Hi, Real Life!

June to present has been a whirlwind... interviewing for/leaving and entering multiple jobs, spending a lot of time with my dying grampa, creating a new piece, yet another new job, performing/teching/insanity/fun at Seacoast Fringe Festival, funeral, auditioning dancers, shooting weddings, revamping aforementioned piece to be performed at Mobius, rehearsals, growing work hours, writing 5 grants with Merli and (oh yeah) remodeling our house, I've been gradually falling more and more behind.  Oh right... and running out of Ritalin like 3 weeks ago when I fired my psychiatrist.

But all that has changed!

After shooting a wedding on Saturday I spent the weekend on the Cape, and it was just relaxing and easy and perfect.  We drove around, spent time at the beach on a beautiful day, enjoyed my Gramma and Twyla's birthdays, and just did not too much of anything.  Perfect!

Today I've had time to clean, rearrange my office furniture and set up the iMac, put away lots of laundry, and catch up on Luminarium work and COGdesign work, and I am feeling just so much better.

Now I'm onto producing an AMAZING show for Luminarium's end of 2011 season, becoming a 501 c3 (any day now...), catching up on car appointments/health appointments, fundraising, painting my front door, and applying for MORE grants.  Soon I will be caught up on life...

This entry has zero purpose, just wanted to chronicle the feel-good vibes.

Kim's Pick-Me-Up Video Playlist. Volume 1.

Here are my favorite internet videos for a mood reversal (even if temporary) when I am feeling gloomy or sad....

Boom King...
This is my go-to.  It appeals to my immature sense of humor, and is just genius.  I am MADLY in love with these guys.  Whoever decided no more Flight of the Conchords sucks majorly.

BEST (not worst) music video ever...
Tim Early's January repertory piece...2007... or maybe 2008?  Just watch.  It needs no words...

Baryshnikov... Tharp... Wild Abandon... What more does one need?
This is dance comfort food... Beautiful out of control looking, yet completely in control, I love love love it.

Note:  These are all wonderful procrastination tactics.  More to follow...

post-weekend whatever.

This weekend was a weird emotion sandwich.  I stayed home from Tobin on Friday, mainly because I hadn't cried yet and was nervous about when it would strike... I didn't want to break down at work.  I distracted myself with crazy cleaning, packing for Fringe, shopping, caffeinating... and the like.

Saturday and Sunday were amazing.  While Merli summed it up so wonderfully, I won't recap- but check out her narrative of the weekend.  It was full of art, silliness, support, AMAZING weather, and lots of love and fun.  Sidenote: I am not destined to be a pool shark, but I plan on practicing, perhaps improving my game beyond default wins and unintentional trick shots...  Stayed up until like 5am with Christin/Merli/Mark/Matt, and then even later with Merli (more chatting and then jumping into and on our beds).  I have such a great dance company/family, this has grown into something beyond dancers and choreographers and I am lucky.

My mom/Jenn/Christos came to the show on Sunday.  I knew I was inevitably going to break down when I saw them, as I hadn't seen any of my family members since I got the news, so I made them come in early.  Weirdly I didn't totally lose it until they left to go get dinner, and I found myself grieving inside a temple.  Go figure.  Good thing for the dark shades, even though I looked like a jerk walking around with them on.  Alan wouldn't have liked my outward display of emotion.... Just like he didn't like, oh, everything?

I showed my new piece twice this weekend, of course with Merli's fun new piece and other greatest-hits too, and it was received as I hoped it would be.  While our performance spaces were nutty and backwards and disorganized, the show went well on both nights.  The experience made me even more excited to show it in November (4-5, 8 pm, green st studios) in a dark and deep theatre space.  I'm nervous for Mobius on Oct 21, as I just found out its a very skinny and longish space.  We'll see...

