We’re Not In Missouri Anymore Toto ….
11/13
I hope you enjoy my lovely piece of slide show and blog this month. We’re most certainly not in Missouri anymore Toto! This past weekend was the first time I’d seen a movie in the theatre in almost a year. We don’t have a TV but being exposed to commercials and advertisements is so common in the city, many of them have gotten so humorous and creative, most likely due to all the internet competition. I’ve seen so many abandoned shopping carts and no store for blocks, an advertisement with people skiing down a hill in a hot tub, a long line of people blocking the crosswalk, and many other curious things that most people would pass by without a thought.
I’ve lost almost 15 pounds since I arrived in Seattle, most likely due to the stress of the whole transition. Nothing has changed much in terms of my eating habits and my family generally eats healthy and similar to how I might eat in Rabbit Land. This is the longest I’ve spent in Seattle in 4 years, and although I don’t feel psychologically under stress, my body is in freak out mode. I’m sure it’s due to my unpredictable financial condition and living in an area where the cost of living is 3 to 5 times higher than I’m used to. Many women might think that it’s great to lose about 15 pounds, but when you’re only 4’10” that’s not so great. My size 3 jeans are falling off my a**, time for a belt. This has only happened once before in my life when I was under a lot of stress including an unpredictable financial situation, before that, the last time I was about 90 pounds was when I was in middle school.
I didn’t get the full time job in a medical office that I spoke of last month. They told me they hired someone who had more medical experience they were looking for and my step aunt says that someone from medical school applied for the position too. Oh well, at least I am still going to be a Santa’s Helper. I did get the “elf job” though. If only there was a job all year round that, when I told people I was doing it, they would laugh endearingly and say, “That’s a perfect job for you!” We’ll see how it goes. It might not sound like the greatest of jobs, but it’s one I’ve actually been wanting to do for quite a few years just because it’s so “perfect” for me to be a Santa’s Helper. I don’t even know the pay rate, the lady that interviewed me wasn’t sure. It’ll be a job that will start sometime this month and go until Christmas. I’ll have to figure out what I’m doing after Christmas, but I’m sure the future takes care of itself, believe me, I can’t afford to worry. What a great affirmation, “I can’t afford to worry.” I think that even if I had 1 million dollars, my psyche would still be a bit uneasy unless I had a stable, predictable, incoming financial situation. I thought, given this info I know about myself, what job would I want to do in Seattle if someone gave me 1 million dollars tomorrow. Besides coaching, I’d want to work in a preschool. Maybe that’s what I’ll do after Christmas.
Generally my days have been good though. I’ve been taking school online, doing business, cleaning my parent’s house, and doing a lot of cooking.
One reason that Americans probably use a lot of water is because their houses are so big they use water cleaning them, I certainly used quite a bit just to scrub the kitchen floor today. I was over at a party the other day and one lady has a huge house, it’s actually an averaged size house for an American and she does have a family, but she said she couldn’t possibly clean the whole thing so once per year she hires cleaning people to do it for her. I was over at another friend’s house who lives in a condo tower downtown in a suburb of Seattle. He’s the only one who lives in his huge condo and he even has a housekeeper. He politely asked me if I could please stop cleaning when I was doing the dishes after cooking because he said his housekeeper would do it tomorrow. Oh, it almost pained me not to clean up after myself, you just can’t do that when you live with 7o people! We were talking about making hash browns and he said he should find a recipe for that. I told him hash browns were pretty simple so he might not need a recipe, you just grate the potato, squeeze the juice out, and fry in oil. He responded with, “Not all of us graduated from the Dancing Rabbit Culinary Institute.” It’s true though, I did learn the secret to making good hash browns in Rabbit Land. Thanks to Nathan who told me to squeeze the juice out of the potatoes before frying.
