This summer has not been worthy of my youth!

...Although both  are fleeting.

I had a mini-cryfest yesterday as I drove "home" (read: whatever couch I am staying on this week in the metro area) from Marshall.  While I thought it was a reaction to the lack of all things interesting in my world or perhaps a reaction to a wedding rumor I had heard earlier that weekend, after rambling through tears to my mom (because she's the best to do that to), I finally realized it!  I HAVEN'T HAD ENOUGH FUN THIS SUMMER.  I have written and illustrated a book and written a couple of plays and directed a couple of shows and done a bunch of yoga and gotten some thesis research done and paid off some debt and went to bed early and gotten at least 6 hours of sleep everynight...but I haven't had enough fun.  

5 years ago, during my final Duluthian year, I had a buddy named Justin.  He was (and is still) gorgeous and we had a very interesting connection.  We were fun buddies.  We were two people who had a lot more responsibility than those around us, who took ourselves too seriously, and who were turning into crabby assholes as a result.  One day at work (we worked together) when I was significantly crabbier than he, he said the prophetic phrase, "Nik, you're no good without any fun."  We both had a light bulb moment and decided we both deserved much more fun and went about doing just that...which being the overachievers that we were, we really excelled at.  

Last night I had to say to myself again, "Nik, you're no good without any fun."  

I have three weeks to make up for it.  Think I can do it?

I haven't been to yoga in a week.

I bet I'll feel like this when I get done today.

I have great friends.

This girl just spent 5 hours shooting and photoshopping Hooferjackal for FREE for me so that I could maintain artistic control on the final product.  Long story.  But I appreciate her.  Thank  you, Megan!!!

My brother's birthday

I found this image on postsecret, my new favorite website (thank you, Chrissy!) but it seemed poignant right now.  

Chris turned 33 yesterday.  He is in Kuwait and feeling bored as his unit is out on missions and he is stuck on base due to seniority issues, I think.  I know that he is coming home, so I'm pretty okay with it, but last week my family lost someone.

20 year old James Wertish was killed over a week ago in Iraq.  His dad rents our farm, his mom does my grandma's hair, his family is interwoven with mine on many levels--I have never met him.  I still mourn him though.  Perhaps because his death made it real to me, this ridiculous non-stop war, or perhaps at the futility and tragedy of it all, I'm not sure.  

My grandma told me that his mother had just received a thank note a few days before his death from him.  She had sent him a box of monster cookies because he was homesick and he had enjoyed the surprise.  It's just freaking sad.

So, Brother, be safe!  Wherever you are, happy birthday.  I miss you like crazy.

A Teeny Tiny Publication but I'll Take it!

http://grad.mnsu.edu/research/grc/journal.html

At long last, the Graduate Research Conference that I presented at this winter has posted its first volume and my paper is in it! I am the second article listed. Read it if you have 20 minutes-ish! It is called: Big, Bigger, Biggest: The Social Implications and Portrayal of Overweight Women in Contemporary Theatre.

I have been working on this bit of research for about a year and a half and I don't think I will ever really be done with it. It's become a secret obsession/passion of mine and I'm okay with it. I'm a nerd like that. Research is my babydaddy.

Plato's Symposium on Love...or the Hedwig theory

After Ben and I broke up in February, I spent a lot of time watching "Hedwig and the Angry Inch".  A LOT of time.  So much time in fact, that it is reasonable to blame my first non-A of grad school (in Dialects of all classes!) on the charmingly tragic transsexual.  I had a small obsession with the song "Origin of Love" which then lead me to actually reading Plato's symposium which the song is based on...and which coincidentally is printed in the back of the script--although JCM made some may-jah edits upon more research.  Anyway, the whole theory is that we were once all connected and made as 2-headed, 4-legged people who were naturally born to be together and complete each other.  Then we pissed off Zues and he threw lightning at us and split us in two and now we are all sad lonely 2 legged people, looking for our other half.  Come to think of it, sounds like Shel Silverstein's "Missing Piece" too....

Anyway, after careful consideration, I've decided that if anyone is my yin that it's gotta be Lex.  OR is that how we all feel about our "children"?  

But then again, I'm not exactly sure I buy any of this Plato stuff.  It could've been the grieving talking all that time...

And here's the new cover of Hooferjackal!  Coming soon to an amazon.com to you!

What I've Learned from Yoga--Two Month Anniversary

Two months today, 14 classes taken of hot yoga, which allegedly burns 800 calories a class....And I don't look like that chick above yet.
But in the last two weeks, I DO feel like HER when I do it.
And I have achieved to some degree or at least once every position on this chart with some sort of form and mastery.  (Second to bottom row, third one in from left to right is totally missing from my rep and I am really okay with that.  I can headstand now, for fuck's sake! I'm happy!)

