new and old

last january, i had a go-to-pieces. i cried for about two months straight and now i have the wherewithal to realize that i was in mourning. i was letting go of my ambition i'd had since i was about fifteen.

i left film. or it left me. i don't know, but it was kind of a bad breakup after a rocky last year. the last few projects i worked on, i felt used and abused with nothing to show for it. actually, the last three projects i worked on (two features and a documentary), are still not finished - and if they were, i probably wouldn't care enough to sit through them.

so my life changed a lot since then.

we bought a farm, which isn't a farm.

we got married.

and i started a real-life job where i leave my hobbit house every morning at the same time and sit in an office. i'm in accounting. at a nonprofit. i have an office, but no window. and i actually really like it. it's nice to have a steady paycheck for the first time in five years. it's nice to be proud of the work this company does (we're building a park system on the outskirts of town) and there hasn't been one moment when i've regretted this change...

until this moment. right now.

the office is quiet because everyone took their vacation time and has stayed home with their families. i don't have vacation time, but i don't have much to do as i sit through the calm before the storm, which is january in the accounting world. and so i've been spending a lot of time on facebook and comparing my life with every other human being who walks the earth. i've compared my life with friends, acquaintances, and total strangers and what i have learned is that i'm a barely functioning adult who sits at a desk and is bored and owns a house she doesn't live in that's full of mold and still can't always figure out what steps to take in life.

and instead of continuing the search for the many people who have more interesting and fulfilling lives than i, i decided to write on this humble blog whilst i fill the time up at my job...my real job.

i think the one thing that remained in all my struggles in working with film, is that i liked what it did for my ego. i liked being a film producer. i liked being the one on a film set who had the answers, who was included in the meetings, who was involved in the major decisions.

and i don't really have that anymore. i'm definitely back on a lower rung of the ladder i had passed a long while ago and i got really used to my hours being packed in with responsibilities and deadlines and fires to put out. i'm making a better income than i made from film, but i'm not allowed to leave when my work is done, i have to sit and wait for the clock to get to some arbitrary time so that i can then leave (see: right now). and now, i bring my lunch to work and i rarely have the opportunity now to eat in a smelly, mildewy tent, next to a space heater laughing with friends and wishing i'd worn long underwear to set that day.

and who knew that stress and pain and crying and chaos was such a great diet.

i thought working in an office with some structure in my life would open it up for other things, but now i don't seem to know how to have lunch with someone since i'm no longer free all the time when i'm not on a project. weekends seem way too precious with the farm and just not going to work. i bring my scripts to the office and attempt to work on them, but overhead lighting and paranoia of blatantly not doing my work isn't exactly the greatest thing to get the creative juices going.

so that's my life as i sit in a small room, and think about my life as the days slowly roll towards a new year.

you shall see...

here are a couple pictures of the farm (that's not a farm) to let you see what it's like. it's about two and a half acres of yard and then two acres of trees, or something like that. i haven't measured it myself.

first, here's the house. it's the ugliest house that ever was. when the old woman moved out of it last year, they found six dead snakes in the basement. snakes are fun. and there's moss growing in the corners and the foundation is all kinds of fut up, which is why the place sat on the market for so long and ended up going to auction.

but here it is...

and it smells. really bad. and the floor is wobbly and there are loads of dead flies in the bedrooms. and the kitchen floor sticks to your feet.

but it's ours.

then there's the land.

it slopes and is always about ten degrees cooler than the city.

i still have to get pictures of the woods and the path.

it's slowly going and going and going. so far, we've purchased a mower (apparently, they are worth more than some human beings) and this week cowboy has been pricing all the materials to fix the garage.

we've pulled probably a ton of scrap metal out of the creek bed (beside the garage) and made a trip to the dump, which, for some reason, i highly enjoy. i think i just like standing on the back of a pickup truck and chucking anything and everything as far as i can.

we're now planning on having a dig party on some saturday in the near future. we're going to dig a trench around the garage to put in a drainage system to keep the place from flooding. and we'll cook meat.

oh, the country life.

