Special Events – Page 26 – Where Vivid Narratives Live

Two Stars Are Born

Recently, an indy filmmaking friend of mine sent out a casting call for extras. I forwarded the email to my capoeira group, my professional writing group and my Austin PR list. Out of nearly 200 people, only one other person answered the call for yesterday’s shoot at the Republic Square farmers’ market. When I introduced my capoeira friend to my filmmaking friend, her eyes lit up and she immediately invited him to play a little capoeira for the opening scene.

He jumped at the opportunity to make his cinematic capoeira debut. Yet, capoeira isn’t an individual sport. Fortunately, one of the lead actors in the film also knew how to play capoeira since yours truly here was not about to get extra funky. After all, sweat was already streaming freely down my back just by me standing on the scene. I planned to go to two tango lessons after the film shoot. For once, I’d be the smelly tanguero in class! (I shared that with another tango student just before our first class and he said that I’d get another free pass at being smelly since I didn’t hit the funky mark.)

I did, however, make my capoeira lead singing debut, both off and on camera. I managed to get the crowd doing the three rhythmic capoeira soul claps as I sang. One other woman in the crowd was brave enough to repeat what I sang as a response to my lead. Unfortunately, she sang the lyrics a little incorrectly, but something’s better than nothing! At any rate, I figured I could always email my filmmaker friend once they start postproduction. She can always record the song over, using two female capoeiristas–I just hope that the whole scene isn’t deleted.

Regardless, I have another opportunity to make it in the final cut since I stood behind the principal actors during the crowd scene. I’d love to see the footage of how we did pretending to see an imaginary helicopter overhead, pretending to listen to a motivational speech and then cheering on one of the main characters.

I now have a newfound respect for actors. It’s very challenging to “get into character” with just a little backstory of what we were doing/reacting to in the scene. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see how much magic is worked in postproduction. Plus, I’m recruiting writers, photographers, and lyricists for the upcoming “Beauty in Other Cultures” roulette in September!

Culinary Carnival

This weekend, I actually challenged my culinary skills by trying out two new recipes and getting a private cooking lesson. For my friend’s upcoming birthday party, I chose to make a cheesecake. Since her capoeira nickname means “pomegranate” in Portugese, I looked up the recipe for a white chocolate and pomegranate cheesecake. For my private cooking lesson, I chose an all-time vegetarian favorite, couscous and vegetable stirfry, since the lesson would focus on the proper way to chop veggies. Lastly, one of the characters in the novel that I’m currently working on, makes up her own recipe for blueberry pancakes; so I chose this morning to see if the recipe actually resulted in a pancake!

I prepared the cheesecake a few hours prior to my cooking lesson. Although I’ve been making cheesecakes for years, I was pretty excited about trying out this new recipe since, for the first time in life, I had to buy a springform pan and I would make use of my blender. All of my cheesecakes either have graham cracker or oreo cookie crusts. For this version, the recipe directed me to put the whole oreo cookies into the blender. After 1o seconds, all those cookies were pulverized. Pleased with the results, I called Mom to let her know this wonderful time-saving step. I then read to her the tip of putting hot water into a casserole pan at the bottom of the oven while the cheesecake was in the middle. Once the cheesecake finished baking, the instructions said to turn off the oven, crack the oven door and let it cool. The water bath was supposed to prevent the cheesecake from cracking. Not only did the cheesecake crack, but the crack formed an interesting shape. Even later on, when my friend helped me to decoratively hide the crack, it took on an interesting design, which reminded me of a jumping woman.

For the coucous and vegetable stirfry, I bought a sweet potato, a red onion, yellow squash, zucchini, roma tomatoes and collard greens. I’ve been on a collard greens kick for two weeks now and I swear that that leafy green is causing me to crave fried chicken! My friend brought over his special set of knives and his own wok. He taught me the proper way to hold the knife and chop round veggies, especially onions. Whenever he quizzed me how I normally chopped up certain things, my answer was the same: I put them in the blender.

