On little details

There is this Tree. A Christmas tree. Just as you are driving into Rockland on 73 going north. And it looks like this.

Look closely. Closer. Yeah. That's right. It's a Christmas tree made of green lobster crates (complete with colorful buoy's), seaweed (It may or may not be real), and to top it all off, a bright red lobstah (not misspelled, according to the locals here) holding up a golden star. Yep. That's what greets me every morning as I come around the bend driving to work. It is the best thing I have ever seen.

EVER.

I don't have a microwave. I thought this wouldn't be a big deal. It's not, really. But you don't really miss the microwave until you don't have one. I can't make the microwave popcorn that I have. I made tune helper the other night and I can't eat it at home because I have no way of reheating it. So I can only eat it at work where there is a microwave. I can't buy microwaveable meals. No big loss there except I bought several recently because they were fast, easy, and cheap. It's all the little things. I miss having a microwave.

Every other day, there is this little stand set up on the side of the road on a small bridge on highway 1. There, out of the back of his truck, a man sells seafood. Fish, shrimp, lobster, scallops, etc. I wonder if more stands like this pop up in the spring. I think it's wonderful. And as a side note, you have not tasted good shrimp until you have tasted fresh Maine shrimp. I'm talking caught the previous day fresh. Sure, it's early in shrimp season and they are mite small (like popcorn shrimp) but I've never tasted a sweeter and more melt in your mouth shrimp in my life.

There are countless natural food markets here. Well, I CAN count them. There are at least half a dozen on my 15 minute drive to work. I want to stop by them all. I just don't know if any of them take food stamps. I can only imagine that coastal Maine is BOMBARDED by farmers markets in the summer. I can't WAIT!

Um...so those are a couple little details. More to follow later. Hopefully with pictures.

On my first Friday at my new job

Little Yorkie Sadie does this thing when she is excited. She loves to roll over on her back and have you rub her belly and she loves to burrow her face into couches.

Right now, when I think of my job and the work I am going to be doing, that's all I want to do.

Burrow my face in the figurative couch that is Merryspring Nature Center.

Or I imagine myself running outside and rampaging in the snow.

Of course, as I talk about being at a new job and LOVING it I am blogging at it.

Don't worry, I'm on my required lunch break.

I do actually have a lot of things I need to do today but in a good way. Tasks that are not daunting. Just little odds and ends to start off my position here. Phone calls, e-mails, rifling through papers, that kind of thing.

Even when the real work begins, I think I am going to LOVE it!

I AM pretty excited about the weekend, though. Yes, I have to do laundry but I am going to wash it at home and then take it to the laundromat to dry to save money (Bonnie says her dryer is old and barely functional). I am going to go to Good Will and see if they have any cheap squashy chairs for my room. I am going to find a baby cage to keep Sadie in the kitchen. I am going to explore Owls Head. There is a transportation museum that is very neat, I hear.

I am going to go to my branch for the first time (now that I finally worked out how to get there).

I am going to watch Lord of the Rings.

I am going to read.

I am going to have a great weekend. My first real weekend in Maine!

On First Impressions (Maine, Merryspring, and My New Place/Roommate)

Every time I come out to the New England I find something new to love.

I loved Rhode Island and New Hampshire for different reasons.

I have a feeling I am going to LOVE Maine.

Well, yes it's cold. Yes mostly everything is frozen and dormant. Yes, I live near a busy road.

I could try to look at all the bad things. But what would that accomplish?

I can leap out my window and touch ocean! (Not really).

I live in a large house that, though a little old and creaky, has a kind of charm to it.

I live with a woman who loves Sadie and who Sadie has already started acclimating to.

I work at a nature center which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the enrichment and education of the community. They are relaxed and easy going. No bureaucracy, no red tape, just a goal and people who are passionate about reaching it.

Can I pause for a moment? I just need to say how much I love Hans Zimmer and his instrumentation in The Lion King soundtrack. Really. How emotionally fulfilling is that movie?

Back on task.

I was feeling pretty lonely at first. It was just me, Sadie, and a woman neither of us knew very well. It was me and my unfamiliar room full of familiar things. It was uncertainty and doubt.

Then I went to Orientation and found reasons not to feel lonely. (The food there was amazing, by the way). I made connections with other MCC environmental educators. Some of them live pretty close to me. I may not be living in the woods with 30 other people, but I am not alone. And I haven't even started making church connections yet.

The past week has taught me that in order to make it through the feelings of being alone in Maine, I have to make an effort to connect. To befriend. To interact.

I can't be the little wallflower who wont speak unless spoken to. I know that if I fall back into my introverted pattern 100% of the time my experience here will be pretty miserable.

