Pennies, Pennies Everywhere

Today marks the close of my second full week in New York City. I'm totally still alive. Good news all around.

In all seriousness though... I really like it so far. Sometimes I am still a bit overwhelmed as I always am in a new city. I struggle to find my way around and find decent places to shop, grab a bite to eat or set up my picnic lunch. Other than the normal getting to know you pains that accompany any move - things are going pretty smoothly so far. I have a place to live, a job, friends, some money and an interest in my surroundings. There hasn't been a whole lot that I don't like yet - though I am sure that I will discover more of that as time goes on. I even like my local laundromat. (and it's lots cheaper than any laundromat in FL - crazy right?)

You might be wondering - why the title? Well a very strange pattern has emerged during my time here. I have found at least one penny every day I have been here. I have picked up about 20 cents in the past two weeks. This totally fascinates me for some reason. I just don't understand why there are so many pennies around. Are New Yorkers just so rich that they overlook all the money on the ground? Is it beneath them to stop and pick up the pennies? Or am I just totally underestimating the nastiness of the NYC streets by touching something that has been on the ground for God only knows how long?

Whatever the reason for the pennies I will continue to pick them up. Hasn't anyone ever heard of that saying? "See a penny, pick it up - all day long you'll have good luck." Maybe the pennies have been fueling my good times so far. I wonder how long I'll continue to find pennies on a regular basis... Maybe I should look up more often?

Nah.

New York New York

Today marks my 6th day in New York City. So far I have remained quite busy and have enjoyed my time. I fell right into looking for an apartment and after three days of looking found one that I think that I will really like. I will be living with 3 strangers - but the place is in a great area, furnished, and is a very reasonable price for the area.

For those of you that don't yet know what I am doing - I am doing AmeriCorps. This was launched as a sort of domestic Peace Corps. More specifically I am a VISTA - which is the part of AmeriCorps that deals exclusively with combating poverty in the US. Some of the links to poverty are loose and some are very clear cut. Regardless, all VISTAs receive a very modest stipend every month for what is officially volunteer work. It is meant to be enough to live on, but is also meant to keep us at the poverty level.

During the next year I will be working full time and making little more than I was making working part time in retail over the past 6 months. We are not allowed to have a second source of income - not selling jewelry we make or babysitting or anything. The idea behind this is so that we may know what it is really like to live on so little money. To struggle to feed ourselves and to not have money for luxuries. I am not convinced that this strategy will work - and I feel as though it is inherently flawed in a lot of ways. (For instance many people are living at home with their parents while doing this or are receiving money from their parents for assistance - why is this OK but not actually working for it?)

It will be a challenge for me, who has never wanted for anything, to constantly be struggling with money. I have taken it on as a personal challenge and I am sure that I will succeed- which might be a problem. I have been very lucky in my life to have a family who has helped and supported me - but also to have one that taught me to handle my money so well. Part of why I have been able to travel as extensively as I have and have never wanted for anything is because of my ability to make the most of what I have and to prioritize my spending.

While I poke fun at myself for having a $10 rule while shopping (I have a hard time paying more than ten dollars for any one item of clothing) it is this rule along with my general abstinence from buying myself little luxuries that has afforded me the ability to travel the world. Occasionally I find myself breaking my rules, and despite the fact that I rather enjoy it, I try to stay on track. There are still so many places I wish to travel and so many things in life that I wish to see and do that will require discipline with my money that I can't bring myself to blow it on a purse or a new pair of jeans.

This discipline I have practiced throughout the years will come in handy over the next year, but without the payoff of a trip! This will probably be hard for me to accept and I will have a hard time truly not being able to buy clothes rather than just preferring not to spend my money on them. There is a huge difference and I'm not quite sure how I will handle it.

The not being able to spend money on food thing will be relatively easy for me. For a while I always ate toast and tea or coffee (made at home) for breakfast and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with some grapes or raisins or something for lunch. I am great about packing my lunch and taking it to work with me and I do enjoy cooking. The problem will be when people ask me to go out with them for dinner or drinks. I am trying to budget in a small amount of money for my entertainment each month and I really, really hope that I pull it off. The first month will be the most interesting for me. I am going to have to learn my way around the city and my new neighborhood- experimenting with grocery stores and coupons and the like to get the most for my money. Being thrifty requires a lot of leg work.