As he chopped away, I made the dry spice mix (in the blender, of course) and prepared the pearl couscous, which I prefer over the regular, smaller-grained couscous. Had I known before hand that there would be a battle over adding fresh mint to the stirfry, I would have simply blended it with the other spices instead of setting it beside him to hand chop as he’d done with the garlic and onions that were sauted before the other ingredients were added. I gently handed him a “branch” of mint that consisted of 5 or 6 leaves. He accepted the compromise since the original recipe called for 1/2 cup of mint.

The next day the double chocolate cheesecake was a big hit at the birthday party . Not a soul knew that the milk chocolate on top had been added merely to disguise the split. As a matter of fact, I think the next time I make that cheesecake, I’m going to assume that it’ll split and have a white chocolate sauce for to cover it and then cover that with the pomegranate sauce with white chocolate shavings. In addition to eating the food I prepare, I find it’s entertaining to test out new recipes and modify them to suit my creativity.

So, Sunday’s blueberry pancake experiment truly took the cake, so to speak. In the current novel that I’m working on, The Adventures of Infinity and Negativa, Infinity describes to her twin sister how she prepares the batter:

“Well, my favorite way for making blueberry pancakes is to use twice as much flour as milk. And then I mix in a fourth of the amount of milk in oil.”

“Milk and oil. Fascinating,” Negativa said, shoving in a mouthful of pancakes.

Gaining momentum, Infinity continued. “I follow a one to one ratio for cups of flour and eggs. Then, for every egg, I’ll use an equal number of tablespoons of sugar. And for every tablespoon of sugar, half the number of teaspoons of salt, but double the number of teaspoons of baking powder. And get this,” she paused, waiting for Negativa to raise her head from her feeding frenzy to make eye contact, “with a total disregard of mathematical measurement, I’ll toss in as many fresh blueberries as I care to and gently fold them into my mathematically precise blueberry batter!”

Since I was preparing this only for myself, here are the measurements I used, following the above formula:

1 cup of flour

1/2 cup almond milk

1/8 cup (= 2 tablespoons) oil

1 egg

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

handful of blueberries

I definitely had “experimental error” in the form of overshooting the prescribed amounts of flour, milk, and salt. I’m usually not too precise with my cooking measurements to begin with, but my end result was a tad saltier than I generally like. That little problem was remedied if the pancake was dripping with syrup. Needless to say, I’ll have to try it again, showing more attention to my measurements. In the end, the result was an edible pancake that rose beautifully, despite the slanted burner it cooked on. Next time I have a private cooking lesson, I want to learn how to flip a pancake although I think making several smaller pancakes will probably be my best bet.

Bollywood Tango

Last night was a confirmation of just why I love life in Austin. One pivotal member of the tango community, especially the part of the community that takes classes at EsquinaTango, has been suffering health problems along with the accompanying exorbitant costs. As a creative fundraising idea, one of our regular milongas was turned into an entertaining cultural event where all the proceeds went to Tom.

A committee was formed to plan out the evening, which consisted of Indian themed cloth to decorate the space, a group of Bollywood dancers who practiced especially to perform for the evening, Indian food and of course, our tango teachers performed.

I arrived just in time for the tango and Bollywood performances, which meant that I totally missed the tango dancing for the evening. Nonetheless, I had danced about 6 luxurious hours of tango in the past week; so I didn’t feel that I missed out on too much. Besides, when I entered, the tango line of dance looked far too crowded to be much fun.

I went to the back room to change shoes and returned to the dance hall to pour myself a glass of wine and enjoy the performances. I was so delighted to see Tom again and he seemed in such good spirits that so many people would come together in his honor. Here’s a man who tirelessly gave a lot of his time and carpentry skills to renovate the space that we all have come to love.

We were forewarned not to expect a speech from him, but Tom was so moved by the turn out and mix of people that the room hushed to hear his wise words, advising us that if we enjoyed multicultural events such as the one we were currently attending, then we should do all that we could to support our little tango school. I couldn’t agree more.

