One of my favorite Austin blogs, Hipstercrite, written by Lauren, posted about five and ten year goals as revisited by someone past the ripe age of 25. This makes me hyperventilate a little. Here at the house-sitting house, where there is cable, I fall into the trap of watching HGTV. On these home buying shows, perfectly composed nearly-30's purchase townhouses for half a million dollars and look like they walked out of a Talbots catalog. I missed the instruction manual on how to be that perfect. I still dream about the perfect pair of boots to wear to a concert to not get my toes stepped on while still looking feminine. Not cardigans with rosettes.
At 26, I've had to do a lot of restructuring of my long term goals as I realize some of my initial goals, like, marrying a millionaire so I can be an agoraphobic eccentric novelist, are not going to pan out. How does a person make goals when they keep changing? With Lennon telling me all about his explorations of DC these past few days, it's had the effect of reminding me how much I would love, love, love to run the education program at a museum. Like, say, one of the fifty thousand Smithsonians up in DC, (and I'd love to live there again). If I could get to that position, and write for some (any!) publication, and have a closet full of pretty shoes, and a garden that actually produces a tomato, I'd like to think I'd feel accomplished in life.
But, if I ever should get engaged again, that could throw a wrench in things - having to accommodate a husband's career and what not. Sounds like a hassle! I really do want children, but I certainly see enough of them during the day, and when they start to get cranky I send them home, (like today! goodness kids get cranky when you ask them to clean things as a service project), and then I can go spend my take home pay on a new dress instead of baby things. I'm O.K. with this arrangement at present. That, and coming home to Bella.
I consistently have the nagging feeling that I've done everything wrong - I didn't go to the right college, I didn't choose the right major, I didn't take the right career path, I didn't focus with the right intensity, I shouldn't have bought a house so soon, I shouldn't have been so stubborn in that argument, etcetcetc. Too many decisions and too many possibilities often overwhelm my thought process.
My only real peace with this is to tell myself that no matter where I've been or what I've done, I have to focus on actively putting myself on the path I want to be on - sometimes this means getting up earlier than I would like. Getting to write for real publications is the right path - I know this like some people know they have soul mates, or love mashed potatoes. I know I needed to leave Arkansas for a while and be on my own, although the "on my own" part I'm just now getting to. My biggest regret is not having more confidence when I was younger. I always thought I was too young to do something well, and as I got older, I thought I was aging too quickly to do anything significant. I'm learning to shake both of these beliefs.
I'm not the only person who devotes a large part of my thinking to questions about being wrong - Kathryn Shulz of Slate is writing a series of Q&A's about people's relationships with being wrong. Recently she interviewed Anthony Bourdain, and I love him, so I wanted to share a couple of my favorite snippets from the interview.
"Travel has made me more optimistic. I believe now that for the most part, the world is filled with people doing the best they can under the circumstances."
After a whole lot of years in New York kitchens, you're suddenly traveling almost all the time, largely overseas. In my experience, that's an incredibly good way to be wrong pretty much hourly.
It's the most exciting thing about travel to me. You're constantly wrong. You're constantly challenged by your own preconceptions. You're forced to relearn such basic, basic things. Words you thought you knew the definition for become completely changed: the word work, the word hunger, the word generosity. Or you think an entire country's going to be one way and then it's another way. I like being wrong in that respect.
I also had no idea he was a heroin addict, I suppose I should do more biographical research about my few favorite celebrities. It's nice to know if you can turn your life around from being a hard core drug addict, I can probably make a few positive modifications in my career trajectory and inability to fight nicely so that when I turn thirty I feel a little more confidant in my standing.
Other words that need new definitions: success, need, expectation, love.
The styles of these clothes look vaguely familiar... oh, maybe because they look like conceptualized versions of what I always cross my fingers to find in vintage and thrift stores.
There is a great article in the New York Times today about designer fashion taking its cue from the hippies and hipsters of yore, (and by yore I mean the 60's and 70's), who's bohemian pieces are now the fountain-of-youth-in-fabric... they don't age, and everyone wants them. So much, so, that designers have taken the liberty to sew replicas of these pieces and charge hundreds of dollars for them. Well, at least that takes the difficulty of digging through stuffed racks and bargain bins out of the picture, (but isn't that the fun part?).
