Too Much TV

It's a strange life I've been leading since I got back from Virginia.  As we all know, I've started a new job at an elementary school and my schedule is radically different.  I get off an incredibly exhausting day of work at 2:00, make dinner around 3:00 (no joke) and then find myself at a total loss for how to spend my time afterwards.  Some nights I can pass the time hanging out with Abigail,  but recently she's been out of the house preparing for her show that opens tonight (BREAK A LEG!).

So what have I been doing you ask?  GOOD QUESTION.

First I watched the rest of The Office on Netflix.  Then I watch the rest of Portlandia.  Then I watched the rest of How I Met Your Mother.  And now I've started watching a lot of comprehensive sex ed and LGBTQ documentaries (mainly examining the conflict between the church and...).  Noticing a pattern? Wasn't I going to cancel Netflix?

Pete says I need to get [a date].  (He didn't say "a date").
Willow says I need to remember that I'm still in my 20's.
I think I need to get out of the house.

So I decided to make this week better.  On Monday, Sarah and I got pizza and remembered we were friends (normally at work we just kind of grunt at each other).  And last night for the first time this month I went out and had a night on the town:

It started as casual coffee with Willow at like 2:30 and totally escalated into something awesome.  We met at Green Chile Kitchen (one of my faves, and conveniently hella close to Willow's) for dinner.  One day I am going to order something other than the burrito and beet juice margarita.  But it wasn't last night.

Then we swung down to the Mission to catch this PHENOMENAL improv duo called Huge.  I was so impressed.  They started by asking the audience to make up song titles.  Then they wrote and performed that song on the spot.  Afterwards they did like 30 - 45 minutes of scenes based off that original song.  Writing a couple more songs in between.  They came up with such clear characters that they really committed to.  And they were clever and topical.  They did this one skit as East Coasters ragging on San Franciscans for being lazy and flaky.  I died.  It reminded me a lot of when Andy used to joke around and be generally flamboyant.  All in all: exceeds expectations.

Afterwards we hit up Bi-Rite because in San Francisco in January you can buy ice cream and eat it outside at 10:00 at night and it's very pleasant.  The girl at the counter suggested I get a scoop of Dark Chocolate with my Grapefruit sorbet... and YES THANK YOU FOR THE SUGGESTION.

While we were sitting there, staring at Dolores Park I blurted out one of my sincerest ambitions for the past year (and one of my "awesome date ideas"), "Let's go to the playground and swing!"

The view from the Dolores Playground is BOMB to begin with.  Just make it nighttime.  Delete the guilt of stealing a swing from some kids.  And it's the best.  JUST THE BEST.  I wish we could have stayed longer and played the instruments or climbed the ropes or used the slides.  But we were trying to catch a bus (which we missed).

So we had a nice walk up to the Castro and caught separate buses there.  Seriously great night.  Just wonderful.

And now, after a particularly trying day at work, Sarah and I are going to go see Silver Linings Playbook.  

So anyway.  Things are pretty solid right now.

Little Talks

Internet:  Mel, you aren't blogging every two days, what a refreshing change!  I mean-- we missed you!
Mel:  Thanks, Internet, it's nice to know you care.

Seriously though, I need to get my body acclimated to this new, relentless schedule because it's not going to slow down anytime soon.  It's making it hard to sleep.  Honestly, I devote a lot of time to leisure and without it, I'm in kind of a weird place.  The first week of school involved struggling to fall asleep, then waking up multiple times to cough.  I overcame that thanks in large part to Nighttime Robitussin.  This week, I'm falling asleep fine on my own.  But now I'm having weird dreams.  Last night I jerked awake from a nightmare guest starring Luke.  I don't remember what it was about, but I just know that I didn't appreciate it all.

My new hipster glasses finally came in the mail from Virginia after a long and harrowing journey.  They look awesome.  As one of my kids said they are "nerd glasses".  Oddly enough, she said that as a compliment.  As in "Melissa, I like your nerd glasses".

My bangs are becoming an issue.  Stringy and in my face.  I think they are going to end up growing out.

I am continually fighting the urge to become a brunette.  Financially it would be much more sensible.  And generally less of a hassle.  But each time I look in the mirror, it just seems too weird.

