Porcupine Babies: Does it Hurt?

Fleas

It’s amazing how much one little aspect of life can affect everything else. We’re so like the little wooden blocks of Jenga we used to play with as kids. Move one wrong brick and the whole tower first wibbles, then wobbles, then comes crashing to the floor in a cacophony of clattering wooden blocks.

I don’t know if it was the terrible noise of that game or the constant pressure of trying to finagle a block out of its rightful place to add to the towering height that bothered me so much, but the prospect of playing Jenga seriously stressed me out as a child. That being said, I was addicted and would play time and again, reveling in the alarm coursing through my body. Oh how things change.

But back to the point. Fleas, if you hadn’t guessed from a previous post, have been a keystone element in my time spent in Tennessee. My legs itch, my arms itch, my torso itches, my scalp itches. In fact, every time I washed my hair, I would wash scabs off the bites on my head and bleed. If you haven’t noticed, blood+water=LOTS OF BLOODY WATER. After a shower where I washed my hair, the bathtub looked a little like a reenactment of that scene from Psycho. Perhaps I exaggerate, but seriously. Fleas.

So I’m going to blame it on the fleas that I haven’t really been enjoying my time here yet. It’s hard to make friends at orientation when all you want to do is rip off your pants because the fabric is causing every inch of your leg to itch. Okay, maybe that move would have made me some friends, but I doubt they’d be the kind of people I actually want to be friends with.

And it’s hard to enjoy your bike ride to work when the tickle of the wind and the heat of the sun on your arms make the bites on your arms itch to the point where you want to forget to steer (or hold on to either handle) and just rip at your forearm with your nails.

Not to mention that everything is harder when you’re tired, which you constantly are because you constantly have to locate the Cortizone Cream (your new trusty bedfellow) to rub all over your body every minute of every hour of every night.

This flea problem has tainted my stay in Tennessee. But this Wednesday, my landlady brought in professional exterminators. We haven’t seen a flea since, and it’s Friday. Fingers crossed.

One thing I can’t blame on the fleas, however, is my work situation. After the abysmal drivers’ course on Monday, our actual jobs started. Imagine! It only took six days to get to the actual work part! (I shouldn’t complain. I was getting “paid” to play on ropes courses and untie human knots. This probably will not happen again until I become a kindergarten teacher. (Because that’s in the works…).)

But when work started for me, instead of learning the ropes of volunteer coordinating, I got to clean up and reorganize the (rather large) office we all share. There’s ten times too much furniture than we need in there, half the equipment from the farm has somehow managed to wander its permanent way into our closet space, and Every Single Dish that we used during our six days of orientation, unwashed, was stored in crates, baskets, and boxes, without rhyme or reason, hidden throughout the mess.

You could barely walk from one desk to another without knocking something over, crushing something beneath your feet or contorting your body to a funny angle to avoid either situation.

I was put on cleaning duty with one other AmeriCorps member, and we washed, organized, recycled, threw out, shuffled and cursed the objects in our office for three days. On Wednesday I spent probably three straight hours washing dishes.

So while I had work, I had no real work. It was frustrating to see how much there needed to be done, and how little good it could actually do the functionality of the office. We’ve finally gotten it to the point where you can walk around pretty freely, and although it still sets no cleanliness standards, most of the rotting honey comb, bug-bitten dried peppers and crusty stew pots whose origins no one remembers, are gone.

I say most.

You can never tell what’s going to be under the next pile.

I finally started my volunteer coordinating, however. A little yesterday, then more fully today. It’s interesting, and I’ve found I like making appointments and writing things down in a planner, but I reserve judgment until I can really get into it. But I have to point out, I found three more boxes of mason jars which need to be washed before my dish duties are officially done.

As you might imagine, things have been getting me a bit down lately. I’m grateful to have a job, and I’m especially grateful that I think this job will do other people good as long as I do it to the best of my abilities. That notwithstanding, I haven’t done too too much smiling lately.

Food Sharing

It has become a sort of joke in my family that I’m not a good food-sharer. The term, I think, probably comes from an episode of the Dog Whisperer; my family officially likens me to one of the psychotic dogs that, when it has food, will attack even its own foot should the little bugger sneak up on the food bowl and try to get a taste.



I seriously hope I’m not as scary as all that, but when it comes down to it, I don’t like to share my food. I bake banana bread with my sister and won’t invite anyone over to my house until the smell of baking is gone and the evidence of our efforts is hidden safely away in the fridge. I seriously contemplate whether refraining to reciprocate an offer of exchanged bites with the person I’m eating with is actually rude or not. I bury my leftovers in the back of the fridge so people won’t be tempted to pilfer them by their presence.

I’m not a good food sharer.

There are a few exceptions. I share freely with my sister, mother and father. I don’t blink an eyelash at giving whole loaves of bread to my high school friends. They can even drink my coffee if they want. A key bonding moment in my relationship with one of my best friends from college was when we split un-baked brownie mix for the first time—a delicacy with which my friend had never before been acquainted. But those are the exceptions to my rule of non-sharing.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but it takes an incredible amount of time invested in friendship, as well as an unbreakable bond of familial proportions, to allow me to share food without hesitation with you. You’re not alone if I hesitate in giving you a bite of my food. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you—I can pretty much guarantee that I do—it just means that we haven’t gotten to that point in our relationship yet.