In the article, "What's in a Label? Say it in French," the Critical Shopper, a self-proclaimed army surplus and vintage hunter enthusiast, describes her experience in Isabel Marant's very chic boutique:
"I pulled my own jeans and gray sweatshirt back on and hustled out of the store — an act of self-preservation that saved me nearly $600. Was my own wardrobe achieving parity or parody? Only my hairdresser knows for sure."
I'd say it's parody, but not on her side of the universal closet - on Fashion Week's. And everyone knows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Aw, shucks, garment district.
But seriously - if you've got $800 to blow on an embroidered tunic - hands off my $20 ebay score!
Trying to travel down closed roads for some sort of inspiration. Best to look outward, no?
It's terrible to sit down, look at a blank screen, and think, "my mind doesn't work the way it used to. It doesn't see things anymore." I've been slowly rereading my old old Live Journal to help me fall back into the routine of really writing things down like I used to. The problem with this? The invocation of self-indulgent memories, the conflict of wanting to have a mindset I used to have without being who I used to be. Is that possible? Why does it feel like everything now is about arriving at meetings on time and having enough money to pay the electric bill on time? Why is there a giant pile of receipts beside me? Why am I so stuck that it necessitates looking backward at my writing scribbles rather than trying to progress forward?
I think I've had enough for tonight. I may need to break something to validate this moment, sort of like a Jewish cup smashing? Maybe?
I found this quote in an entry, I don't even know what this song used to mean to me.
I think the bottom line here, the unspoken thing, that this silly Live Journal, that all of my silly diaries validate, is that I used to be sad. Sad like a lot of teenagers are sad, but also really sad. I worry that's offensive to some people. It shouldn't be. And I don't ever want to go back to that place again. It simply bothers me that my eyes seem to see less now than they did then. I'm not sure when I closed them, if I even did, or why every muscle in my body always feels tight as though I am, actually, squeezing myself shut. What would happen if I weren't?
Time to stop for the night, as I'm not even sure what story I'm looking for, and I'd like to end it on this:
HomeInTheHills: I'd prefer you not walk alone after dark - don't forget, the nuts are everywhere! summer long ago: even in our own family HomeInTheHills: I prefer to think of us as "interesting" and " amusing" summer long ago:aha...they go hand in hand HomeInTheHills: your puppies would say hello, but they are all snoring summer long ago: thats puppyspeak for hello HomeInTheHills: well, then, a great BIG hello from the 3 stooges
Oh goodness... another movie about a woman who's lost and subsequently sets out to find herself, writes about it, and all the spheres of Heaven align. That's two now, after Julie Powell, surely it must really be possible to do then? For every story that gets a movie made about it, there has to be thousands that aren't publicized, right?
Hard to imagine when sitting at my table, littered with receipts, bills, twenty golf pencils I emptied out of my high school backpack of unknown origins, dog hair all over the floor, running late for work trying to eat a bowl of cereal, no pay raise or extended vacation in sight, and there's always a choice to be made between writing, reading other people's writing, being social, keeping the house from rotting, and trying to do my best at work while stretching myself too thin with hobbies. Writing always loses. Saving up to travel always loses. It's easier to splurge on something that's $20 when trying to put the rest towards car payments, etc, than it is to say: I want to save up thousands of dollars for a fairy tale trip around the world that I will never have the time off or savings to take.
But that's just being cynical, right? Right?
I'm slowly reading Committed, but not for lack of loving it. Now I'll have to pick up Eat Pray Love before the movie is released.
Thank you to Tulips and Tea for the heads up about this trailer! I can't wait to see it. I already have a girl crush on Elizabeth Gilbert, Julia Roberts playing her won't help cure it.
Normally, I would describe myself as boringly healthy, and if that's all you want to know about me, then you should probably not read on, or skip ahead to the third paragraph. The only "problem" I have is chronic UTI's. Most girls have probably had at least one, but I tend to get them every other month. They are painful and sometimes make me cry, and I'm on number six or seven for the past year, (third one since moving to Austin in August).
This is super disappointing, as I was supposed to take my kids on a field trip to see a rugby game tonight, (another director is going in my stead - but I'd been looking forward to it), and tomorrow I was/am supposed to go on a field trip with our photography kids to the Blanton Museum, and Friday is the New Media Fashion Brunch. I will probably be functional thanks to the miracle OTC drug that is AZO, and the antibiotics (I'm practically on horse killing antibiotics at this point), but having the infection still wears me down physically, (I should probably be sleeping in bed right now, as opposed to laying in it).