I am reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.  Don't.  Just don't.  Whatever myriad of excuses you have to do so, fight them.  It isn't worth it.  These books make me so angry.  But like with most men, I'm not willing to let go of them until I've seen this thing all the way through to the end.  Even though I'm not enjoying myself and it clearly isn't working out, I have to let this thing run it's course to the end in the hopes that it will redeem itself and actually be pleasant at some point.  I will most likely post on my pure hatred for the Fifty Shades Trilogy after I've finished all three books, but not yet not until I have all the facts.

My three new fave songs are:

"Dear Avery" by the Decemberists

"Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men

"Rivers and Roads" by The Head and the Heart

They are going to be at Hardly Strictly and you KNOW I will be at that concert.

Weekend Update: Bernal Heights

Sometime in March, several things happened at once:  Fat Bitch broke my shit, Skinny Bitch sent one too many emails, and both told me to stop singing, among other encounters. I needed to move out.  So before the whirlwind of apartment hunting, moving, parents visiting, and opening a show happened, I went on one last adventure.  For no other reason than I'd never heard of it and my guidebook said there'd be lots of dogs, I went to Bernal Heights.

To get to it, I walked through the more grungy, less-trendy parts of the mission.  Spanish, government housing, and thugs dominated the streets.  Gotta love the murals in SF though, this is Cesar Chavez Elementary.  That is Cesar Chavez.

View from Bernal Heights Park.  It's in the South Eastern Part of the city.  I think that's the view of downtown.  I couldn't even see Golden Gate Park from here.  The city is SO much bigger than I realize.

The park is this big patch of green on top of a hill.  Dogs everywhere.

Someone had taken the time to arrange these rocks in a huge path, or sculpture or something.  Point is, I spent five-minutes walking around in circles.

View from above (and upside down), I think (from L to R) it's a tree, a headless duck/swan, and a heart.

Only in SF.

Fantastic (and huge) coffee shop in Bernal Heights.  It was clearly a converted house with seating in the backyard.

Said coffee house.

I believe this is on "Virginia Street", Bernal Heights had this quaint small-towny feel, with a main street and everything.  My guide-book described it as "never a wealthy neighborhood", but it looked great to me.

Love Bomb.  I love graffiti. 

Another elementary school mural, this school's up by Bernal Heights.  The mural on the left is called something like "Family" and has interracial, hippie Adam and Eve types on it.

YES THAT IS THE STARSHIP ENTERPRISE ON THE A MURAL ON THE FRONT OF AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. HAHAHA.  Sometimes I love this city.

Weekend Update: Marina

The next weekend was spent cavorting around Fort Mason/Marina/Cow Hollow.  The Marina made me wonder why I decided that I valued happiness, friendship, and "doing-what-I-loved" over money.  I mean, money can buy happiness, right?  It was the cleanest place I've been in the city right.  Actually, it was like uncomfortably clean.  In retrospect, think the Lower Haight is more my kind of neighborhood.

Fort Mason.  Notice the characteristic smudge in the center of my camera.  This is the weekend after I submerged my camera in an inch of water after my water bottle leaked all over the base of my backpack.  Fun fact: if that ever happens to you, leave it in a bowl of rice for a week.

Some Senator "orating" in a fantastic park between Fort Mason and the Marina.  I think it looks more like he's looking at his hand going "Holy shit, what's on my hand?!  Is that pigeon poop?!"

Pictures of Boats for my parents.  And Andy.

This is a sculpture that I think is called a "Wave Organ".  You put your ear by these tubes (see below) and listen to the sound of the tides.

Apparently it's best at High Tide, at Low Tide is sounds like the "gurgling of a toilet" as my guidebook put it.  I think that was an accurate description.

As you probably read on facebook, I saw a wedding at the Palace of Fine arts as I was exploring.  I'll be real, I got teary eyed.  It reminded me of that time that Nate and I saw someone propose in a park in Richmond.  He came up to us afterwards and was just shaking he was so happy; he asked us to take a picture.  It was one of the best moments of my life.

Anyway, after I got home I started looking up pricing and how to schedule a wedding here.  Apparently it's not the best place because of SF's temperamental weather, but seriously, what kind of moron has outdoor, "June Wedding" in SF.  I've only been here for a couple months, and even I know the phrase "June Gloom". (And am dreading it). 

