A Trial in Happiness

The semester is almost over already. It's been a hell of a ride. It's all just been off kilter, really. I suppose it's because everyone is just so busy all the time.

I'm ready for the semester to be over; I'm not ready for finals.  I have yet to crank out 25 more pages of screenplay by Friday. I know my story now, at least, but the idea of actually writing it is painful just to think about.  There's so many problems in it that I just don't have the time or the energy to fix before then.  I just hope I can it done.

I'm terrified of writing my paper. My professor hasn't been grading me fairly and that leaves it all to chance.  She could fail me or give me an A. I have no fucking clue as to which.  I don't want to do it but I have to. It's beyond frustrating.

I just never have any time anymore.  I'm too sick or too tired to get anything done. It's either acute exhaustion or mono. I just need to make it to 3pm, December 18th.  It'll all be over then.

I'm interviewing at the production company I desperately want to intern for on Thursday. I hope I get the job.

It's raining again. It seems like whenever it rains I post. Funny, that.

The apartment is almost set up entirely how I want it. Still need to reconfigure the desk and figure out what to do with the spare TV. It's still woefully taking up our sitting area.  It's a table, I swear.

I keep having to remind the boyfriend to throw his garbage away into the garbage cans and not leave them just sitting there. Ugh.  No matter how old they get, boys are always still little children in some aspects.

I've been getting worried about money lately. It's a tad ridiculous but I've felt like I've been spending as if it were water. Inflation is such a bitch.  I swear, all the diners have already updated their menus so everything is $0.25-0.50 more expensive. It doesn't seem like much, but it adds up.  I'm exit-polling on Saturday so that should be at least $50 bucks, hopefully closer to $100 though.

I dropped out of my playwriting class. I decided that the screenplay I'm working on is too important to let myself be distracted by theater. We all know what happens when I let theater into my life. I just can't do it.  I need as much time for the screenplay, the rest of my homework, and finding a job as possible. I solemnly swear to not let theater take over my life this semester. Amen.

Home

So remember how I said I'd have stuff to talk about when I got back to New York?  I kind of lied.

I don't know if you've been following the news or anything, but the midwest has been hammered by storms these past two weeks, with more still coming.  I live in a teeny weeny town that straddles the Fox River in Kane County, Illinois.  We've been getting a lot of rain and today was no different. Only today there was a fuck ton of it, and it's still pouring. It's not even 7:00pm and it's as dark as it is around 10:00pm.

Our town has one bridge. It's under construction right now. A bit down the river are three islands with three foot bridges connecting them together and to the mainland.  Crossing the bridge today after the first downpour, I noticed something peculiar.  The islands were gone. Just gone. Flooded over.  I've lived in Batavia for all twenty years I've been alive and the islands haver never been swallowed by the river. Not even close.  There are lower islands farther south which are constantly sinking and rising out of the river, but not our islands.

Oh, we were also hit by a few tornadoes. The elementary schools kept their children at school late rather than risk sending them home in the downpour and wind. Trees are down all over and my dog is terrified. I was actually a few counties north when they came and the poor dog had to weather it all by herself. We knew there'd been tornadoes by the time we were coming home and the close we got to home, the more awful it looked. Streets closed, trees down, power out.  But, thankful my street was largely spared, our recycling bins were just blown around and some smaller branches were down.

On top of all this, the van broke down. And we need it to drive to New York on Saturday. Ugh.  I just hope we can still leave on time and wont get held up by any of the flooding in Ohio.

I exited teenhood last Friday. It's a bit weird to think of myself as twenty, but the clock keeps rolling forward.  Reflecting on the past twenty years, it's crazy how much this place has changed.  You see, I've lived in the same house my entire life, and while I haven't always lived here full time, it's where I come home to in the summers and over holidays.

For one, we didn't have any four lane roads before I was ten. And we certainly didn't have The World's Largest Strip Mall until a few years back.  The cornfields are all gone, and the "known" families in town--those that have been in town for at least six generations--they don't hold any sway anymore over local elections and policy building. Some have even moved away.  All the new houses being built are these fugly McMansions, which completely and entirely clash with the older, Victorian houses near the river and the neighborhoods filled in and populated in the 30's and 40's.  My hometown has grown so ugly.