But, in perusing the vastness of internet blogs - I found a Little Rock fashion blogger - and her blog is beautiful! When I was on my own in Little Rock, (I lived with my grandmother for a while), I first owned a house, then sold it and moved into a downtown apartment in a remodeled cathedral from the 1800's, then moved out of it to live with my then-boyfriend in an old carriage house. Most of Starr's photos are taken in and around the downtown area, which is rife with heart breakingly beautiful historic homes. The heart breaking part is that most of them have fallen into grave disrepair, and it's the "poor" section of town, so there isn't a lot of money or incentive to fix the homes. There are several streets that have been renovated and kept up, and they sell for upwards of $400,000 - $1,000,000. I know this because I helped remodel a house on E. Daisy Bates, so I'm a downtown Little Rock real estate expert (well, maybe a tiny bit).
So going through all of her photos as I lay around being infected has been making me nostalgic and sort of sad, and then I even found one with my carriage house in it:
My house is the gray two story behind her to the left.
I actually have terribly sad memories about that house, because it's where Michael and I broke up, which, clearly, was not the desired outcome when we decided to move in together. It doesn't help that I'm also a chronic second guesser. I've been reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book Committed, and she writes:
"The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word 'zwei,' which means 'two,' and the word 'zweifel,' which means 'doubt' - suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neuroses-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time."
I feel crippled in this way often. I don't know if I made the right decision by leaving Little Rock, by coming to Austin, by starting teaching, by quitting teaching, by letting my ten+ year relationship with Michael dissolve, by moving on to a new one... I know that when I made the decision to leave Little Rock, I was unhappy where I was working, I felt tied to the place I am from and like I needed a new experience, or a clean slate from all of the mistakes I had been repeatedly making. Maybe one day I will learn that physical place has no bearing on when and how we start things over. Being a seasoned army brat and bag packer, though, it's difficult to change old habits.
When I was in Little Rock a few weeks ago for my great-grandmother's funeral in Prescott, I wrote here that I feel as though I own Little Rock, in that I have a memory to impress on every part of it. Maybe my inability to let go of certain people stems from the same sentimentality.
I know that when I lived there, I tried very hard to help revive the slam poetry scene both in the adult sector and with the students I taught, but I never felt creative. The most creative I have ever felt was living in a tiny dorm in D.C., and then in my apartment in Fayetteville, AR, where I mostly made sad collages and wrote terrible poems that spoke way too much about lamp light and the train tracks that passed directly outside my window. Oddly or as an excuse, I correlate much of my stifled feelings with the time my mom died, as though I've been seeking to regain my proverbial creative footing ever since then.
In a weird way, seeing other people find the most beautiful aspects of Little Rock and be inspired by it, reminds me that I really don't own any of it all, no matter how hard my heart seems to squeeze when I think about it, see pictures of it, or suffocatingly - go back to visit.
Perhaps the bottom line here is that the only thing that ever holds a person back is themselves? I'm not sure what I am still waiting for Austin to give me, (I can hardly remember why I randomly selected it as my place of escape), but there is the sensation of a foot stepping into cold water before the rest of the body wants to follow.
Speaking of the body, Lennon just came back in with my antibiotic prescription from Walgreens. I get these so frequently that I won the prize of an ultrasound, although I don't think it will reveal anything, I'm certain I'm just unlucky. I need to go ahead and schedule that appointment, note to self.
As an almost crass-turnaround, I feel compelled to post this video with lyrics, seeing as I center half of my Little Rock nostalgia around high school crushes, college love affairs, and a good deal of mutual heart smashing. So, it fits.
Whenever the seasons change there seems to be an influx of commentary about happiness and unhappiness. Seasonal depression? The cure could be sweet potatoes, but I still like reading the words of people like Eckhart Tolle. I don't want to call him a "thinker," as this interview illustrates his views on our collective need for a paradigm shift in thinking that we are what we think. My thoughts tend to be so scattered and trivial, (I get stressed out by cups being left on the coffee table), that I certainly hope they are not the foundation of my existence. I tend to agree with Tolle, who tends to agree with the historic, basic theology of most major world religions.