I'm currently participating in my Pre-Service Orientation for AmeriCorps VISTA and am at a hotel in downtown Manhattan with close to 200 other "volunteers" for the upcoming year. We have been trying to "build relationships" and discuss our thoughts on poverty and service in NYC. We all have different opinions, and while I feel that a lot of us have a lot in common I have been caught off guard about a few things and have surely made an ass of myself. I love that people here correct me when I'm wrong about things in America. Being here and interacting with people from all over the US with regard to American problems for once has been really enlightening. I've spent so much time overseas and worrying about America's international agenda that I've failed to learn a lot about what goes on in my own country.

Being in New York is great for me for that reason. I feel that even though I am still in America, NYC is so very different from Florida and Jacksonville in particular that it's sort of like being in a different country. I don't feel as isolated or as far away from home for a lot of reasons - but I definitely notice that I'm out of my element! It's great and I'm excited about learning more about the rest of America!!

I'm truly excited about my upcoming service - and while I'm terrified that I'll do a horrible job or absolutely hate my organization or my coworkers or just be totally unprepared and overwhelmed in every way possible - I can't wait to start. I've always wanted to dedicate myself to helping others in one way or another and I am finally getting that chance. Hopefully I am not disappointed.

I'll update more later - I know this is already really long. Wish me luck and come visit me in NYC!!

Adventures!

OK so I'm a bit of a strange girl in the sense that I have no problem going places by myself. I will eat dinner by myself, chill at a coffee shop for hours with my ipod and book (ok it's usually just my book), and even go to a bar and get a drink by myself.

I don't mind being alone. I don't mean alone in the bigger sense of the word, just in the immediate "hey, I'm here by myself" sense. I would probably wither away and die without people in my life, so I'm very grateful to have so many wonderful people in it - even the ones I only get to talk to online make me feel like my life has meaning of some sort. However, I do not require someone to go to the movies with and I don't really have a problem sitting at a bar drinking a beer and reading a book, or even just enjoying the music being played. I know that I look really pathetic, and people typically assume that I have been stood up or am waiting for someone - but who cares?

I bring all of this up because I have been acting on my impulses to do things by myself a lot more lately. I've been to a few bars by myself and have enjoyed it for the most part. The whole experience has been sort of interesting because I have zero experience with getting hit on and handling myself around men. I've been in a couple of relationships and dated a few people - but none that I ever met outside of school/friends/work. I'm not the sort of girl that gives out her phone number usually and I typically brush men off when they do approach (which to be fair, in the past wasn't all that often.)

I'm not entirely sure what's changed but the past couple of months I've been approached by a lot more guys. I even had a guy at a local sandwich shop ask me for my number a couple of weeks ago. Really random and I'm pretty sure that's never happened to me before. I'm still trying to figure out how to politely turn down a guy or escape him when I can't turn my back on him to talk to a friend.

What's worse than trying to figure out how to politely turn down a guy is trying to figure out how to answer his questions. There's always the question, "what do you do for fun/ in your spare time?" Honestly? The majority of my time is spent at work or at home by myself or hanging with family. But who wants to hear that? After listening to my brother complain about how boring girls are when they never have any hobbies or anything that they do for entertainment - I just can't bring myself to really answer the question. Maybe I should just change the question in my head to, "In an ideal world, what would you do for fun most nights?" To that question I have lots of answers!

I've led an interesting life and have a ton of interests and have done and seen so much, but none of it is stuff that I'm really open to sharing with a total stranger. Dating is awful - by the way. I'm so incredibly awkward and horrible around new people. I'm typically quite shy and quiet until I get to know someone so I probably come across as totally uninterested and snobby. Most of the time I am uninterested so I'm not too upset about this, but for those few times where I am it makes it sort of difficult.

Also, the more guys I meet - the more I realize that I am incredibly, incredibly picky. (The number of times that I have liked a guy immediately upon meeting him is..... very very small- usually I have to be eased into it as I get to know them) And will probably never have a one night stand. Both of these things are both positives and negatives, but for now I'm just going to view them as positives.

I really want a puppy.

Holy Shit

I just scared the crap out of myself. (I hope)

It's not a very nice night here in Jacksonville. The full moon is high and bright and my house is eerily quiet, save the wind throwing branches against my windows and audibly straining the doors. It's one of those nights - one where I walked outside and said to myself, "Creepy" at the sight of the moon and the sound of the wind.