Not only did the tango and Bollywood communities had come together, but many of us reached deep into our closets to retrieve our Indian attire for the event. So often at milongas, people stick to dark colors, especially black, and usually contrast black with either white and/or red. What a visual relief to see bright greens, blues, yellows and oranges. The festiveness of the swirling colors added to the positive fun energy.

After the performances, the crowd thinned since most of the pure tangueros left. Those of us who stayed did our best to dance to Indian music, which had quite a range from traditional to hip-hop and reggaeton. A few salsas and cumbias were mixed in, but every single song inspired sweat-drenched movement.

Before I left, I cooled down with a glass of water in front of a fan and I also suggested to one of the tango teachers that Esquina should have an ethnic-themed milonga at least once a season. Monthly would be a little too often, but we should not wait until one of our members needed help. We should be proactively embracing the talent and cultural population that we have.

All in the Family

This year’s family reunion had a wonderful surprise: pictures of the original twelve Strange siblings, especially my guardian angel since I’ve been traveling around the world and living in Austin, my Papa, Floyd B. Strange.

And I was especially moved to see my grandmother, who married into the Strange family, was the first Avon lady in Cascade, VA, could spin entertaining stories while cooking up delicious food, Mama Bea, Beatrice (Adams) Strange.

As I studied the sepia-toned pictures of my ancestors two generations before me, I was filled with a sadness that I only had a thin volume summary, given the wealth of life experience these twelve siblings and their spouses represented. One result of the closeness of the dozen siblings is that we’ve just celebrated our 71st Strange family reunion.

Last year at the family reunion, I made my novel reading debut, which had been a bit nerve-wracking since I could scarcely find an excerpt that contained kid-friendly language. I chose to read a BBQ scene since it dealt with food, a highlight of our family reunion. I sold several books based on the double-entendre with (meat)balls. As a matter of fact, one of my cousins informed me that she loved reading Tribe of One so much that she completed it in two weeks. She kept laughing about all of Salome’s antics.

This year, instead of doing another reading, I gave all members of my immediately family a Tribe of One t-shirt in order to “represent.”

Yet the main two reasons I attend our yearly family reunions are to catch up with relatives who I hardly ever talk with throughout the rest of the year and to eat too much delicious food that will take me about a month to exercise off!

Lunch with Amiri Baraka

There are some fabulously creative people here in Austin and occasionally, several of them get together and do wonderful, enlightening things. One such occasion was the special lunch that I attended this past Thursday at 11th Street Station. For the second weekend in a row, the Black Arts Movement festival had lined up a selection of Black artists, starting with political poet, Amiri Baraka.

As usual, the morning had gotten away from me. When my cell alerted me that I had 15 minutes to get to the restaurant, I raced around the apartment to get ready. I put my game face on as I walked to the back room of the restaurant, but to my relief, Baraka had not arrived. Fortunately, I had a chance to reconnect with another writer and meet a large round table of others.

When our guest of honor finally arrived, most of us local writers, who were mostly poets, had arrived. After taking a brief opinion poll that chicken and waffles were the way to go, Baraka first asked how many of us were published. Then he asked how many of us were self-published. I’ve heard so many mixed messages, concerning self publication, but I was initially surprised by Baraka’s reasoning: institutions never published writers whose work deals with bringing down those very institutions; therefore, it was up to us to make sure that our work is published. He told us about how he had self published his own two-page newspaper back when he was in middle school, writing every copy by hand.

Baraka then wanted to go around the table and hear which poets had influenced us. Fortunately for me, the outspoken writer to my left, suggested that discussion begin with the poets on the other side of the table, which meant that I would blessedly go last. I estimated that I would have at least 30 minutes to think of an intelligent answer. I felt like one of my students who had not done the reading all along and now the teacher had given us a pop quiz.

Name the poet who has had an influence on my writing?! Now, I occasionally read poetry, but the greatest influence on my writing has been traveling and living in other countries. I write to document significant moments in my life. I write fiction so that the main characters talk and think through the everyday drama of their experiences.

