What I'm eating for dinner

As I was leaving work I saw a blond, Caucasian woman with dreadlocks secured neatly to her head, in a beautiful wrap skirt, walking with a beautiful little girl with a shaved head, save for long bangs, wearing a stylish, colorful outfit and I thought, "How appropriate. I wonder if their life is the way it looks it is, if it is really as romantic as I imagine it to be."

I got to drive more through other parts of Kentucky. It is so beautiful right now! There are cows and the leaves are bright oranges and reds and deep browns and mellow yellow tans. Some of the buildings are still quaint, men in trucks, women on tractors, eying me as any would eye a suspicious stranger. I drive along the highway and can't imagine ever not being there.

I made a delicious tuna salad. If you like tuna salad you might find tuna salad difficult to make not-delicious but I've made bland tuna salad before and eaten just regular boring tuna salad before. Now I know how to make it the right amount of spicy and the right amount of sweet; how to put in enough curry to be detectable but not too much to overpower the tuna flavor. I spread a spoonful of this tuna on slice of Aunt Millie's Lite Whole Grain Bread, sprinkled some pre-shredded "casserole" cheese on top, and put it in the toaster oven. It came out delicious.

Then I pulled one of the cinnamon rolls I baked (from scratch) a few nights ago out of the freezer and put it into the microwave. The taste was so perfect for this day, even better than it was out of the oven, that I thought I needed to make it more perfect. There was no sound in my apartment as I was bouncing from doing work work to scanning pages from recipe books to taking bites from my cinnamon roll. I put on a Joni Mitchell record and I am listening to it now and drinking an-alcohol-free, crushed-red-pepper-infused Hot Places I've Never Been Chocolate.

I love Joni Mitchell but I wonder who loved her first. Whose skin am I trying to wear? Where did I see that painting that I decided should be the ideal for my own life? I feel if the perfectness of this all was more authentic I wouldn't feel so strongly a need to tell the world about it. Or maybe it's too perfect to be spending it alone?

Cost of Living Comparison: compare New York, New York to Cincinnati, Ohio

When I told people I would be moving to do AmeriCorps, one of the things that would invariably come up was finances. I would of course tell people that part of being a VISTA is receiving a living allowance that was just barely above the poverty level, and that I wouldn't be allowed any other form of income. (Obviously financial gifts from family and friends is acceptable as is government assistance.) If I didn't mention the word "poverty" and just said that I wouldn't be making much money, no one ever failed to say, "Yeah, but the cost of living has to be a lot cheaper than NYC, amIright?" Yes, yes, you are right. However, my current gross income is approximately 28% of my gross income in New York. The good thing is that housing really is cheap here. I am able to live in a small, but comfortable, studio apartment. There are larger one bedroom apartments (with 4 to 5 rooms total) for a comparable price, but with fewer amenities. Below is a link to a comparison calculator to show how much money I would have to make here to compare to my life in New York...and to show the difference in the cost of housing.

Cost of Living Comparison: compare New York, New York to Cincinnati, Ohio

Posted using ShareThis

Nice

I went to my sewing class for the first time in a month, after I'd only been twice, and one of the women told me, "You have really been missed;" I could've cried.

Things I Like About Living Here

If you almost cut someone off in traffic on accident, but wave and smile an apology, they wave and smile back, instead of calling you a "stupid bitch."

Whether be the weather

It had gotten cold and suddenly it's sort of warm again: high of 74° and sunnyish. I think to myself: I should ride my bike to work since this might be my last chance before the true cold comes. But I tell myself I need to replace the chain, that I'll hate riding home this evening as it starts to get dark. And so I tell myself that I will bike this weekend, to the library, the city, a museum. But I check the weather. There is an expected 20° temperature drop and rain. Rain. To add further rust to my bicycle chain.

Things I Like About Living Here

It is beautiful in the fall.

Things I Like About Living Here

I don't have to drive that far to see cows.

When it moves

Things are picking up.

I wake up every morning feeling anxious and worried and I sit in bed until I think of all of the things about which I could (whether or not I should) feel anxious and worried about so that these uncomfortable feelings are attached to many facts (or just fears)...and it is only then that I can get out of bed. This is a strange unpleasant way to live my life and so I pray about it but haven't really let go because I think I am so afraid of new feelings that I force myself to wallow in them.

But now, the facts that I attach my anxieties to are my progress. Things are finally going somewhere with my work and now, instead of being worried that I won't accomplish anything, I am worried that I will screw up the things I've finally started to accomplish. I stood in front of a room of firemen and stuttered and mumbled and stared at everything but their faces...but then tried to learn from my mistakes.

Non-work life wise, I am optimistic. I spend too much time alone but I have found a church that I am enjoying, a once-a-month movie event that I have been to once and had a blast at (I love biting my tongue and hearing the amazing, and sometimes not-so-amazing, insights of non-film buffs talking about a film in an honest and real way), a free sewing class that I hope will some day lead me to actually completing a project, and an organization that pretty much focuses on what I want to do with my life: InkTank.

My incredible parents fascilitated a vacation to Chicago, my first time in that beautiful city, and it was the further boost in morale that I needed. Today my tummy aches but tomorrow I look forward to going back into work and fighting my anxieties with consistent productivity.