Do you want to hear a story?

Coming Home: A Travel Story

The Story:
I am staying for the weekend in Berkeley at Alef and Dr. Animal's house, the closest thing I have to a home right now.  I got here Tuesday in the middle of the night and am leaving Sunday morning to return to camp for my last three weeks there.

A few days ago I got a not-so-gracious, unsurprisingly self-focused email from Ani about the mountain biking, beers on the beach, and topless women she's been enjoying in Spain this past week with a p.s. reading "...and I'm coming home on the 29th in case I forgot to tell you before."

The Lesson:
I will be gone by the time she gets home that night and I do not want to see or talk to her anyway.  The towing company came yesterday morning and took her car to the Subaru dealership for repairs to the damage it sustained when I was rearended on 880 three weeks ago, and I sent her mail with the information about where it is and how she can be in touch with the shop and the claims agent.  Otherwise, I'm done.  Welcome home, my dear, you missed your chance.

New Blog: A True Story

The Story:
I have been writing this blog for almost four years now...is it possible?!  Wow.  In that time many things have happened and nearly all of them have been recounted here: falling in and out of love, weddings and babies (none of them my own), world travel, finding out I'm queer, choosing Judaism, surviving war in the Middle East, and a few stories from Third Grade thrown in here and there.

Now a new chapter is beginning, I have abandoned most of the external accessories that have made my life what it is up until recently.  I am on sabbatical from my teaching job, my car is gone, my stuff is in storage, and I am living in the mountains of Yosemite where I find myself filthy in body but cleaner in spirit than I've been in a very long time.  This is just the first of many adventures that I intend to have the next eleven months, and you know by now from reading here that with adventures come stories. 

But how to tell true stories from my real life here where things are anonymous?  I've already had one disastrous experience with someone finding this (not-so) secret blog, which makes me very hesitant to write as myself online...but giving into the fear of discovery I felt, and to some extent still feel, gives the person who found me a power I am unwilling to relinquish.  So, as in many other ways this year, I am choosing to be brave and tell the stories of my real life and true adventures online--not here, but in another blog. 

The Lesson:
There will always, as far as I can tell, be storytime and you can find it right here on the Internet whenever you want.  And, now there will also be somewhere else you can find me.  I do not want to publish that link as part of this blog because to do that would make it possible to connect the identity I've constructed and the stories I've told here to my real self.  The chance of being discovered by someone working it backwards and using the URL of my public blog to find all that I've written here is too terrifying to me, maybe not so much because of the actual text of what I've published (although it does range from hilarious to embarrassing to dangerous) but because of what this private, anonymous space has meant to me. 

So, if you want to know where to find me send me email and I'll tell you.  Or, you could choose not to find out all about what's really going on and instead just check here for the juicy stuff...because believe me, for as R-rated as this can be my new blog will certainly remain PG, and what fun is that?  No one--not my father, not the principal of my school, not anyone else at all--is going to get the chance to read on my new blog about who I'm fucking so if you want the scoop on what's really up this will, as always, be the place to find out :)

Not What I Need Right Now: A True Story

The Story:
Last weekend when I was home in Berkeley (which is my home now, as much as I have one) I got rearended on the freeway in Ani's car that I am borrowing for the summer.  Ugh.  And of course the person who rearended me pushed the Subaru into the car in front of me, and that into the car in front of him.  Fuck fuck fuck. 

All of this would be fine although inconvenient, except for the fact that while I had copies of the registration and insurance I am not actually one of the policy holders and am not authorized to make decisions regarding the vehicle's repair.  Which would be fine and I would just deal with it and actually had, prior to learning I was not authorized to take action about any of this, already called Subaru of Albany, California, to arrange to have both the mechanical repairs and also the bodywork done.  Which would be fine because normally all that would need to happen is the person in whose name the policy is written, in this case Ani, would simply speak with the insurance company and give her permission for me to take action on her behalf to repair the car except for the fact that Ani is now in Tanzania and does not have access to a telephone and as a result cannot speak directly with the person handling the claim.  Which would be fine because in the last (not so gracious) email Ani sent me from the airport in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia, she did not ask me if I was hurt in the accident (no I was not) but did ask me if I could give the claims agent her email address so they could communicate that way.  Which would be fine except for the fact that the claims agent left a message on my voicemail saying that she has not heard from Ani and so there is nothing I can do with the car as of now.  Which would be fine except that part of our arrangement was that I would take the Subaru that we have been sharing since January to camp for the first part of the summer and then bring it back in time for her return to the Western Hemisphere on July 28th because she wants to drive it to her grandma's house in Santa Barbara and her parents' house in Seattle. 

The Lesson:
If she does not get in touch with the insurance people and I am not able to be authorized to deal with the claim and it is not only in Berkeley instead of San Francisco but also is in need of repairs, all because she was unreachable in Tanzania, there is really nothing more I can do to be responsible for this (which, as she wrote in her not very gracious email, she is glad to hear that I am willing to be).  So that I guess is the best I can do.

Friend Crush: An Un-Love Story

The Story:
Now that I have been at camp for about a month I am finally starting to feel like I belong at least a little, and that I have some friends.  My two roommates--the social worker and the nurse--are my friends and so is the gardener and one of the wilderness leaders.  The female nanny is cool, one of the songleaders this session is someone I know from home, and the current visiting director is friendly to me although I certainly would not say we are friends even though she might think otherwise.

The wilderness leader and I were sitting in my office a few nights ago doing some joint programming for our two departments when he confessed (and I am not even really sure how we got started talking about this since ostensibly we were talking about Judaism in nature) that he has what he described as a "friend crush" on me, a term I had not heard before but one which makes perfect sense.  This is fascinating because when someone I know had come up to camp before the season started for supervisors' training, she picked this wilderness leader out as someone in whom I might be interested...

Which would make it seem like it's not only all well and good but also very positive that he has a friend crush on me, but unfortunately his girlfriend is the gardener and so it is actually a little bit of a problem.  Not the friend crush thing, that is no problem at all, but rather the fact that I can see I am developing a little bit of an un-friend crush on him which is not okay for a variety of reasons.

The Lesson:
Note to self: spend less time with the wilderness leader, even though he has freckles and eyes that light up when he smiles.

Semi-Happy Camper: A Travel Story and A Jew Story

The Story:
I have not written for more than a month because a few days after my last post I told my school I was taking a sabbatical for the next year.  Since that time I have moved out of my apartment, put all my belongings into storage, and taken a job for eight weeks at a Jewish summer camp in Yosemite.  After that I will live at Alef and Dr. Animal's house for a little while until I leave to spend the next ten months in Jerusalem, Kenya, India, and maybe even Australia.

The Lesson:
I was busy for awhile trying to orchestrate all this but things are calming down a bit, at least for now, so I should be able to write more soon.  This weekend I'm going to Berkeley for one of Alef's many pre-wedding celebrations ('bridal showers'=too stam) and while she and Dr. Animal are at Chez Panisse I think they might let me use their Internet.  I will share with you stories of this transformation I have taken on, including but not limited to what it was like to finally move out of my adorable but sorrowful apartment and the ways in which I am currently trying to embrace how filthy and underpants-free I am out here in the middle of nowhere.