As the enlightening conversation unfolded, my anxiety of being an unprepared student subsided. I sat there, drinking in the other artist’s experiences, which were all the more interesting since we all had the additional connection of being “community caregivers”: teachers, teen counselors, financial counselors for low-income adults, event organizers, anthropology graduate students.

Baraka led us down another conversational path when he stated that presently, there was a whitewashing of the political history of the 60s. We all agreed that in general, the quality of education had lowered. One guy, who was orginially from Chicago, testified about the dumbing down of education. As soon as he came to Texas in 1988, he hit a huge barrier of not fitting in. Not unusual for the new kid, but he vividly recalled being teased for using big words, reading a lot and so on.

After he shared his story, I was nearly bursing out of my skin to share my background. I explained that I began writing so I could remember every detail of my Peace Corps service in Tanzania as a Biology and math teacher. I then summarized my international teaching experience and concluded with the fact that I’d taught my students outside the States at a much higher level than what is expected here in Texas despite the zealous emphasis on standardized testing.

Before the lunch had ended, I exchanged information with most of the local artists in order to send them information about the Austin Writers Roulette. The few artists whose information I had not received, I caught up with later that night at Baraka’s performance. Two of the local artists opened for Baraka and I was blown away at how I had never heard of such great talents until that day. I hope they will make time in their busy professional and performance schedules to participate in the roulette.

Once Baraka came to the stage, three local jazz musicians accompanied him–a pianist, an upright bassist and a drummer. Their music provided an aural backdrop that rose, dipped and punctuated the selections Baraka read. He started off with about 20 “low-kus,” which was his variation of haikus. The short pithy poems did not follow any numerical format. My favorite one dealt with the fact that rich people ate more than poor people; so rich people are full of more sh*t. He ended his hourlong performance with an epic poem about 9/11, which occurred when he was poet laureate.

As beautifully packaged as Baraka’s political, poetic messages were, I also experienced nearly the extreme opposite when I attended Paul Mooney’s performance on Saturday. My friend had wanted to sit closer to the stage, but I did not want to tempt a comedic berating from a man infamous for his raw humor. Although Mooney dabbled with some polticial jokes, such as the ridiculousness of Trump questioning Obama’s citizenship (“Trump forgets that he and Obama both came from a white vagina!”), my personal favorite was, “My grandmother told her granddaughters ‘Don’t you come back home broke ’cause a dry purse and a wet p*ssy don’t go together.'”

Although Mooney never once mentioned Tupac, the bandana around his bald head caused me to recall the political messages of the slain rapper. I don’t believe that association was coincidence.

This weekend was a fantastic reminder that despite the grimness of politics, be it work, local, state, national or global, I can always write about it and share my observations through artistic expressions.

Graduation Day 2012

Usually I only attend a high school graduation if there are a significant number of seniors who I know are walking. After teaching at the same high school for the past three years, my advisory class has finally grown up and walked across the stage. For some seniors, they had one of my science classes for three years in a row, thanks to my ever-changing teaching schedule.

Since I was one of the sponsor teachers, I got to wear the cool black robe, but longed for the magic wand like the teachers at Hogwarts carry! Nonetheless, I was the first teacher to arrive at the Frank Erwin center, where we held the seniors in a holding pen as if they were bulls, waiting to be released. I took advantage of moment by taking pictures with the members of my advisory class who I could find.

If I thought being in that room was a long wait, sitting through the actual ceremony was mind-numbing as different people made speech after speech.

Finally, the ceremony got to the part we’d all been waiting for, the famed walk across the stage. I was so proud as I watched my students walk and I remembered all the times I had to call home just to get them back on track. As a matter of fact, some of the most notorious students I made hug me since, whether they knew it or not, my constant monitoring of their behavior was the only reason they even passed.

It’s almost going to be a brand new student body for me since most of the students I taught this past year were seniors. Of course I don’t know which classes that I’m teaching in the next school year and I’m certainly not curious enough to return to school to find out. I figure that getting the email with the master schedule will be good enough for me later on in the summer.

