summertime and the livin’s easy

I shall now attempt to chronicle my summer, at least the highlights and lowlights of it all.

June brought a car accident, which has resulted in over $2500 in damages to my car and numerous hospital and doctor visits (diagnosing a badly sprained shoulder and elbow and chest contussions). It is now two weeks before I am supposed to leave for school, my car is not fixed and now does not pass inspection due to the accident. Its a long story, but the insurance company might rent me a car to get to school until my car is fixed. That would add a trip home to return the rental and retrieve my car, which does NOT make me very happy. I just want my car back. I miss her, something I never really thought was possible. I’ve been using my mom’s car, work vehicles and sympathetic friends to get around, but I need a car for school. I’m not looking forward to making the long trip back “home” without Charlotte. I never thought I would have become this attached to my car, but I love her!

The car accident actually took place in an unknown city, miles from anything and anyone I knew. I was at the International Double Reed Society Annual Conference (read as “Mega Geek Fest for Oboes, English horns, bassoons, etc). I enjoyed the conference as much as I could considering the circumstances. I was in lots of pain, but met some amazing people, created great connections and played beautiful oboes. I now want a cocobolo Howarth oboe more than anything! We’re talking $9,000 of wonderful oboeness. So that won’t be happening anytime soon. I still love my oboe, a Loree. He (don’t ask why it’s male, it just is) is my first pro oboe and has seen me through much. He holds a special honored place in my heart. But that Howarth….Pardon me while I drool. I’m now looking into grad school at either Arizona State or Birmingham University (UK) as a direct result of that conference. We shall see what time will bring me!

A week after the accident was my paternal grandfather’s death, which brought about an unplanned trip to Florida. My feelings toward my grandmother, which have long since stopped being warm and fuzzy, were made even worse as she ’emoted,’ for lack of a better word. She deals with strong emotions by getting angry and attacking those around her. My cousin’s soon-to-be wife was one of the many targets, which included but not limited to me, my aunts, uncles and anyone within view. Needless to say, the trip was highly charged with emotion. And while I do not begrudge the attention given to my grandmother and the situation at hand, I was still trying to deal with a car accident. I still don’t think (and neither does my therapist) that I have properly dealt with it.

July was relatively uneventful. HA! I worked – a lot. The team I’ve worked with this summer has been amazing, which is a huge step up from last year. But the drama has also been flying high. There were car accidents (none I was involved in, thank god), campers leaving in ambulances (more than once), bitchy pop stars (I hate Mariah Carey!), whiney directors, and horny teenagers. There is less than a week left of camp, so things are slowing down to some degree. People have finally settled into their grooves and shown their true colors. I started the summer excited and looking for an escape from the craziness of the past semester. I was attracted to a particular member of our team and went after him, perhaps a little half-cocked. Admist the other drama, he and I had a rocky beginning. He’s 19 and didn’t know how to tell me to back off without being an asshole. But we’ve since gotten over it and now work very well together. I thought I was going to miss Bubba and his noises, his quirks. Phil doesn’t make noises the way Bubba does (I’m not sure anyone can), but he has his own random quirks about him. We’ve discovered that we both share a love of WoW and an eclectic collection of music. He makes me laugh the way Bubba does, by his random stupidness and attention to detail. I adore him like a little brother, and I’ve forgotten how much I miss guy friends. LeeAndra and I are the only girls on the team and its great to be hanging out and working with those great guys. I’m going to seriously miss them when I go back to school…well, some of them. Nothing is ever perfect, but this summer has been wonderful. Camp drama provided something to distract my attention from the crappiness of my life. I needed a fun, soap opera-filled summer to reground me a bit. The stories from camp should be chronicled and kept, but I worked hard and slept harder. I just know that this summer, although it had its moments, was the best way to recharge my batteries.

Today is a perfect example. I’ve had a tough couple of days with various issues popping up (family, Manny, car, my own thoughts). Last night I stayed up all night doing overnight laundry with Owen. I then worked the entire day with Owen, Terry and Phil. I don’t know if he noticed or if he was just being himself, but Phil kept me smiling all day long. He was like my court jester all day long, making me laugh insanely and helping me from losing my temper. Today for some reason was a bad day for my temper, which seemed to flare at the smallest thing. So a potentionally horrid day was counterattacked with a court jester in the best way possible. I will write more of Phil, because the more I learn of him, the more I adore him. He is my Court Jester.