While I want to get down to discussing my new work in a blog post, I don't have the time to do it justice.  Keep your eyes peeled.  What I will say now, is that it depends so majorly on the dancers (what is emotionally portrayed or restrained, and their connections) and their performance quality made some serious magic happen on Sunday night.  I remember sitting in the dark with my silly clamp light in my lap, watching and lighting, tears flowing down my face, and trying both suavely and frantically to wipe them away as the dancers got close to the downstage region, so they wouldn't see me awkwardly in the darkness.

I absolutely love being a creator, wouldn't ever ever want it any other way.  I am very grateful that I was able to take a big risk, that I have a great partner, and that there are so many supporters that are making our org flourish.

So now we are in a new week...

Monday I crashed, cried, enjoyed my puppy and the weather, and regained my composure.

Yesterday I went to work, and had one of the first successes I've had in the arts at Tobin.  The kids have been a hard sell on performing mediums, but I had a good sized group of girls trust me enough to do some theatre, and they had a great time.  At the end of the day I got word of some interest in dance...

This week is grant-mania.  Merli and I have 5 grants due this week, and a CRAZY project in mind.  Wish us luck... We also have a bunch due over November and December.  While we only have a year behind our belts, it was such a solid year.  2 self-produced performances, a statewide tour, invitations to perform in multiple fundraisers and festivals, a Boston Center for the Arts performance, invite to be guest lecturers at a MHC arts talk, a gala, a community outreach project... now a Mobius performance next week.  We have no intention on losing momentum!

So that's life.... and non-life.

I'm sad, happy, numb, relieved, more sad, more numb.

We were running our show to prep for Seacoast Fringe this weekend, and I finally began to love my new piece.  I had tears in my eyes at a moment or two, because it was finally becoming perfect, powerful, expressing just what I wanted it to say.

After packing up all of our belongings, chatting with dancers, getting a park bench into a station wagon etc, I read a text from my mom:

'Grampa is at peace,  Auntie just called me.  They just called her that he just passed away.  I don't want to talk so excuse the texting.  React with love and relief for him that he is out of the nightmare he was in in his broken body.  Lisa told him we all love him and named us all to him and said he will be in our hearts forever.'

I passed his hospice/home on the way to rehearsal, passing through Needham, and had just said a few nice words and by usual 'hello' as I passed by without enough time to stop.  I knew from my mom yesterday night that he had finally committed to dying, telling the nurses to freeze all of his Ensures, raising a fist to the Armenian national anthem, and then saying to family members that he was going to try to die now.  Always a philosophical joker, this is all taken with a grain of salt.

Fast-forward to 10:59pm.  I got that text from my mom and just have been a bit numb since.  I've spent so long (7 months, really) preparing for this very moment, and now I'm just so unsure of how to react.

For some time I've thought this piece I am creating was linked to his death.  I was wondering whether it would be linked with our October performance, or the November showing of the piece, and as I sit here I realize it is perfect.  The new piece has found its finality, though yet to be performed, I've told the story correctly, and now he can go and find peace.  Biologically/scientifically, who really knows if there is a link or a convenient overlap, but I like to believe in the power of my art sometimes.

I feel guilty that I am sad and a bit angry at his death.  I've had so much wonderful time to visit and talk and prepare for death, but I feel so robbed and unsure.  I feel guilty that I haven't visited in over a week, I am sad that I left him alone in the drab room with the dated floral window treatments and slow-moving nurses.  Death's a real pain in the ass.

Looking forward to spending time performing this piece, and taking Luminarium to Portsmouth, not everyone has something they love so much to occupy a whole weekend and make them focus.

Sad, sad, sad, more sad.  The end.

(because now I don't want to write anymore...)

black... or charcoal... or navy...

Whenever I wear clothing to a funeral it always becomes completely marked by the event.  I do mean completely... a hanging instant association with sitting in a hard pew, or standing still in a cemetery while your heels are sinking into the earth, or many tears.

