looking back

I found out today that one of my flatmates from London died last September.  Another of our flatmates found out via facebook, and we’re all in a bit of shock.  She was an interesting girl with a giant heart and a deep soul.  I’m sad to think that the world will not be blessed with her anymore.  You were loved, Danielle.

I also looked back through my email and found this surprisingly accurate initial reflections on London.  I wrote this to my parents in my first few days in the flat.  I’d already been traveling for a couple of weeks, but I was then settled in London and had started classes.  This makes me chuckle.  I loved my London experience so much.

So now I have some time to actually sit down and do an update about the flat, roomies, and general going-ons.  It’s been amazing easy to settle in here.  We’re all getting along, and I know that we’ll have tifs along the way but it’ll all work out.

So the flat is good.  It all works, and we actually have plenty of space.  It has kind of become a hang out for random people, which is fine because the sleeping rooms are always quiet and make for a good escape if necessary.  We have a laundry washer in the kitchen where the dishwasher would normally be, and it holds about 2 pairs of jeans.  We also have a laundrymat next door, which I plan on using just becuase it’d be easier and I can get it all done at once.  We’re sandwiched between the above ground underground tracks (aka trains 5.30am-12.30am) and Cromwell street, so it can be noisy.  Lots of people are staying in a building a couple of blocks away, and then there are a few scattered flats around the neighborhood.  Now that most of us have our mobiles working we can easily hang out in the local pubs, although everyone is preferring O’Neills, which is an Irish chain pub.  I’d rather try some of the more authentic types myself.

The roommates are all working out alright.  Hmm lets see.  There’s Erin, from Petaluma.  She and I are going to be spending a lot of time together.  We just got tickets to go see Franz Ferdinand in December here in the city, and that will be so exciting!! Then there’s Amanda, from Diablo Valley?  She’s really nice and is spending a lot of time out, but we really get along too.  Robin’s from Sacramento?  She’s more on the fringe, because she likes to be alone.  She’s the ultimate mothering figure, and so she cooks a lot and has never lived with anyone, which could make it interesting.  It’s also suprising but she’s also the messy one.  Finally Danielle.  She got here late due to plane and passport issues, but she’s great.  She’s from SR, brought her skateboard and has great dreads.  She’s really laid back and makes friends with everyone.  I look forward to hanging out with her more.

Classes are going well.  My history teacher is great.  He lectures straight through but he doesn’t use any notes and still stays on track.  You can just tell that he knows his stuff so well. I’m reawlly looking forward to getting to race issues, civil rights, and the politics of the depression.  Magic is interesting.  The teacher is a little crazy, and so it will definately be entertaining.  She’s one of those people who’s spent way too long studying magic and I think she’s maybe lost touch with reality.  Mythology will be hard work.  You know those crazy English teachers who just like to kill their students with reading and writing- I know a few of those   Well she’s one of them.  And British Life and Culture is one day of lecture and then one day of a trip somewhere.  Today we’re doing a walking tour and then going to the Museum of London.

Besides that, things are just going on as normal.  On Saturday, Erin and I are going down to Brighton, on the beach, for the day.  We wanted to go while it was still warm, but we woke up this morning to rain.  Who knows?  Maybe it’ll clear up.  It’s worth going anyway, especially since we got bus tickets for £6 return.

 

bad me

I’m a terrible blogger, abandoning my blog for so long.  I’m basically all wrapped up in spring.   There’s the lure of the outdoors, the pressure of the final weeks of regular programming at work, and the fact that I’m mentally trying to prepare for moving, grad school, and all that comes with that.

Not to self: Take at least every third weekend off.  I’m looking forward to Memorial Day weekend, in part because it’s my only second free weekend in almost 3 months.  But that’s okay!  Summer is coming!

 

Trying to add a share button.  I honestly didn’t even notice it wasn’t there.

Edit: Too bad it’s an uber ugly button

 

I’ve decided

spring is here.  The sun is out, I’m wearing a halter dress sans sweater, and I think it’s time to go home, pump up my bike tires, and get myself to the arboretum.  This is great.

I’m also going to go get a pair of running shoes, and try to start stress running.  It’s like stress eating, but healthier, and I need to get my mind off things.

 

Amped up and anxious

I haven’t gotten much sleep lately.  I try not to sleep late into the morning because I lose too many productive hours.  I’m tired and amped up on caffeine, so basically just twitchy.