August started with a bang. Camp insurance regulations require that the driver of the 15-passenger camp van, which transports counselors into town on their days off and sick campers to the doctor, be at least 21 years of age. Two weekends in July resulted in me being the only person capabily of driving the camp van. Usually we try not to have drive shifts back to back because its gets very tiring driving the van all day and all night. Unfortunatly, that weekend I was forced into that position. I drove from 9am to 1am one day/night and repeated that the following day. The only good to come of that was three consecutive days off, which I was able to use to see some family at the cabin (my only trip up there). The situation repeated and I used to time to drive a carload of college things to my uncle’s in Rochester. It was fine, but that was how my August started. Then we had a weekend of people not showing for shifts and some scrambling to cover them. I made overtime that week, which was nice financially-speaking, but horrid socially-speaking. I’ve now had two different friends on seperate occassions come to work with me because I have no other time to see them.

August 1st also marked the mad dash to the departure for school. This past weekend my father and I drove to Ohio for my mother’s family reunion. My father is not particularly fond of my mother’s family and usually ducks out of these functions, much to my pleasure. The last event he attended resulted in a all-out screaming match between him and I. In celebration of my grandparents 50th anniverday, my aunts and uncles had created a version of the Newly-Wed Game. I don’t remember the particulars anymore, but the males were to go in the backyard to answer pre-arranged questions, while the females stayed out front to answer the same. My father said he didn’t want to play, he wanted to sit and read his book. No one attempted to force him into the game; they just left him alone. He proceeded to complain louder and louder how much he didn’t want to play the game. I finally got sick of his belly-aching and told him if he didn’t want to play, fine, no one cared – he should just shut up and go away. There was a stare-down. I’ve never defied my father like that before, standing up to his glare the way I did. But he was acting like a child and someone needed to tell him so. I don’t remember there being punishment or what happened when the stare broke, but I remember being so pissed at him for acting like that. I swear, he was an inch away from throwing a temper tantrum and kicking his feet like a two-year-old. The following reunion, he did not attend and most everything was at peace. My grandfather passed away shortly after that. So now my grandmother had arranged and paid for this resort for a family reunion. My mother twisted my dad’s arm into going, saying the last time he skipped out her father passed away. So he came, but grudgingly. I would have prefered for him to just stay home and get over it. I worked an unplanned double on Saturday, Sunday night, an unplanned Monday morning and another unplanned double on Wednesday. Thursday I took a half day believing my father and I would leave Thursday afternoon. We would split the 9-hour drive to Ohio and arrive early Friday morning. We ended up leaving late Thursday night (10 pm) and driving through the night to reach a train-watching spot early Friday morning. That was enjoyable to some extent, except that I had a wicked cold. As we left the spot and drew nearer to the reunion, my father began dragging his feet, which pissed me off. I wanted to see my relatives, even if he didn’t. We arrived Friday and I was exhausted, so I slept most of the day Friday, leaving only Saturday to spend with the family. There was drama, to say the least, which put strain on everyone in the family. My father actually behaved himself, but I kept a good distance from him, so as to avoid a repeat of past reunions. My cousins are all so much more active than I am, even when I’m healthy. I ended up being the photographer of the daily events, volleyball and water fun. I really enjoyed doing that, although a part of me regretted I wasn’t in the pictures. But I did get some great shots.

**Pause for life**

It’s now two weeks later. The weekend after the family reunion was another family get together, this time my dad’s side of the family. My cousin, Greg was getting married in Iowa. There was only a few days home between the family gatherings and I ended up working a triple shift, from 9pm one night to 11pm the next night. No break, no sleep. It was pretty crazy, but I need the money. We flew to Iowa on Thursday. Thursday night was the bachelor and bacelorette parties, nothing crazy at all. Friday was the rehearsal dinner and Saturday was the big day. The wedding was wonderful and everyone looked beautiful. Instead of the traditional glass-clinking, Greg and Mary had something of a game. Whenever glasses were clinked, the names of a married couple were drawn from a hat and they had to demonstrate how Greg and Mary should kiss, and then they had to reproduce the kiss. Some of them got pretty creative.