I originally walked outside to retrieve something from my car. As I'm moving everything around and shuffling through the papers and everything else in my car that I really need to clean out - I notice that it got a lot darker all of the sudden. I look up and my garage door is shut. Now - I didn't shut it when going out to my car because I knew I would be coming back in momentarily. My garage door is also quite loud when it opens and closes as it is 30 years old and the machinery is therefore ancient- so the fact that I didn't hear it close is extraordinary. Add to that the fact that when I reached for my garage door opener to reopen it, it took a few tries to get it work, and you have a scared shitless Camille.

I don't scare that easily, and while I know that I did pick up and move my garage door opener while searching through my car and could have easily accidentally hit the close button - the combination of the moon, wind, the fact that my garage door opener rarely works on the first try, and the fact that I'm here alone right now just freaked me the hell out.

Naturally, I assumed that someone had snuck into the house and closed the door behind them in an effort to keep me out. I watched the windows for a while to see if I could see any movement and searched the area for a vehicle of some sort or anything out of the ordinary. Seeing nothing, I decided it was time to suck it up and reenter the house because I was probably overreacting. I looked for something to wield as I entered the house and settled on a bottle of Raid (bug spray that will sting the shit out of you if you come into contact with it). I wandered through the front of the house and opened all the doors and closets and such to check. I then proceeded to play pool for a while in an effort to seem casual and more vulnerable in an effort to lure out my possible attacker if they existed.

No one appeared. I have yet to explore the back of the house - and I think I'll wait until Eric gets home to do that. I realize that this probably sounds crazy and ridiculous paranoid, but I'm pretty ok with that. I would rather be safe and paranoid than completely ignorant and naive and put myself in danger. Not that going back into the house with a can of bug spray was my safest option, but at least I remain alert. For now, I'll keep my bug spray nearby.

In other news, I watched Yes Man tonight. Hilarious. Not all the way through, but there were definitely some parts that I found really really funny that made the rest worth watching. Plus Zooey Deschanel is in it and I just think she's tops.

Late night rendezvous?

I love staying up late and listening to music and chatting with people online. I need to find the pipes to my hookah so I can set it up and go outside and enjoy the Florida spring nights with my laptop, hookah and beer. Nothing better. Those were some of my favorite nights in college. We had the best times, didn't we girls (and occasionally guys)? Though it usually was some silly girly drink and not beer. We should do that again sometime soon.

It's crazy that everyone has such different lives now. Having friends in the real world is actually a lot harder than it is in college or high school. I think part of it is that I no longer have a group of friends that all hang out together all the time. Back then it was like you call one person and it starts a chain and then you just all show up. Now I have to make 5x the effort to have the same effect. My irrational fear of calling people totally doesn't help things.

The good news is that I really do just enjoy sitting at home and chatting with people online or watching a movie or some stupid ass shit on TV. Tonight Eric and I watched Tough Love on VH1. Worst. Show. Ever. And of course by that I mean that I love it. Where else can you watch a bunch of skanky explaymates/models try to find true love but on reality tv? Apparently no normal people do reality television. I guess we're not interesting enough. (interesting = crazy)

In other news... I found a blackberry when I was out for Alicia's bachelorette last night. I totally buy into karma at least a little bit so thought that I would return it. So today I texted and called one of the person's friends and found out where she works and when I could drop the phone off and the guy I talked to promised to give her a heads up that I had the phone and was actually going to return it. Her reaction was priceless. I showed up at the bar that she worked at and she was just like "OH MY GOD! Can I hug you?!" Of course I was like ummm yes? So she gave me a massive hug and was really appreciative. All the guys behind the bar were like omg you're so lucky that someone gave that back to you! And gave me a free drink. I think it was totally all worth it. Random acts of kindness are fun.

Alright now that it's almost 4 am and I really haven't slept much in the past few days I suppose I should attempt to get some rest. Tomorrow I have to go to the hospital to talk to my grandmother's doctor and visit her... possibly my least favorite activity of my life. Oh well. I definitely want someone to visit me when I'm old and stuck in a hospital bed.

Karma better fucking exist.

Holy Crap!

It's been ages since I've updated. I suppose it's because I haven't had too much to say or update on. I probably still don't have too much to say of any substance but I feel like writing.

Yesterday was a sad day. I've been living here in Jacksonville for almost 5 months now and I am sort of disgusted with myself for that. There are a lot of reasons for this but mostly it's because I've been amazed at my laziness and lack of drive. I'm in a funk and it's not good, but I've made some decisions lately that ensure that I won't be here forever. None that I'm really ready to share on such a public platform... but if I'm still here this summer then something is seriously wrong with me. None of that really has to do with why yesterday was a sad day, but is just pretty much how I've been feeling lately so certainly didn't help.