So how is it that this guy I met just under a year ago is free to take the yellow-dyed chicken right off my plate of Singapore noodles? To share dumplings with me, and split a chocolate tower of chocolate doom chocolate cake with no danger of puncture by my three-tined fork?

Because he’s the type of person to drive from Texas to New York and make an overnight stop in Tennessee to see me.



I had the great pleasure of having one of my best friends in the wide world come to visit me yesterday. He’d planned this in advance, I’d known he was coming for a week and a half, but when he showed up in front of my house, I was floored. Utterly taken aback by the fact that he’d come to visit me. Here. In Tennessee.

Nothing against Tennessee or anything, but there’s really not much to see here. Unless of course you’re stopping in Graceland (where I fully expect to encounter Paul Simon paraphernalia rather than Elvis….) But he stopped here anyway.

Having him here for the evening was like Christmas. You know it’s coming, but you’re completely blown away at how special the day is when it actually arrives, and then it’s over with all too soon.

I met his mother, we went to dinner, we took a walk by the Tennessee River, came home; he played banjo, sang, broke out the guitar, sang. We laughed and hugged and talked for hours. We looked up whether baby porcupines are as painful to give birth to as one might imagine (their spines, by the way, start out soft, though they harden within the first thirty minutes of life). We watched a few shows and laughed and hugged and talked some more. I may have slept a total of three hours before I had to go to work, but I would have paid a price ten times that for the amount of happiness his visit brought me. Spending those hours with my dear friend put my petty complaints about fleas and strange work-lack-of-work into perspective, because when there’s something that good in your life, nothing can really be all that bad.

Thank you for coming to visit, friend. You have no idea what it meant to me. And although it wasn’t intended as tangible proof of my love at the time, just remember. I let you eat one of my yellow dyed shrimp.

Waste of a Day

As promised, here is my Monday Defensive-Driver-Course update.

It took over an hour to get started. After twenty minutes of taking a mock test to show how little we knew (although we passed it?), we took a half hour break. We talked for another twenty minutes about unfair tickets and took another break. Watched a bit of video, had an hour and a half lunch. Chatted about filling up the gas tank while in a CAC vehicle, took another mock-test, took a break.

We took more break time than "class" time, the instructor was out of the room taking phone calls 80% of "class" time, and we got out an hour and forty five minutes early because we ran out of stuff to do.

Waste. Of. Day.

In other news, Misha Collins is my new hero:

Chronicles of an Amateur Gardener

I apologize for the lack of pictures. I assure you, I have them ready to upload, but blogger doesn’t seem to want to let me. This always seems to be the problem.



One might say that my life has become, more or less, entirely about food. Over the winter of my senior year, I applied to and was accepted into AmeriCorps, more specifically a CAC project in Tennessee. I was hired to work as a volunteer coordinator on a sustainability and education farm. Yep. Farm. As in, entirely about food. My food-centric view of the universe, much cultivated by Mim, is finally justified.

What do I know about farming, you ask? Funny. I often ask the same thing. Basically, I know nothing about farming, but I’m enthusiastic, I like the environment and I like being outside, doing hard labor. Sounds good to me. I’ll learn!

Most people in the program focused on environment, sustainability, city planning, etc. in their college careers. When we went down the line telling everyone “a little about ourselves” in orientation, I stuck out like a sore thumb when I said, “Art history. Art restoration. Writing. Whatever.” There are a few of us in the program—English, theatre, art, so I’m in good company. But why am I here?

Well, I’ve been answering that question a lot lately. My boss asked me, my peers, family, friends. So take a look.

• AmeriCorps has an early application.

Places of business, never underestimate the value of an early application period. You’ll get fabulous applicants like me. The people who not only like to, but have a deep-seated need to plan ahead, get on top of things, and have all things done early. This characteristic is often accompanied by an almost inhuman drive to want to excel in whatever job we hold.

• AmeriCorps does Good.

That’s not like the “does well” all you grammar Nazis are rolling around in your mouths, considering. No. AmeriCorps does Good Deeds. And we all need a few of those stacked in our back pockets. Call it a trump card to be played at the Second Coming, call it Karma, call it whatever you like. I call it my duty as a Christian, and I also call it a lot of fun. I can’t think of a better thing to do with a year of my life than dedicate it to a place that grows fresh fruits and vegetables for food kitchens and teaches children about the planet.

• (And, as if “Good” isn’t good enough) AmeriCorps gives me the opportunity to spend a year outside.

I love academics. I love writing papers, thinking and questioning, reading, speaking, and problem solving. Learning ROCKS. But nothing says that all learning has to be done inside, which is what every college, even a college as cool as mine, seems to think. I need a year of the sun on my face, rain in my hair and dirt under my fingernails to tell me once and for all if I want to continue in the world of academia or try a different route. That being said, I’ve already applied to grad schools and have my heart set on attending, so….

