On buying things...

My month of not buying anything ended on Sept 11 and was largely a success, despite a couple of slips (earbuds, magazine).  In fact, until yesterday, I maintained my own personal "no buy zone."  Yesterday, I received word regarding an upcoming show I was cast in and its wardrobe requirements, which provided me with a convenient excuse to go out and shop.  Moreover, having been a relative hermit in the past couple of weeks, I thought it would be good to get out of the house in people clothes (as opposed to pajamas) and interact with other human beings.

It's a sad day when I can barely manage to find one item at H&M and an even sadder day when Target holds little appeal.  I came home with three pieces of sale clothing and a downcast heart.  I priced out clothing in terms of food.  A cute top cost more than my entire grocery bill at the DeKalb Farmers' Market, so I put it back.  A dress was less, so I reluctantly bought it.  I envisioned the roasts and fresh asparagus and goat cheese that I could have purchased in its stead, but realized that I was in need of such a dress.  My pre-move purge effectively dumped the detritus of my closet but also swept up plenty of practical clothes in its path.  I needed the dress, but it was damn hard to buy.  Is shopping a muscle that atrophies with disuse?

Story fragment

A dear friend of mine and I used to meet irregularly to do writing exercises, just for the proverbial shits and giggles.  Below is a fragment of a story I wrote based on an exercise from "The 3 a.m. Epiphany" in which a normal group of people meets and decides to kill someone.  Terribly fun.

WE ARE LEGION

 

American Legion Post 145 in Vienna, Minnesota is typically closed on Sundays, but on this particular Sunday, three cars sat in its parking lot, one of them still occupied by its driver.  A tan, late model Buick Century idled in park as the driver, Millie Freeman, absently opened and closed the glove compartment, lost in thought.

 

“I just don’t know about this,” muttered Millie.  Millie muttered this a lot.  In fact Gene, her husband of 37 years, had often threatened to have the phrase carved on her tombstone when she died.  Millie thought of her husband and of tombstones and muttered again “I really just don’t know…” The rest of the phrase was silenced by a shudder that passed through her and the startling sound of a stubby finger tapping on the driver’s side window.  Millie, who had an aggravated startle response, nearly choked on her own saliva at the sudden tapping.  When her heart resumed its normal pace, she looked out of her car to see that the tapping finger belonged to Verle Saari.  Verle crooked his tapping finger at her to coax her out of the car and shouted “GET A MOVE ON, MILLIE!  WE BEEN WAITING!”  Satisfied that he had done his job, Verle wheeled himself toward the ramp at the front of the building.  Like every day, Verle wore his American Legion cap cocked jauntily to the side.  Legionnaires were only supposed to wear them at official Legion meetings or events, but Verle didn’t care.  “I pay my goddamn dues!  I’m in a goddamn wheelchair, goddamn it!”  Verle never shied at playing the handicapped card.  The fact that he was paralyzed due to a drunk driving accident while stationed in Germany was never discussed by anyone who didn’t want a punch in the crotch from an angry Verle.

 

Millie followed Verle up the ramp and into the Legion bar which still smelled of Saturday night’s beer, cigarettes and meat raffle.  Verle wheeled over to a table, passing by Jan and Del Fiskesson, who perched on stools with their back to the bar as if waiting to be told what to do next.  Seeing this, Verle told them what to do next.  “Get off those stools, goddamn it, and come sit at a table so I don’t have to crane my goddamn neck to see you.”  Jan and Del complied.

 

“As head of the Ladies Auxiliary, I call this meeting to order,” said Millie in a high, reedy voice that she reserved for official business.

 

“The hell you will, you goddamn idiot!  This ain’t official business.  I doubt the goddamn American Legion high command would approve.  You ain’t the head of anything here.”  Verle stretched his arms out above his head and in the silent room, they could hear his ancient shoulder joints pop and strain.

 

“Okay, then.  So.  Well.  What are we going to do about Sid?”

 

Sid Hoffmann was the branch president and had been for the last forty years.  The forty years of his rule was largely smooth and full of much prosperity at the Legion.  In fact, under his authority, the new Legion building (it was now ten years old, but still new to the Legionnaires, who just appreciated not having to meet in a basement with mold issues and exposed wiring anymore) had been fundraised for and built.  At the ribbon cutting ceremony, everyone patted Sid on the back.  He was admired, he was well-liked and he was a generally good man.  Until about three months ago.

