Back from the commune! (Where Carrie is living until labor day.) And back at work. Should have updated yesterday, but was too lazy. Am still too lazy, but I'm updating now because I'll still be too lazy tomorrow, and this laziness situation could just spiral completely out of hand! If it has not done so already.
So. The drive up to Twin Oaks Friday after work was possibly the Stupidest Drive I've Ever Made. I got lost twice in Roanoke, where I've lived all my life, just getting on the interstate. Despite the fact that I've probably done this about three million times in my life since the age of 16 alone. Apparently, stopping at Walmart to buy bug spray and shorts (it occurred to me that really, the correct attire for gardening and canoeing is shorts, and I didn't have any besides exercise ones, having never worn shorts out since 1995 or so), was simply too much for my puny direction-finding brain.
Then, when I was on the road, not only did I sail on by the interstate I wanted to get on in the vicinity of Stanton, and get off at several wrong exits when trying to buy gas, I was pretty much convinced I was going to either die or get a speeding ticket, because I kept driving so stupidly, even though I would repeatedly say to myself "Drive smarter, self! You're going to die! Or get a ticket! Or both!"
Eventually, though, I made it, if about an hour and a half late, and was the second one there, since Jamie was even later than me.
Friday night Carrie showed us around, and it was really pretty, if dark, and we talked and Ellen told a funny story about a boy in her Philosophy club who didn't understand Kitsch and called it "Fitch" instead. And then we went to sleep.
Saturday morning we Gardened. Which, for Jamie, Ellen, Carrie and me meant first picking beans, then picking blueberries, and then very industriously hoeing corn. Or in my case very much weeding corn, since I was inept enough with the hoe that I pretty much just pulled the non-corn plants up by hand the whole time. Which is why my hamstrings are still killing me. (Note to hamstrings: this whole hurting thing was kinda cute the first two days. No more. Time to be over now. Okay?)
We were very productive! And hot. And Jamie saw some scary spiders, and there was a frog that held a weed in his mouth just like a pipe.
After the gardening shift was over, we lounged around a bit, and ate lunch a bit, and then went canoeing on the river they have there in the canoes they have there, in two canoes right behind each other – just like in the Fellowship! (Yes. We talked about how we were like the Fellowship the whole time. I love my friends.)
There's no current, so our path was pretty much just determined by our own rowing. Which would lead you to believe our journey up the river would have looked like this:
Which is in fact what Jamie and Ellen's canoe's path looked much like.
The path of Carrie's and my canoe, on the other hand, looked more like this:
Only, with more detours.
Apparently, though we couldn't tell it at the time, this was reducing Jamie, up in front of us, to hysterics the whole time. Every time we would get straightened out, then over to the other bank we'd head. We couldn't really figure it out. I mean, we were rowing normally and everything, we just kept veering over to one side or the other.
We tried to explain that it was a Strategy, not an accident. See, that way, we kept the other canoe guessing. And once, when through a burst of concentrated and unprecedented strength and skill, we got in front of them, they were unable to pass us again for some time, even though we got stuck in the bushes, because every time they would come up close to us, we'd suddenly veer out into the middle of the river pointing towards the other bank, and they couldn’t get past us without ramming into us perpendicularly. (A maneuver which, Carrie remembered helpfully, was called "Crossing the T" during the revolutionary war. We were really, really good at "Crossing the T.")
So anyway, Carrie and I probably rowed about three times as many miles as Jamie and Ellen, if you take into account all our handy strategic back-and-forth motion.
Also, right before we turned around to head back to the commune, we blithely scooted up a little inlet/creek to See Where It Went. Jamie yelled after us "Wait! How are you guys going to turn around?" Which, considering our previous rowing progress, was probably a very good question. And we happily yelled back "We don't know!" Which, also considering our previous rowing progress, was probably pretty good answer. We did get turned around eventually, though. After going forward and backwards into the same log (we called these logs "alligators," to make it more interesting) about fifteen times first.