---kate and amy, does this suffice?----

oh! and we're getting married in a few weeks....

a house that is not a house

we bought the farm. cowboy and i.

it's only five acres, but it has rolling pastures (kind of) and a walking woods. and it's always cool and relaxing and in a few years, i'll be able to put my feet up on something inside my home and look out at the beautiful land around me and be happy.

at the moment, the house that sits on our lovely farm is old (but not the pretty kind of old) and ugly and has mold and a faulty foundation and smells like stale cigarettes and old kitchens.

my sister and best friend saw the place (at separate times) this weekend. they both live in new york. and they both loved it.

and seeing the farm made them both ask when we were going to have a baby...which is funny.

anyhoo...

so, with my new adulthood in check: land ownership, (almost) full-time permanent work, out of school, and (almost) married, i suppose now we will see what happens next.

hi

for those waiting in line somewhere and trying like hell to pass the time, i shall tell you about my day.

i made some tea and a bowl of yogurt and granola, feeling like if it took the time to actually drink my tea and eat my breakfast, i was wasting my time. but i did it anyway.

i have a pile of school work in front of me with notes and ideas scrawled on pages upon pages, and hopefully i'll be able to put them all together and turn it in my wednesday and still walk with my head held high.

at the moment, i can't wait for school to end. i'm exhausted. i want to read a book without guilt. i want to watch a film without breaking it down in some way for discussion. and i want to go a day without having the weight of due dates new drafts constantly resting on my brain.

last night we talked a lot about buying property and what the future looks like.


and i can't wait.

fun day at work

i worked with cowboy this week.

every time i've worked with him before, it was an empty house and we worked alone with the radio on.

this week, though, we worked in a house where people lived.

we were let in a door from the garage that led down a hallway to the bathroom needing work. the hallway passed the main living room where an older woman sat on a sofa and played solitair on her ipad and watched game shows the entire day. the entire day.

the morning began quietly - except for the frustration cowboy had with rockboard and my lack of skill and gravity and the toilet paper holder - but it quickly turned.

first, the woman's thirteen year-old grandson came home and stared unflinchingly at both of us working, but when i said hello, he responded with the same stare. it was a bit more awkward when this scrawny pale kid changed into baggy shorts, a wife-beater tanktop, yellow-tinted shades, and a cap. in this new outfit, he again just walked slowly in and out of rooms staring at us.

he was even kind enough to continue the awkward walk and stare out in the garage when i cut tile.

then, the dogs arrived. they stayed behind the temporary gate put up by the woman who presumably took a moment away from solitair.

at the point in the day when the sun slanted and pointed directly in my eyes when i stood at the tile saw, when the teenage boy's relentless staring added to him mumbling things to his grandmother when she wasn't in the room, and the dogs barked uncontrollably. that's when we decided when the day was over.

no more

my temp agency called yesterday afternoon. this job ends today. smeller hasn't mentioned it to me and i think she knows, but i'm not sure.

next week, if the temp agency doesn't call with another job, i'm working with cowboy.

new day

i stayed home yesterday and worked for the company i'm not legally allowed to talk about and created a new invoice design for cowboy's company.

but now i'm back at the temp job and my soul is weeping.

smeller keeps complaining about anything - it's too cold, too warm, she's tired, too wired, hungry, full, or something to do with the broken stapler.

on the other end of the spectrum, i received an email this morning inviting me to join the board of the local film society. it's all kinds of strange and surprising, but something that also seems pretty darn cool.

screwed

my abs burn with the heat of a thousand suns.

did i take some hot, new workout class? nope. i screwed down rockboard for my boyfriend's construction company last night after work.

my boyfriend cowboy took the giant leap last fall and started his own company. he knows carpentry and construction, plumbing and electrical, anything to do with tile and hardwood, and he can pretty much build an entire house out of toothpicks if need be. but even though these skills live in his marrow, and he's been working in the field for years and years, it doesn't take away from the anxiety that comes with relying totally on self to find work, assess the job, bid it, gather materials, do the work, invoice, and get paid in a steady, professional, and timely way.

to no one's surprise, though, the company has been growing steadily and the work continues to come in. and very soon, he will be faced with the next big step and actually have to hire an employee.

i want this job. it's not just to get out of temping, although that would be the blessing of a lifetime, but because i like doing something with my day.

and cowboy thinks it's not a completely bad idea. but then we come face to face with the fact that i might be good at a few things, but really, i have no skills (i can't lift anything heavier than about twenty pounds, measuring scares the daylights out of me, etc). and we also have to consider the situation of both of us relying solely on the income of this company, which is a leap in and of itself.

but the company isn't quite at that step yet, so until then, i get to help out when i can and screw down rockboard and pull up nails (i love this more than queen latifah movies) and eat sandwiches on the jobsite and listen to classic rock and wear cowboy's old t-shirts and be a part of making something beautiful.

and i love it.