There have been years when, in the transition from winter to spring, I feel a great weight lifted off of my shoulders.  With the sun comes a kind of freedom. Time to play frisbee in the field, time to go on long walks and eat froyo.  This year I don’t have that same kind of freedom.  I’m actually incredibly anxious.  It isn’t so much stress, because I don’t feel some undue amount of pressure to find a solution, but it’s just anxiousness because I know that things have to change or they won’t survive.  My mind turns over and over with the idea that, without a pointed effort towards chance, we cannot continue life the way that we have been living.

This gives me a lot to think about.  Unfortunately it doesn’t give me a lot that is appropriate to blog about.  Maybe when I’m less anxious I’ll have more to say here.

 

Grandpa

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Grandpa.  Someone wanted to form a Relay for Life team, and I figured, ‘why not?’  I’ve been spending a lot of time encouraging others to get involved in fighting cancer, and in the process I’ve thought about one of the men I’ve loved, and lost, to cancer.

My Grandpa was incredible.  I can only speak to my own experience with him, but it was a great experience.  My Grandpa married my Grandma, a Brit marrying a Finn.  Grandpa fought in WWII while Grandma worked in a factory.  They used to go to Lake Mohawk, New Jersey for vacations.  I have this great photo of them, one, I think, from their honeymoon, and the other over 30 years later, both from Lake Mohawk, both sitting in front of the same stone cottage.

My father and my grandparents spent some time in Levittown, NY, the first mass-engineered suburb in the US.  They had a built-in TV.  Eventually the family moved to Southern California, where they raised four boys.

‘Gentle’ isn’t a word often used to describe Grandpa.  Despite this, I always felt love and warmth from him.  I was the only girl in the family.  In the family of four boys, there were only two grandchildren, and I was the only girl.  I would go visit Grandma and Grandpa, I’d go camping with them and their Motorhome Club, I went square dancing, strawberry picking, and ate a lot of Grandpa’s waffles.  I also made it clear to my Grandpa when he hurt my feelings.  He wasn’t used to making girls cry, and he wasn’t used to feeling bad about it afterwards.

One day, I locked myself in the bathroom of the motorhome.  I couldn’t figure out how to unlock the door, and cried for my Grandpa to come save me.  He got me out, but wasn’t happy.  He yelled, I cried, and it was an overall bad time.  Later, to my mom and dad’s shock, I received an apology letter.  My dad still says it was the only time he heard Grandpa apologize.

This was the Grandpa I knew.  An amazingly kind person, who apologized, let me play the electric organ even though I had no idea what I was doing, someone who taught me square dancing moves and made the most amazing waffles using his super-secret recipe.  He also let me into his office, where I played with his variety of wooden toys and desk gadgets.

He was also stubborn and didn’t like doctors, which explains why, when he was finally diagnosed with colon cancer, there wasn’t much they could do for him.  He didn’t pursue any treatment, and Grandma determinedly fed him protein-enhanced smoothies.  I remember the shocking physical change of a bear of a man being reduced to sunken cheeks and suspenders to hold up his pants.  There were also more family gatherings around the Prunedale table, complete with the required pot of artichokes and bad jokes.  I don’t know if any of us knew how to say goodbye.

In 1998 he lost his battle with cancer.  We had a celebration of his life and gave away his collection of neckties so others could enjoy them as much as he did.  I was 12.  At the celebration of his life, Uncle Terry offered me my first cigarette.  I declined, so we just sat outside while he smoked.  I had lost the only Grandpa I had known, four boys had lost their father, and Grandma had lost her life love.

I know that everyone didn’t have the same experience of Grandpa that I did.  I know that he was a gruff, short-tempered man.  But he was my Grandpa, I was his little girl, and nothing could change that.  I love him, I miss him.

 

The Davis Protests

Clearly I have a lot of gratefulness to catch up on, but in case you’ve been hiding under a rock or something, the UC system is a bit of a mess.  Davis is no exception.  And we’re all a bit ‘on edge‘.  Today has been dominated by numerous protests and voices in opposition to the fee increases, among other issues.  They’ve marched by work once, and I’m following it on Twitter.  I wish this much energy was put into contacting their representatives and going to Sacramento to have their voice he heard, but until that happens they are speaking out in a way that they find meaningful.  I just wish they wouldn’t disrupt the education of students in classes.

 

Brian Thayer

I’m grateful for Brian Thayer.

