE ME really unnecessarily loud).  But for the most part, they’re willing to give directions (I’m trusting the others on that one, my experience speaks differently), and engage in conversation.

Tomorrow we go to the GBGM headquarters for child abuse.

I couldn’t understand why Lauren would want us to go somewhere to abuse children, and then I got nervous when I thought maybe we were the children about to be abused.  I’m not much of a child, but age wise I could be one of the runts here.  Don’t abuse us, Lauren.  Someone corrected her though.

You mean go to the GBGM to learn about child abuse.

Yeah, thats what I said.

Emm.. ok.

I’ll keep my guard up on abuse watch anyway, and it will be easy tonight because again I’m too excited to sleep.  Tomorrow the meaty material of training starts.  Tomorrow we will carry sweatshirts down 8 blocks while the temperature nears 100 degrees.  Tomorrow we will sit in an icebox of a room, forewarned shivering, listening to a child abuse officer speak.  Tomorrow I’ll again tell myself to get to bed before 11pm.

Tomorrow is day four, and I’m still happy to be here.

Thanks for the encouraging texts, IMs, and comments thus far.. I miss ya’ll everyday.

~Always

I don’t know if it would be right for me to question the decisions made by the founder of my religion, but I think John Wesley had some pretty crazy ideas that I’m not sure I agree with.  Well, maybe just one.

Fasting.

What was he thinking?  Wesley habitually fasted twice a week to center himself, and didn’t understand why it wasn’t a part of modern day meditation.  I have a couple of ideas: hunger, that awful noise your stomach makes when it growls, and the reaction of other’s who have heard said growling.  It just doesn’t paint by number itself into a pretty picture.

This is not to say that I am practicing fasting in true form, but deviations of fasting can entail limitations in eating and drinking, and this is more so the practice of the last two days here in NYC.  Welcome to the 2007 Young Adult Training, hosted at Columbia University: you are provided with one towel, a furnished dorm room with standard dorm-room-esque furniture, and a morning shower time slot to be fought over between you and 4 other of your classmates.  Have a pleasant stay.

And believe it or not, I love it here.

Its been only 2 days, but the energy is so high, and I’ve never met a group of individuals so motivated to do good in the world.  I’m training with 16 other young adults, 8 of us (myself included) are staying in the United States to work with social justice, and the other 9 are being sent all over the world to fight similar issues on a global level.  The 8 of us US-2’s met at our interview in Feb, but this is my first encounter with the Mission Interns (minus Jen, who grew up with me).

Alycia (our MIRYAP) handed us mint green sheets of paper last night.  We sat in a circle reading the 30 quotes on the page, and introduced ourselves to the group with the quote that spoke to us the most.  The strongest prisons are built with walls of silence.  One does not honor those who went before by elevating them but by, if anything, standing on their shoulders and working and living where they left off.  I like them both, but the second I like more.  Someone took it first.  I’m not disinclined to sharing, but never having met some of the others in our circle, I couldn’t impose it on them first.

Sharing circles, crop circles, full circle.  Lets bring it back to the start.  So… fasting?  The past two days were like a day out of Angela’s Ashes- A few crackers yesterday, today a piece of bread for breakfast, and bread and jam for lunch.  Don’t think that I write with cynicism, these hunger pangs were self-inflicted.  I was a nervous wreck yesterday on the train from Hamilton.  Nervousness leads to vomiting, and vomiting leads to the train conductor ejecting me without a refund.  I was in no position to walk to the big apple in flip flops.

The grocery store is 9 blocks away from where I’m staying, if you ignore a couple of the first few, middle, and last blocks you have to also walk.  But walked we did.  We walked with a living stipend in our wallets.  We walked under the glow of a feverish red neon light to a restaurant priding itself on bbq-ing dinosaurs.  We walked like tourists, 17 tourists.

The supermarket was great because it was under a random dock, and just kept going.  It was a realm of produce, bakery, dairy, and millions of cans that had no end.  Perhaps this is what is perpetuating the tourist image- we’ve all seen grocery stores before.  But never one that was set up like a maze for a lab rat to find cheese in.  We were the rats, on the time limit, wandering the aisles for American Cheese.

Colby, Goat, Swiss, Stinky.  No American.  Not in the cheese section that is.  I would like to tell you that I eventually found the American with the help of my cooking team, but I’m not really supposed to lie.  I got lost in this catacomb market that could have very well been someone’s house from the outside.  It’s one thing to be lost when you’re with your friends, or people you’ve met before, or people who know people you know, and its another to be lost in an endless world of produce without anyone’s cell number.  I’m pretty sure I could be the poster child for that neon leash that parents attach to their children sans a flee collar and tags.

Like most wandering children, I eventually found my way back to the group.    Our cart’s contents multiplied in the meanwhile, with all of the delicious ingredients necessary for us to prepare a successful meal for the 17 of us.  4 groups of 4 or 5 volunteered to prepare dinner for all of us, a few nights during training.  It is our task to figure out a recipe, shop for the ingredients, and cook it on our designated night without harming ourselves or others.  Grocery shopping has never been my forte.  Cartoon characters on brightly colored boxes scream for me to pick them up, and I do.  Luckily the group finished getting our ingredients for our amazing meal:

Breakfast for dinner.

We’re talking eggs, french toast, bacon.  And fresh fruit.  A culinary delicacy.  Or at least one thing our group can’t successfully mess up.  I threw out the idea tonight of white wine with the fresh fruit for some fresh sangria; I just want it to be known that if we want to take our fruit in a different, sangria-ey direction, I have no objections to that.

After our cart was full of breakfast delights, we put our hands together for a one two three break! cheer.  And back to the catacombs I went in search of food for breakfast and lunch.  We have to provide for ourselves with the living stipends we were allotted.  Proudly on my dresser now sits a box of apple cinnamon cheerios, a few granola bars, some jelly (sans bread), and 3 cans of tuna fish.  If I had any idea of how to fend for myself via traditional menu items, I’d be all over it.  The tuna seemed like a good idea until I unpacked it and noticed it doesn’t have an easy open top.  I don’t have a can opener.  Crap.

This morning, with my tuna fish perhaps eternally damned into its can, we began the process of creating “our story.”  Those who influenced us, what we stand for, high and low points in our lives, what shaped us into who we are today.  5 presented their stories today.  My story will be presented tomorrow, with the assistance of the amazing visual aid I created this morning: a giant board game, not so originally labeled “Life.”  Not that it doesn’t adequately do its job, I just hoped to come up with an acronym.  Like “Lasers, Infrared, fry eyes.”  But something pertaining to my story.  However, my story could probably use some lasers or western music or something to jazz it up.  Its not very exciting in the beginning- nobody gets killed or anything like that.

But other than playing some frisbee in Riverside Park, a peachy banana smoothie, and venturing into an amazing bookstore, tonight has been low key.  In six hours my alarm clock will be greeted with bloodshot eyes.  No aroma of grounds brewing a source of life will be present.  The coveted naptime will not be scheduled into our busy day.  But we will finish sharing and prepare to tackle the hard issues on Wed.  Our dinner plan is blue printed with miso soup, seaweed salad, and sushi.

And after the completion of Day 2, I’m still happy to be here.

I miss y’all already, and hope you’re doing well.

Always~