Some revelations I've had through the sweat:

1.  Dancing has nothing to do with yoga.  Being good at one does not mean you are automatically good at the other.

2.  The first time you see your shins dripping rivers of sweat makes you realize that you've never REALLY sweat before.

3.  Some people are really happy completely nude.  And those people all go to hot yoga class.  After two months in the dressing rooms of Corepower Yoga studios across the metro, I feel like a connoisseur of naked women.  They are everywhere, with all kinds of curves and comfort and coiffing choices.  It used to make me really uncomfortable, but I had a huge breakthrough this week when I was able to respond to a completely naked woman greeting me as I too was topless.  Felt good.  In the freeing sense, that is.

4.  I feel strong.  I do not feel flexible.  This is opposite to how I feel in every other work out medium.  

5.  Yoga has become a sort of church for me.  It starts with cleansing breaths and intention setting, you then work so hard you could cry and you sweat until you think there's nothing left of you, and then you meditate together.  Finally every one says "Namaste" to each other.  Kinda like "Amen", no?  Well, for me, former Catholic school girl who renounced the Church almost 15 years ago, I have found myself praying a lot lately.  Maybe because it reminds me of India, maybe because at least two times a week someone asks me to think about a higher power, maybe because I am back in a place where I have total faith in the greater power...whatever it is...I like it.

6.  Did I mention the naked chicks yet?

Namaste...

Darwinian? REALLY?

As many of you know, I have nannied for baby genius (now child genius) Lex for almost three years of his four years of life. I love him. Sometimes I think this is my shot at parenthood.

Other times, not so much.

Today was one of those days.

Lex is naughty. He is as socially underdeveloped as he is intellectually overdeveloped. (Yes, he does algebra now and is reading at a 5th grade level. He also speaks some Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Greek and Arabic due to his schooling at the International School of Minnesota. This has inspired him to make up his own alphabet which he calls "Silly Canadian speak" known in his actual language as "Suklanterninowenowe"...I can only imagine this is how Tolkein started Elvish.)

Anyway, yesterday he went on a rampage at kindegarten camp and destroyed a bunch of "block-creations" his classmates made. He wouldn't apologize to the teacher and so I took him home and we talked about it and he agreed to apologize today. He was ready. He fundamentally understood why it was a mean thing to do.

We walked in today and found Ms. Lindsay and I said, "Lex has something to say to you." I nudged him a little and he finally says, "I'm sorry I broke the block creations but my dad says school is Darwinian and sometimes it's okay to break stuff." Both of our jaws drop. I ask Lex what Darwinian means. As if reading a dictionary he promptly says, "Survival of the fittest!" I ask him what survival of the fittest means. Silence.

Rage. I feel rage. His father is training him to disrespect and belittle teachers. How is a 4 year old going to respond to being told it's okay to break stuff by his dad? How is a teacher going to be able to trump a parent's advice while still having to control a room of 12 other 4 year olds at the same time? How is a teacher going to deal with some little robot regurgitating a parent's lame scientific excise for why their kid is a little jerk sometimes? This is ridiculous.

I inform Lex that his dad is wrong and reminded him that when I was around, I was in charge. I told him that in fact, school was intended to be Utopian and not Darwinian and that I would explain that to his dad today. (Big words tend to impress Lex into your way of thinking as a general rule.) We tried the apology again. It went better. We then went around to the other kids whose feelings and creations he had hurt and apologized to them as well.

As I was leaving, his teachers thanked me for staying to handle that situation. As I was leaving, Ms. Lindsay said to me, "His dad sure isn't helping him make any friends, is he?"

I came home and wrote an e-mail that, while it wasn't as strongly worded in defense of teachers everywhere as I had originally wanted to, still got the point across.

In this Darwinian experiment, let's hope that ethics and love trump elitist tendencies as the "fittest." Let's hope even harder that I still have a job tomorrow...

More Virgin Territory....

This research just keeps getting weirder and crazier and creepier and lovelier by the day... Writing this play is definitely one of the biggest ideas I have ever had...

Here's hoping I pull it off!  ...10 months to showtime...

I lack total motivation

Usually I don't.  Really.  But I cannot make myself work on Hooferjackal to save my life.  I don't think I've touched a drawing in 5 days.  I have been spending my hours researching instead.  What is it about this book that I cannot work on?  Maybe because I feel like I'm done with it as far as I can get it.

BUT!  Then I should be working on Virgin Territory or Rikkie Recycle, right?  I think about them constantly and am writing notes on them in every random notebook I have and alas...they still remain unwritten.  What the hell?

This hasn't been a fun summer.  Or a get skinny or rich quick summer.  It hasn't been a summer of falling in love.  This is supposed to be a productive summer dammit!  What's wrong with me?