I just recently donated a dark blue and black kimono-esque top that I wore to my grandmother's funeral sophomore year of high school.  I remember coming home from dance, and my mom sitting me down in our living room to tell me that Adie had a stroke and would never wake up from it.  I remember staring as intently as I could at the cover of the TIME magazine on our coffee table so I wouldn't explode with questions and tears- it was the issue in memoriam of the Columbia space shuttle, which disintegrated when it tried to re-enter earth.  On our drive up to Maine we stopped at Macys and I picked out the top thinking it was really quite awesome and I'd love to wear it again and again once life returned to normal, but that was never the case.  There were many instances where I eyed it, hanging in my closet among other dressier tops, thinking how cute it was... but I could never really walk out the door wearing it.

A year-plus ago I went to Russell's grandfather's funeral.  With no notice I grabbed the only black dress in my closet that I was in the mood to wear.  It had some abstract polka dots, and was cut in an almost 40s, bordering on pin-up, style and it was stretchy and fun and I had thrown it on countless times.  As I write this blog entry I now realize that I haven't worn it since that day, though I don't think it is as intensely/emotionally connected to a death as the above top.

Currently, I find myself waiting out the week- waiting for the inevitable phone call from my mom to let me know that my grampa has passed.  Maybe it's shallow, but I find myself considering what the heck I am going to wear.  I have so much black, charcoal grey, navy blue etc., but what will become the new marked item, or, do you instead dress to memorialize someone through what you wear?  Where do the considerations fall?  I guess many people would put their efforts into grieving and just showing up to the designated place at the right time, but perhaps our funeral attire, or at least my funeral attire, deserves more thought.

10 months later...

So, last year, Russell and I decided about two weeks before the first time homebuyers tax credit expired (we're talking April 2010) we needed to become homeowners.  Our one bedroom apartment on the Waltham/W.Newton line was lovely, but we had outgrown it.  As a couple of impulsive shoppers, we decided to do the leg work on Zip Realty, found some properties, and started going to open houses one weekend.  Well, to make a long blog post a bit more concise, it DID NOT work out.  The agent was late, could have cared less (even though we already did all of the work finding homes) and when we saddened that we didn't magically fall in love with the first property we walked into, she was like 'no? okay, find something else and we can go look'...

In our overwhelmed confrontation with reality, Russell and I found ourselves slumped in someone's TINY living room (no way would we buy a glorified low ceilinged one bedroom home with no land for 289k), with my mom telling us why we needed a real realtor (there are many things I can do or figure out how to do myself, apparently real estate isn't one of them) and like magic, Susan Shruhan and Kevin Monahan from Jack Conway Realty poofed into our lives.  They were wonderful about listening to and understanding what we needed from a home, and introduced us to condos, townhouses, foreclosures and shortsales.  [Sidenote, though we were pre-approved for 350k, there was NO WAY we could afford that mortgage... and we wonder why everyone's screwed over money-wise in this country?  We felt comfortable at or under 250k, and unfortunately that doesn't go far for a legit house in Boston!]  We viewed tons of properties with Susan and Kevin, and decided we would focus on the Roslindale/West Roxbury/JP/Hyde Park area.  For a bit we looked at multi-families, to play the landlord game and make some money (too overwhelming), for another period of time we looked at BEAUTIFUL condos in JP (while amazing these condos were still often 290k!), and lots of foreclosures.  We got in a rut and totally stuck and discouraged for a tiny bit, and then I asked to see a house in Roslindale that Russell had passed over.

For some reason I was drawn to this house because it was tall (great reasoning, I know) and it had a tree in front of it.  It also had some mystery going on, and I'm all about the mystery.

A big perk was the backyard space as well.  Russell had given up on getting New Hampshire sized land, but to find a house with lots of green space with a Boston zip code was a delight.

As I am sure you can tell just from the outdoor pics, this house was not in lovely shape!  It was a HUD foreclosure, had been vacant for a seriously long time, and before that it was a type of sketchy boarding house (read: sweet drug smell, marbles in the floorboards, a bit of graffiti here and there, snails everywhere, total re-do needed inside).  But I LOVED it! I walked in to find sunny living space throughout, high ceilings, wood floors in surprisingly good shape, and POTENTIAL.  Problems were that the kitchen and half bath on the first floor needed a complete gut, both spaces couldn't even be used.

