Trail Extravaganza!

On Saturday I went out to lend my labor to building a trail at the Ocean Shores Interpretives center (a senior culminating project with our partner, PEI). I freakin loved it. It feels so good to actually get something accomplished as a team, work hard physically. Our society just doesn't provide enought of these types of activities! With probably a team of 15-20 people, it was pretty damn cool to see a trail carved out of the forest, along with all the kinds of tools, methods, cooperation with strangers.

I ended up working on starting one side of the trail on the side without too much forest, meaning we did hacking up of the dirt,roots, weeds, branches, shoveling out the dirt and creating an edge. 3 of us kept at this 25 ft of trail, learning as we went, that each root we pulled up, created about 3 more...figuring out what tool what best, using a combination of hoes, axe-like chopper (my favorite for agression release), shovels, rakes, loppers, an edger, wheelbarrow...after smoothing the path, we rolled a weed cover over the trail and started hauling and laying the gravel.

All the while, other groups have gone through with chainsaw, saw, loppers, rakes, clearing the a 3 foot path through the forest, hauling out wheelbarrows full of bush, weed, branch remnants. Oh, so freaking rewarding. A full forest with tags throughout was carved into and acutally looked pretty much like a trail by the time i took off. Hell yeah!

INSPIRED TO BLOG...borderline inappropriate...BEWARE conservative folk...

I feel pretty fucking cool right now. Today was my second session at good ol’ Americorps Serves with the fucking hilarious dude Brandon Rogers. I’m that girl that bursts out laughing at some of the most random of his comments that nobody else really thinks is funny, but strikes me as fucking hilarious. Although everybody is laughing at his jokes, I just to seem to gleem some extra kind of joy from his humor…I think its something about the fact it oozes sex, conceit, and alcohol into a discourse that keeps me rolling. I relate. But have not found my outlet… the ideas just float around inside my head.

Completely inappropriate, yet maintaining a professionality. I constantly find myself thinking highly inappropriate thoughts, amusing myself in my head. A difference between Brandon Rogers and I: I hold it in. He says it, in such a dry, sarcastic, fucking brilliant way and pulls it off, even while teaching Americorps sessions on grant writing or doing the writerly thing. I stand in awe.

His literary voice reminds me of how I’ve recently realized my inappropriate meter is broken. One of my favorites. At work one day, treated to pizza hut by our boss, my coworker spewed off the sins pepperoni, and how it is a concoction of all the nasty left overs…my response: “mmmmm. pig but hole in my mouth.” I couldn’t stop laughing for a good 5 minutes. Seriously. The others stopped laughing after about one. It came as quite the shocker, as I’m sure you can imagine. I couldn’t stop. I cracked myself up so much, resulting in one of those outrageous fits of laughter that I love so much, but have received A LOT of weird looks for.

Ah. I love making myself laugh. And here is sit, gloating inside because I found the blog he wouldn’t tell us the name of because it was too inappropriate. Wahahaha! I fucking rock. I am super sleuth, master of the websearch. I can find ANYTHING! Not that it was that difficult…but you will never convince me I’m not brilliant. My search strategy: google search: “brandon rogers, one child left behind” First Result: / thepenismightier \. How could it not be his? In the writing of his I’ve read so far, one of his reoccurring themes is very clever and strategic placement of penis size talk. Just one more reason I love him for so many reasons.

I am From...Poem

I am from...
Utah.

A land of wonder
enchantment, beauty,
snow, mountains, desert,
A landscape I miss so

But also a conservatism
that stifles, chokes, represses
creativity, questioning, exploration
of the depths of yourself,
the expanse of the world.

Rooted in the landscape and natural wonder of Utah
but turned way by the culture of repression
I long for a place of mountain peaks,
4 seasons, deep canyons of red rock, billowing rocky peeks

But I cannot live stifled

So I search...

by mary sundblom
written in session on service-learning in refugee communities

Unexpected Motivation and Delight...

Ok so, reflection time. I've been wanting to do this all weekend, but been runnin round like a chicken with my head cut off, even though i asked for it to be cut off...haha. ok, that translates to I did some pretty damn cool stuff this weekend, that thus prevented me from refelcting sooner. more on that to come...

