Amid Weeping There Is Joy (or HSC Conference 2010)

I find that it becomes infinitely easier to look back on things and find the good in them after a few days. The same is true for looking back and seeing what truly was as bad or worse than you thought it was at the time and figuring out how and why it went so wrong. It's somewhat therapeutic, after an event such as this, to lounge and think about the whys and the hows and pick apart the stresses, fights and failures.

When you put 25 teenagers together and deprive them of sleep, feed them junk food and put them under stress breakdowns will inevitably happen. Adding in 150 of their peers relying on them for amusement doesn't help anything. As well as things went (and most of them went wonderfully) bad things do happen. Things that could ruin the truly unique experience of the conference as a whole if you are willing to let them, and I almost did.

I've come to realize that there were a lot of tears shed in vain and perhaps some words that would have been better off left unsaid, but many things were justified even outside the heat of the moment. There are some people that will never be likable, actions that are unforgivable, trusts that won't reform. Those things won't change even after the initial bursts of anger and betrayal have passed. Nothing will make false rumors less biting or lies less hurtful, and they can't be taken back.

But there are also just people who made silly mistakes and said stupid things to the wrong people and never really thought about the consequences. Forgiveness isn't really in my nature but when it comes down to it well intentioned ignorance is not the same as idiocy and has to be forgiven. And the upside is finding out that what you thought was malicious really wasn't, which kind of brightens things up. :)

So when it comes down to it...conference was pretty good. A lot of the people were really awesome, and really gorgeous, and I wish I had been in a better mood to enjoy their company. We put together a few supercool parties and dances that were totally worth all the effort, and arranged way more workshops than I want to think about.

But my favorite part was probably Sunday night, hanging out and detoxing and letting go of all the things that had been stressing me out.

I'm still exhausted. I'm still kind of upset. But I'm actually pretty happy. Looking back there's always joy amid the tears.

I can't wait for next year. <3

Conference Countdown

This summer has been crazy: beautiful places, beautiful people, adventures, drama, sickness, parties, my 1 year anniversary with my boyfriend, and a new puppy, just to name a few of the things that have happened in the last few months. It's been pretty epic and I've hardly been home at all in the past month. I think my family is starting to wonder if I'm trying to abandon them.

But August is drawing to a close, school is starting (for you conformists who attend XD), tons of people I know are being eaten up by Community College, the awesomely hot weather is going to fade...

But we're going out with a bang because the HSC Conference is this weekend!!! I'd have a hard time thinking of a better way to say goodbye to summer then this. Parties (SUPERHERO THEMED, WOOOOO! the nerd in me can't stop grinning), dances, crazy workshops, not to mention tons of awesome people in one place. And all the weekend before I start class (only one, damn them) at Sierra community college.

I can't wait! Only a day and a half left until it starts....

A Beach Vacation

If there is anything in the world that could make me believe in magic it would be the ocean. There's nothing quite like wiggling your toes in wet sand and looking out past waves to a completely flat horizon, or swimming in something that seems to go on forever. It's the kind of thing that causes existential crises or (in the case of little girls with overactive imaginations and a taste for reading fantasy novels) creates wild imaginings of swords, sorcery and the kick ass princess (Disney and the damsels in distress can go screw themselves). Or maybe talking dolphins, but I'm a bit past that phase.



The beach was beautiful, obviously. The company was great.

Universal studios was awesome.



I got some really amazing leg warmers.



And we all arrived home safe, sound and sunburned.

Much as it annoys my mother to hear it I never wanted to leave. Puppies and ponies aside, I'd stay in SoCal forever if I could.

So thank you to my lovely friends and their family for taking me back there, at least for a little while. <3

On the Road Again

Let me start by saying it's summer in Bakersfield. If you don't know where Bakersfield is or what it's like, let me advise you against visiting. Ever. It is a craphole at the best of times and on days like this, in a motel with shitty air conditioning on the way to somewhere Better, it is even worse.

It was nearly too hot to walk across the parking lot to CoCo's for cold drinks and pie (PIE, four teenagers who nearly did not want to walk to get PIE!).

I prefer the driving to sitting in a motel staring at walls, but then again I've always liked driving. Cramped, overheated, noisy car full of teenagers and all. Even when it's boring. Even when you're driving down I-5 with nothing in sight but hills and stock yards full of too many cows in too little space with no relief from the stink of the shit they're standing in. Sitting in a car going Anywhere But Here is peaceful, thoughtless, and one of my favorite ways to spend time.

Sitting here with the cheap prints on the wall and the rose wallpaper and the mediocre tv and no relief from the heat is not.

But at the end of this road is the BEACH. Anything for the beach.

Going Home

It's probably strange that I still think of San Diego as 'home' after all these years, a place where I last lived permanently when I was 5. By now that's less than a third of my life and by any sort of logic San Jose, Morgan Hill, Sacramento and Folsom all have as much right to a claim on my heart as San Diego does.