I really enjoy cooking. My mother calls it “Recreational Cooking,” when you just get in the kitchen and start making stuff. We’ve made all kinds of things- sushi, cranberry bread, we’ve made soup several times, we’ve made stuffed crepes. It’s also nice and convenient for my step dad who works during the day to have yummy food around, but my mom says he could just eat boxed soup and bread for the rest of his life and be happy. I’ll have to admit, part of me just wants to be a really well paid personal assistant {or housewife} and cook and clean all day. Sounds weird and stereotypically womanly, but cleaning here has made me feel really good and living in Rabbit Land has made me stellar at both. I’d be a great professional homemaker!
Living in Rabbit Land has really helped me appreciate the lifestyle of the city. Sure, much of America can be wasteful and “consumers,” but this is a Land where everyone lives like a King and a Queen. I don’t think they notice. It’s so easy to take an average, socially normal, lifestyle for granted. I had a class on chocolate with school the other day and my professor was talking about how cacao was really honored as sacred by ancient people like the Mayans, and it also has a lot of health benefits if you eat raw cacao. Nowadays we can go to the store and buy this once sacred coveted food, and anything else from just about anywhere we want. “Forbidden Rice” used to be eaten only by the emperors in China. Now I can go to Whole Foods and buy it anytime I want. Fresh clean hot water comes from our walls at will. We have soda machines that dispense 100 different flavors of soda. Magic juice makes our vehicles run. We can live in towers and drive cars that practically feel like space ships inside. My step dad was attempting to put in a bigger hard drive into my 2007 Macbook and he was telling me a little about how they work, sounded like he was talking about some mystical land full of spinning metal discs and electromagnetic fields that read data. The drive wouldn’t work because it is too fast for my 7 year old computer.
We live like royalty, and the world is changing at lightening speed, better not stay in Rabbit Land too long or you’ll miss it. I always say it’s good to get out of there once in a while so you can appreciate home, but even being Eco is becoming a mainstream part of what seemed like just a fantasy only 4 years ago when I learned of the mecca of my ideal lifestyle, Dancing Rabbit. During one bus trip in Seattle I saw 3 houses that had solar panels all over their roof. My mother tells me of a house just two blocks away that utilizes rain water catchment and a cistern, has solar power, walls that are about 2 feet thick, and uses passive solar gain. I think she said it was just built about a year ago and the reason she knows so much about it is because they had an open house and were giving tours. Apparently they give a tour once per year and belong to some kind of solar power organization. I was looking at studio apartments last month in case I got that job, and for less than 1/3 of your income you can rent a 150 sq foot “micro-studio” with utilities and internet included. Here I can recycle most types of plastics, ice cream and milk cartons, plastic bags, so many things that I can’t recycle in Rabbit Land where we can only recycle plastics 1 and 2. No plastic bags are given out in the stores in Seattle anymore, apparently it is a city ordinance. Most people bring a reusable bag when they shop. Most people compost also, if I go over to someone’s house, having a little green bucket on the counter is almost as common as having a trash can and most disposable cutlery and food containers are “commercially compostable.” Even public places like PCC and the Whole Foods has three different bins for recycling, compost, and landfill. I also read an article the other day that Seattle is planning to make the nation’s first food forest park full of food bearing trees that would be free for anyone to pick.
I also love ecstatic dances and there are at least 200-300 people just in the dance, polyamorous friendly, touch positive culture and community of people I have here where there is probably an event almost every day of the week. Too bad I’ll be missing the 4C event on Saturday to go play board games and make sushi with friends, but there will be another “Community, Cuddle, Connection, Communication” workshop next month too. If I wanted to dance and cuddle with my friends almost every day in Rabbit Land, I’d probably be all alone dancing and cuddling myself most of the time. The 4C workshop facilitator calls it Vitamin T (for touch), did you know that babies who aren’t touched after they’re born will die? The modern hippies in Seattle also frequently talk about oxytocin, like we’re discovering the drugs that are good for us. Touch, cuddle, and hug people often because you get oxytocin instead of “free love, man.”
I don’t partake, but I bet the hippies of the 70s never thought that pot would someday be a legal medicinal and recreational herb either, found in a cannabis store down the street and used in salves and soap.
Welcome to Seattle 2014, little Rabbit SunGee!
The Ecolyte 