Thanks a lot, Thanksgiving.

I got sick again over Thanksgiving weekend. I actually know of three people that puked on or around the day, but my ills were different. I had the worst fever I've had in years. Controlling my body temperature became next to impossible. I spent a lot of time on the couch. I woke up in the guest bed several times thinking I'd wet the bed but turned out to be drenched in sweat. Oh well, at least my Momsers was there to take care of me! That felt nice.

But before the illness attacked, I made sweet potato gnocchi this year as my dish at Thanksgiving. That and my old classic, chocolate meringue pie, which I hadn't made in years. The gnocchi turned out great but it took me longer than I'd thought to meticulously cut each piece and press with a fork and try to keep in that shape until tossed into boiling water. I ended up participating in the family prayer with flour-covered hands. My sister-in-law, Pilar and boyfriend forced to hold onto my elbows and not my hands. I then joined the table halfway through the meal because the brown butter wouldn't stop foaming. ANYWAY! It turned out DELICIOUS. And relatively easy if you exclude the hooplah and crowding of a kitchen full of people trying to finish their own Thanksgiving day dish. It was all amazing. My sister-in-law, Amy is lactose intolerant and so there were vegan varieties of a few dishes. And the mashed potatoes were delicious despite not being filled with cream cheese and sour cream. We used margarine and chicken broth and they were perfect. Especially with giblet gravy all over it...

I'd like to go back to my parents' house now!!!!

Did I mention they moved into a new house since my last visit? Coming "home" to a new house was interesting. I sorta felt like I was in a hotel the whole time. A hotel with a closet full of my old stuff, I guess. It was a big, nice house. And the master bathroom had an enormous bathtub, which is one of the things I miss about living at home the most. No room for bathtubs in NY! I took three baths during my 5-day stay, and loved every minute of them. Wastes water... but you know, it was a treat.

So here I am back on my blog, I guess. Sorry, I've been gone too long! I've been busy. It's so strange to read about how lonely I used to be and how desperate I was to perform. I am spoiled with amazing opportunities these days, on a weekly basis!

Oh! My mom gave me an early Christmas present since I won't see them then and I haven't been able to put it down! Check it out at your local comic book shop or book store. It's called Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. An amazing and sad story. I wish I was better with adjectives. Really, it is fantastic though.

Long time no see, BITCHES!

Well it is DAY THREE of the Master Cleanse which forces me to say something on my blog. I think I am actually getting a little bit high right now! This is the first positive thing to happen so don't persecute me for being happy about being high, ya know?? I also have a weird sense of humor and didn't think this was funny at all somehow. bette luck next time Eric. I have been having sharp pain on and off on my right lower abdomen. I am afraid to google image where my different organs are because something horrifying will inevitably pop up that will stick in my head for the rest of the day. Today I worked. I have practice with my improv team, Snacktime from 8 to 10 and then I plan on going home and trying to distract myself. Maybe I'll return to this blog.........

Birthday Weekend

Since yesterday morning a dog has been crying somewhere in my building. He misses someone or he is without food and water or is trapped. He probably just misses someone and isn't getting enough sun or green grass. There are so many dogs here. New York City is full of them. Overflowing out of apartments, all the sidewalks smeared with shit reguardless of the owners picking up after their friends. There is still the smear. So I went to the building super about this crying dog and he was on the phone so sort of half-way talked to me and told his friend on the phone to hold on and tried to restrain and quiet his own inside-dog. He said, no I haven't heard the crying dog. I think that it's Boris. Okay, thank you for telling me. And the crying continues.

My birthday party turned out somewhat disappointing because of the ridiculous onslaught of freezing rain and snow that began early Friday morning and didn't let up until after the party had come to a close. We (me and my faithful attendees) ate a few things that I prepared, drank wine, ate a beautiful cake from a local patisserie, attempted to dance a little bit and mingled for hours. The stragglers and I ended up at our local pub for a few night caps. I dressed very nicely in my "best man" dress from my brother's wedding. It is wonderful I've gotten so much use out of that dress. What I made: hearts of palm with olive oil, lemon juice, salt &pepper, goat cheese surrounded by tiny artichoke hearts and loads of thinly sliced salami, a large bowl of tiny toasts, caprece salad composed of sliced fresh mozzarella, fresh basil leaves, and sliced roma tomatoes, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I bought a cheap bottle of delicious Chilean red wine. The evening was wonderful, I for some reason keep thinking about it and being disappointed though. I think it is because I never have parties and I won't have another for quite some time and I still haven't seen all these people that live here that I know or knew.

