Last night, I attended a salsa-themed birthday party for two friends.  Most of the attendees were salseros who I’ve known since moving to Austin, but only see every blue moon.  So, as social custom dictates, we all greeted each other and inquired what the other had been up to since we last saw each other. I joyfully told people, especially men, that I had recently decided to be a comic stripper.

The light that briefly flashed in their eyes was totally worth the juvenile manner of saying that I’m researching about how to be a cartoonist.  They shared their vision of me being on the pole, telling jokes and removing clothes. One guy even suggested that I could have punchlines tattooed on my body; so if a joke bombed, I’d at least have the entertainment factor of removing some clothing to help the joke out.  Of course, I didn’t bother to point out the problem of having a bad punchline or any punchline TATTOOED to some area of my body.

One male friend warned/teased me that I was making a big mistake to pursue stripping and encouraged other guys to dissuade me from being a comedic stripper. He actually had more fun with my latest creative endeavor than I did.

Women, on the other hand, completely got the joke behind my “job title” and knew that I was talking about creating a comic strip. Some even asked about the subject matter. 

I believe that most of my creative outlets begin with a need to express an idea, whether it’s a story or blend some luxurious paint together to bring forth an image from my mind to the present as much as my skills will allow. I birthed this comic strip idea to vent my frustrations with the state of public school education.

Nonteachers tend to think that the main source of any teacher’s frustration must be the students, but challenging students are the easiest situation to deal with. The growing emphasis on standardized testing, a shrinking educational budget and increasing classroom size are all easily more challenging to deal with singularly, but they don’t take turns. Their combined effects destroy the so-called “rigor” for which the educational system strives. I’ve heard repeatedly how less money, more students, fewer teachers and more standardized testing will lead to a more rigorous education.

Now it’s long overdue to bring this farce to a comic strip. Why should I allow such good material to keep me up at night, tormenting me with its sheer disregard of logical sense when I could easily type up a comic strip script?  

I’ve written one script so far and my first challenge will be to end every strip with humor. I want the silver lining to be humor.  With a little humor, I will sleep better at night and my future readers will more than likely tell the “joke” to others and hopefully engage in conversation about the educational concern I’m discussing in the strip.

A few people at the birthday party asked me about the financial viability of being a cartoonist.  I just smiled and told them that I was just excited to have a new creative pursuit.  I totally believe that as long as I do something I love, everything will work out.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the week I spent with my family for Christmas, I rushed back to Austin in order to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  Part of my preparation, besides attending a few bootcamps to work off the two-desserts-a-day-and-sedentary lifestyle that I had embraced while visiting my family, I went to Goodwill in order to get an inexpensive outfit.

In my haste of rushing around town running various errands, I pulled into the Goodwill parking lot around dusk, which was about a quarter after 5 and dashed into my favorite thrift store. I had a few miscellaneous items to get before looking at the fancy dresses. That only took about ten minutes then I got down to business for the next hour.

Since I was going to a milonga, I wanted something elegant, but I wanted to avoid the cliche tango color combination of red and black. All red would have been fine, but I’ve been trying to avoid buying all black outfits since about once every few years, Mom buys me a black dress anyway.  I selected a variety of bright, beautiful colors and dresses of different lenghts, but among all of the styles, the two must haves were both silk.

One, which I knew would be part of my NYE outfit was a creamy dark brown silk skirt that had a flirty ruffled slit up the right side. I already had an elegant white sleeveless top to go with it–a previous Goodwill purchase! The other silky outfit was a light green dress that had an attractive rayon patterned shell over it, which also looked fantastic and I visualized wearing when I see “Wicked” later in January.

As I walked to my car, beaming with pride at yet another good forging at Goodwill, I was mildly annoyed when I saw that some “vendor” had left a flyer under my windshield wiper. I hate that since it always makes me panic initially since it looks like a ticket. Once I reached my car, I retrieved the flyer, glanced at it and saw that my initial panic was correct: it was a parking ticket.  I looked in front of my car, lo and behold, there was the handicapped sign just as clear as day even at night!

It was as if my hurry to dash into Goodwill had blinded me from the sign.  I read the ticket anxiously to see what the fine was, but instead, I had to call the Justice of the Peace’s office to find out the fine. I’d received the ticket at 5:45, which was 45 minutes after their office had already closed. I was pretty anxious to get the situation resolved since the back of the ticket warned that I may be fined up to $500.  My jaw dropped.

I called on Jan. 2nd and of course the office was closed.  I called on Jan. 3rd and wished the woman who answered the phone a happy new year.  She wasn’t having any of that pleasant greeting shit.  She made me get straight to the point.  I read the ticket number and she said there wasn’t any record of it in the system.  I had to call back the next week.