The Coyote Valley was where I truly grew up (and so far the place I stayed longest) but it has less than no hold over me. It's a place on the map, a few mostly forgotten memories and severed friendships I was already growing out of before we left. Mostly it exists in stories that start with 'Back when I was a public school kid...'. And Sacramento...well, I don't think the greater Sacramento area will ever be home. No matter how long we stay, no matter how many friends live here, no matter how many memories we make. It remains a physical place to me, with no emotional connection. It's not a place I've ever planned on staying in, a glorified cow-town full over conservatives and white trash (not to say I'm any better). When I leave I don't miss it, when I come back I look forward to going somewhere else again. The mountains, maybe...the mountains I love, but not the valley.

Unlike the others San Diego remains a place I can call home in my heart (a silly romanticized notion 'Home is where the heart is', but don't teenagers love those things?) above all others. Maybe because above all else I love the ocean, and they have by far the best beaches in California (though I won't turn my nose up at NorCal coast in the middle of winter, if that's all that's being offered). Or because the weather suits me (hot and dry and hot and dry, a sort of permanent summer). Or because of the theme parks and museums that I hardly remember. Because of the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park that I utterly adore and could spend weeks in at a time. A romanticized notion of childhood, or because that remains the place I associate with family and yearly trips to visit them, though the family that I care about have all moved here by now and there's no excuse to visit anymore.

It's silly, pointless, stupid to have such an emotional connection to a place that only exists to me in cloudy memory, but there it is. And I can't wait to be going back, going Home, even for a little while.

Puppy!

So I recently got the cutest puppy ever.

She comes from Animal Control by way of The Grace Foundation of Northern California, from a litter that would have been put down thanks to apparent ringworm (which they didn't actually have) had they stayed at the shelter. Fortunately Beth DeCaprio of The Grace Foundation picked them up, brought them back, and found them all foster homes.

When I first saw her she was skinny and badly proportioned, with an angry red rash all over her body. When I picked her up from her first foster home she had gained a little weight and the remains of the rash were much faded.

In the past week and a half she's grown significantly and has no signs of the rash left, has gained a much nicer coat and a lot more energy (she's quite literally bouncing off the furniture when she's not out like a light).

We have absolutely no idea what breed she is--The Grace Foundation's guess was Corgi/Australian Shepherd, but while her siblings look much more like Corgis she appears more Chihuahua (ew) or Rat Terrier, with a Border Collie pattern, if not coloring. Oh well, I'm a big fan of mutts.

Not only is she adorable, she's incredibly sweet and people-motivated, making her easy to train despite her high energy. She sits, comes to her name, and has begun begging at the door to be let out. As soon as she gets her shots (and it stops being so damn hot!) we'll take her out and train her how to walk on a leash.

Of course, our cats hate her. And our old dog isn't really sure what to do with this bouncy little ball of fluff, though I'm sure he'll come around eventually.

Toy Story Is Proof That I Have A Heart

Toy Story 3 is not a children's movie...it's a movie for all the has-beens, the children that grew up and left childhood behind in the past eleven years. Four out of the five members of my family that saw it today cried--the only one who didn't is eleven years old, with a dollhouse made out of the entertainment unit and a collection of Bratz guaranteed to trip anyone who walks through the living room. This movie wasn't aimed at her, not yet.

It's a movie for tweenagers trying to forget their childhoods, straining to grow up but not quite there yet, and teens desperately scrambling back from the brink of adulthood and wondering where all that time went. Shown in snapshots of yesteryear that probably match the pictures on your mother's wall: Andy constructing fantasy lands out of linkin' logs and imagination, Andy asleep amidst a mountain of well loved toys that are, inevitably, forgotten in a dusty toybox. The toys scramble to hold onto what they've known; Andy grows up, forgets them, prepares to leave them in the attic with only one exception.

My own toys are gone: Barbies beheaded by a ten-year-old tomboy, toy cars crashed, action figures lost and left behind in multiple moves, a toy school bus that got dropped on the cat and was forgotten somewhere down along the line. There's no safe warm attic for them, they died in a dump somewhere. I have a collection of Breyer horses (missing hooves and legs, paint scratched, propped up against each other in the windowsill) and a pile of stuffed animals next to the bed, and nothing else. Somewhere there is a stuffed chihuahua with a pink bow tie named Mr. Snookums (you see, I've always been cruel) who went with me to Florida when I was ten and will no doubt go to college with me when I'm 18. No toddler is getting their grubby hands on these, they're mine, and I cried when Andy passed his off even though they went to a good home.

Andy grew up, went to college, and passed his childhood on to someone else...but it went out with a bang, and in doing so has made me want to cling to mine a little harder.