I still feel like this is an important step that I needed to take at this point in my life.


I’ve been in Tennessee for a little over two weeks now. Life has alternated between being quite full and fulfilling, and being filled with obscene stretches of having nothing to do. See statement above about baking. I spent nearly six hours one day making butternut squash bread. Just because I could.

Most of the obscene stretches of having nothing to do came in my first week here, before my job actually started. There has been the occasional adventure, however.

Adventure 1: Fleas.

We have them. In our house. It’s through no fault of our own. They were here when we moved in.

Think that’s not an adventure? There are bloody, itchy, bruised bumps all over my body (every adventure has to have its fair share of bumps and bruises). We have the meeting of local fauna (an adventure-staple). There is the bombing, then re-bombing, then RE-re-bombing of my house involved in the battle to rid said house of fleas (poisonous-gas-bombs, it’s just an alternate spelling of a-d-v-e-n-t-u-r-e).

SPOILER: I lose the battle.

Fleas, it seems, pick a single person in the house to torment over all others. Lucky me, I smell like Christmas dinner to these guys. After the first two nights here, I had over eighty bites on my arms, legs, and torso. The worst was probably next to my bellybutton (my bellybutton=super sensitive for some reason), but that one didn’t bruise over and bleed like the others, so I suppose it’s debatable.

Here’s how the meeting of local fauna went:

Me: *Drags every piece of flea-infested-soft-furniture from house to curbside for trash pickup*
Local in car 1: You gettin’ rid of that? (Here read heavy southern accent).
Me: Yep. But you don’t want it. It’s got fleas.
Local in car 1: You SURE?
Me: Yep. I wouldn’t be getting rid of it otherwise. So I guess I’m sure.
Local in car 1: … *Drives away*
TWO MINUTES LATER
Local in car 2: You throwin’ that out?
Me: Yeah, we’ve got fleas.
Local in car 2: Mind if I take it?
Me: …It’s got fleas.
Local in car 2: You SURE?
Me: o.O You DON’T WANT IT. There are FLEAS.
Local in car 2: Like, how bad? Real bad?
Me: I’m THROWING IT AWAY!
Local in car 2: Well, what about the pillers? All I need’re the pillers.
Me: FLEAS!
Local in car 2: …Have a nice day…. *drives away still eyeing the goods*

This conversation went on three more times before I finished bringing everything down to the curb. I finally wrote a giant black sign with the word “FLEAS” on it and left it on the furniture overnight.

In the morning, I noticed that the garbage, which had already gone, had not picked up the furniture. However, the couch was missing. I went to work, thinking I’d deal with a large-trash-pickup call when I came home, and when I got back, the chair was gone. I ate dinner and looked out the window, and the love seat was gone too.

Well, thanks, local fauna, for taking my flea-infested furniture off my hands and not making me pay for its removal. But seriously. I hope you don’t end up itching as badly as I do for your mistake.

Now, to bombing. Let me tell you a little something about bombing. You vacuum everything, and I mean EVERYTHING before you bomb. You set up a bomb in the middle of a room, one to each room, and set it off from the back of the house forward, holding your breath as you go. The spray gets on your hands, face and hair, in your nostrils and everywhere in between. You run for it, leave the house for three hours or more, then come back, open windows and vacuum everything yet again, all whilst hacking and coughing because of remaining fumes. As if that’s not enough, one out of every six bombs we’ve set off has not worked, so we have to re-bomb and leave for at least another three hours.

It’s a pain. And it’s ineffective.

In short, I itch.

Outside of the fleas, there’s not much news. I’ve tried some local cuisine, including eating at the Blue Plate, a local restaurant that doubles as a radio station. You eat your delicious turkey avocado sandwich while you watch lovely live music playing for the radio. There’s nothing more charming than a big band of people with banjos laughing and singing as you munch your last bit of avocado.

Work began a week ago, and while it’s mostly been indoor orientation I’ve gotten to do a little work on the farm as well. I worked for about six hours on Saturday (today) to get “bank time” (also known as comp time to the normal world). I’ve got a brand new shiny pair of work gloves (I should say they were new. After a few hours of weeding, they’re not so shiny anymore) and a pair of work boots (also no longer shiny, but through the miracle of Gore Tex, at least dry) and am quite content with the fact that I’ll get to spend time working outside.

Fun fact though. When you have brand new gloves and wear them for six hours while it’s raining, they dye your hands bright yellow. After much washing, I’ve managed to get it to be just my fingernails that are yellow. But now I get to go to church tomorrow, reach out my hand at the sign of peace and look at my fellow parishioners’ faces as they look at my hands, which look like they’re the victims of a wicked and contagious fungal infection.

Now for an evening of watching scary movies and crocheting, a favorite pairing of mine. But just wait for a Monday update about my mandatory attendance at a defensive driving course. (Those of you who know me even marginally will hopefully find this as hilarious as I do, as I cannot drive, nor have ever driven.)