I promptly called around 8 AM the following Monday.  Still no record in the system.  I was becoming a little hopeful that it would get lost in the system.  This woman asked me what the parking violation was.  When I told her, she said that I might as well send in a certified check or money order for $500.  I protested that since I was a first time offender that I should get a lesser fine.  She then told me that if I wanted to contest the charges, then I had to check the box that read “Not Guilty” and wait for a court date.

According to our screwed up legal system, you’re either guilty or not guilty, but there’s no “I agree I’m guilty, but since it’s my first time, can I pay less than the full violation fee?”  She told me that she could not give me legal advice.  If I wanted to pay less than the $500 amount, then I had to go to court.

I hung up and angrily filled out the back of the ticket and over the next few days, I ran through my mind how I was going to approach going to court. During my deliberation, I decided to email three male friends who also live in Austin and I figured that any one of them had either done the same thing or knew someone else who had.

Two of them replied within 24 hours that not only would I not be shown leniency, I’d lose both time and money. I spent the next several days figuring out how I was going to cough up $515 (yes, a$15 court fee although I didn’t go to court!). I then remembered that I had another account.

So my new scheme was to get some money out of that account, get the rest from the other account and then go to a third place to get a money order.  Afterwards, I went to a mail service store to send the money order via registered mail.  The last thing I was going to go through was some “check got lost in the mail” bullshit.

Throughout the hour and a half of getting all that done, I walked around looking like someone who was at a funeral.  I’d just paid off Christmas, 6 months worth of insurance and now that. Thank God my next task was going to capoeria music class.

The combination of drumming, singing and feeling the rhythm going through me helped get over my blues of paying the most for a Goodwill outfit or any outfit in my entire life! Then followed by tango class.

The one silver lining is that now that I don’t have any going out money for the month of January and perhaps February, I magically have more time to dedicate to my latest creative scheme: being a political cartoon stripper.  I LOVE the sound of that.

This past week has been my favorite work week of the school year: two days at work, followed by five days off. Some students reminisced about the good ol’ days when they got the entire week off, but I reminded them that any time off was a good thing.

During the school year, my life is so scheduled that I normally do certain things on certain days just to make sure it all gets done. Most of it is social/health,  such as my capoeira, yoga and tango classes. Then, there are the things I have to do: laundry, grocery shopping. Whenever there’s a change to the regular routine, I have to adjust the rest of my programed life. While on wonderful vacations, I have surplus time, which I attempt to preserve as much as possible for just relaxing.

Of course, with a more flexible schedule, I can pursue some other creative things.  The one thing that I thought I would accomplish was making my own greeting cards. Not only did I envision making them, but writing them out as well. The first prototype batch looked so “ghetto” that I had to recycle them in the name of aesthetics and the environment. At least I know one way not to make greeting cards! I managed to cut up some of my older paintings that I had painted on thin cardboard.  They are ready to be glued on cardstock just as soon as I get some.

During my programed life, I normally go grocery shopping on Thursdays, but since that was actually Thanksgiving day, I figured I’d avoid the crowd and go on Wednesday. Apparently, the crowd had the same idea. As packed as the parking lot was, there wasn’t a scarcity of food nor long lines at the checkout. Then again, the only traditional Thanksgiving item I bought was a bag of fresh cranberries.  They looked so richly red that I could hardly resist.  Too bad I didn’t realize that all the cranberries I’d ever eaten were artifically sugared.  Those berries were the sourest things since my ex-boyfriend’s kisses.  But I was determined not to waste my money. So I garnished my wine glass with cranberries.  Absolutely beautiful, but they would have had to soak for a much longer time that it takes me to consume a glass of wine in order for the berries to absorb the wine.

Although I had been invited to a couple of Thanksgiving celebrations, I wasn’t in the mood for all the hoopla. Instead, I made pasta putanesca for the first time.  While I prepared it on Thanksgiving Day, I called family and friends.  I figured as long as I got in touch with people who I don’t get to see/talk to on a regular basis, I was generally observing the holiday. I watched some back episodes of one of my favorite TV shows and read. The way I saw it, I’d spent Wednesday being sociable by training capoeira and then dancing salsaafterwards. 

Friday I painted, read and of course wrote my daily contribution toward my second novel. I went to Central Market to have dinner and get a good table close to where the salsa band would be playing about an hour and a half later. Since I love living alone, it’s nothing for me to dine alone with a good book and enjoy myself. Besides, I knew in this case, my salsero friends would join me closer to 6:30.

As predicted, my little table for 6 swelled well beyond 6 people and we cannibalized chairs from surrounding tables. Despite the crowd, most people were not salseros and there was a distinct lack of leaders. I still had a good time talking with my friends.

Saturday was the day I’d been looking forward to. Last year, I had participated in 3 out of 5 available days of a tango workshop.  This year, I wisedup and figured that I actually wanted to be more than a tango zombie; so I only planned to attend the tango show and milonga afterwards.

Well before the tango festivities began, I had attended my capoeira music class and two tango classes. Of course I regrouped, napped and then got ready to tango for real. I was most proud to show off my “new” tango outfit. I spent one hour and less than $12 at Goodwill for it.

