flying time

Wow. I can't believe I only have two more weeks left here. I'm finding myself feeling a little more anxious, feelings all over the place, not sure how to gather my thoughts or "make the most" of these last days. I'm trying to focus my head day to day but that's nearly impossible: what photos and mini-gifts should I give to people? What birthday present should I make for (my friend/co-worker) Natalie? What should I do for my last weekends off? How can I show people in the best, clearest way how much I love them? Who knows! And no answer will be totally satisfying or possibly "the best" because there are so many ways to respond to those questions, and in the end, the experience will be over. I will have to accept whatever happened as one pretty crazy and awesome year!

Two weekends ago I switched my off-days to be able to go out to Boston with Natalie. Her main goal was to shop and a mutual goal was to attend a heavy metal concert (few and far between around these parts)! Natalie did do shopping and it took her a day to recover from feeling guilty. The heavy metal band was good but there weren't enough people so the energy was a bit low. Either way we wore all black, fish nets, and black make-up to get ourselves in the mood :)

This past weekend I went to Montreal with a current and former volunteer. It was good to talk to a volunteer from last year about his experience - how the residents and volunteers were then v. now, how much has changed on the farm, how he felt about his experience before and afterwards. Talking with a former volunteer helps settle me a little, knowing that this place won't just disappear and that I'll probably visit again. In terms of Montreal, I fell in love with the place over a mere day and a half! I got the impression that it has plenty of things I would enjoy living around: French, cafes and smaller shops, nice parks, culture, diversity, fun night scene, young people, liberal, mix of nature and city, etc. We stayed in a small, rented apartment and went to a dance club 1234 (ladies free before midnight!) and danced the night away for hours. The next day we walked to a good ice cream shop and a Montreal bagel place (I gather the difference is that their bagels have bigger holes and are round and have seasoning on both sides as opposed to not on the bottom). We also walked around the Latin Quarter, saw circus people performing and a life-sized chess game, and bought a lot of cold drinks that day (heat wave this weekend). In addition, some old man went up to my friend and scratched his beard. There are also some strange people there!

This week I plan on going to a shooting range, a roadside bbq place and the drive-in movie theatre in Milford (things that have been on my wish list for a while). Hope it works out!

California Love

So Julia Bruckner is now Julia Newman! The deal was sealed at the Sequoia Retreat Center last weekend, 140 friends and family as witnesses, inside a main lodge due to continous downpours. It was a week full of laughter, dancing, drinking, and reconnecting (esp with my nieces/nephews and the only cousin close to my age, who suddenly grew like a redwood and dropped octaves in his voice since I last saw him). The bachelorette party in San Francisco was a blast - 20some girls in hot pink wigs parading around the North Beach area, free drinks offered at our feet, and sweaty dancing through the night! And I know I said in my last post that my goal was to sing/dance with Randy Newman - well we only exchanged some greetings, but his family members complimented me on my singing during the ceremony so that's a point! Plus, I discovered it was more important to me to chill with the people I already knew I loved. Awwww. Some wedding pictures can be seen through facebook but I'm still waiting for more.

So that week was a refreshing way to jump into the last 2 months I have here at Plowshare. I have revived energy and motivation and just want to make the most of the end. My friends (Erin and Natalie) becoming co-workers has turned out to be a pretty great situation - we're basically the coolest house at Plowshare. Both of them will be staying another year so I have extra impetus to come back and visit. But for now...

I'm loving getting sweaty during workshop and being able to dive into the pond for a swim. Anyone who knows me in Chapel Hill will know that I love lakes and a pond is the next best thing. I suppose I've traded the risk of taking a breath to see goose poop floating on the water for taking a breath to inhale pond flies. The point is, it's WATER and I can SWIM now!
I'm loving the fact that our house bought a slack line that we set up in our back yard and I can practice on. I haven't made it all the way across yet, but my goal is to be able to in a few weeks. That and the hand-made hula hoops aren't really doing a good job in my defense that this is not  some hippy-dippy intentional community...it's so much more! haha
I'm NOT loving the immense about of bugs, bug bites, bug spray, bugging, buggers, boogers, etc.

In other news, we've started milking the second cow and she's much more a tail-whacker and milk pail stepper than the older, wiser cow. I keep hoping that my "uh uh, no you don't" gut reactions will somehow make her feel guilty and stop, but maybe I just need to give her some time. I mean, if I was suddenly being milked every day for the first time, I would probably feel uncomfortable, too.

I'm aliiive!