Until then, I’m going to take the advice that I gave to the graduating seniors and make the best of what’s to come.

What’s in a Name? Austin Writers Roulette

http://www.facebook.com/events/303758879712204/

Back in December 2010 when I self-published my first novel, Tribe of One, I naively thought that after seven years in the making, the book would be easily promoted through email, blog and readings. I enthusiastically bought audio equipment, talked with my friends, Monica and Gustavo, at Esquina Tango about hosting my reading debut, “Cupid’s Naughty Secrets,” and dropped off press kits at several locations around town to set up future readings.

Although I managed to arrange two other readings at other locations, the whole hustling around town and not hearing back from most places wore me down. Not only that, but the more time I spent trying to arrange readings, the less time I was working on new material and reading/researching. After my third reading event in Austin, I stopped hustling and concentrated on writing my second novel and enjoying the unstructured time of a three-month summer vacation, including making a research trip to Utila, Honduras, where most of the next novel takes place.

School began again in the fall and a lot of my time and energy went into teaching. I still wrote every day and after Christmas when I bought myself a kickass blender to make smoothies and cut down my prep time for my weekly cooking, I discovered that, for once, a time-saving device actually had saved me time. I then began my morning routine of getting myself ready for work, then sipping my smoothie while writing before work rather than waiting until the evening.

That slight change in schedule truly made a tremendous difference. The need to eke out writing time and headspace after a full day’s activities was eliminated. More of my afterschool time could be dedicated to other pursuits, which felt more natural.

During this past spring break, I took another “stay-cation” and enjoyed a week’s worth of my life as full-time artist. One of the things on my to-do list was file my taxes. I took a deep breath and created an account with a popular on-line tax filing service.

Although I’d paid someone last year to prepare my taxes since I wished to file as a small business owner, I felt confident to do the deed myself this year. By sheer luck, I had chosen to use the “perfect” credit card for charging all my businesses expenses. That particular company made things tremendously easier by offering customers an annual spending report, which broke everything down into categories.

My very Virgo sense of organization also helped. I’d kept nearly every receipt in addition to having the charge accounted for through the credit card report. After I finished going through every tax deduction scenario, I happily saw that I’d receive a refund. I exclaimed to the heavens, “Why aren’t I a millionaire?”

Then and there, I decided to adopt a more business-minded approach to my writing. Instead of reliving the energy-draining hustle of setting up readings, I’d invest my refund in brand Mathdreads, the name of my company.

A few weeks later, the capoeira group I train with provided the first opportunity. Every year, Capoeira Evolucao has a batizado e troca de corda in order to give the first cord to the beginners and the next higher cord to the continuing students. This huge ceremony usually involves higher cordas from other capoeira groups, including my capoeira teacher’s mestre, Rodrigo.

We raise funds for plane tickets and other accompanying costs to host the batizado. Sponsorship is just one of the ways we raise money. So when I received the email with the sponsorhip information, I immediately filled it out. I then emailed my book’s cover art so it could be added to all the promotional flyers and the official 2012 Capoeira Evolucao batizado t-shirt along with the other sponsors.

With left over refund money , I had Tribe of One t-shirts printed up just in time for the batizado. I set up a table and enjoyed watching my fellow capoeiristas spar higher-level capoeiristas to earn their corda. At the end of a spectacular batizado, a few people bought a book and a t-shirt.

Yet, I knew I could do better. After mulling things over and talking with a friend later that night who also trains capoeira, I came to the realization that in order to get where I wanted to be, I had to organize my own event. I’d no longer waste good energy chasing after venues and events. I’d no longer set up a vendor’s table at events where I wouldn’t read, perform or emcee. After discussing my intentions with two friends, one became the co-organizer and the other a performer.

The three of us knew that in a happening town such as Austin, any night we chose to have the event, we’d be in competition with other cool events going on. I felt that Sunday was the best day for me, especially for a monthly event. Then the phrase “second Sundays” popped into my head. Not only did that fit well for my personal schedule, but it was also a good time to book the capoeira studio in the evenings.