[Sample conversation in our boat:
Me: Oh no! Oh no!
Carrie: Row to the right! No! Other way! Right!
Me: Aaargblyh! (Getting hit in face with overhanging spiderwebs and branches.)
Carrie: Aaargblyh! (Getting hit in face with overhanging spiderwebs and branches after me.)
Me: Sorry! Sorry! I got confused again how you do it.
Carrie: Now I understand what you mean about not being able to tell your right from your left.
Me: Yep!
Me: Oh no! Oh no!
Carrie: Row to the left! No! Other way! Left!
Boat: Whump! (Sound of running into midstream Alligator log.)
Me: Sorry! Sorry! So what was it I was saying about American Idol?]
To our defense, Jamie and Ellen were much more experienced canoers than us, and I think there was something weird about our canoe that made it pull to the left – we had to stroke about three times as many times on that side as we did on the other. And we also got the hang of it much better on the way back.
But still. I would reckon that our Arm Workout was a lot more strenuous than Jamie and Ellen's. (Which is weird, because my arms weren't very sore at all the next day, whereas my hamstrings, as I mentioned earlier, are still Whining Like Babies. Actually, nobody's arms turned out to be very sore the nextt day, because we are all cool, buff, strong chicks!)
After the canoeing, we lazed around a little bit more, and checked for ticks (I became obsessively frightened of them), and then walked out to the Playground of Death, which is the cool rope playground they have there, and swung around and things. I was quite proud of myself for being the first person to climb up to the highest net-type thing, which was really a very scary climb and jump (more a scary jump than a scary climb, really). I am not proud of myself that I almost didn't do it because I was chicken, but I'm proud that I eventually did. Also, the swings were really cool!
Then we showered, and drove to the grocery store and bought wine and cider and Guinness for our planned evening activity, and came back and ate dinner. And ran into a guy Ellen had gone to high school with, Dave (hi, Dave!), who turned out to be guesting there the same time Jamie and Ellen and I were, with one of his friends! (Actually, we'd run into him earlier, after gardening, but I left it out and I'm too lazy to go put it back in now. Also, narratively, it works better here.)
Our evening's plan, which we embarked upon after eating dinner, was to drink wine (and cider and Guinness) and do a puzzle. Because they have lots of puzzles in Carrie's SLG, and it's fun.
The puzzle we settled on is called, oh-so-amusingly, "Decisions, Decisions," and is quite possibly the ugliest puzzle in the entire world. Its publication date is listed as 1980, and it shows a milleu of desert pastries, all laid out together, that seem to have been posing for the puzzle since about 1973.
Honestly, these things are hideous. Carrie decided we had to make a list (to strategize) at one point, of all the different types, including "hideous pink swirlies," "moldy green things," cannoli (apparently, towards the end of the night, the word "cannoli" acquired an inflection of disgust heretofore probably unapplied to it in English), and "smushy chocolate things."
But really I can't express how hideous these deserts – and, taken in conjunction, the puzzle – are. The colors range from "vomitous" to "sludge" to "moldy," and the deserts themselves really shouldn't have made it past the factory conveyer belt. They're just hideous. So. Ugly. Definitely "fitch."
In addition to being the ugliest puzzle in the entire world, "Decisions, Decisions" is also dreadfully constructed. The pieces don't fit together, and have to be sort of jammed in place, and the picture cheatingly continues around the sides of the box, not just on the top.
Here's a sample conversation:
Ellen: "Ewwwwwwww! What is this! It looks like mold!"
Jamie: "I think it's a cannoli."
Carrie: "He he he! Ewww! Cannoli!"
Jamie: "Does anyone have any of this cadaverous bengiet thing? Is this chocolate?"
Me: "I think it's more toffee." (My contribution throughout most of the puzzle working was to proclaim that things were "more toffee than chocolate." I am not helpful at puzzles.)