A few years ago, Brian applied to counsel at camp.  Brian was older– already a grandfather– and didn’t know what he would have to contribute to camp.  He didn’t really know why he’d been called to the place, but he had followed the call and found himself up at Caz Jr Camp for a week.

Brian wasn’t one to jump in front of the crowd and lead songs.  He wasn’t loud, he wouldn’t contribute fast-paced entertainment, but he was present.  He was present and peaceful and he provided the kind of space that some campers (and counselors) needed during the week in order to just go and talk.  He didn’t put on airs. He was genuine in his love of the kids, his love of the counselors and, after a few days, his love of camp.  Brian didn’t try to hide how he felt.  He would actually just break down and cry tears of joy that there was such a space as camp and that there was room for him in that space.

The next May I saw Brian at Annual Meeting.  He was there as a delegate from his church, and I was so happy to see him.  Amidst the hectic stress of Annual Meeting, I was glad to see Brian, a calm in the storm.  That year the youth taught the crowd 500 Miles, and led Merrill Hall in all-gathering dance.  Brian was right there in the thick of it, dancing so hard that his nametag flew off into the crowd.  He was beaming from ear to ear.  Brian was someone who not only valued youth, but valued youthfulness.  As a grandfather, Brian learned that he had something special to contribute, even when serving on a staff of 20-somethings.

Brian died on Sunday.  He will be missed, and I can take from his life the hope that I will always remember to love like Brian loved, cry like Brian cried.  He took the message down the hill, and we should take his message out into the world.

 

Grandparents

I’m grateful for my grandparents.  My Grandma and Grampa lived near Salinas.  They actually lived in Prunedale.  I’m not sure why they lived there, but they bought a piece of land and, I believe, mail-ordered a log cabin.  My dad helped build that house.  It sat on a cul-de-sac, on top of a hill, with a long series of steps to the front door.  Their motorhome sat in its own space adjacent to the driveway, and the entrance to the garage was covered with what I think was a lilac vine.  They were great grandparents.  Sure, my grandpa was short-tempered (hey, he’d raised 4 boys), and my grandma was a little eccentric (freezing the free milk from the senior center is normal, right?), but they were amazing.  I have a lot of great memories of the Prunedale house and the Jackson family in it.

When I think about grandparents, I’m always in awe of the history that they embody– the things that they lived through.  Grandpa fought in WWII while Grandma worked in a factory.  They watched Uncle Terry go to Vietnam and they successfully traversed the United States in a move from New York to California when Uncle Brian was still a kid.  They did all this, were married for 50 years, and had a pretty cool family to boot.

I love them and I miss them.  It’s a strange feeling living a life without any more grandparents.

 

Sunday

Sundays are traditionally not considered a part of Lenten sacrafice.  Since each Sunday is a mini-Easter (community celebration), Lenten observances are not kept.

I continue to talk about how I need a church that believes that the church extends beyond Sunday mornings.  Lent is, for me, the church I want to see.  While Sundays are a celebration in community, the actual observance extends from Sundays into the every day.  Instead of waiting for Sundays to be people of faith, we are encouraged to give up something significant to our lives in order to, every day, be a part of Jesus’ journey to the cross.  This is, I think, what the church should be.  An every day challenge, rather than a challenge for just Sunday mornings.

Today, I’m grateful that it’s a Sunday.  Pardon me, but it’s been a shit day, and I’m glad that I don’t have to come up with something positive to say (in case you missed it, I decided one positive thing a day was one of my Lenten practices).  Hopelessness isn’t the right word, because I know that things will get better.  More specifically, I’m disappointed in the people I thought I knew, and I’m disappointed in myself for not being able to stand by them.  In this, I discovered my breaking point– the point upon which a relationship went from unsustainable to damaging.  I’m also in the process of discovering personal pain levels, because this hurts nearly more than anything else.

I’ve lost too much since September– a grammy, a godfather, and now I fear a friend.  At a time when I’m looking at embarking on new paths, I find that my old path is disintegrating while I’m still walking it.  I honestly don’t know how to deal with this.

My mom comes home tomorrow, and I’m incredibly grateful that I’ll be able to talk to her for prolonged periods and I’m going back on Friday so we’ll have some face-to-face time.  While I love my father, my mother and I are near carbon copies of each other, and I need her wisdom and her love now more than ever.  I also need someone to mourn with, and she, moreso than myself, has really lost a lot since September.  I love my mom.

This sucks.

I’m so sorry.  I don’t know what else to say.