Life is a Marathon

It has been intense since I returned for a second year of AmeriCorps Public Allies. My placement is experiencing some changes, namely my supervisor moved to Wisconsin and her job was spliced up and given to various employees, including myself. I now oversee an after-school program that is understaffed and over-budget. I am supposed to be giving art classes to our students while managing staff and doing payroll. However, I find between meetings and administrative work, I am rarely available to give the art instruction. I am also organizing parent nights, staff trainings, and finding activities and funding for our students. My capacity as a supervisor of staff is growing, and my brain is learning how to juggle a thousand different balls.

The job that I actually came on to do was to start a Peer Educator program. And I'm still doing it. I recently held a student focus group and am now blasting out the job description in hopes of interviewing candidates and commencing training in mid January. Peer Educators will receive 25 hours in training and then have the opportunity to coordinate two community projects related to my organization's mission - to reduce teen pregnancy and the spread of HIV and AIDS. They get a stipend dependent on their participation in outreach, and they will also have an arsenal of skills to get them into college and higher employment. I'm really excited about this program, but it is overshadowed by the colossus of the after-school program. Oye.

I also am coordinating our second teen event - our first was a city-wide talent show and art exhibit that drew in 60 contestants, 25 volunteers, and over 70 audience members. This time we're doing a Poetry Slam.

Did I mention that I am in charge of our social media and quarterly newsletter?

I'm still me, though. Recently painted a picture for this year's holiday card to send out, been running like crazy, starting to see muscles everywhere (I'm also lifting), and I lost ten pounds in a month and a half. I was eating really well for a while, clean, healthy wholesome, eating, but the holiday parties have me a strange schedule of chocolate binges. Been knitting and reading and hanging out with friends. Thinking of next year's garden, and I can't wait to build a coop and get chicks. My love and I finished the painting upstairs and moved our bedroom up. It's super cool - all the colors found in a peacock's tail feathers. I've met all my resolutions for 2011 (more on that later) and am making new ones for 2012. The pets are healthy and whole, and our lights are up on the house for the holidays. I'm sure soon there will be a Hanukkah dinner with Lover's parents, Christmas Day with my mother and sister, and Festivus for Lover and I.

Did I mention I was accepted into a Graduate Studies program? I will start earning a Masters in Science for Environmental Education in the summer of 2012. Pretty f-in awesome.

Also, Lover and I made our first homebrew - a stout, that turned out successfully delicious.

So, in a nutshell, life has been a marathon. I keep having to check my pace, my form, and take a sip of gatorade, but I'm moving forward all the while. Can't get better than that.

Cape Cod Getaway

I am on my way back from a Cape Cod getaway weekend with Lover. It's off-season, so there's little traffic, fewer people, and only a handful of open shops and restaurants. Love it.

We visited P-town and stopped at my favorite used books store. I picked up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" for $8.00. We sat down for truffles and hot chocolate at "The Purple Feather," and perused open shops.

I worked on a new project... I'm pretty excited about something coming up.. A new venture in life. This project is the start of it. You'll be among the first to see the finished product. ;)

We walked along the beach. Malai looks so happy! The first time I took her to see the ocean, it scared her. Now she runs around, sniffing the piles of seaweed and mounds of dry sea oats. She's had so much more energy and vigor since she's lost weight!

Here's wishing you all a happy spring!

Washington, D.C.

I love to travel, mostly because I love to absorb the energy of new places, take in new things and ideas, and shirk usual routines and household responsibilities. When Lover told me that he had a business meeting in Washington, D.C., I was instantly jealous. It's one of my favorite cities to visit, with such a wealth of museums and history.

Well, I got to go! I met him last Monday evening, and we went for a walk along the Mall. I love to see the memorials lit up at night. I'm generally not sentimental about political and military history, and I despise war and violence. However, I love the memorials, because they become something positive. It's art uniting citizens. These are tools for teaching future generations about the effect of certain founding fathers, or the toll of war. When I look at the US memorials, I know memorials stand in other countries for those same wars. I know other people stand before them, like me. I know that things got to a point where diplomacy was either ignored or refused, and violence was used (or someone decided Germany wasn't enough for them and got a little big for their britches...). I know people who didn't necessarily want to serve, served. I know families suffered on both sides.


On Tuesday, we walked around the Air and Space Museum, The American Craft Museum, The National Gallery, and the International Spy Museum. At the Gallery, I saw a few favorites pieces:

 

 I love the color and movement within a Georgia O'Keefe. As for Gauguin, what a life! Beach living, half-naked women, and painting. Too bad he died of syphilis.

Also, the cherry blossoms were right at the precipice of explosive beauty. 

Even if it's just to cozy up with a friend at their house, sometimes it's nice to get out of our usual environment and take a breather in fresh air. Going anywhere this spring?

Scene It!

For the past year and a half, I have been helping out here and there on the paints crew for shows by Staples Players in Westport.

Shows include "Guys and Dolls," "Little Shop of Horrors," "Rent," and "Curtains."

This time the show is "Brighton Beach Memoirs," written by Neil Simon. The image above is me wallpapering. I've never done it before, so this was certainly a learning experience. The below image shows the type of wallpaper we used - anaglypta, a very cool textured kind of paper.

 

It's going to get painted another color. Below is some other parts of the set. It looks a hot mess right now, but it's going to be pretty cool once the set is done. The dummy on the couch was used in the production of "Curtains", and the students have named him Harold. 

 It's so funny how much in theater is faked - the "hardwood flooring" you see above is actually luan strips painted with two kinds of brown and then sealed. It's a very different kind of painting (and often uses many different mediums) than your traditional fine art painting, but it's fun to see how all the pieces fit together.