Unfortunately, “second Sunday” was a popularly used name as my co-organizer, Carmen, pointed out. We both wrestled with names and volleyed each other possible names that the other politely shot down. I thought my best one was “Mariposa Verbosa,” which Carmen thought was funny, but one problem with a Spanish event name is that it may mislead attendees that the event would be in Spanish.

I confessed to Carmen that I had far more success naming books, poems and short stories than I did this event, primarily because the theme would change every month. As both a surrender and compromise, we settled on the name “Austin Writers Roulette.”

Now that we have an event name, we can busy ourselves with recruiting talent and advertisting. I love unleashing this creative entity just in time to fully enjoy my summer.

2012 Batizado e Troca de Corda

For most capoeira groups, the yearly batizado e troca de corda is their biggest event. A batizado is a capoeirista’s official induction or baptism into the Brazilian culture of training capoeira. A troca de corda is a change of cords, going to the next highest one as recognition for all the training that a capoeirista as undergone to advance his/her game, including singing and playing capoeira music for the more advanced students.

The three days of workshops with guest instructors, including the day of the big event, is an intense time of high energy and anxiety. Our capoeira teacher’s teacher, Mestre Rodrigo, comes into town along with other respected capoeirista teachers who are either part of our lineage, trained with us or who invites our higher cordas to their batizado. This is all to ensure that students are given plenty of opportunity before the event to sharpen their skills and pick up at least one new movement out of the sea of new things being presented in the workshops.

This year was the first time in the three years that I’ve been a member of Capoeira Evolucao that I’ve been in town during the batizado. Due to a myriad of reasons, mostly excuses, I’ve not been motivated to train as seriously as one needs to in order to receive my next corda. As a matter of fact, I usually attend class with the attitude that I want to maintain my physical and mental health in a social setting with positive people. Not a bad ambition, actually!

Yet this year, as one of the proud sponsors of Capoeira Evolucao, I set up a table where I displayed my book, Tribe of One, along with t-shirts that had my book cover on it. As the event unfolded, many people stopped by my table, seeking batizado t-shirts–some even handed me their money and told me what size they needed! I know in the future that we need to have all available items for sale in the same area. Although I sold some books at the very end of the batizado, I could tell that some people were a little confused that my book had nothing to do with capoeira. I’d tell them that I was a sponsor and also a capoeirista myself, which cleared up the confusion.

As fate would have it, I’d spent nearly a month and a half getting my technological act together in order to accept credit cards and everyone paid in cash! In the long run, I’m better off having the capabilities to accept both forms of payment, but a part of me is a wee bit disappointed not to play with my new business toy during our big event.

Outside of the intense training and the exhilarating batizado, we capoeiristas had a good time just socializing. For me, that started Saturday morning for the waffles breakfast, which two capoeiristas who used to train with us hosted.

Several of the other sponsors were restaurants, which the group visited on different nights for dinner. So, I was the first one at the sponsoring restaurant after the batizado. As other people showed up, all of the instructors who tested the batizado participants, sat in a private room in the restaurant while the rest of us filled the tables on the patio, snacking on complimentary yucca fries and pão de queijo (cheese rolls). Delicious appetizers, but my hunger wasn’t fully satisfied until I finished devouring my entree: rainbow trout fillet with mashed potatoes, spinach and cream sauce.

I caught wind of some female capoeiristas’ plans to “get hoochie” for the after party, hosted by a fellow capoeirista and his roommate. I never like being the ugly stepsister; so I put on one of my favorite slinky salsa/tango dresses, pulled back my hair and took the trouble to wear jewelry and lipstick. Every now and again, I enjoy playing dress up. People hardly recognized me!

Although I swore I’d not stay out until 2 am, I lost track of time. I was highly entertained by all the batizado war stories, dancing and even a game of limbo broke out. I finally snuck out a little after 2 without making the customary round of kissing cheeks.