"When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual, there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving, that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts. You are that depth."
"Many works that are called art these days are actually creations of the human mind trying to be clever, trying to think of something new. And so they lack the essence of true art, which is the flavor, the fragrance of that heightened state of consciousness out of which the original inspiration came. That is the essence of great art. No one knows how it gets into the work. Even the artist doesn’t know. And yet, somehow, people recognize it when it does. Somehow, they sense it. So they are not totally mad; they sense that there is something there."
Fear of not being clever is an incredible hindrance to creating - both in that it prevents the attempt at creating something, and, according to Tolle, diminishes the final product once there is an output. I'd like to think that for lent, I've been giving up fear. It's not a total success so far, but a work in progress. Maybe I need to skydive.
Or dress like a bumblebee in public. Check. (baby steps).
Dress: handmade from Parts & Labour Tee: J. Crew Tights: Target Shoes: knock-off Chucks Necklace: Etsy
Eirik and I just finished watching Julie & Julia, my third viewing, his first, and after my experience Monday night in the mustard heels, one of the most notable images in this film is Meryl Streep as Julia Child cooking in three inch platform heels (and pearls).
I read an article about the costuming of the film that said Julia Child would have more likely been found in sensible shoes with a shorter heel and that the high heels only served to help give Meryl Streep the appearance of height. But regardless of historical accuracy, it can't be denied that women of earlier eras were far more likely to be found functioning in high heels in a regular basis, and for that, I tip my absent hat to them.
In college, after moving out of the dorm into my own apartment, I made all of my own bread from scratch. One night, my friend Lela came to help, and we decided we were going to bake the bread in heels, red lipstick, and pearls. I wore my best 60's scarf to compliment the ensemble, which included the jeans I ripped a giant hole in when I tripped over my own foot in the senior parking lot in high school and fell on my face, (in front of boys, which should definitely be mentioned here, in a public forum). We aren't going to talk about the bangs.
Moving right along...
In the extra features of the film, one of the directors talked about how Julia Child always viewed herself as a teacher, rather than a writer. Several of my co-workers have mentioned my continuous talk about my past three years as a classroom teacher and my identification as a teacher versus my new position, and of course I started making comparisons between myself and the woman I admire.
At one point, in the film itself, Julie Powell compares herself to Julia Child in that they were both secretaries, married to nice men, etc... and it turned my mind to thinking about mirrored lives.
Eirik and Lennon both tease me that I like the movie so much because I am very similar to Julie Powell - melodramatic, aspiring writer who can't fathom the idea of actually being a writer, blogger, (duh), project oriented... mostly banal details that describe lots of people, but regardless of origin, I still love the film.
Most of my love stems from the idea of two women who don't start life with a certainty about where they are going or how they are going to move forward, but somehow life unfolds for them in an organic way they could not have devised or planned by scheming a certain trajectory, the way it seems everyone else I know has done.
When I look back on high school and college, (and at the dawn of the new year it seems appropriate to do so), it would seem as though everyone I knew had a strong sense of self and idea of where they were going, while I've just been drifting from one undertaking to the next. Naval ROTC, international relations, English literature, poetry, teaching, various boyfriends, cities, states... I am unsettled and unsure of where the next foothold is.
It's reassuring to know that a blind start is not the recipe (pun intended) for a disastrous finish. While I can't mirror myself on any historical or popular personage, I'd like to think that the unplanned path is not an impossible one.
And I suppose that the desired end depends greatly on how one measures success. For myself, I've always set the bar of success on a writing career and comfortable finances, neither of which I've achieved. But, knowing that Julie Powell didn't get there till her 30's, and Julia Child till her 40's or 50's, let's me know I have plenty of time, and that's a comforting thought. Especially when Facebook inundates my news feed with marriage and baby announcements, a proclamation of semi-solidified paths that make me feel even more fluid and unstable. But this is not reality, and my fluid path will allow me to hedge my own way about things, or at least that's one of the things I hope for 2010. That, and more movies I love to watch on repeat.
I'm getting close to finishing The Shadow Kingby Sidra Stone, and I'm beginning to realize how much it's getting under my skin, in (I hope) a positive way.