SERVES... I wasn't looking forward to it, another conference with over 700 young people getting together for a whole bunch of workshops that vaguely relate to what we are actually doing. Afterall, things are crazy busy at work these days, with never enough time to get everything done...and to take off for 3 days, even if it is free hotel and food. But whatever, it was mandatory...we treked across the state to Yakima, WA.

After checking into our hotel, which was in the 'armpit' of Yakima, far far away from the convention center (IP's always get the shaft)...we headed to the conference to check in. With an hour till dinner, and the fact it was St. Patricks, we decided a green beer was neccesary to get this party started... that was where the fun began...part of it was the beer (incredibley green, enough to color our teeth) made me relax a bit, then the hotel lounge was sweet, and we sat in the corner "mafia" booth. Things had started out right.

Green teeth and all, we headed over to get dinner and sit through all the boring traditional welcomes and introductions. This is where they got me. They had a few volunteers or shall i say Ameriteers...reflect to the group on their expereince. The second speaker really peaked my interest by telling her story in a really creative and sarcastic way that totally resonated with me. It was a comedy routine on screwing up in life, realizing you hate what you studied, so thus hated teaching and hence created a classroom full of critical, negativity... What got me here is that, uh, doesn't that often times sound like me? I get so angry and frustrated at the system and all the bad going on in the world that sometimes I get so caught up in that, it's hard to keep positive. So basically making fun of herself, the whole time she reviewed "what not to do" in life and americorps.
Essentially reminding me of the power of empowering folks to do something about what they see as wrong in the world, instead of spreading the gospel of doom.

The AmeriPedia speech got us upto par on the all the Ameriwords created in honor of being Ameripoor....getting us all to think of creative Amerivocab. My favorite: Ameriscare: a pregnacy scare while serving as an Americorps member. Then Power of Hope got us up, moving and singing together...a beatiful round. on with a little motivational schpeel... "We are the Ones...we've been waiting for." Ah, precious...

Surprisingly, it got me pumped and excited, the engery was flowing and good vibes were abound. Being surrounded by people that are working to improve their communities, serving and sacrificing part of their lives for a cause, with so many ideas, passions, and plans to improve our world. I always forget how empowering being surrounded by those kind of people can be. and am reminded that I am also one of those people...even though I forget sometimes.

OH AND...Game night...LIFE happened and i convinced an attractive man that wasn't too enthused about the idea of playing life and we joked around the whole game, ending up inviting him and his friend to the 'festivities' (aka. drunk cranium in hotel room with over 20 people). that automatically means fun!

a bit of self praise...with a bit of rant:)

So i gotta rant a little, right? so our evaluations were due on Jan 31, and they were just completed this week. Does anyones see how that could be a bit stressful, when you boss disregards deadlines? I did my part more than a month ago, resulting in a little bit of a tiff between us because she took my self evaluation as an personal attack on her. Sigh.

But overall, we have discussed all of it, and I feel I have learned a great deal, one of which is the importance of constructive criticism. I am quite a perfectionist and so am very critical of myself and others. In hindsight, I can see how she took offense to my self-evaluation, even though that was not my intention. However, it did open up a discussion about some of the disorganization that drives me crazy sometimes.

I am happy to say that during that month, I reflected quite a lot on this frustration and how it is percieved by others. So in the formal evaluation meeting, i was able to constructively discuss with her my frustations about not having anything to do for the first 3 months of our position, especially now that we have so much on our plate; that with more foresight and planning, much of that time could have been used to prepare and improve program curriculums, materials, etc, so there would be less stress now.

I'm pretty damn proud of myself. Go mary, go mary, go mary!

quick little rant

uh, so i found out that the americorps that was put in charge of scheduling all our presentations was not told that each "grant awarded" came with 2-3 presentations...a maxiumum of 3! I find it quite pathetic that I was told this, but the one who was actually scheduling them wasn't. BIG IMPORTANT DETAIL TO MISS, which has left us with a whole lot more presentations and work to do. Grrrr!

oh well what is done is done. several classes have 5 presentations scheduled. double grrrrr!