Dave: "Is this an edge piece?"
Jamie: "You shouldn't even have to ask that! This puzzle sucks!
Ellen: "Hey! There weren't two cherry swirlies on the box! There are definitely two cherries here! No fair!"
Carrie: "This puzzle sucks! Ew! What is this? Cannoli?"
Me: "No, it's toffee."
Eventually, Ellen and I collapsed and went to bed, but Carrie, Jamie and Dave carried on bravely until four in the morning, and, incredibly, finished the whole thing. And I tell you, it was just as ugly in person as it was on the box. Which is really saying something. They had a competition at the end for "ugliest dessert" and "ugliest piece by itself." I think part of a cannoli won both.
In the morning on Sunday, Carrie had a Tofu shift, so we all went and helped out there for a while. (Ellen and I were more bushy-tailed. And bright-eyed. Being as we'd been subjected to less "Decisions, Decisions" the night before.) I love handling tofu! Although I now understand after this weekend that there is definitely such a thing as too much tofu-smell. Twin Oaks smells like tofu a lot. Which is of course understandable. But still can be rather overwhelming. Then Jamie, Ellen and I slacked off and ate brunch, packed, and napped (in my case) while Carrie finished her shift.
After which we all went into Richmond to do Food Not Bombs. Which is a program wherein people go to grocery stores, collect food they're giving away that's either juuuuust past its expiration date or not pretty enough to sell or something, and make it into a meal and serve it in a local park. (It's called Food Not Bombs because it started as a protest – i.e., "we should spend money feeding those who need it, not building bombs," but it's kind of grown into more of a just good-works/anarchist helpfulness kind of thing. Though sometimes it's still protest-ful.)
We ended up making salad, fruit, stir fry, and mashed broccoli-and-potatoes. There were quite a lot of people, so at first it was a little difficult to find work, but by the end, Jamie, Carrie and I (Ellen having had to leave earlier, at noon, because she needed to meet her dad) ended up being In Charge of the Stir Fry, which made me, at least, feel very useful and cool. I love using two spatulas and stir-frying things around very officiously. It makes me feel like a hibachi chef.
Once we got to the park, we couldn't really be useful serving things, so we split off and went and ate at a very good vegan/vegetarian Chinese place in the area, where I had fake shrimp, which I'd never had before, and which was really delicious. The notable thing about this restaurant is not just that they have a very wide vegan/vegetarian selection, it's that they make all the normal American Chinese food options with fake meat. I guess it's a sign of my provinciality, but I've rarely seen so many varieties of it – I mean, I didn't even know they made fake shrimp. Normally, if you want something vegan, you just get it with tofu or something. But here they had fake beef and fake pork and fake chicken and fake seafood! It was really good.
And after that, it was time to go home. And we did.
So. That was the weekend at Twin Oaks. It was neat, and I’m glad I went, and I'm really glad I saw Ellen and Jamie and Carrie.
But I think I was confirmed in my new, and not really anticipated, thinking that living in a commune/community – at least in this one, anyway – would not really be for me. I would have to think about it much more in depth if I were really considering it, of course, but just from what I've seen – though I would definitely relish the idea that my days were spend really working usefully (if I could get my hamstrings into shape, that is), and very much understand how people could want to live there, I think the atmosphere might not be for me after all. Though of course everyone we met was terrifically nice, and they're all great people. And I'm so glad we got to visit there!
(This is not a substantive thinking-about-Community-life entry. I may write that some other time. Or I may not. Anyway, this is just the stuff-we-did entry.)
Meanwhile, I wish we had some fake shrimp here. That stuff was delicious!
An addendum the next morning:
Jessica has brought to my attention while I was talking to her (In Realtime! On the phone!) that I described "Decisions! Decisions!" as being composed of a milleu of "desert" pastries, when, in fact, though a puzzle made upentirely of pictures of baklava would have been even harder to work, our puzzle included not "desert" pastries, but "dessert" pastries. But I left it up there. In case you want to imagine the bakalava puzzle instead.