 

Sometime around the completion of the new Legion building, in a swell of good feeling toward Sid and under pressure from the town’s mayor, the Legionnaires passed a bylaw, making Sid president for life.  It seemed like a safe bet at the time.  Sid was 88 and looked like a sickly prawn.  They gave him another year, tops.  Sid fooled them, though, and clung to life with his gnarled hands.  In the last three months, though, Sid’s grasp of reality had begun to slip a little.  People overlooked the mismanaged funds and missing liquor, but after a particularly memorable bake sale in which Sid appropriated one of the parade salute rifles and fired it directly at the larger members of the Ladies Auxiliary  while removing articles of his clothing and shouting “Mooooo, cow, moooo!,” it was determined that something had to be done.  And that something had to happen soon as the annual Fourth of July barbecue and craft sale was approaching quickly.

 

Del cleared his throat and looked to Jan for encouragement.  Finding none, he spoke anyway.  “Well, it’s this president for life thing.  We just can’t get around it.”

 

“No shit.”  Surprisingly, this epithet came not from Verle, but from Millie, who was no longer using her high voice.  

Life and its relative goodness

There are few labels I actually tend to follow, clothing-wise.  In fact, I can only really name two, though one (Jimmy Choo) is far, FAR beyond my means.  The other, which I won't name in case the proprietors thereof object to my referring to them, is much more reasonable and accessible to the mainstream public.

Let me explain my devotion to the latter...  When I was living in Boston and working at a lovely theater full of lovely people, I had the good fortune to co-teach a class in improvisation.  I was sitting in on the class, preparing to eventually teach the class myself, and I was (as always) astounded by the depth of creativity in the students.  At the end of the class term, one of the students presented all of us with hats from his fledgeling casual clothing company.  He and his brother had recently gotten a contract with their first major distributor and his hopes for future success were high.  I was delighted by the present and charmed by the optimistic mission of my student's clothing line.

As the years ticked by, I saw this student's brand expand.  A hat in midtown Manhattan.  A T-shirt in Wisconsin.  A bumper sticker in Maine.  A backpack in Georgia.  This doggedly positive, relentlessly happy, fantastically upbeat person eventually invaded the national consciousness, his brand a powerful standard for people who believe that the nature of humanity is basically...well, GOOD.  And I was very happy: not only to know someone so successful, but to have been around when his lovely idea caught fire.

I still have the hat he gave me, threadbare as it may be.  Truth be told, I have innumerable products from this man's company.  The reason I continue to buy so many things from this company is because of a number of reasons.  One: I'd like to be the kind of optimist that my former student is...I'd like that very much.  Two: I believe in personal loyalty.  Three: The battered, beat-up baseball hat reminds me of the first time I discovered something I loved...teaching.  I may not be the world's best improv teacher, but I am very, very good.  Moreover, I have found that one of my greatest joys in life is watching a student exceed their own expectations.  I love being present in that moment when someone realizes they can do something they thought previously impossible.  This particular student's class was one of the first I ever had any responsibility of teaching and I was thrilled and delighted every day I came in to work with them.  Some months after receiving the hat and after this particular student left our training center to take care of his burgeoning business, I was fortunate enough to direct that group of students in their graduation show.  

Loyalty.  Optimism.  Devotion.  Learning from others.  Let's get on it, shall we?

You've got to be KIDDING me!

So, I decided to jump on another assignment one of you wonderful commenters had thrown at me...  I thought it would be a great idea to apply for a substitute teaching job now that I've settled in to my new home.  After all, I've worked in a school district office before and had seen first-hand the lack of suitable subs in that particular district.  In fact, out of grave necessity for warm bodies to fill in for absent teachers, the state of New Hampshire lowered the education requirements for substitute teachers while I was working at the district office.  They only needed candidates to have successfully graduated high school in order to sub.  No college, no degree, no teaching certificate needed.  I learned a powerful lesson a couple of days ago...  New Hampshire and Georgia are vastly different places. Duh, right?

I looked online at local counties' school district websites only to run into the same thing, over and over again: the position of substitute teacher was indefinitely closed to new applicants.  To be very honest, I was a little indignant.  I mean, being a teacher in a public school in Atlanta must be less than ideal (compared to genteel teaching appointments at, say, Phillips Exeter Academy), so being a SUBSTITUTE teacher at an inner city Atlanta school must be like combat duty.  I'm not saying that I think the kids are engaged in active war with the teachers, but having worked in a middle school in New York City, I know that kids plus crowding plus overworked teachers plus lack of funding equals chaos.  I was actually willing to volunteer to deal with the chaos.  In fact, I kind of looked forward to it.  Despite the discipline-issue kids I worked with in New York, I really loved my job.  The kids were the kind of kids that could very well turn out to be exceptional, given space and time and attention, all of which were in short supply in the tiny school that housed them.  When I was at the school, I saw what I had previously thought was only an urban teaching legend: a classroom for 14 students in what had formerly been a janitor's closet.  There were four thousand children in a building the size of my old elementary school.  Keep in mind, my old elementary school was in a town with a population under one thousand.  Going down the hallways of this middle school during class changeover was like trying to get onboard a Tokyo subway at rush hour.  