Merryspring is covered in snow, but that snow will melt. In the meantime, I get to contact speakers for Tuesday Talks and organize winter activities. I will become very familiar with writing press releases. I will pretty much work at my own pace and do what I can to maintain traditional practices and introduce new ideas at this beautiful little nature center. It feels so official to be THE Environmental Educator at Merryspring. I am so excited.

Though Bonnie still hasn't worked out getting wireless internet, the Rockland public Library is really close (now that I finally found it). It's in this lovely old building well maintained. There is a common room with a fireplace!

I met one of Bonnie's friends last night. He was a really nice guy! A character. He likes to drive across the country taking pictures and writing in journals. I wish that I weren't just starting the professional part of my life. I would LOVE to do that. And Bonnie herself is such a free spirit. She lived in South America for a time and has been a designer her whole life. She loves NPR and reading news magazines. She loves making dinner and entertaining people. She is a nice lady and a free spirit.

I still feel lonely at times. But I've been here less than a week. What can I expect? But even more so than New Hampshire, I imagine finding myself in Maine. Either that, or I will retreat into myself and never leave my room except to work.

But all first impressions tell me the following: This is going to be a challenge. I am not an extrovert but I find that the more I try, the more outgoing I can be. There is a lot to be done at Merryspring but they aren't going to let me crash and burn without any help. I'm going to be poor but I am already finding ways to work past that. I can look past the cold grayness of winter that covers everything and see how I will fall in love with this place once spring comes around (not that I'm not starting to fall in love with it now. It's just had with it being so cold and harsh).

I know it's winter and I have a while, but I can't wait for all of you to come and visit! I will have so much to share with you.

On Javier and a Journey

I got a new car. A gold 1999 Saturn SL2 (the same exact model as Alice only 3 years younger) As advised by Emily and Kirsten his name is Javier. I have to say, I didn't like it at first (I knew a Javier in school and this car looks nothing like him). But as I have driven him, it's grown on me.

Alice is now to property of Top Quality motors. After three years of faithful service, she has earned some time off. She got me to New Hampshire and back with no problems. She almost always got me where I needed to go. Remember the broken windshield? And the passenger footwell lakes? Remember the leaky roof? Scraping frost off the inside of the windshield? She may not sound like a joy to drive, but she was my first car and I loved her for every quirk. And I miss her manual transmission.

That's right. I'm back to an automatic. Javier insists on doing all the work and not letting me contribute to the driving. He has a tendency to drift to the left. He has a hard time getting up to speed on hills. And he grumbles a little when getting up to 70mph after a break at a rest stop or gas station. But he seems sturdy enough and has plenty of room. He also has an annoying security system. As if he has something to protect. Hah!

The process was stressful, let me tell you. I really wanted Alice 2.0-A 2005 Saturn Ion. Manual transmission. Black. A nice little car with one big problem. It was a salvage vehicle. Everything was going to be great. I was going to get a trade in on my old car, I was going to get a great deal with the bank (good interest, good monthly payment) and then we called Allstate. They would not insure the car. And with only 2 more days to get this whole thing taken care of I had no time to look for a new insurance provider.

So, Javier it is. I just hope he proves to be as sturdy in New England as Alice was. She was a real trooper.

I wont go into all the other little disasters that happened as I was trying to get this whole car things worked out. Just know that I never want to have to car search under a 5 day time crunch ever again.

In other news, I'm in Maine.

Yup.

Back in the North East.

I am currently using the spotty internet stolen from some neighbor who has wireless. It fades in and out. Sadie took the trip fairly well. Only one vomit. She does NOT like the car and would get super excited any time we pulled over.

I cannot BELIEVE how long it seems to take to get to Lafayette! Sorry Juli. I LOVE staying at your place but the last hour or so on the country highway takes FOR-EV-ER. Or maybe it just seems to when it's late, I'm tired, and I can only go 55mph. Oh well, I got there. Good times with Juli. Good breakfast! She made Strata. And then it was the longest solo drive of my LIFE. Boy, I tell you what. Over 12 hours, several stops, and a nap later I finally rolled into my hotel. It wasn't the nicest place in the world but it was sufficient for the price and for one night. I barely stayed awake for the ball dropping and then went to sleep.

And then it was a less long, less horrid drive through the rest of New York, into Mass., Through East New Hampshire and finally into Maine. It was wonderful to see "...mountains again, MOUNTAINS, Gandalf!" hehe.

Google maps fails. No big surprise there. Having looked at where I live with Emily on Google maps we had determined that the white house you could see from the road was NOT in fact where I was going to live and that the house had to be hidden behind the trees. Going on this, I tried to find the house behind the trees. It wasn't there. I could see the studio where Bonnie works but not a house. I saw a run down small thing that looked un-inviting. I was afraid that it was where I was going to live. But I finally called Bonnie and the directions she gave me led right to that house visible from the street that Google maps said was the wrong house.