Russell and I were lucky enough to have my dad, who is a great handyman/carpenter/construction/nothing he can't do/fix kind of guy, and my mom who offered super generously to fund the kitchen gut/replacement (amazing, will never be able to send enough gratitude), and that was enough to get us to jump.  Nervously, we low bid 215k, had to counter 225k, got accepted, and waited MONTHS to get into the house.  Seriously, I won't detail it here, but buying a foreclosure with a FHA loan is kind of a nightmare.  Finally, we closed on August 28, 2010... and rushed right over to start ripping things out of the house!  We moved in on our first wedding anniversary (Aug 30) after Russell's parents graciously hired us a moving company.  We were just so incredibly stressed with the HUGE project we had committed to, that this was a great gift.

Below are some 'before' pictures... in retrospect, I can't believe how brave we were to tackle this! Sorry, the pics aren't quite in chronological order...

The kitchen.. a bit into gutting.  We're talking mold, snails, no appliances, awful wiring and plumbing, leaks, grossness.  Russell is amazing for ripping most of this out!

yuck.

The whole house had/has the classy orange paint job found on the stairs here.  Also, fake wood paneling... everywhere.  The floors were tile, but AWFUL... cracked, chipped, condensation on them... no good.  They were a pain in the ass to remove, since there were 2 layers of adhesive linoleum underneath, and then the 1800s wood nailed down with square nails.  The square nails were by far the coolest part of this project.

Living room with some of the weird wallpaper removed...

Hallway with the stylin wood paneling.

Stairway to the third floor, orange paint and wood paneling in their full glory.  Doesn't it make it look so closed in and awful?  Yes.

Yucky kitchen when we moved in... The photos don't make it look as gross as it was...

Otherside of kitchen, aka nothing.  

The living room had a jail built into the skinny doorway... left gap for crack, middle for guns, right gap for meth.

It got fun to throw all of the junk out the window into the backyard... until we realized we had no idea how to get rid of it!  Thanks to pain in the trash removal services it was not problem.

(yes, that is the stove tossed into the pile)









Now, I am happy to present some new pictures!  The first floor and some backyard reno took 10 months (Russell had a crushed thumb from work for a month in there, so we lost a bit of time), but we did it entirely ourselves, no hired contractors except for the electrician who had to install the plug for the dryer, and the electrician who had to hook up the dishwasher!  Isn't it beautiful!?

So... that's it!  Now on to the second floor, and then the third!

Where'd everyone go??

So here I am... three days into my two week break between jobs.

Life is so strangely empty, but in an ok way.  There are no crazy little kids running around causing chaos, no awful commuting through the city.  It's just me, the dog and the house.

I am excited to have the time to actually get stuff done.  There are doors to paint, trim to prime and paint, and my mountain range of clothes on the third floor to finally finally organize.  I cleaned out 5 moving boxes yesterday!  Finally!  Also, Operation Shoe-Racki Freedom has been completed.  So. Many. Shoes.  So glad to have them all back though, I've been wearing the same pairs over and over again.

More importantly (before this blog gets super boring) our Luminarium Sponsor Benefit Gala is this Sunday!!!!

We are so excited to celebrate our one-year anniversary and get to reflect on the amazing strides we've taken in the past year.  It's crazy to look back on, a blog post about that will I'm sure follow in the next couple of days.

If the weather holds out we are going to work with the amazing photographer Jordan Matter this afternoon.    We are going to participate in Dancers Among Us, a national photo project showcasing the likes of Mark Morris dancers, ABT dancers, American Rep Ballet dancers, So You Think You Can Dance dancers... amazing beautiful professional dancers... and us!!!  This excites me to no end.  We have been such a legitimate entity as a dance company recently... I'm just very proud and also so tickled inside!

Anyways, yes.  Fighting off boredom one paint job at a time.