Palace of Fine Arts.  SO getting married here if I'm still in SF.  Needless to say, I make plans years in advance.  I started going to college fairs when I was 13, only makes sense I'd start planning my wedding early too, right?

That reminds me, I had this dream the other night about getting married.  And for some reason I was like "Oh marriage, it's NBD, we'll just go to the Justice of the Peace and not tell anyone about it.  Like, it's just another thing on my to-do list."  I woke up feeling quite tragic.

Weekend Update: North Beach

If February was the longest month ever (and it was), March and April were the shortest.  This is gonna be the first in a series of post covering my backlogged adventures from the past two months.

I had a dance class down in Jackson Square, which I guess is part of North Beach, so I took out my trusty guidebook to explore the neighborhood for the day.  North Beach: Italians live there, right?

Before I even left my neighborhood (before I even got to the busstop even), I found this:

A destroyed VHS of "A Goofy Movie"  as my neighbors, my tumblr followers, and my roommates probably all know, one of my biggest guilty pleasures of all time is blasting the Powerline Hip-Hop Ballad "Eye to Eye" from the soundtrack.  In fifth grade, my best friend Jessica and I used to dance around to this and the Power Rangers sound track ad nauseum.

When I got to North Beach the weather was AWESOME it was warm and sunny and I walked around pretending I cared about the Beat Poets who used to hang out there.

This for example is a very famous bookstore full of pictures of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg.  Not that that means very much to me.  But they did have a whole lot of Vonnegut, which I decided would be my next literary exploration.

And Vesuvio is a bar that Jack Kerouac liked to hang out in.  The alley in front of it is named after him now.  Again, that didn't mean too much to me, I found On the Road very hard to read.

So San Francisco is funny in that the neighborhoods are very distinct and very close.  One minute you are walking down the main street of the very Italian North Beach, and a block over is the heart of Chinatown.  At one point the roads actually converge and this Chinese Instrumental Music group was playing on the corner.

They were underneath this building.  I think that's a mural of jazz musician Benny Goodman, the epitome of Chinese culture, as I'm sure you know.

Everyone kept walking around with gelato.  So I did to.

Later that night I met a friend in Lower Pac Heights for a night of drinking, which I hadn't indulged in for a very long time.  When I woke up in the morning I remembered why:  I had a hangover, had lost my keys (by leaving them in the pocket of my sweater), was chastised by my drinking buddy for flirting with a kid my own age, and had a series of texts trying to explain away the "goodnight kiss" he tried to steal.  A couple days later I had a beer on my doorstep and ended up angry and circuitous.  Needless to say I'm on another sober kick.

The next day I drove to Santa Cruz for an audition (I did not hear back). I did get some sunshine and bathing suit time, however.  It wasn't enough.  I miss heat.

 Santa Cruz is like Virginia Beach: dirty and desperate.  Trying to be this cool beach town, but somehow missing the mark.

Hipsters or Yuppies

I can't decide if I want to explore the Mission or the Marina today.  I'm dressed more for the Mission, but I've been there before.  I've never been to the Marina District, but I hear it's everything I never wanted San  Francisco to be and everything I left behind.  To quote my guidebook (yes, I have a guidebook... a walking tour book to be exact.  Seriously, if you haven't figured out the full extent of my dweebiness yet I'm surprised):

"The city's counterculture leanings are little felt here."

Well, I'll bring along my camera and be sure to show you all pictures of wherever I go.

And I owe you guys a post about last weekend: North Beach, Santa Cruz, and a couple phone calls with Abigail.

Where I Live Now

"Melissa, this post doesn't seem like it's going to be about that job you alluded to on facebook a couple week ago." You're sure right! It's isn't. I'll post about it eventually I promise, just haven't really wanted to, yet.

I'm staying in a cottage behind a strange little house that looks like it hasn't been updated since 1951, save maybe a coat of paint or two. From the front it's a quaint little white house with blue shutters, from the back it's a quaint little blue house with white shutters. And then parts of it are red too, very patriotic you could say. The paint, of course, is pealing in big patches that you almost don't notice because the grass is so overgrown and faded red car in the driveway is such an eyesore. It's dusty windows and backseat full of junk make you wonder if it's there to drive, or because they ran out of storage space in the shed.