So. The drive up to Twin Oaks Friday after work was possibly the Stupidest Drive I've Ever Made. I got lost twice in Roanoke, where I've lived all my life, just getting on the interstate. Despite the fact that I've probably done this about three million times in my life since the age of 16 alone. Apparently, stopping at Walmart to buy bug spray and shorts (it occurred to me that really, the correct attire for gardening and canoeing is shorts, and I didn't have any besides exercise ones, having never worn shorts out since 1995 or so), was simply too much for my puny direction-finding brain.
Then, when I was on the road, not only did I sail on by the interstate I wanted to get on in the vicinity of Stanton, and get off at several wrong exits when trying to buy gas, I was pretty much convinced I was going to either die or get a speeding ticket, because I kept driving so stupidly, even though I would repeatedly say to myself "Drive smarter, self! You're going to die! Or get a ticket! Or both!"
Eventually, though, I made it, if about an hour and a half late, and was the second one there, since Jamie was even later than me.
Friday night Carrie showed us around, and it was really pretty, if dark, and we talked and Ellen told a funny story about a boy in her Philosophy club who didn't understand Kitsch and called it "Fitch" instead. And then we went to sleep.
Saturday morning we Gardened. Which, for Jamie, Ellen, Carrie and me meant first picking beans, then picking blueberries, and then very industriously hoeing corn. Or in my case very much weeding corn, since I was inept enough with the hoe that I pretty much just pulled the non-corn plants up by hand the whole time. Which is why my hamstrings are still killing me. (Note to hamstrings: this whole hurting thing was kinda cute the first two days. No more. Time to be over now. Okay?)
We were very productive! And hot. And Jamie saw some scary spiders, and there was a frog that held a weed in his mouth just like a pipe.
After the gardening shift was over, we lounged around a bit, and ate lunch a bit, and then went canoeing on the river they have there in the canoes they have there, in two canoes right behind each other – just like in the Fellowship! (Yes. We talked about how we were like the Fellowship the whole time. I love my friends.)
There's no current, so our path was pretty much just determined by our own rowing. Which would lead you to believe our journey up the river would have looked like this:
Which is in fact what Jamie and Ellen's canoe's path looked much like.
The path of Carrie's and my canoe, on the other hand, looked more like this:
Only, with more detours.
Apparently, though we couldn't tell it at the time, this was reducing Jamie, up in front of us, to hysterics the whole time. Every time we would get straightened out, then over to the other bank we'd head. We couldn't really figure it out. I mean, we were rowing normally and everything, we just kept veering over to one side or the other.
We tried to explain that it was a Strategy, not an accident. See, that way, we kept the other canoe guessing. And once, when through a burst of concentrated and unprecedented strength and skill, we got in front of them, they were unable to pass us again for some time, even though we got stuck in the bushes, because every time they would come up close to us, we'd suddenly veer out into the middle of the river pointing towards the other bank, and they couldn’t get past us without ramming into us perpendicularly. (A maneuver which, Carrie remembered helpfully, was called "Crossing the T" during the revolutionary war. We were really, really good at "Crossing the T.")
So anyway, Carrie and I probably rowed about three times as many miles as Jamie and Ellen, if you take into account all our handy strategic back-and-forth motion.
Also, right before we turned around to head back to the commune, we blithely scooted up a little inlet/creek to See Where It Went. Jamie yelled after us "Wait! How are you guys going to turn around?" Which, considering our previous rowing progress, was probably a very good question. And we happily yelled back "We don't know!" Which, also considering our previous rowing progress, was probably pretty good answer. We did get turned around eventually, though. After going forward and backwards into the same log (we called these logs "alligators," to make it more interesting) about fifteen times first.
[Sample conversation in our boat:
Me: Oh no! Oh no!
Carrie: Row to the right! No! Other way! Right!