I did a little moving in at first but not much.

I was tired.

I was sure to take Sadie out as much as possible. I brought my bedding up. Now I'm here.

P.S. I am finishing this post several days after I started it. I just wanted to break my update posts into smaller chunks. So a post will follow this one shortly on my orientation experience and thoughts on my first several days here.

On this time in my life

Some things seem to be coming together, while others do not.

The ones that do not are really all because of my own procrastination.

I think I have a place to live when I move to Maine! It's with a woman who designs handbags. You can go to her site HERE. They are pretty cool. She lives in a house that was built in 1910 and is on a hill overlooking Penobscot Bay. It's in Owls Head Maine which is really close to Rockland which is about 20 minutes away from where I will work in Camden. She loves little dogs. She is willing to look into getting basic cable and wireless internet. She it prompt in her responses. She says she has been living in that house for 22 years so she is middle age or older. She lives a quiet lifestyle and likes small dinner parties but not Partaaaaay parties (yay for me!). I cannot WAIT to love so close to the ocean!

It seems like the perfect situation. I am going to call her Monday night and get a little more information from her.

The best part?

$400/month utilities included! No pet deposit! I don't think I could find a better deal.

Work is going by swimmingly. I make SOOOO much more money working mornings than I did working nights (even with closing 4-5 nights a week). It's nice to actually have substantial money in my account!

You know what else is nice? Not forgetting that Christmas is only two weeks away. I haven't done ANNNYYY shopping!

Also, I think Sadie still resents me for not being around all those 10 months. I'm pretty sure she no longer sees me as her owner.

Classic Christmas music is WONDERFUL. What's not wonderful are all the lame re-makes. Vom.

Tangled is cute, though not an instant classic like all those Disney movies of my childhood were. Is it just because I am older and jaded?

Ahhhh! I need to feed my birds!

How easy do you think it would be to make Pestilence Pony? Not very if you want it to be an exact replica with ALL that detail. But Here is my attempt.

Side Shot.

OTHER side shot.

Slightly off center frontal view.

Close up on facial detail

Close up on rear end symbol.

First I tookA pony very similar to this one and pulled all but the yellow hair out.

That took a while. Then I painted her yellow and did all the rest.

This is what the REAL Pestilence Pony looks like. I was going to try for all the texture and all, but it seemed too involved. Especially since this is a Secret Santa gist with a $10 limit.

So there you have it. The tale of my Arts and Crafts project. I told Kirsti this is my artistic rendition of Pestilence Pony. NOT an exact replica.

Merry Christmas, Rick! You're very own Pony of the Apocalypse!

On ninja moves and exploding choco.

There are times when a hero is needed. When the darkness of the days demands an explosion of light. Well, this is not that time and I am not that luminous breakthrough.

But I am a ninja.

I bet you didn't know that. Neither did I until last night.

It was a Saturday night just like any other Saturday night. Things were moving along. I was taking tables and making money as always. And just like any other night I reached for a white plastic syrup pitcher. That's when it happened.

I dropped it.

Now you have to understand. The clatter of these plastic pitchers on the tile floor is much like cat claws on a chalkboard to me. It's loud, the pitch is shattering, and it doesn't seem to stop for a whole 5 minutes. I could not, WOULD not suffer through 5 minutes of ceaseless plastic on tile. It's lucky that these plastic pitchers are also rather bouncy. One impact on the right edge and they will reach heights to rival your average 25 cent bouncy ball. Because of this I was able to reach out my hand and catch the wily pitcher before it hit the ground again. In my sudden relief, I loosened my grip and the pitcher fell again. Again I caught it (lucky me) but this time it reached only the tip of my fingers. The smooth white plastic slipped from grasp but I would not let it fall a third time. With that same hand I reached out and grasped wildly. I played a little game of one-handed hot potato for several seconds until the Ninja in me was manifest.

It was all a blur and there is only one witness in the world who can confirm events as they occurred. As I played hot potato the horizontal arc of my arm widened. That is to say, the pitcher was getting farther and farther away from me and my left arm was moving in a kind of semi circle in a counter clockwise fashion horizontal to the ground. As you all know, if you hold your hand out, palm cupped and facing up (I want you to try this. Go ahead, extend those arms!) and then move that arm toward your back not (and not twisting at the waist) it eventually becomes easier to twist your arm around and point your arm so that your palm is facing down. Try it. About the time you get to mid waist flip your arm over and then as you get further still you bend your arm at the elbow and your hand is facing up again. It is this way that we are able to reach those hard to reach places when we scratch our back. Well, that's the route my arm took the last time the pitcher hit my hand. I caught it and in an attempt to keep it in my cupped hand I moved my arm back and bent my elbow. The pitcher was propelled out of my hand at top speed and into an alcove where we keep dishes. It slammed full force into a bowl and that bowl was shattered.

