Hello pets, it's been awhile

Emo-ing it out with some Death Cab

Oh my. So spring camp. Considering all the obstacles (last minute planning, hardly any funding, language barriers, mass confusion and hysteria, fire-breathing dragons and general sorcery) the kids had an awesome time and even learned a little English. I did the best I could, ya know? Next year will be better.

Now I’m back safe in my little house, hangin’ out with Timmy and drinkin’ a cup of tea. This month’s goal is to chill the fuck out, hence the tea. Plus I am out of milk and black coffee is gross.

Timmy’s gotten kind of fat this week and I’m very excited about it. I’m going to try to get out to Rabat this week, maybe even THIS VERY AFTERNOON to buy her some stuff…then it’s all about figuring out what shots she needs so I can maybe take her to America with me twenty months from now, how big I can expect her to get (true to form I have totally spazzed out and convinced myself she has St. Bernard in her and will be humongous) and cracking down on the potty-training. She kind of gets it, but not enough to avoid whizzing on my sheepskin rug. Whore.

I don’t really know what else to say right now. This would be a good place to stop but I think instead I will ramble for a bit, in practice for when I’m old and sit around on front porches with a shotgun in one hand and a bottomless firefly-and-lemonade in the other. (Emma do people still drink those? Please lie to me if they don’t.)

Yesterday I was sitting outside while Timmy sniffed around the alley and some dar chabab kids came by to play with her/ hang out with me. It was so relaxed and normal and it hit me that I actually fit in in this town. I’m definitely still an outsider in some senses and always will be, but I feel like my differences are generally accepted. I’ve experienced complete acceptance with small groups of close friends before (ESTA for life), but never with a whole community ranging in age, socioeconomic status, education level etc. I don’t know how I did it because I’ve always felt like a pretty socially awkward person, but there it is.

Other things—Lindsey, my very dear friend from further back than I even remember sent me a letter recently and she enclosed some pages from a handbook we had made when we were kids with a bunch of crazy ways to flip and jump off of a recliner. Can I just say, oh my God I am lucky to be alive.

I give you the “Side Slide”:

-approach chair from the back. That’s what she said?
-jump up on the back of the chair, on your side
-slide down the front of the chair head first
-land

Genius.

There’s also the “Spinnie,” which involves doing the ballet equivalent of a single tour en l’air (jump and turn one revolution in the air before landing), landing on the seat of the chair and pushing it over backward, sliding off and landing, again, headfirst, on the ground for a 10.0 finish.

However horrifying these feats seem now, they totally jogged my memory and I got to thinking about all the ridiculous shit Lindsey and I used to do:

-on cold fall days we would zip our arms inside big puffy jackets and run around slamming into each other until we fell down. Once her little sister played and we knocked her down and ran away and she couldn’t get up. It’s okay, I made up for this horrible deed by joining the Peace Corps.

-we used to play “explosion,” where we would practice for our future careers as stunt doubles, first making a huge explosion noise, then running in slow motion and flipping onto the ground, knocked out.

-there were countless hours spent drawing yearbook pages with made-up people. I have no idea why.

Anyway my (badly-made) point is that my childhood was better than yours. It may have been weird, but it prepared me well for the “work” I do in Morocco, which of late has involved, among other things, dancing like a chicken and kung-fu fighting.

Moving on. New things I learned about stuff kids like:

Taping their mouths shut
The “Time Warp” from Rocky Horror
Anything I do that involves yelling, singing or dancing
Cookies (not that I didn’t know this before, I just didn’t realize HOW MUCH they like cookies)

So this tea ain’t bad, but it’s just not gonna do it for me. Off to buy milk!