Me: Aaargblyh! (Getting hit in face with overhanging spiderwebs and branches.)
Carrie: Aaargblyh! (Getting hit in face with overhanging spiderwebs and branches after me.)
Me: Sorry! Sorry! I got confused again how you do it.
Carrie: Now I understand what you mean about not being able to tell your right from your left.
Me: Yep!
Me: Oh no! Oh no!
Carrie: Row to the left! No! Other way! Left!
Boat: Whump! (Sound of running into midstream Alligator log.)
Me: Sorry! Sorry! So what was it I was saying about American Idol?]
To our defense, Jamie and Ellen were much more experienced canoers than us, and I think there was something weird about our canoe that made it pull to the left – we had to stroke about three times as many times on that side as we did on the other. And we also got the hang of it much better on the way back.
But still. I would reckon that our Arm Workout was a lot more strenuous than Jamie and Ellen's. (Which is weird, because my arms weren't very sore at all the next day, whereas my hamstrings, as I mentioned earlier, are still Whining Like Babies. Actually, nobody's arms turned out to be very sore the nextt day, because we are all cool, buff, strong chicks!)
After the canoeing, we lazed around a little bit more, and checked for ticks (I became obsessively frightened of them), and then walked out to the Playground of Death, which is the cool rope playground they have there, and swung around and things. I was quite proud of myself for being the first person to climb up to the highest net-type thing, which was really a very scary climb and jump (more a scary jump than a scary climb, really). I am not proud of myself that I almost didn't do it because I was chicken, but I'm proud that I eventually did. Also, the swings were really cool!
Then we showered, and drove to the grocery store and bought wine and cider and Guinness for our planned evening activity, and came back and ate dinner. And ran into a guy Ellen had gone to high school with, Dave (hi, Dave!), who turned out to be guesting there the same time Jamie and Ellen and I were, with one of his friends! (Actually, we'd run into him earlier, after gardening, but I left it out and I'm too lazy to go put it back in now. Also, narratively, it works better here.)
Our evening's plan, which we embarked upon after eating dinner, was to drink wine (and cider and Guinness) and do a puzzle. Because they have lots of puzzles in Carrie's SLG, and it's fun.
The puzzle we settled on is called, oh-so-amusingly, "Decisions, Decisions," and is quite possibly the ugliest puzzle in the entire world. Its publication date is listed as 1980, and it shows a milleu of desert pastries, all laid out together, that seem to have been posing for the puzzle since about 1973.
Honestly, these things are hideous. Carrie decided we had to make a list (to strategize) at one point, of all the different types, including "hideous pink swirlies," "moldy green things," cannoli (apparently, towards the end of the night, the word "cannoli" acquired an inflection of disgust heretofore probably unapplied to it in English), and "smushy chocolate things."
But really I can't express how hideous these deserts – and, taken in conjunction, the puzzle – are. The colors range from "vomitous" to "sludge" to "moldy," and the deserts themselves really shouldn't have made it past the factory conveyer belt. They're just hideous. So. Ugly. Definitely "fitch."
In addition to being the ugliest puzzle in the entire world, "Decisions, Decisions" is also dreadfully constructed. The pieces don't fit together, and have to be sort of jammed in place, and the picture cheatingly continues around the sides of the box, not just on the top.
Here's a sample conversation:
Ellen: "Ewwwwwwww! What is this! It looks like mold!"
Jamie: "I think it's a cannoli."
Carrie: "He he he! Ewww! Cannoli!"
Jamie: "Does anyone have any of this cadaverous bengiet thing? Is this chocolate?"
Me: "I think it's more toffee." (My contribution throughout most of the puzzle working was to proclaim that things were "more toffee than chocolate." I am not helpful at puzzles.)
Dave: "Is this an edge piece?"
Jamie: "You shouldn't even have to ask that! This puzzle sucks!