This all happened in about two, maybe three blinks of an eye. It was amazing. No one knew what happened. All they heard was a crash and then they saw was a pitcher lying next to a shattered bowl.

Okay, you had to have been there. But I am a ninja. I promise.

That same night, the coolness I bought with the ninja move was canceled out 10 fold. There was a tiny rush. Not much. I had 3 tables and a 5 top get sat all within 5 minutes. And all the tables seemed to be needy. Needless to say there was much rushing around. One table ordered all hot choco's. But the machine that makes this delicious drink was out of powder and so was producing chocolate colored water. Instead of finding a knife or a pair of scissors, I decided that I could open the bag of hot chocolate powder by holding a side of the bag with each hand and pulling, much like you do a bag of chips. At first there was no give. Then there was a little give and I thought, "piece of cake". But before the "cake" part of that thought was even fully manifest there was an explosion.

An explosion of hot choco powder.

In an instant everything in a 2 foot radius of me was covered in brown chocolaty dusting. I stood there helplessly and in shock for several moments and then my coworker arrived (the one who had witnessed my ninja move). She took one look at me and burst out laughing claiming that I was just making her night. She helped me blow off and dust off as much powder from my uniform as I had time for (if you remember I was running around trying to get things done) when my food came up. So I took it to my table and explained the situation. All were sympathetic as they took in my bepowdered form. My table of very chatty and amusing guys said that I smelled so good that I was not allowed to leave the table. I told them that smelling me would cost them extra.

Needless to say, it was a crazy night and overall not one of the best nights of my life. But it just goes to show that you can't be a ninja and a Sarah Lambson at the same time. It's just one of those scientific laws I suppose.

On being

Sarah sat with her legs dangling over the tiny pink couch in the corner of her room. Could it even be called a couch? The SIZE of the thing. It wasn't even a love seat. But it was there and it was better than lying on her bed.

Little Sadie made a wild jump and barely cleared the gap from the bed to the mini couch. Once there, she settled herself in the space between her loving owners legs.

The song "The loneliness of a tower crane driver" by Elbow sounded from the speakers of Sarah's laptop. She was listening to her "writing music" playlist. As the notes swirled through the cluttered spaces of the room, the ever so slightly emotionally rumpled young woman of the family of Lambson wondered just what she was going to put into her blog entry.

It was another one of those started, deleted, re-started, deleted, re-titled and re-started and edited and deleted and RE-restarted entries. Sarah knew that if she didn't finish an entry once she started one that it would never get published. It was a good thing then that her livelihood was not dependent on her ability to create a witty posts like THIS blogger and THIS blogger.

Even now, she had no idea just where this post was taking her. She wished more than anything that the creative side of her could be awakened again. But the only things she could think to write about was how all her time these days was spent working at Bob's and watching movies and TV shows. The only things occupying her thoughts were how much sleep she would get tonight, considering the altered sleeping arrangements, whether or not her car would live another year, and how in the world she was going to find a life in Maine.

She twirled her hair thoughtfully as the live version of "Newborn" by Muse played through her thoughts. She considered how there were several people close to her who had problems and worries that were much worse than hers. Why complain, really? Her car situation was out of her control and all her other worries, the ones that WERE in her control, she need only worry about as she continued to procrastinate solutions.

As she corrected yet ANOTHER misspelled word, this molder of mediocre motifs (Mmm for short) realized that, yes, she does make a lot of mistakes on this blog. There are a lot of typos, she tends to use commas far too much, she write run on sentences and sentence fragments, and she has no idea how to spell. Thank goodness for those squiggly red lines which are only useful sometimes.

Oooh, oooh, OOOH! Sarah clicked a link in her e-mail to a radio program on the magic of the music of Harry Potter. Her heart soared. She was glad that this episode still existed and hoped that others might take advantage of it, especially since they started off with WILLOW music (Sarah also decided to let readers of this blog know that in order to access the episode if it in fact still exists, they need to click "On Demand" and then "The Score-Edmund Stone" to listen to it).

Oh if only she had just enough money to buy all the Lord of the Rings complete film soundtracks. If only, if only.

Sarah realized she had gotten off track. But really, what was this blog for if not her random thought processes and de-railings. And why would she need to edit her blog entries? It was HER BLOG after all. There for HER benefit first and foremost and only secondarily existing for the readers. You want to read a grammatically correct and blemish free piece of writing? Go to a library, or a bookstore, or any INTELLIGENT persons blog.

"Enough of that," Sarah Thought. "Time to stop this and move on with life. Time to find an online writing exercise and post it on the OTHER blog because I have the time to have TWO unnecessary places to publicly publish my thoughts."