The long and short of this is, I won't be substitute teaching any time soon.  Atlanta area schools are not hiring those of us willing to go once more into the breach, so us idealists and part-time job searchers had better look elsewhere.  Which leads me to another blow...

When I look for work in between acting and teaching gigs, I always turn to temp agencies.  I've been a Kelly Girl in at least three states now and have always loved the familiarity of the temp agency routine.  Every time I applied at a temp agency, I had a job to go to the very next day.  I anticipated the same thing or something similar to happen now.  No f'in chance.  Not only is Atlanta not looking for substitute teachers, it happens to be in the middle of a wave of massive joblessness, so there are no temp positions and very few permanent positions to be had.  Damn.  I picked the WRONG DAMN TIME to graduate from grad school.

So, folks, what do I look for now? 

Trail

First of all, it's been harder to do the not buying anything thing than I previously imagined...  I had broken earbuds and couldn't listen to the televisions mounted on the elliptical machines at the Y, so I asked my husband to buy me some.  THAT was cheating, and I admit that.  Then, I went to the grocery store and realized that I had inadvertently purchased a magazine.  Okay, it didn't JUMP into my hands, it didn't sneak onto the checkout counter, it didn't cajole me into taking it home, but I bought it with the same thoughtless detachment that allowed me to amass a shocking collection of sundresses at the beginning of the summer.  Shocking, I tell you, how sundresses can just pile up.

I've been housebound most of the past week, solely because I feel paralyzed by the daunting task of finding temporary employment.  I don't even really want meaningful employment anymore, just something mindless, short and lucrative.  Or, if not lucrative, then at least something with a regular paycheck so that I can feel like I am doing something productive.  God, grant me productivity.  I'm a hot mess without it.

Yesterday, I went hiking with a friend.  Driving out to pick him up, I felt surprisingly content for the first time in over a month.  I was out of the house, I was on my way to do something with a friend and it struck me that this is what happiness has become to me now.  Has my life shrunk to such a small thing or is it just simplicity asserting itself?

We had planned on a short hike...more just a walk through the woods.  I had dressed stupidly for anything other than a leisurely stroll through a mall.  Jeans, for God's sake...I wore JEANS to hike in the humid Georgia air.  At least I remembered my hiking boots.  Thank goodness for that.  My friend insisted that the Kennesaw Mountain visitor's center was just a short walk away from the Illinois memorial on the battlefield (battlewoods?  battleglade? battleglen?), so we took the trail, visions of ice cold soda and gift shop tchotchkes in my head.  When we got to a road, I noticed that there was a sign that said "Visitor Center, 4mi" and started to think that maybe we had been wildly optimistic in our plan of taking a nice walk to an air conditioned park building followed by creamsicles and the purchasing of keychains.  It was not to be.  The 4 miles went up, up, up.  Atop the first clear rise, my friend looked at me and said "I messed up.  We're on Little Kennesaw Mountain.  And we're about to go up Kennesaw."  As with all things in my life, I realized that there is no way out but through.  Plus, I'm not a quitter.  If there's an end to the road I happen to be walking on, I will see it through no matter what the obstacle.  And here's the thing about my 10-plus mile mistaken double mountain hike in jeans: I loved it.  Sure, we were tired and covered in sweat.  Sure, we had to run back to the car to retrieve it before the park service had it towed.  Sure, it was way longer than I had anticipated.  Regardless, I loved it.

The past two summers, I have been hiking mountains with mixed success while employed at the single greatest job ever in the history of the world (Improv Acadia...look it up).  It was this summer that I realized just how much hiking suits me.  I love running, but I don't do races to win, just to see if I can finish them.  Similarly, I hike because I want to see if I can make it to the top.  And, because I'm pathologically unable to give up something I have committed myself to doing, I never turn back, even when it would have been wiser if I had.  Consider my ill-advised solo hike up Cadillac Mountain's West Face...in the rain.  I crawled on my hands and knees and belly up that trail, emerging on the summit with bloody hands, soaked through, crying.  But I damn well made it up that bitch trail.  Because I said I would.  Because I started it.  Because it was there.  Plus, like running, I like the accumulation of miles.  The only other times I have experienced such a gleeful tallying of miles was when I was on camp-sponsored canoe trips.  Ten miles of river is to ten miles of trail is to ten miles of urban asphalt...  The more milage I accrue, the happier I get.  For me, most definitely, the journey IS more important than the destination.  Especially considering the fact that the visitor center at Kennesaw turned out not to have creamsicles at all.

