Ma guarda chi c'e!

Disasters and Illness

So much for New Year’s Resolutions. In my defense, I’ve been swamped with classes, homework, rehearsals, disasters and illness. Since I know you don’t want to hear the boring stuff about classes, homework and rehearsals, I’ll start with the disasters of this semester.

Disaster #1: Kag’s study group, who still meets at the loft and still includes Angela, decided to cook meals using my kitchen to “pay me back” for the use of the loft. The first three weeks were fine. Kag cooked first, then Karen, then Mike. All three cleaned as they went and washed the dishes immediately after dinner. The fourth week, Angela cooked. She didn’t clean as she went, she somehow managed to use every pot, pan, and utensil I had and then left it. I know I’m a neat freak. It’s because of my OCD but that just hit a few too many of my buttons and I demanded she get her lazy ass into the kitchen and clean it up. I won’t go into details about the fit she had. After they left I had a mild panic attack and took a nap. Kag stayed with me. That was nice. After that I stopped the cooking using my kitchen.

Disaster #2: This one was entirely of my own making. I took Calculus this semester and almost failed. On the midterm I completely forgot to go back and show my work. I do Calculus in my head, always have, and the teachers at Liberty realized this and cut me some slack on it. I realized what I’d done that evening, and then spent the next two weeks convincing the Professor and Math Department head that I hadn’t cheated and could do Calculus in my head. Kag, Mike and Karen were all really supportive and talked me down from a second panic attack. Angela was … well, when I told Grams and Gramps about it Grams said a word in Cherokee that I can’t pronounce or spell and she wouldn’t translate.

Illness #1: Gramps thought he’d had a heart attack. He was in the hospital a few days, but the doctors couldn’t find any evidence of him having one.

Illness #2: I will never ever eat a meat pizza again! After Disaster #1 the group started ordering pizza every week. They tried this new place that I’d never heard of before. They should’ve ordered from Cousin Mario’s place like Kag and I always do. You know, come to think of it, I think it was Angela that ordered the pizzas. I ate about ¾ of a large and about a couple hours later was – um – very glad I wear my hair in a pony tail. I hope I didn’t scare Kag too badly… I must have looked as bad as I felt, because she kept trying to get me to go to the ER. But anyone who has had food poisoning will agree that when you’re going through that you don’t want to be touched let alone take a ride in the car.

Even writing about it is making me feel ill again so I’ll stop here for now. I have finals to study for.

Been a while.

Between classes, tutoring and doing stage hand work for one of the school productions last semester, I haven’t been able to keep up my journal like I should have. My New Year’s resolution is to do better in 2008 about keeping it up.

In November I helped Stephen with a project for his photography class. The assignment was to tell the day in the life of someone using photographs. Dad was out of town trying to get funding for his new show so I was volunteered. He had to meet with my professors for approval to take the photographs.

We had a guest choreographer come in the day he took the pictures. He used us as a workshop for the ballet Apollon Musagete.

( Stephen's Photography Project - With my comments )

What is it about a man getting hit in the groin that women find funny? I ask because my partner managed, somehow, to hit me there with a toe shoe yesterday. I had to deal with the giggling from the other ladies in the class, and then when I got home Kag thought it immensely funny, too. It's not fun. It can actually be quite painful, but women seem to laugh when it happens. The location of the testicles is one of God's major mistakes, and there will be penance done for that statement on Sunday.

I've had to ban Kag's study group from my kitchen. They were taking turns fixing dinner on Saturday nights for all of us. Mike and Karen did the first night and made Mexican food which was pretty good. Last Saturday Angela cooked and left the kitchen a complete disaster area. I know I'm a "neat freak", but I can't help that I have OCD and a messy kitchen is apparently one of my buttons.

Angela is my least favorite of Kag's group, and not just because of the not taking "no" for an answer to going out with her, either. She has decided any brains I may have had have evaporated. According to her, since I am a Dance major I have the brains of a gnat and can only count to 8. Also, since Grams and Gramps live in Brooklyn she is mystified by my lack of a Brooklyn accent. I don't think she understands the concept that acting and singing lessons since I was a toddler had an effect on my speaking.