There were some other things I wrote about today but can't find the courage to publish. I feel like I'm letting Noah Dassel down by not being completely honest. It never feels like the right time though.

On Tuesday, some things changed.

On Tuesday morning around 7:43 AM I was violently torn out of my snooze button routine by a jolting sound. I could have sworn it was the sound of something heavy falling on the floor next to the bed but I scoured the floor and couldn't locate anything that looked heavy or anything that I recognized to be from the shelf or bedside table. I then realized there was chirping outside. Loud chirping and lots and lots of birds swooping about. The chirping has been absent all winter, I realized. I then realized what the waking sound had been. It could be none other than the sound of a bird flying head first into our bedroom window.

The window stretches from floor to cieling in our loft space and I often gaze at the apricot tree outside of our window when I wake up to the sound of church bells at noon on a Saturday or Sunday. In Brooklyn, people have little weird yards that they are never in from the months of August through February (I do not know if they are in their yards from March through July because I've not witnessed those months of Brooklyn living yet). The yards are empty. Last Tuesday or Wednesday's snow is still laying there in their yards unscathed, unclumped, unblackened my street crud. But I notice the snow is waining around the edges, appearing concave and sickly in comparison to the fluffy, chubby amounts that could be seen on that morning that I naively fantasized I wouldn't have to go to work (my hometown would've completely shut down!).

The morning turns out to be an unusually lively one. The loud bird injury sound forcing me to give up on some extra sleep that I wasn't supposed to have anyway and inspiring Eric to get out of bed as well. He immediately goes to work on some dirty dishes in the sink and I welcome the sound of clinking and rushing water running and the main room's lights flipped on. The sound of someone hand-washing dishes is something you'd here at my family's old house from my upstairs bedroom because of the acoustics from the high vaulted cielings, and my family's seemingly deliberate force to get me out of bed and downstairs for breakfast. So the current atmosphere is a far cry from the usual moping about done by me and my roommate Kat in the darkness and the quiet before work. Kat and I have similar schedules and we rarely have the energy to have a conversation in the morning, let alone turn on any lights and pretend that we are allowed to occupy the commons space as usual. There is something about the morning that makes me very apprehensive to disturb the furniture and lightbulbs of the household.

I suppose that is part of the joy of Christmas morning. There is excitement for the morning to have come and no need to contain noise or feel horridly introspective about the coming events of the day. There are no personal journeys of anguish that one must take on the Christmas days of my past. Unless of course the journey is taken during the dream of a luscious post holiday brunch nap. But not likely, even then.

So on to the changes. Since I am in a hurry I request Eric throw together a peanut butter and honey sandwich for me and he does so. Later, when lunch time arrives in my miserable little cubicle, I realize the sandwich is far better than anything I could've prepared, solely because Eric made it. These days I forget what it's like to be taken care of like a parent might. Eric goes the extra mile and makes me another sandwich, in case I get hungrier, featuring rice slice (fake cheese), tomatoe, salt, pepper, and garlic mustard. Later, during lunch after I realize I indeed am still hungry, I eat the strange sandwich and think to myself that I like it but that it's weird (like something my parents may have put in my lunch years ago, out of odds and ends in the fridge).