The shed is a nightmare adventure from an episode of Hoarders or American Pickers. To quote Bobby, "When I got here there was no room for bikes." Dusty, smelly, and dark I can't imagine there is actually anything they care about in there. I think the first thing I saw was a row of tropical colored T-shirts eaten away by insects and time. And each time I open it up I see something new. Last time I found what looked like an old 1970's style public school desk. I've also found more clothes than I can fathom, an armoir, and another bike. It's like a page out of Eye Spy in there.

And then AND THEN you go to the backyard. OH MAN. Talk about finding something new everyday. I honestly don't understand. There's so much garbage in these people's backyard that you can barely find the cottage. And I can't understand how it got there. Sure, the gardening supplies, the outdoor furniture, those make sense. But it's the tea-sets, the rugs, and plastic containers that throw me. What thought process goes "Oh, I am just going to leave this tea set out here, and never miss it." How do you not need your tea set later? How do you not notice it when you back outside? How do you decide to just wait and get it later? It's in a stack! Just pick it up and take it inside! There are ceramic pots crushed into the soil under the flowers. I know they compost here, but I don't really think that's how it works.

I'm being harsh; they are very nice people- the landlords who live in the house and leave teapots in the yard and t-shirts in the shed... I just don't understand. To Bobby's credit, he's doing a really good job fixing the cottage up. It's very homey on the inside and I've been charged with watering his plants while he's away. On the front of the place at least. After the front facade, it's a jungle. There's this structure on the side of the house that I just can't identify and mystery furniture hidden under some of the plant debris that Bobby's cleared from the front. There are bricks and stepping stones under layers of leaves, vines, and out of control bushes. Also extra trashcans. Full. Can't be without those.

Well, babysteps I guess. Honestly it's a really nice space and I'm really enjoying staying here with all its quirky charm and sunny East Bay weather. I have to admit that I do have this really strong desire to give the front door a fresh coat of paint. A nice bold color. The cottage is white, so I'm thinking mauve or plum, a nice deep purple. I actually think it could work. But I'm a pretty flashy person, so maybe I should refrain from repainting while Bobby's away. Not many guys would jive with a purple front door, haha.

Every day's an adventure

I guess when you're doing something like this, everything you do is going to be new and shiny and different. I'm finding it hard to keep up with this blog because everything seems awesome and important and I want to write all these super long posts. But actually, for someone homeless and not working I have like no time. Anyway, I'll make this post short and maybe give deets later b/c I've got to run into the city to look an apartment at 2:15... it's only 12:30 but it takes a lifetime to get into the city using transit, and I'm not ready to start hunting for parking yet.

FUN THINGS:

• Biked around SF yesterday with Bobby as a tour guide. It was fucking cold and I spent a lot of money to make my wheels and seat difficult to steal, but it's probably worth it.
• I ate at KASA, which is like an Indian version of Chipotle. De-fucking-licious.
• Saw the Full House houses, went to the aquarium, saw a whole bunch of neighborhoods
• Ate at some ice cream shop near Mission Delores park that has Salted Caramel ice cream, but totally going back for and Olive Oil and Basil double scoops sometime.
• The Muni doesn't know if it's a bus or metro system.
• I hate the BART it is loud and charges by distance like the D.C. metro.
• I have a job, but I'll make a post about that later.

A Day Worth Writing Home About

The day started at ass-crack early in the morning. Even with my East Coast sense of time I had to drag myself out of bed. It was still dark, and being San Francisco (well, Albany) it was overcast and cold as sin. The night before I had decided to bite the bullet, pay the toll, and drive into the city. Awesome idea. It was early enough that traffic was nothing and the cityscape driving in was worth the $6 bucks. Besides I can't imagine how I would've dragged myself around the Presidio if I had been using public transportation.

What's the Presidio, Mel?

Good question: The Presidio is this enormous park on the North end of the city where people actually live and have yards and it makes you uncomfortable thinking about the amount of money these people must have. It has these amazing views of the Golden Gate Bridge that make you remember why you moved here in the first place. If the fashionably dressed, bicycling hipsters I saw throughout the day were any indication, I think you can actually access the bridge from the park ("To the Bridge!" they bugled).