All things considered, college life doesn't completely suck. Being in the city I've been able to see a few plays and Kag and I have tried several new restaurants. My cousin, Antonia, has opened a little place not too far from the loft. She makes Biznonna's recipes, so it's like going home for dinner. She won't let me pay for anything; she tells me "La famiglia non paga", or "Family doesn't pay."

I think I'm going to go have something for dinner now.

Fill’e bagassa


Karma, why do you hate me so? What have I ever done to deserve the hell you have made my life?

This has been the week from hell! There is no other way to describe it.

Wednesday I broke a toe - again. I landed wrong and crumpled. So the last two days I've danced on a very well-taped and braced toe and eaten Advil like it's candy. I plan to continue that regime until it heals.

I did decide to offer the loft to Kag's study group and they arrived at around 1:00 this afternoon. I insisted that they come after noon because I needed the time for a shower and a pot of coffee. There are three others in the group besides Kag: Mike, a nice enough guy be he's into sports; Karen, Mike's girlfriend who's a sweet girl and is really quiet and polite; and the third is Kag's roommate, Angela. She is also the girl I was talking about in my last entry.

Right now they're all still gathered around the table studying and I'm safely upstairs sitting on my bed while I type this entry. Hopefully they'll finish up soon and Kag and I can go do something together. For now, though, I'm going to limp downstairs and take some more Advil.

I'm beginning to remember why I hate September.

College is more work than I thought it would be. It’s not my class work that is overloading me, either. If Stephen doesn’t stop coming by every Friday night, dropping off his Statistics text and demanding I tutor him in it, I’m going to have no choice but to start charging him my tutoring rates. I do have a Jeep payment and a loft payment to make every month, after all.

My classes at Tisch are great; they’d be fantastic if they started in the afternoon. I really think mornings should be outlawed. Afternoons are for my core classes like Lit and such. History of Drama and Theater is really interesting; the only drawback with the class is this one girl who just won’t understand I’m not interested in her. She keeps asking me out for coffee or to the library to study or out to dinner... I’ve told her I have a girlfriend, but she was "What does that have to do with anything?" She’s blonde. What is it about blondes that makes so many of them think that just because they are blonde, every male wants them? Someone explain that to me, please.

My other afternoon class is Elementary Italian. My advisor insisted I take it, although luckily after correcting the professor’s classroom Italian the first day he’s trying to get me into the Intensive Elementary Italian instead. It’s still frustrating though, since I’m so bilingual in the language that there are times I have trouble finding the English word I’m looking for.

Kag is at the library with her study group. They spend all day Saturday studying there every week and it really cuts into the time I have to spend with her. Maybe I should offer to let the group study here.

In five days it will be the sixth anniversary of Mom’s death. I’m going to use some of my allotted absences that day and spend it with Grams and Gramps. I just don’t think I’m strong enough to walk into that building, the same one I was going into the day when it all happened. It’s been getting harder each morning to walk in there just knowing it’s coming.

I want to call Kag but don't want to inturrupt her study group... merda. I guess I'll just go study instead.

I've never had a journal before, online or hand written. There was really no need with the number of doctors I saw. But now that I've moved into the loft here in SoHo, Dr. Henderson insisted that I have somewhere to log some of the minor things I usually talk with her about. She says it's not good for me to hold everything in or blame myself for every bad thing that happens to people I care about. She seems to think this will help me with that. Since she is the doctor I'm not going to argue with her.

Dad left a few minutes ago to pick up Stephen; he's coming back from visiting his grandparents. I guess I should clarify that he was visiting Dad's parents. Dad is a lot happier now that his divorce from Cy is finalized. I'm just glad that one of the provisions of the divorce is she loses everything if she comes near me for the next ten years. I wanted to know why it couldn't be twenty years, but Dad explained that it was for as long as he was making annual alimony payments to her.

Next week starts orientation and placement classes. I'm not looking forward to getting up in the mornings after sleeping late all summer. Kag will be coming back from her father's and moving into her dorm next week. I'm looking forward to that as she's been gone three weeks.

Grams and Gramps have claimed Sunday dinners and it will be good to see them more frequently.

Dad just called, he and Stephen are on their way to pick me up to go get a late dinner.