Amazing enough, I still made it to my 10 am bikram yoga class. Fortunately, the room wasn’t extra hot. I felt the effects of drinking a bit more than my usual glass of red wine from the night before. At least I had the opportunity to detox…just in time for the capoeirista BBQ.

Another capoeirista and her family opened their wonderful back yard to us. The smell of BBQ hung in the air and as people arrived, we had a stream of new buffet side dishes. My “Mexican style” cornbread didn’t last too long and the yogurt parfait station that I helped set up was a big hit as well. I knew not to stuff myself because what my capoeira teacher normally barbeques the best cut of meat last–after people have eaten a lot of other food so he can take most of the good stuff home. It’s still an effective game plan since we usually come hungry.

Many capoeiristas took advantage of the opportunity to practice playing instruments and singing. Others relived exciting moments of their childhood by jumping on the trampoline and playing with hula hoops. I stuck with eating, drinking and socializing. I didn’t want to challenge my digestive system any more than overeating and sipping cachaça (Brazilian sugar cane rum) were already doing.

Well satiated, I gathered my glass casserole pan, which was full of cornbread crumbs, kissed cheeks on my way from the back yard to the kitchen to clean my pan and left.

As much as I’d indulged this weekend, the best remedy to set things right will be training capoeira on Monday. It’ll be glorious to be among all the shiny new cordas.

Setting Things in Motion

Two things that I set in motion for the upcoming batizado e troca de corda are printing up Tribe of One T-shirts and getting a credit card swiper for my smartphone. Both endeavors have had hidden challenges.

First of all, the original credit card processing company I wanted to go with would have given a percentage of the credit card processing fees to my school of choice. Of course, I immediately leapt on that. But after talking to them about how small my small business was, they suggested that I should go with a cheaper option since they would not be set up to deal with such a small business as mine until the summer. So, it’s still a possibility, but not for this upcoming event. The freaky thing is that the company is based in Texas and they were planning to approach school districts in Austin the very week that I had contacted them.

After contacting a couple of other credit card processing companies, I then focused on getting my T-shirts together. One thing that makes my book cover so beautiful is how colorful it is and that is also the challenge of getting T-shirts made. I’d have to pay for every color since there would be a different screen for each color. I chose four main colors and since the color of the T-shirt would be will, the design would include five colors. Then I chose a different color for the web address on the back.

The first challenge was the book cover file was poor quality. That’s when I learned the difference between JPEG and PDF. Fortunately, I had a usable PDF for the bookcover that worked. The T-shirt guy just needed to edit the file to squash it to the four colors that I wanted.

I knew he was busy and that we had merely discussed things without me actually putting in an order and paying a deposit. In order to get a jump on things, I asked my unemployed graphic artist sister, Carla, to edit the file. I talked to her about it on a Saturday, sent the file with detailed instructions to her on the following Sunday. She called me once she got it and said she’d have it ready for me on Tuesday morning.

Come Tuesday, I anxiously checked my email several times, but never received one from Carla. During my lunch break, I called her. She spun a story about how she had to get some food together for her church since they had asked her to cater at the last minute and she also had to pick up her son from work and blah, blah, blah. I cut through the list of excuses. I reminded her that she had 5 hours in between the present and leaving for her church meeting. Then talked her through how much time it would take her to complete the food preparation, pick up her son and finish editing the file.

A couple of times, she told me that she could finish editing the file after she returned from church. I repeatedly reminded her that that would be too late since I wanted to go to the print shop after school that same day, which is what I’d told her on Sunday when she agreed to have the file ready by Tuesday morning.

Part of the problem that I had to help Carla overcome was the timelessness of her existence. She’s been unemployed for so long that she’s lost the meaning of urgency. She questioned why I couldn’t go to print shop Wednesday versus Tuesday. I told her that I had something to do after work every day of the week up until Friday. She then asked why couldn’t drop by the print shop on Friday. I explained as best as I could without giving into my temper that the difference of going three days later may result in getting my order in too late.

