Thursday, January 28, 2010

Honestly, a real time update, with TACOS!

We start with a few photos completely unrelated to the post from Giant's Causeway:




Chelsea: Well hello everyone! This is a real time update, not another thing I have been working on for weeks and am just now posting. Here is what is on my mind today.

On Monday, the whole life changes. Our kitchen in Rainbow house is being re-done into this beautiful model-home kitchen. We already know what it will look like because there is a twin home here, called Sunrise, and they have already finished their kitchen. There will be a beautiful tile floor, five (count em, FIVE) sinks which incidentally each have specific purposes under health code, granite counter tops, a new window, a new larder, new cabinets, better lighting, and a copper fume hood. Custom made dish sinks made to fit people more generally so that we do not have to bend over to do the dishes. We will still have the aga, but they're also putting in a range with an oven (read: proper temperature regulation for baking). Finally, a dish washer. If anyone can imagine doing dishes by hand for a family gathering or party of 12-20 people, then imagine doing that three times a day, you have an idea of how excited I may be for a dish washer.

This big change brings about all sorts of little ones. Our cooking crew is shifting over to Sunrise and their new kitchen, and Jill will no longer be in the crew. She will move to another house so that Catherine can cook in Sunrise again. What I hear is that Catherine is a wonderful cook and very efficient, so I am excited to see what we can do together! In reality I am only really cooking three days a week now. The bakery makes us pizza one day, a support worker (employed by the community to help out) cooks on Sundays, and I have a big meeting every Wed. so Christina has to cook on her own... more on home group meeting later. Besides cooking changes, we also are all spreading out over different houses for our lunch meal. Lucky for us, Jeff and I at least still get to eat together, and then run back home for a little R and R.

Home group. This has been slowly ramping up as one of my additional responsibilities. Wednesdays are a funny day for me. I attend this meeting, which is all about every big or little thing that needs talking about in the community, with the home coordinators of each house. These are the mover and shaker people who really run the administrative side of Clanabogan. They do not make every decision alone, but most things at least start in this meeting. I am learning a lot about the way things work here, and tucking tidbits away for future use. Later in the day we head to Introductory Course with all the young co-workers, and I get the other very basic side of things-- what is respect, how do we ensure safety in the tub, antidiscrimination policies etc. So I find myself a unique bridge between these two groups. I am quite comfortable in the young crowd meetings, and generally feel a need to help those meetings along with participation. My footing in home group was initially tenuous, but I am starting to feel the ground there and I am speaking up more when I have options or opinions. There is this funny thing that I think can be found in many do-gooder non-profits everywhere... do-gooders are not always so practical. We weave and tip around subjects, someone forgets their point, another brings a new one in the middle of a current point, someone brings us back to center... repeat. No kidding, it took us 25 minutes to figure out where everyone from our house could eat. So I find myself often drifting between daydreaming and bringing up poignant ideas that are often solutions. Oh, inefficiency mingled with efficiency mingled with bleeding hearts on everyone's sleeves.

Tonight we are celebrating my birthday with tacos. Old El Passo has a complete monopoly on the Mexican fare here, so you can imagine exactly what we will be eating. Add to those staples home made guacamole and salsa, and I am quite excited. We are having our house dinner early because two guys from the house, David and Christopher, are leaving tomorrow to visit home for the weekend. It was absolutely crushing to David that he would miss my birthday dinner (because he thinks everyone wants sausages and chips on their birthday), so we moved it up. In a wonderful but completely unnecessary gesture, his mother drove 20 minutes from Kesh to bring a gift for me. Likely, a tin of chocolates. We are still working on the tins we got at the holidays! After supper, I have a distinct idea that Jeff is taking me to a Jazz ensemble and dinner (second dinner). Maybe I have this thought because I told him it would be a nice idea for my birthday. Perhaps I will even get him to dance with me. We will see! More on all that next time. I leave you with a few completely unrelated photos:

2 comments:

  1. I always love your pictures! They are perfectly evocative. Got your comment on the blog about no website... so sad! I could see myself buying weavery pretties all the time. Maybe it's better for my check book that there's no website after all ; )

    Regarding wedding herbs, I think the bouquet toss is going to be a little bunch of "Bona Fortuna" herbs in my own made up Roman tradition. I'd also like to work in the (horribly pagan) Roman wedding vow "Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia" somewhere in the whole thing, but I just don't know where it fits. Any suggestions?

    I hope you have lots of fun jazz and dancing for your birthday celebration!

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  2. It was absolutely crushing to David that he would miss my birthday dinner (because he thinks everyone wants sausages and chips on their birthday), so we moved it up.

    David is correct. It's science. You can ask Jeff.

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