Asad and Jade drove out to see me since everyone else was busy for my birthday.  They commented frequently on just how many liquor stores Batavia has, considering it's size.  While there's certainly a lot more to do around here than when I was younger, it still mostly consists of shopping and eating. Granted, that's what all the new yuppie transplants want to do. It's kind of silly how many pseudo-nice restaurants keep opening and then closing around here.

I'm so ready to go back to New York City.

I've been away for awhile. I know.  Moving took a lot of effort, fighting with parents over subletters was incredibly tiring, and finals drained me so much.  All in all, everything turned out how I wanted it, though.

I'm working for the Batavia School District again this summer. I lost my cubicle/office space when they hired the new tech guy, but I did get a raise.  It's kind of silly though: I'm in charge of such an insane amount of paperwork and don't have any drawers  .  I barely have enough desk space to hold a laptop and a stack of papers.  Though it's nice, I get to share a cubicle with Laura this year, and she's always a lot of fun.

The really messed up thing is that today, the second to last day of the school year, I was informed I may have been exposed to viral meningitis.  A teacher was hospitalized for it yesterday and everything has switched over into damage control.  They yanked me off the project I was specifically hired to do to help crisis manage.  And considering we need to be all prepped and ready for summer school on Wednesday, this was very bad.

I also found out that my best friend growing up is hella rich.  Like hundreds of millions of dollars rich.  And her dad is now running for congress.  It's very bizarre.  Well, not entirely.  I knew there was money, and I knew her father was political, I just never realized the degree.  I mean, he was a physicist when I saw him on a regular basis.  It's so weird.  I almost blew up a church (on accident!) with her and her brother once. What strangeness.  Though I am happy that she'll be back from Stanford this summer to help campaign, which means I get to see her.

The other fucked up thing today is something I'm not sure I'm at liberty to talk about.  It happened to Luke, but it was very upsetting.  All I can is that a very fucked up thing happened on Myspace today. Like, extremely fucked up.  Fucked up to the point where it could be turned into like a Dateline story, or 20/20.  I'll write more about it late if it's okay with him.  I'm just dumbfounded.

I went to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show On Earth tonight with three friends. I'm writing a play/musical/play about Victorian Era circus freaks, and since the circus is in the city, we thought we'd check it out.

All in all, we had a good time.  But there were several times that I was not happy to be sitting in Madison Square Gardens. There were, in fact, times I felt ill.  I knew that animals were a part of the act, but somehow it never crossed my mind that I'd actually be seeing these creatures, that they were actually real.

Circus Horses

It started with the horses.  My family is horse people. I grew up around horses.  Much of my childhood was spent at various barns and horse riding events because it's a huge part of who my sister is. I was six or seven the first time I rode a horse myself, but I was first exposed to these lovely creatures on a routine basis starting when I was three.  The barn my family called home for over a decade was not the best barn.

That in mind, I have never seen more depressed, unhappy horses in my life.  Even from 100 or so yards away, it was obvious.  When a horse is happy, their head is up, their ears are perked, there's an airiness to their gait.  These circus horses, of which there were at least a dozen plus six zebras, did not exhibit one of these traits.  They were severely head shy, which is probably why not a single rider was ever present.  The horses are probably too frightened and downtrodden to trust anyone to get close to them.

I was shocked at the unnecessary whipping and poking of these animals while in the ring.  I know what humane treatment of horses is.  I know how much forces is needed to get a horse to do something. I've used a crop before.  It's a tap. A light little nudge, if even that.  Not a slapping whip that is obviously hitting the animal, and is making such a racket that it echoes throughout the stadium.  That is abuse, and it's abuse witnessed by thousands at every performance.

Big Cats

Then came the big cats, mostly tigers.  The size of their cages weren't even attempted to be hidden.  They were rolled out right in them, and I did not get the impression these cats were only in them to be brought on stage.  These cages were barely tall enough to allow them to stand, and had just enough room to let them lie down. Barely.  And the fact that all of the cats were lying down, with some of them asleep, suggests that these meager pastures are their homes.

The cats were demoralized beyond recognition.  And their "trainer" yelled and shouted at these creatures. He berated them and hit them with sticks.  Yes, yes, tigers don't speak English, but all animals are sensitive to inflection and tone.  These cats were terrorized into behaving, if you could even call it that.  Every single member of my party reflected during intermission how we had desperately wanted these cats to turn on their keepers and extract revenge.  Their roars were defensive and fearful.

And then there were the Elephants.

Elephants