I then temporarily forgot that she was my sister who I loved and switched into firm teacher mode. I reminded her that she’d given me her word that the job would be completed at a certain time and that if she expected to run her own business that she would have to honor her word to people. I could hear her discomfort as I told her more things that she needed to hear.

A few hours later, I received the file and her apology for dragging her feet. I thanked her for her work and told her that she’d be so happy once I brought her T-shirt in June. After school, I raced to the print shop.

In the meantime, the guy from one of the credit card processing companies called me to let me know that I’d been approved to receive a credit card swiper that attached to my smartphone. I was so happy that something had come through on that pursuit. Of course, the hidden steps revealed themselves. The guy sent an email, but I couldn’t access it until we hung up. Then once I received it, I couldn’t sign the agreement electronically by holding down my cursor key on my phone nor could the phone’s screen be used as a touch screen. Now aware of my smartphone’s limitations, I told the guy that I’d sign the document electronically once I returned home, but at that moment, I needed to rush over to the print shop.

Fortunately the print guy was in even though he wasn’t expecting me. I downloaded the file Carla had edited. I knew that it wasn’t good enough quality to be used, but he said that seeing it helped him with editing the good file. I chose the type of white T-shirt I wanted, made a down payment and left with the assurance that the shirts would be ready the day before I actually wanted to pick them up.

The first thing I did when I got home was to sign the credit card agreement, using my netbook. The other hidden step in getting my credit card swiper didn’t reveal itself until this past Friday when I called three different numbers to see when the device had been sent. From what I could gather, someone had left a partial message earlier in the week, and needed to talk with me in order to send it out.

Now, I’ve got another thing to do Monday before school starts. Hopefully, whatever issue there is, can be resolved in a few minutes. I’m also hoping that I’ll receive my device by the end of the week.

Plus, I’m picking up the T-shirts on Thursday and at some point next week, my new business credit card will have arrived. That endeavor took me three times to convince the credit card lawyers that I owned the art, which is my book cover. Now part of my book cover will be on my credit card.

I know that things are going to come together since I’m determined that they will. I also know that one day, I’m going to look back at these stressful weeks of trying to take my business to the next level while still maintaining a full-time job and laugh. For now, I’ll continue taking deep yoga breaths.

Living My Dream

So I first got the heads up that I needed to exit the teaching profession the first year I taught in Austin, TX. That conclusion came to a shock to me since I’d never thought that I would ever need to exit the classroom until I retired.

I’d taken so much time researching where I wanted to live in the States after 8 years teaching abroad and was broadsided by the plantation-style management of public schools here in Texas. Although I attempt to be as creative as I can muster while working within an educational system that I disagree with, I didn’t become a teacher 16 years ago to fight battles with a network of people who desire to profit, literally, from the brutal, systematic standardized testing of students.

As I explored both my interests and the job market, three things became apparent to me: 1) I wanted to remain in Austin; 2) I had no desire to be in another classroom setting that was subjected to profiting off student standardized test scores; 3) I no longer wanted any asshole in my professional life who I’d refer to as a boss.

Now, nearly three years after coming to those conclusions, I’m still living in Austin, I’m still teaching in a public school setting and I’ve stepped up my game to become self-employed. In pursuit of completing my transition, I’m attending a 2-day workshop to help me flesh out some things that I’m perhaps overlooking.

So far, the 30 other participants and I have introduced ourselves one by one, including where we are now in life and where we want to be. I’ve helped a few of the participants who are also writers realize some other directions that they can go in as well as suggest capoeira to a couple of people who want to get back into shape. As a matter of fact, I’m taking a CD of capoeira music to today’s session so one of my fellow capoeiristas and I can demo a friendly game to everyone. I think just hearing the music will be intriguing.

Yet, I’ve not landed my a-ha! moment of how to improve my pursuit of happiness beyond what I’ve already put into motion. Hopefully, today will be as entertaining as yesterday with an unexpected insight into a new direction that I can explore.