This morning I had to get up early because the pastor of the church I have been attending was coming over to do introductions and discuss membership. I had asked my roommates to pick up their messes before morning arrived, because I don't like the idea of a guest walking into a dirty space. Especially a small dirty space, because that makes the gross ten times more prominent. And gross, by definition to me, includes plates with food stuck on them in the sink, magazines laying around, dog hair forming colonies on the couches and in corners, etc. So when I came down stairs this morning, I was immediately disgruntled when I found the sink full, copies of the Austin Chronicle on an arm of the love seat, the garbage can's contents literally spilling out onto the floor, and a few particles of dust strewn about.
My immediate reaction to such a state is to get resentful and upset - first, I don't like feeling as though keeping the apartment sanitary is my duty simply because I'm the only one who enjoys cleanliness a few degrees higher than everyone else present, and then I especially hate the idea of a guest walking in and judging me/us by a messy, dog-odor infused apartment. This merited me snapping at a roommate, words were exchanged, I got mad and stormed upstairs.
I started thinking about it, and realized that it's not just the guest being here that worried me about the apartment's state, because I always like it clean. And aside from preferring clean by character, I see the state of the apartment as a reflection of my own hygiene and level of responsibility, as though a messy apartment means that I am a lazy, negligent care taker who probably doesn't bathe. When I realized that I should not see the apartment as a reflection of my own ability to be a good, well-kept girl, I relaxed.
Then I heard the sound of running water and glass dishes clanking as someone scrubbed them in the kitchen, and I relaxed even more. An exterior mess is not indicative of an inner mess, nor does it demonstrate my inability to maintain feminine responsibilities, because cleaning is not solely feminine responsibility in a shared household. Perhaps next on my reading list should be a copy of The Second Shift.
One of the things I wanted to try doing as a step towards better self-care was to see a therapist. I went this past week and it was the third time I had ever been to one, the first being my freshman year of college, my second at the beginning of my junior year of college, and then this past Wednesday. I have only been once to each session because I have never walked out of a session feeling "better," usually my feelings are more aligned with words like "exposed" and most recently, "lectured."
I have to be admit that part of the problem each time has been that I always answer the question "why are you here" with the stock response, "someone referred me," thus deflecting responsibility for being there and exhibiting a lack of desire to actually be there, even though that's not true. I felt like this especially set the tone at my most recent session, when I still refused to be honest about my desire to be there and only mentioned the recommendation that I attend from a family member.
The first time I went to therapy I sat clammed up, the second time I cried, and this time I promised myself not to do either of those things, but nonetheless found myself rendered incapable to speak freely, by what mental block I don't know - that's why I was there! - and found the hour veering into directions and topics I didn't find to be issues or worthy of talking about for that long. And it was less talking, and more lecturing about what I should and shouldn't be doing. I left feeling as though I were a weak, uncommunicative enabler. Which may be true, but those aspects would be things I would have liked to work on in therapy, not reasons to be dismissed/accept dismissal. For example, I appreciate being told that it is part of the healthy grieving process to still be angry and sad that my mother passed away, but five years after the fact, I'd like a little guidance in letting off the intensity of those emotions. But according to this therapist, I'm normal. I don't think I'll be accepting normalcy then. I'd like a little more relief than the previous five years have afforded my mentality... or I've afforded myself, I'm not sure which.
Either way, despite my love of reading psychology books, I think my taste for visiting psychologists has soured. I have a few ideas of where my money can be better spent.
Tonight I went to my first yoga class in Austin at Dharma Yoga. I always leave yoga feeling like an untwisted knot, so I don't know why I find it so difficult to commit to regular practice. I've practiced on and off since I was an undergraduate at Fayetteville - perhaps some sort of commitment would be a step in the right direction towards my overall health, since commitment would have been one of the "issues" I would have liked to work on with myself.
In addition to that, I'm interested in seeing a homeopathic doctor who combines life coaching with holistic therapy treatments. Stress and anxiety relief would be my priority. Perhaps I'll go and discover that homeopathy should go the way of therapists, but then I'll just get myself a massage. Which I may do first, anyway. My biggest problem there would simply be choosing one.
I strongly believe in life inspiring art inspiring art inspiring life.
I've been seeing red: in my coffee mugs and movie screens and I think it means to be bold.
I believe I am ready to map my territories on paper. Plus, I just like the word "cartographer" the same way I like "bumblebee," lascivious," and "cryptic." Welcome to the word count - computer, it's probably to time to stop worrying to the point of paralysis.