So again, the common theme of posts: I slack on them. But alas, it is finally really spring! The flowers are blooming, the lettuce is harvestable, the peas are showing about an inch above ground, and we will be getting pigs tomorrow (a sign that it's really spring)! I am loving the weather. Yesterday I spent a day with one of the volunteers eating ice cream, walking down a "rails to trails" path in Jaffrey, joy riding down to MA to discover how many lakes and cute recreation towns around them exist, and coming back to the farm to make and decorate some hula hoops (a project I've been meaning to do since I got here). The sheep and lambs are mowing the grass outside our house, and soon our farm will get hundreds of meat chickens (70 we'll keep for eggs) on this new "chicken tractor" system where the farmer will move the chickens around the pasture every few days. Lots of things happening on the farm.

In terms of Plowshare, there's other business buzzing. May is when the school classes come (between 13-20 kids and chaperones) so our workshops adjust to make sure the kids are busy. My houseparents and resident Jenny moved out last weekend and my two volunteer friends (Erin and Natalie) moved into the houseparent role and brought along another resident to take Jenny's room. I'm still adjusting to having my friends become coworkers now (and the potential tensions coming from business becoming closer to relationships) and am bummed we can't all go out anymore together. That's a biggie. But so far things are working out pretty well and I have confidence that with time, things will smooth out.

Then, the first week of June I'll be in CA for my sister Julia's wedding! Should be fun, and Randy Newman's fam will be there! (He's the "You've Got a Friend in Me"/Toy Story singer). Goal of mine: to sing/dance with Randy at the reception...

It's too nice to be inside now, so I think I'll test out my new hula hoops, go for a walk and a nap, and sing some karaoke tonight. Ahh off days, so sweet...

It's March! still snow...

I keep thinking that any day now, all the snow will melt, the daisies will pop out and I'll be running into our pond for an after-workshop swim. Now it's more like: snow keeps surprising us, the occasional melt makes our farm into a slip-and-slide, and I slide into the house for more hot cocoa and cookies after workshop :)

The past two weekends I've been in New York City. The first NYC visit was with Danny (a volunteer) to his friend's apartment where we hung out mostly inside, watching slam dunk contests and Man v. Food, and me throwing up in public trash cans due to the stomach flu. The second time I went with Natalie and Erin where we went site-seeing and stayed with Anne, my sister Christine's roommate from MN. I was feeling much better and needless to say had a better time! This weekend Jen and Namara are coming to her house in Amherst and we'll have a happy Macalester reunion sleep-over tonight :) She's up for guiding a circus performance with kids, leprachaun-themed? Sounds intriguing...I'll let you know if I see it!

Tomorrow is my Dad's 70th birthday! Now he's in CA with my Mom, my brothers and their families for a few months. I sent him a card I had worked on for a while. The cover is a portrait I drew of him and in the inside are some German quotes that I like. I want to make my Pop proud!

I feel like I'm learning a lot about myself at this place. Any given day I can be up or down, mad or sad, reflective or normal, at peace or nervous. I look up to Natalie - she's worked in communities for years and says that through that experience has found herself much more. I can see what she means about "coming out of yourself" more now...I'm learning how to be more honest with how I feel in the moment it arises, which usually means being more direct. It's one of the hardest things for me to do with some of the residents and with people in general. I find that there's a lot of fear around things that I do, worrying about how a resident will react or a volunteer will take it. But sometimes it's necessary to fight with friends, to learn how to deal with all parts of people, the good, the bad and the ugly. To just try things for the sake of trying and learning if that's how you want to do it next time. Not to say I think I'm becoming a hard-ass, but that I'm learning how to be more comfortable with myself.

spit

Ahh, now I´m sitting in my brother Marc´s apartment after having slept 9 hours on the most comfortable floor mattress, awaiting my greek yogurt breakfast and a day of my first experience downhill skiing. Leora, his girlfriend, is here this weekend too. Though it feels like -5 out and I'll likely come back very sore, this is just what I needed at the end of the week.

That resident I mentioned in my last blog, with whom I live and who is my biggest challenge, again blew up a few times this week. It's become a pattern on Mondays (euhh, dreaded Mondays) that he will not listen to me and/or threaten me and/or walk away from the farm. It's the day I carry the house alone. So this Monday he wanted to take a shower 20 minutes before workshop started. I asked him to take it later that day so that the whole house could use the bathroom. That was it. Those are the kinds of things that freak him out - someone asking him to change. So he started calling me names and threatening me. Five minutes later I was in the bathroom helping another resident brush her teeth and he comes in and continues to insult and threaten my life, and once the house parent came down because he heard the noise, the resident steps right up to my face and spat on me. SPAT ON MY FACE. I said, "THAT IS NOT OK" and slammed and locked the door. The other residents were either hiding in their rooms or crying.

