Posted 7:37 PM by Michelle

I don't think I even need to mention that today was the longest day of the year, but that the sun never actually appeared, and it was dark all damn day. Summer Solstice my a... I can't help wondering when we as New Yorkers are going to get all of the good karma that simply must be headed our way. It's been a really rough two years, starting in September of 2001, through the wars, through the economy, and then we've been cursed with the worst winter EVER. The worst spring EVER. And now it's the first day of summer and damn it, we New Yorkers deserve some sun. And I'm not talking the 90 degree mugginess that it is supposed to be by Thursday- I'm talking about a week- just one week- of sweet, breezy, mid-70's weather that is warm in the sun but you are glad you grabbed a wee sweater when night falls. We deserve this. We deserve nothing less.

There was a front page article in the New York Times that New Yorkers are actually more depressed. There are numbers to prove it. More people are going to see analysts and psychiatrists. Me? I'm just going nuts.

And yet... and yet... the only thing that gives me pause about joining the Peace Corps, the only thing save my worrying about my family, is that I will miss my city. I became an EMT because I wanted to be an EMT in New York. Even though I don't work on an ambulance, I work every chance I get on the people who live and visit here and who need me. I became an EMT to care for my city and once again I am leaving, and this time not just for the summer. That gives me pause... for about ten seconds. I still feel like I'm sticking my head in the sand by leaving. I have this irrational, desperate hope that when I return, the goons will have left the office and people remotely resembling humans will have signed up. But, as my brother Ian points out, the goons in this country elected the goon in office. But I would like to make a few points perfectly clear:

1)Bush is anti-choice. Bush would take away every right to choose that ever existed from every woman alive. He is going to sign into law the first national abortion restriction since Roe Vs. Wade. Even if you are wishy-washy on this issue, please realize that it is one of many basic rights that he is dissolving.

2)Bush cares exactly nothing for the natural world. Of ten examples I will cite one: this past winter he allowed the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Now, yes, I am a tree-hugging granola eater, but even if you hate the likes of me, please realize how lucky we are as Americans to have places like Yellowstone. If you've never visited, you cannot know the beauty of it. But I hope you will trust me, as someone who lived there this summer, that places like that make everything else better. Allowing snowmobiles 1) disrupts the mating habits and migrations of countless species of animals and 2) destroys wild areas. It creates unnatural trails. It scares animals. It sucks. Bush allowed this simply because he could. He felt like it. "Just cuz".

2c) The simple use of the term "ANWR" rather than the full name- Artic National Wildlife Refuge- speaks to all the unthinking Americans who don't care if he drills for oil in some far off place called ANWR. Perhaps if a few of those folks looked up what those letters stand for, a mind or two might be changed. But the Americans who elected him aren't paying any attention.

3) He lies. That's really the jist of it. He is a liar. He lied about the WMD, he lied about why he went to war, he lied and said that Saddam was behind 9/11, he lied that he gave a flying shit about anything ever. Sorry. I'm trying to be cool-headed here. But I simply don't understand why the whatever huge percent of America that supports him doesn't see that.

Wow. You know what I just realized? It's not our administration that has made me lose hope. It's the people who support it. The majority of Americans. My fellow Americans, you make me lose hope.

Posted 8:48 AM by Michelle

I got an email from the Peace Corps today. If I told myself, even two years ago, that I would be getting emails from the Peace Corps, well, maybe three years ago, I would have laughed out loud. I get these emails once a week or so that tell me that my application status has been updated. When I went to the website today, and logged into My Toolkit, it said that I've finally been mailed the medical forms. I'll have to take these forms to my physician, my gyn, my eye doctor, and my dentist, and all of them have to complete pages and pages of paperwork all about my lil' ol' body. I will know more about my health when they are done than most people will know in a lifetime. Once I get all of those completed and mailed in, there really will be nothing left for me to do. It will be in the hands of the folks in the D.C. placement office, and I will wait each day for a packet or a letter to come in the mail. The packet will tell me where I'll be going, and the letter, or email or phone call, will tell me they've found something wrong. Wrong how I don't know but somehow something that would prevent me from going. I hate waiting games.

So, yeah, I, uh, went to the placement office for my French Class, and I thought I did pretty well on the test. I mean, I made some stuff up, but that's all Sean and I ever did at Ridge High. Sean and I were in the same class, French 2, which he was taking for the second (of three) times, and when we all had to say our names, Sean announced that we were married. I really feel for that teacher. I went more often than not, barely, but Sean showed up, I think, three times, the last being the final where he curled up on the carpet of the floor and went to sleep. Granted, we weren't sleeping that much that year, but... needless to say he failed his junior year.

Thinking back, I feel like that was so bold! I have degrees with honors, and Sean managed to squat at four colleges, and after all has been said he and I are not far from each other in our lives. In fact, I'm the one slaving away at a restaurant a billion hours a week and Sean has found a way to survive without being beholden to anyone other than those he loves.

I got my paycheck yesterday, and did a little dance for joy that it was $675. $675 measly bucks, and I need it so badly that I was happy. That little sum of money, barely half my rent, made in a forty-five hour backbreaking week, living in New York City. Times are hard for restaurant workers in this city, and my place is not immune. It's weird to me that my birthday is next week. I know I talk a good game about Birthday Month and all, but it's not shaping up to be much this year. Not that it should, or needs to, but I will admit that when there is not a certain person in your life who will make your birthday special, you kind of dread the day. Even when I've not had a man in my life, the last six years I've had my friend Hayley, who will be out of town this year.

I'm working with Sean today on our show, called "Rehearsal". And really, I must stop writing this and work on that. It is to be a show about our musical lives, and it is a kick in the pants to go back and remember these stories. I'm really hoping everyone in the family will be able to get here and see it. And I'm really hoping that by the time this show goes up, I will know what I will be doing for the next two years.

Posted 8:36 AM by Michelle

It's hard to write a blog while singing along to Nickel Creek, but I'll give it my best shot. Another double at work yesterday, but I managed to talk to my Dad anyway who was out buying furniture for their new house in the desert of California. At least, I'm pretty sure it's in California. But a belated and public Happy Father's Day to my one and only father. I often wonder the percentage of people who actually enjoy days like yesterday- how many fathers are miserable on Father's Day versus how may get loving phone calls or better yet, actual visits from their children.

I'm off to register for my French refresher course, and then to the first Braking the Cycle event. Free beer at the Brooklyn Brewery, and a first chance to meet the other riders. And my bike had ANOTHER flat. Yeesh.