To Do Ta Da

This week is going to be a lot of fun though extremely packed with events and “to-dos”.  I’m looking forward to it a lot though, despite how tense and stressed I feel right now.  It’ll be so rewarding to go to bed in a decorated and finished apartment all to myself, with my life temporarily arranged as I like it.  All will once again be under my control and completely out of control.  I’m definitely a little more than on edge and I feel like a runner, backed up against the spring waiting for the gun to fire.

Highlights to look forward to this following week:

• “The Fly” with Steven and David tomorrow night.

• Sunday– organizing and packing my car with as much stuff as I can fit.

• Monday– opening up a savings account, paying first month’s, and driving to my new studio where I will unpack, arrange, and fix what I can before I’m due at school.

• First official Creative Connections meeting where I will take my place as Creative Connection’s official photographer.

• Meetings, rehearsals, interviews, gym-going, therapist-searching and practicing throughout the week, along with a no-bullshit job hunt.

• Knott’s Scary Farm on Thursday night!

• Tara’s “20’s Mystery Murder” party  (I seriously have the BEST costume, right out of Nana’s closet.)

• A long day of hauling the rest of my stuff to my studio, including my new stunted fridge, microwave and TV center!

• Steven and Rachelle’s much-awaited housewarming.  I think I’ll bring them a chia pet.

• Sunday, organizing my place in hopes that I can go to bed with everything finished!

The only thing that’ll blow for a little while, is not having any TV or internet at home. Though, I seriously think it’ll make me 1000 times more productive, since when I go home it’ll force me to study and I will spend a lot less time just sitting on Facebook and/or watching “Celebrities Without Makeup.”

Now it’s all about waiting for the gun to fire on Monday….

Crap.

Hi Dr. Taylor,

I hope you’re enjoying your final days of summer. I’m getting prepared for my move back to Irvine right now, and I can’t seem to find the notebook where I wrote down all my repertoire. Is there any way you could e-mail me the list, so I can have a copy on my computer? Thanks Dr. Taylor! I’m really excited for this upcoming year.

-Danielle

Dr. Taylor:

“I know you have been working on this repertoire all summer and not
waiting until two weeks before school to get started on it, right.”

GULP…  even shittier is that DT won’t be in his office until the 22nd, which means, I don’t get the list of my rep until then.  So much for my plan to cram.  I have a lot to do though… a LOT to do and I’m sort of freaking out.

One caramel macchiato too many

I’m such a compulsive person. I can’t just drink one caramel macchiato, paint one abstract, write one poem– it’s always all or nothing with me. In fact, I realized that I absolutely detest the word, “moderation.” It’s so…. sane and it makes me feel like I’m a bad human being.

I remember one time Leah and I went down to San Clemente with her father and we both had a violent urge to make s’mores… not the classy kind over a campfire either, but the white-trash “stove-top” variety. After binging on about 6 s’mores each, her rational father said, “Everything in moderation girls.” What the hell? I blushed. I wilted. My screaming appetite was muffled.

I haven’t been able to look at him the same since that trip.

Anyhow, I’m about to run out and buy more canvases. I painted three paintings yesterday:

I’m on a roll and I can’t help myself. I actually painted these for Leah since she’s leaving to France on Saturday. They are 8×11 travel-sized.

Yesterday I went rollerskating with Leah and Scott and discovered a new passion. Rollerskating is my next new “thing.” I want to take lessons when I get back to Irvine and get ridiculously good at it. I even had visions of going on MTV’s MADE (never going to happen). You just always see that one “cool” person at the rink who you secretly want to be. Last night it was this 60 something year-old black guy, who was so smooth it hurt.

I will be him someday.

*UPDATE*

Just got offered and accepted an incredible opportunity working for Creative Connections at UCI, documenting, photographing, designing, & filming.  I’m off to buy canvases and a sketch book.

I am on a creative roll

A couple of new creations, plus I wrote a song and painted three new paintings… WOOO. Social isolation does WONDERS. I’m getting happier and happier with my photography too, though mainly my Photoshoping skills. Hopefully in a few more months I will have a new: tripod, lens cap, lens and lighting kit.

old haikus and a new book

I’m going to write a book… I don’t know specifics, but it’s going to be about life– my life specifically and my family tales of old. I figure, why not? It dawned on me that I have A LOT of old journal entries, saved conversations from AIM, tons of fucked up family dramas to exploit and sappy stuff that’s bound to amuse. If people don’t like it, screw them. I know it’ll be entertaining.

It’s all a matter of compiling it in an understandable way. I’m thinking it’ll be separated in themed sections, or it will go chronologically. Maybe I’ll just throw everything together for a big life collage. I want it to have photos, conversations, memoirs, poetry and stories. eew. It kind of sounds like a nasty soccer-mom scrapbook…

I need to think this through some more…

Anyhow, during the height of my hormonal teen years (wait–I’m still in them technically) custody battles and family warfare, I wrote these haikus. I think they are fucking brilliant for lost-and-found haikus. They sort of summarize my life experience from age 13-16.

DMV nightmare
waiting in bleak endless line
for “come back later”

Parents armed for war,
in child support battlefield-
with greasy lawyers…
Californian dreams!
Look! big time hollywood stars-
and overpriced rent.

Taco truck business
not producing needed cash.
Where are the tacos?

Permit sinks in sky
as mom says the dreaded “no…
“I can’t afford it”

Time, clicks by slowly
monotonous Mr. Guy
thinks his goatee’s cool

Mustang fantasies,
red and black within my dreams-
heat, in the back seat?