Yes, and on to the changes. The main change I experience as I brace myself for the cold that will inevitabley hit as I exit the front door of my building, is that the temperature has risen so considerably that I am actually comfortable walking down the street. I don't dread the two and a half block walk but rather embrace it, noticing the things around me again, such as the Polish market featuring all of the plants I want for my room, the Mexican children walking to school with their mothers (usually, sometimes fathers though) all bundled up as usual even though the temperature has risen, and the hipsters eating bagels at Bagel Factory and looking like they don't have to go to work today. It turns out that the temperature is up about fifteen degrees from what has become usual and we're all loving it. The relief I feel when I realize that going outside will not hurtle me into the throws of mental and physical anguish is loverly and scrumptious. I want this weather to last until all of the black crack rocks of snow are gone and have slushed down the slopey streets and into the drain pipes and then the filthy East River. The process has been slow. But I can see them leaving like unwelcome guests on our streets.

I gazed at one of the piles of snow today, thinking solemnly of the story of Frosty the Snowman and how everyone was sad when he melted. And for a moment I felt sad for the huge blocks of black snow on the streets.

Trying not to vomit at my new job. It turns out one of my co-workers is a megalomaniacal bigot.

"Fix It In Post" as they say

I've decided to take a lighter approach to the bloggie blog. I've realized that everytime I'm distressed I want to write a blog entry, but who wants to read that? I feel the most inspired by blogs when I've read one rich with description, hilarious observations, and the feeling of hope and satisfaction within that person's life. Not to say I will not bitch on here ever again, but I would just like to practice speaking like I usually do when I say anything outloud. I try to make something sound funny as often as possible, but when I write I tend to overly dramatize things. So here's to the new way to blog.

It Happened

It definitely happened. Then I had my graduation show and then I went to Austin. Then I met a bunch of cool people. Then I went to the Pacific Northwest. And then, I WENT SNOWBOARDING. If you know me, this is a ridiculous notion. It was scarier than jumping off a cliff real high up into water. Because evertime you fall, you're hurt. I'm still hurting two days later. I miss my blog... I'll be back.

Here We Go

Sorry about involuntarily disabling comments for that last post.

In other news, I've been taking improv classes here in New York at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre for about seven weeks. UCB has nightly hilarious sketch and improv shows which I attend at least once or twice a week. It is something I have never had before to just go and see amazing performers after work all week. Amazing performers.

I am stuck in this bleary state where I want nothing more than to be on stage, but envisioning the large chasm that exists between where I am now and where all of these great performers are is so daunting! It's like that big ravine that Indiana Jones is blue-screened over in Temple of Doom or any of those other Indiana Jones movies where there's a huge chasm and we don't know what he'll do next.

Oh! Oh! This is turning into a better analogy than I thought. Because here's the thing, I know I have the potential to really knock em dead up there. I've been doing improv for over two years now and loved every minute of it and have received a lot of motivation from performers who I respect intensely. So I know I can get there. It is just this what seems to be completely empty space in New York where I can't imagine that I'll ever get to be on that stage and having a good show. The last show I did was in Olympia, WA and it was my best show to date. I yearn for it again and can taste that feeling of numb energy blinding me as I'm standing in front of a bunch of skeptical Olympia kids who would rather be at a show in a nasty basement in which some dude is twanging on a nylon stringed guitar he found in the living room of the house who's couch he's crashing on with a goddamn fork, and he's closing his eyes and feeling the adoration of ten greasy kids who are disappointed again with another ill-prepared spectacle of megalomania.

Anyway! I yearn for that feeling to be in front of that skeptical audience and then see them all start to smile and then start to laugh and then bust their britches and then fall on the floor next to their seat. All because of something a stupid character in me said.

Back to the amazing analogy. Remember in the search for the grail Indiana Jones where he gets through a bunch of obstacles and then comes to the great chasm? Then he gets this amazing idea to throw gravel into the chasm and it lands on an invisible flat surface that will safely guide him across!? Right? Are you seeing how great this analogy is yet? So the thing is that I'm Indie and I'm trying to get that holy grail right? That holy grail that is my pride and my happiness and fulfillment and I think that I've got so much shit to go through right? But the only obstacle is my own blindness to how easy it will be. So, let's plug this into reality why don't we?

Okay reader. Let's get serious here. I promise. I promise to do a show within the next seven days. Don't ask me how. Just know it will happen. And know that I will give you the details. I love you all. Thank you for your support.