Ellen: "Hey! There weren't two cherry swirlies on the box! There are definitely two cherries here! No fair!"
Carrie: "This puzzle sucks! Ew! What is this? Cannoli?"
Me: "No, it's toffee."
Eventually, Ellen and I collapsed and went to bed, but Carrie, Jamie and Dave carried on bravely until four in the morning, and, incredibly, finished the whole thing. And I tell you, it was just as ugly in person as it was on the box. Which is really saying something. They had a competition at the end for "ugliest dessert" and "ugliest piece by itself." I think part of a cannoli won both.
In the morning on Sunday, Carrie had a Tofu shift, so we all went and helped out there for a while. (Ellen and I were more bushy-tailed. And bright-eyed. Being as we'd been subjected to less "Decisions, Decisions" the night before.) I love handling tofu! Although I now understand after this weekend that there is definitely such a thing as too much tofu-smell. Twin Oaks smells like tofu a lot. Which is of course understandable. But still can be rather overwhelming. Then Jamie, Ellen and I slacked off and ate brunch, packed, and napped (in my case) while Carrie finished her shift.
After which we all went into Richmond to do Food Not Bombs. Which is a program wherein people go to grocery stores, collect food they're giving away that's either juuuuust past its expiration date or not pretty enough to sell or something, and make it into a meal and serve it in a local park. (It's called Food Not Bombs because it started as a protest – i.e., "we should spend money feeding those who need it, not building bombs," but it's kind of grown into more of a just good-works/anarchist helpfulness kind of thing. Though sometimes it's still protest-ful.)
We ended up making salad, fruit, stir fry, and mashed broccoli-and-potatoes. There were quite a lot of people, so at first it was a little difficult to find work, but by the end, Jamie, Carrie and I (Ellen having had to leave earlier, at noon, because she needed to meet her dad) ended up being In Charge of the Stir Fry, which made me, at least, feel very useful and cool. I love using two spatulas and stir-frying things around very officiously. It makes me feel like a hibachi chef.
Once we got to the park, we couldn't really be useful serving things, so we split off and went and ate at a very good vegan/vegetarian Chinese place in the area, where I had fake shrimp, which I'd never had before, and which was really delicious. The notable thing about this restaurant is not just that they have a very wide vegan/vegetarian selection, it's that they make all the normal American Chinese food options with fake meat. I guess it's a sign of my provinciality, but I've rarely seen so many varieties of it – I mean, I didn't even know they made fake shrimp. Normally, if you want something vegan, you just get it with tofu or something. But here they had fake beef and fake pork and fake chicken and fake seafood! It was really good.
And after that, it was time to go home. And we did.
So. That was the weekend at Twin Oaks. It was neat, and I’m glad I went, and I'm really glad I saw Ellen and Jamie and Carrie.
But I think I was confirmed in my new, and not really anticipated, thinking that living in a commune/community – at least in this one, anyway – would not really be for me. I would have to think about it much more in depth if I were really considering it, of course, but just from what I've seen – though I would definitely relish the idea that my days were spend really working usefully (if I could get my hamstrings into shape, that is), and very much understand how people could want to live there, I think the atmosphere might not be for me after all. Though of course everyone we met was terrifically nice, and they're all great people. And I'm so glad we got to visit there!
(This is not a substantive thinking-about-Community-life entry. I may write that some other time. Or I may not. Anyway, this is just the stuff-we-did entry.)
Meanwhile, I wish we had some fake shrimp here. That stuff was delicious!
An addendum the next morning:
Jessica has brought to my attention while I was talking to her (In Realtime! On the phone!) that I described "Decisions! Decisions!" as being composed of a milleu of "desert" pastries, when, in fact, though a puzzle made upentirely of pictures of baklava would have been even harder to work, our puzzle included not "desert" pastries, but "dessert" pastries. But I left it up there. In case you want to imagine the bakalava puzzle instead.
Labels: being dumb, friends, trips
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