So I drive into the Presidio for this day-long working interview. She had wanted me to work there for a week, but I politely told her I thought that was complete bullshit; we'd know if it was a good fit after a day. And boy I couldn't have been more right. I knew after about an hour that I'd never be coming back.

I arrived in the Presidio about 15 minutes before she did (great first impression). When she finally showed up she popped out of her green SUV in her jeansemble (jean vest, jean pants, jean hat), led me down a winding staircase on the side of a chapel, and cheerily informed me in her New Jersey accent that they had lost the space for the fall (apparently it failed fire department inspection and was unfit for young children... Oops!).

Opening up the basement door, it wasn't hard to see why they were kicking the kids out. Locked away in a musty basement with only one window, disgusting earth tone carpets, and the stench of a perpetually rain-soaked foundation, I wondered why anyone would ever leave there child here in the first place. We dragged all the supplies out of the cramped, toy-less room and into the foyer ("We share this foyer on the weekend, I wanted to have it all pulled out and set up before you got here, but just got in late!" ... of course you did). Being such a mess, you may think that she and I would get along perfectly. "Melissa, you are so type B, it's a match made in heaven!"... Yeah, but I'm also fiercely professional... and this woman's seeming inability to be so was already pissing me off.

And then she blew my mind; "I put all the marker's facing the same direction," she says, "And then I put the caps facing away from the children. That makes it look inviting for the students and the parents." Oh Fuck. Not only is she a fall-down mess, but she is a totally type-A, viciously irrational fall-down mess. The little snip-its of advice continued to rain-down over the course of the day.

Highlights include:

"We write in all capital letters here"

"Don't give the kids direction, just follow my lead, I'll do it"

"They need to eat the healthiest food first at snack time, that's the fruit." (Trust me, it was all healthy).

It didn't take me long to realize I was basically back at Goddard (do not send your children to a Goddard School, do not), with a woman as informed about working with preschoolers and I am about brain surgery. The best part of the day was a patronizing little game called "Rock, No Rock". Essentially a multiple choice quiz, this game had the potential to be a great learning experience with sensible, supply-response (i.e. not multiple choice) questions. Instead she asked the students to pick a question about "nature" or "nurture" and then gave them a multiple choice question she made up with approximately zero-validity. Dr. Grant would be cringing if she knew what I witnessed.

Highlight:

(Talking to a six-year old mind you) "Do caterpillars turn into: Butterflies or... jelly-flies?"

(Then to her twin sister) "Why do some people have brown-eyes and some people have blue eyes?"

HAHAHAHAHA. Oh my god, I almost died. Going from a question that would be too easy for a three year old to a seventh-grade genetics question. OH MY GOD. I could not get over it. I mean, what the fuck is a jelly-fly? YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO KNOW THAT CATERPILLARS TURN INTO BUTTERFLIES BECAUSE YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF A FUCKING JELLY-FLY AND THEN SHE EXPECTS HER SISTER TO TELL DISCUSS MENDELIAN GENETICS. FUCKING GENETICS. OHMYGOD. I'M LOL'ING IN BARNES AND NOBLE JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

*takes a break to collect myself*

So anyway, I knew it wouldn't work out. But was stuck with her for the rest of the day... which actually ended up being a good thing because I met this amazing young woman named Mia. Mia has been a Nanny since college and said she would hook me up with her nannying agency. We discussed how she moved to the city when she was my age with as much of a plan as I have, and far less money. She told me all about nannying, and took me to the home of her most recent employer for lunch. She wasn't nannying for them anymore, but she had just sold her apartment so she was staying there while the mother was out of town. The mother I might add was the former CEO of some branch of Yahoo! and the inventor of micro-loans or something ridiculous like that, so just take the time to imagine the house I walked into at noon. We ate lunch on the roof deck of this undoubtedly multi-million dollar Pacific Heights home, and had the most beautiful views of the bay. I have pictures from the roof, but won't post them for fear of the woman finding them and freaking out like "Why are pictures from my roof on the internet?".

Sitting on the roof, watching boats pass on the bay, talking about the amount of money a really good nanny can make suddenly everything felt peaceful, hopeful, and I remembered why I came out here.

Clearly, I need to make a fuck-ton of money and get a good roof-deck. Sure thing, I'll get right on that.