A $2.99 Breach of Promise

I am big enough to admit when I do shit that I have promised not to do.  Believe me.  And so, I feel it necessary to inform you that I went against my last post today to purchase a $2.99 colander.  Though my husband and I have been gifted with innumerable kitchen gadgets, for some reason, no one thought of ever giving us a decent-sized colander.  Consequently, I have been inexpertly draining things through a colander I bought at Ikea a billion years ago that's cute, but was designed to drain tiny single person meals like sad single servings of macaroni.  Which I used to eat in the dark, sitting on my kitchen counter and wondering why I didn't care more about the Olympics.  Also, since my husband likes to make "normal person pasta" (wheat-based) which I cannot eat due to my wheat allergy (forcing me to buy "sucks to be you" rice pasta), I worried that tiny bits of his wheaty, poisony pasta was still clinging to the itty bitty colander, waiting like so many molecular ninjas to attack my digestive system.

So, in the name of my small intestine and larger cooking abilities, I broke my "don't buy anything new for a month" rule.  I feel justified.  The exception proves the rule, doesn't it?  Oh, and I should let you know that I keenly regretted offloading all of my parmesan graters because the new recipe I tried tonight called for grated parmesan.  I had to buy pre-grated.  Shame on me.

ENOUGH!

I just moved.  A short move, but a move, nonetheless.  I am married to a lovely man whose largest fault, in my opinion, is the vast amount of THINGS he has been able to accumulate in his young life.  We moved from a large two bedroom apartment into a very tiny, yet adorable, one-bedroom apartment.  Here's the issue: it is impossible to live in said adorable apartment alongside my husband's prodigious collection of rare board games, Star Wars (tm) themed Christmas tree ornaments and parmesan cheese graters (at one point, we had FIVE).  For days before our move and some days afterward, I cajoled my husband to offload some of his stuff.  Okay, I cried and screamed a lot, too.  I felt like I was drowning under a vast wave of useless junk, collected in some weird effort to make our lives into something other than what they were.  We had a yard sale.  We took carloads of things to Goodwill.  We gave stuff away.  We even left some things in our old apartment because a friend without much in the way of furniture was subletting from us.  Still, we had a lot to move.  

It was only after moving in and beginning the process of unpacking that I realized just how much useless stuff of my own I had held onto over the years.  I have several framed photos I kept, despite the fact that both my photographic eye and equipment have improved vastly since I took those point and shoot snaps of the Nubble Point Light House.  I had a number of items of clothing I have never worn, with the price tags still on them.  Granted, I wasn't the one who had managed to collect approximately six silicone barbecue basting brushes or matching margarita and martini glasses, but still...  I was part of the problem.  Moreover, I saw the random crap I've kept as an almost unpardonable waste of money.  Sure, that brocade coat was marked down 75%, but is it still a bargain if I never wore it?  Hell, no.

Another thing that occurred to me was the fact that most of the "stuff" I'd yelled at my husband for keeping had been given to him (to us) by well-meaning people who had no earthly idea of what our day to day lives were really like.  Our stuff spoke of a life of endless entertaining, parties, sushi cookery, scrapbooking, book clubs, opera going and presumptive travel to exotic locations.  And, if the sheer number of our cheese graters is any indication, a life almost entirely devoted to the grating of parmesan cheese. In reality, we've lived in tiny apartments barely able to accommodate ourselves, let alone guests.  We've lived on excruciatingly tight budgets as we've navigated the challenging economy of graduate school and have travelled only to visit family or when grant money provided for a research trip or conference attendance.  We don't cook as often as we should, and the only books we've really had the time to read have been for our classes.  I love the people who have given us well-meaning gifts, but at a certain point, we needed to say "Look, this is who we ARE.  Stop throwing money away on presents for who we are NOT."

So what I propose to do is not buy a damn thing for the next month and, if it works, stretch that even farther.  We will, of course, buy food and hygiene products (the world would hate us if we didn't) and I will knuckle under if I need to buy something to help me secure gainful employment.  But I will not buy a dress if it looks cute.  I have enough.  I will not buy a book if it looks interesting.  I have a library card.  I will not buy the complete series DVD collection of "The Golden Girls."  I will have cable shortly and it's on endless rotation.  I don't NEED much.  I already HAVE plenty.  I just didn't realize how much I actually had that made me happy until now.

As a sidebar, I think I may have signed up to show some of my photographs at an art show.  If that turns out to be true, I will have to buy supplies to mat and frame the photos, but I consider that to fall under the gainful employment banner.  Also, I will probably be pooping myself in terror.  Updates to follow.