Something about May and Arkansas turning wet, lush, and green makes me want to read Henry Miller's novels or Anais Nin's journals. Charlotte gave me both Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn for my birthday several years ago, and I bought every book Anais Nin ever wrote, from her study of D.H. Lawrence to her last diary, in a used book store on Martha's Vineyard the summer after my freshman year in DC. I had to ship every one back to Arkansas in tightly packed, heavy boxes. Thank goodness for book post. I also have the diaries of Rilke I've been meaning to read, and while on Martha's Vineyard I poured over the drawings in the journal of Frida Kahlo, which wasn't mine and I've always wanted to order ever since I left and wrote "Alas Rotas" over all of the pages of my own diary from those months. I should just declare this the summer of journals and devote myself to devouring all of them.
Speaking of summer... it' can't possibly come fast enough.
While M. laments about losing an hour of sleep tonight, I am relishing the thought of having more of a DAY in the coming weeks. My desire to sleep is intimately linked with how much sunlight is in the sky - if it's dark, my body says it's night and I can't accomplish anything else except bed. Now I'll have more time after work to function.
Yesterday the south was hit with an uncharacteristic snow storm. Since it's the south and we don't have snow plows, the entire city shuts down. My school district actually closed, so I'm ok with the chicken-little reaction to inclement weather. When my family lived in Dekalb, IL (outside Chicago), I LITERALLY had to walk in two feet of snow my first week at Clinton Rosette Middle School because we had moved from Texas, didn't own a snow shovel, and the snow plows that cleared the streets had shoveled all of the snow into a mound on our driveway and we had no way to dig ourselves out. That was a long three years. We did acquire a snow shovel - after walking/trudging to the Jewel Osco to buy one.
Today, after batting the last hunks of slushy snow off the windshield of my car, I escaped renovation duties to go get my hair done. After getting highlights and lowlights, a shampoo, and a trim, my stylist began putting a mysterious powder product on my hair. It looked like baby powder and I thought it might be dry shampoo, but I'd just had my hair washed - it was still sopping wet.
The mysterious substance turned out to be this:
A hair thickening powder to add volume by Aveda. I don't know if it is this stuff or all the teasing she did to the hair on the back of my head, but it's now 12:30 at night and my hair is still looking voluminous and pouffy.
Of course D's hair looks better than mine, but when you're part chow, there's really no competition there.
Today we got our first snow storm of the year. I don't teach in district, so I have a 45 minute commute to get to work - and my district did NOT cancel!! It was the only district in that county that decided to have school. I took a look outside at 7AM, saw the snow blanketing the hill I live on, and called in a sub while feigning illness.
It's amazing how fast a day off goes by. I never did make it on my new Tony Gazelle as I had planned, but I did work on an article I would like to submit to the English Journal concerning my stance on homework. Basic premise: I don't give it because it never gets done when I do. Am I worried about the future of America's work ethic? Yes. You should be too.
I did accomplish something significant, though: the loan has finally been approved for the house I am going to renovate with my new company. Our first bank appraised it way under value, thus ensuring we would NOT have enough money to actually complete the project. And they were such dolls they had the low appraisal done two days before we were supposed to close.
Bad appraisal + immediate closing date = FUCKED and $500 earnest money gone.
Neeless to say, we switched banks. Our loan is now for $200,000, and that includes the purchase price of the house - $70,000, plus the construction money. The new appraisal is $240,000 upon completion, so ideally we will be seeing a nice turn around in six months or so. Our real estate market is semi-sheltered from the disasters going on elsewhere in the country.
Here is our salmon colored historic 1886 beauty: It is going to be a very busy spring break, summer, weekends...
Today, while sitting at my desk and evilly making my students do individual seat work, I created a long list of topics I would like to write articles about. This extensive lists includes everything from how to pay taxes, (why the hell isn’t this a class offered to everyone in high school?), to how to organize a closet, to vegetarian cooking, to how to live life fabulous, underpaid, and well invested. The result of these musings? Green Bella.
I am a first year teacher, a co-founder of a home renovation and restoration company, a dog lover, possessed by a rampant curiosity, and an obscure knowledge connoisseur.
Bella Green: portfolio? Magazine? Self-indulgent reverie? Time should tell.