Yesterday was sad because everyone left. My dad has been here since late January and last week Renee, Sage and Zeb came to visit. A few days into their visit Eric drove in and my mom was sort of in and out of town during their stay. Yesterday everyone but Eric left. It was so good to see Renee and Sage again. I miss them terribly. I had a blast living in Shanghai with them and seeing them made me miss it a lot. They joke that everyone wants them to come visit so that they can see Zeb - and while he is really damn cute - I definitely wanted them to come to see them!! I think that I've grown a lot closer with all of my siblings these last few years and I love it. We were never really that distant or anything - and of course I was always the closest with Dave bc I lived with him my whole life - but I just feel much more attached and I miss them a lot more if a long period of time goes by without seeing them!

Thankfully, Eric is still here to keep me company for the time being. I'm horrible entertainment for him, but hopefully it will all work out. Dave said he might come visit next weekend which is exciting - I haven't gotten to see him much since I've been back bc he's some hot shot college kid... (not really... he's just in college but I like to blame it on that). He's currently in NYC visiting a friend (I hope you're taking good care of him!) and I'm slightly jealous. I wish I had some money to travel around and get the fuck outta here for a while again. I've actually started to miss the smell of airports and the strangeness of hotels. This fact is a sure sign that my life is fucked up.

I miss living in China and even living overseas. When I came back to the States there was a period of time where I wasn't sure that I was ready to leave and go oversease again but now that I've been back here for a while ... I realize that I miss the transitory lifestyle that I had established for myself. Renee's apartment in China was my home for a longer stretch of time than any one residence has been since I moved out of my parents' house. I've gotten used to moving every 4-6 months and while spending just over a year in one place was enjoyable... I sort of miss the excitement of moving and traveling. Of course... there is where the internal conflict takes over.

A huge part of me wants a cute little apartment that I can actually decorate without thinking about how I'll just have to move everything out and sell off most of it in 6-10 months. I want to be able to date someone without worrying about how it might affect my desire/plans to leave the place where I am. (This is not really something I worry about very much but it does keep me from actively dating.) Also I've decided that I definitely want kids. The husband thing is still a little iffy and I'm still not sold on the whole house idea but I do want kids. I used to swear that I would never have children but I've warmed to the idea and after getting the chance to play with babies lately I've pretty much decided that I'll have kids if Mother Nature allows it.

Also I want a dog. I always thought I was a die hard cat person but after living with a dog I'm not so sure anymore. Plus... I don't think I care much for the cat that I have now. I liked our previous cat much much more. (That's probably wrong but I don't really care) Don't get me wrong, I love my cat - I'd be sad if he died - he just annoys the shit out of me and I don't really feel like I get a whole lot back from him. Oh well.

I think this post is sufficiently depressing and disjointed so I am going to abandon it now. Hugs and kisses.

Hmmm...

Things have been weird lately. I'm not sure if I'm depressed or just lazy or what. I've fallen into a bit of a funk here at home. Don't get me wrong, being here has been great for the most part. I had a fantastic holiday season with my brothers being here and going to New York with some of my favorite people... but since then? I'm completely unmotivated to find a real job and move on with my life.

Working part time and seeing my friends and family on a regular basis has been awesome, but it's definitely not what I want to do with my life! I haven't been able to come to terms with the thought of picking up and moving away again, but I also dread the idea of still being here in a year. I'm a little embarrassed to be living at home again - not that there is any shame in it - I just never thought that I would be doing it. I'm glad I'm here at this point, though. My dad's having more health issues and needs someone to be here with him while he goes through this and hopefully recovers. Actually, I think being here with him depresses me a little bit. He's not exactly an upbeat guy, but that's ok- I still love him.

At any rate, I'm totally over the whole Andrew thing. It's sort of nice to be single again - though I completely am horrible at meeting new people and even worse at dating! The good news is that I'm pretty ok with being on my own and am in no hurry to get into another relationship. Besides, there's no point in getting involved with anyone when I have no idea where I want to be in a year.

I've found a few jobs that look pretty much perfect for me - now I just have to get the desire to actually apply for them. Hopefully that motivation strikes me soon. First I want my dad to get a clean(ish) bill of health, though.

Here's hoping!