The house is still an uncomfortable place for me to hang around. Every free time I have I usually go to another house - it's more fun and relaxed. Since Monday there have been some changes, like he force apologized to all of us (for that, walking out in a meeting, talking back to us, all in one forced "sorry"), he's getting back on his med's, the founders of the farm are taking him on Monday mornings and evenings, and he's gotten a lot of harsh or sly talks. I've decided that I am not going to go out of my way to walk on egg shells with him anymore. I will talk when I have to get things done, but I'm not going out of my way to be nice or his friend "to build trust" and hope he won't do that crap to me anymore. If he doesn't show me respect, there is no reason for me to shower him with it.

what a week

I've had so many thoughts and feelings this week that I feel it must've been a month already. Time is so relative.

I've had  fun. I went sledding with two cute little girls in Hancock last weekend, the first time I've been sledding in a few years. I had some good laughs at a few bars. I was reminded of how much I love Mulan. I ate delicious Indian buffet and got some feel-good clothes at the Salvation Army. I'm also getting closer to the other AmeriCorps volunteer, Erin, by taking winter hikes or talking about what seeds we want to order and what kind of gardens we want to grow. I'm especially excited about an herb garden - I've always wanted to grow and make my own tea and medicate myself with herbs.

I sat with a dead body. A lot of people who believe in Anthroposophy have a vigil for their dead family member, where for the entirety of three days, someone has to sit with the corpse to help release the spirit. You can sing, read, think positive thoughts, play music, just as long as you are with the person. Our Eurythmist's mom died and many co-workers and some volunteers volunteered to take 2-3 hour night shifts to help the family out (they are Russian immigrants and not many of them live here). Erin and I woke up at 3am to drive there and experience the small lit candles, the inscense, the Steiner books, and the real, lifeless body, covered in dyed silk veils, that lay in an open casket in front of us. It made me think of how I want to go - I had always assumed cremation, with my ashes scattered on some meaningful piece of land, but this vigil made a good impression on me. It was a good experience.

I cried from built-up frustration at the volunteer meeting we have every week with the boss. I've been having a rough time with one of the residents in my house who has severe emotional damage (from his poor upbringing) and a low IQ. He always makes public phone calls (on speaker phone, wandering around the house) cursing and saying (and hearing) awful things. When I tried to ask him to make phone calls in his room, he blew up on me, threatened me, etc. Very simple requests, if they're anything that would make him change his ways, are 98% of the time understood by him as attacks, and he will do anything to try to put himself above you. He targets the fact that I'm only a volunteer, only a female, and therefore I know nothing. A few days later him and another resident in the house had a real verbal (and nearly physical) fight. The man he was insulting was black, and you can imagine the direction he took his attacks. This resident is such a challenge for me to even tolerate, it's such a different type of resident who for me requires much more patience and will-power that I don't have in the moment. I'm not trying to hang out with him to establish a closer relationship with him because any time I'm off or don't have to see him, I don't want to. I can't feel very at home when I feel like I have to walk on egg shells to try to prevent another illogical blow-up, feeling like my body is trapping what I actually think so I can spit out what I am told to say. I could go on for so long...the point is, I'm struggling with that.

Oh, Spring, come a little sooner this year, ok?

SNOW like WOAH

My house is pretty warm so I always sleep with the windows cracked. When I woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday to snow flakes and a damp blanket over my body, I knew the blizzard had begun. It didn't stop snowing until Wednesday night! The whole day's worth of shoveling those nearly 2 ft of snow had to be essentially redone because of all the wind. I felt like I was in a sandstorm with the amount of dunes and ripples stacking outside our houses. Needless to say, there's been a lot of fun, cold falls, hot chocolate and cider since. I have yet to steal a kid's sleigh and zoom down one of our hills.

Other than that, not much new. Paul the volunteer has a friend from Holland staying for 3 weeks to help out and experience a little bit of America. (They're also going to New York and bigger places together - I'd be slightly  dissapointed if my only impression of America was a small place in the woods). It's always fun to have people visit and mix things up. I also recently decided that every Friday I'm going to spend more time on the computer and look up possibilities for next year. As of now, I'm just looking at sustainable/agriculture-related jobs in and outside of the US. If any of you souls out there have a great organization or place to recommend to me, please do so at any time in the next 4 months!

Til next time...