Even with all that, there was still quite a bit of free time. I spent some time looking for a dress for my recital. It caused some friction between me and my parents. They kept telling me not to make the weekend about me; it was my cousin’s weekend. I really didn’t make a big deal about it. I didn’t say anything to anyone unless they asked first. My mom kept telling me not to ruin Mary’s weekend in particular. She was the bride. But Friday night, at the rehearsal dinner, Mary came up to me and said she heard I had gone to David’s Bridal and looked at dresses. SHE asked to see the pictures I had taken; SHE wanted to talk about it. After I put my laptop away, my mom told me I was stealing all the attention away from Mary and Greg. I tried to tell her that Mary asked about it, but she wouldn’t listen. I was just the jealous cousin trying to steal her day.

I will admit that I was jealous. I’m the oldest, I’m supposed to do things first. It’s not rational, I know, but it was hard to watch my cousin get married – marry the girl he’s known since 5th grade – and I don’t even have a boyfriend. My boss offered me a full-time job up at the camp once I graduate from school. Not a career, but a job for a year or two, if I want it. I’m not sure if I want to go to grad school. I didn’t practice this summer. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t want to, because I’m subconsciencly trying to sabetoge my chances (like my mom says). I choose this path, this degree because I didn’t like the path that I was on. The law firm was a soul-stealing job and I didn’t want to live like that forever. So I changed the path. I don’t hate the path I’m on and I want to get to the end, graduate with my degree. But I don’t know where the path goes after that. I’m still not sure.

I only had a few days after getting home from Iowa on Monday to pack. And I didn’t have my car back yet. Tuesday I had lunch with the ops team and my boss at a really nice Italian restaurant. Steven ended up buying bottles of wine for us. Only three of us were drinking though and we ended up getting pretty tipsy. Thankfully none of us were driving or working. Except that once we got back to the rez, most of the sober people seemed to disappear. We needed to deliver 400 blankets and sheets into each cabin and it was raining. So I ended up working drunk, which was annoying but interesting. I also talked to my boss about his secretary who is retiring about the time I’m graduating. He offered me her position full-time and permanent if I wanted it. I told him I would help with the transition, but I wasn’t sure what I was doing after college. Its not going to be until 2009 so we both have some time, but its nice to know that I have an opportunity for money after school. I spent Wednesday picking up my car and packing. Wednesday night my parents and I went to the Culinary for dinner. It was nice, except my dad was not excatly in a great mood. He thinks the job offer is stupid and I’m stupid for thinking about taking it. He wants me to whore myself out to anybody who wants or needs an oboist. I don’t want to cold-call people or organizations, for jobs I don’t even know that I want. He doesn’t understand and he doesn’t listen. My mom says he’s very unhappy at work and church and just everywhere. She thinks he might be depressed or just going through a mid-life crisis. I feel bad for him, but he won’t get help and nothing anyone says to him will convince him otherwise.

Thursday I drove out to school and unpacked. Becca came down from Rochester with her parents and we went to dinner, along with their neighbor who also attends the school. Becca and I spent the weekend playing Spyro, cleaning, unpacking and just having a good time. We didn’t sleep much, but my apartment is pretty much all set up now.

Today was the first day of classes, but that’s another entry.

summertime and the livin’s easy,
and bradley’s on the microphone w/ ras m.g.
all the people in the dance will agree
that we’re well qualified
to represent the lbc,
me and louie,
run to the party dance to the riddim it gets harder.

me and my girl,
we got this relationship.
i love her so bad but she treats me like…
on lock down like a penitentiary.
she spreads her lovin’ all
over and when she get home there’s none left for me

summertime and the livin’s easy,
and bradley’s on the microphone with ras m.g.
all the people in the dance will agree
that we’re well qualified
to represent the lbc,
me and louie,
run to the party dance to the riddim it gets harder.

oh take this veil from off my eyes,
my burning sun will some day rise
so what am i gonna be doin’ for a while
say i’m gonna play with myself,
show them how we come off the shelf,
so what

summertime and the livin’s easy,
and bradley’s on the microphone with ras m.g.
all the people in the dance will agree
that we’re well qualified
to represent the lbc,
me and louie,
run to the party dance to the riddim it gets harder.

evil,
i’ve come to tell you that she’s evil,
most definately,
evil, ornery scandalous and evil,
most definately.
the tension,
is getting hotter,
i’d like to hold her,
head underwater, oh

me and my girl,
we got a relationship,
me and my girl,
we got a relationship,
my girl,
we got a relationship,
oh and my girl

take a tip,
take a tip,
take a tip from me.
bradley’s on the microphone w/ ras m.g.
all the people in the dance will agree
that we’re well qualified to represent the lbc,
me, la la louie,
everybody,
run to the riddim it gets harder

Doin’ Time ~ Sublime