In between the magnificent tango show and the milonga, I grabbed two friends to pose with me. I spent the rest of the night dancing and resting up for the next tanda. Not only could I feel that I was dancing my best, but guys who didn’t even know me approached me for a dance. Normally, only the guys I knew from class would ask. As I was leaving around half past midnight, my tango teacher expressed surprise that I was going so early.  He told me that I looked really relaxed on the dance floor and lamented that he would not have a chance to dance with me.  That was truly the biggest compliment of the night.

As wonderful as my Thanksgiving vacation was, I celebrated every day without a drop of hot water running through my faucets!  Once again, my Peace Corps experience helped me out. The two and a half years that I volunteered in Tanzania, I had to warm up my water and take a bucket bath. Here’s my “developed” country version of a bucket bath:

I actually don’t need a lot of water in order to get squeaky clean, especially since I only wash my hair once a week and that’s usually at the gym after swimming. It’s just so much more convenient to have hot water coming out of the faucet.

Apparently the apartment complex had some boiler issues and parts had to be ordered and didn’t arrive until Friday. Then, only 5 out of 6 circuits worked. The next memo posted outside my door informed me that someone had gone to Dallas to get the missing part. In the meantime, the chilly howling winds truly picked up enthusiasm throughout the week.

Sunday morning, after my 10 am bikram yoga class, I just had it in my mind that hot water or not, I was going to turn on the faucet and shower.  Even if I had to run in place for 5 minutes to make the icy cold water feel refreshing, I was in no mood to warm up a pot of water, carry it to the bathtub, stoop over and go through the whole bucket-bathing ritual.

As I washed off my yoga mat, it took me a full minute to register that the water coming out of the faucet was warm.  I laughed with joy, finished rinsing off my mat and then I draped it over the shower rod. Clang! That damn rod hit the floor. I just stood there in disbelief. I think things like that always happen in threes. 

First, the smoke detector, then the hot water and now the shower rod. I laughed, shook my head and put the rod back up along with the shower curtain and my damp yoga mat.

What isn’t a laughing matter is how long I had to go without hot water. I emailed the property manager about compensation/a discount off next month’s rent for going a week without hot water. I’m already motivated to start searching for a new place. Before I do that, I want to give them an opportunity to appease me. With exam week two weeks away, I’ll have a few half days on my precious schedule to check things out. Granted, my lease isn’t up until mid-July, I don’t want to wait until the last moment and make a mad dash out of here.

I unofficially woke up much earlier than I’d intended, thanks to my mysterious smoke alarm that would start randomly beeping at thirty-second intervals for 5 minutes or so.  Just when I’d fall asleep about 45 minutes later, it would start up again.  I’d reported it three times, starting with last Friday morning. 

A maintenance guy checked the battery and I thought the issue had been remedied, but a few days later, it started up again. I got up around 7:30 only because that was around the time I’d intended to get out of bed.  I drearily gave the smoke alarm the finger as I dragged into the bathroom.  Once I finished my business, I returned to the offending smoke alarm and pushed the test button as if I could miraculously fix it.

The real miracle occurred: I heard the alarm again, but not from the smoke detector that I was standing under.  I entered my bedroom and to my surprise, a SECOND smoke alarm lie, flashing its red light.  All I can say is that because I thought this tiny apartment only had one smoke detector, which was located in the hallway, I had not seen the one in my bedroom.  I immediately took out the battery and felt a surge of energy that comes with being empowered over an annoying situation.

I preceded about my morning making breakfast, writing, painting and then waiting patiently for my friend to come over so we could hit the road to Houston to attend a “Getting Published” workshop.

Her good company made that 3-hour drive full of bad drivers bearable.  We swapped war stories and discovered in many ways that we had had similar experiences although she’s more than ten years older than me, divorced with kids. It’s always a pleasure to find a kindred spirit, especially one who is far more spiritual than me.

As par for the course for me, I got a little turned around about ten minutes away from the destination, but I stopped at a gas station where, fortunately for us, I bumped into a mailman, who pointed me in the correct direction. We turned out to be one of the first of the thirteen participants to arrive.

We got situated and the 4-hourlong meeting started off with each of us introducing ourselves.  I was delighted to have the opportunity to use my smartpen again.  Thank goodness I had it, because there was so much information flying around the room, I could not have possibly caught it all. I discovered I was the only self-pub author in the room. (Rita, the facilitator, told us from here on out to refer to ourselves as “independently published authors,” but I’m not so sure if that’s just not swapping one stigmatized title for another.  In which case, I’ll just stick to the original!)

During my intro, she asked me about how much money I’d spent on publishing my book.  I told her around $3000.  Then she asked if I got a ISBN through the company I’d published with or my own.  I vaguely recalled getting one through the company.  At that point she informed me that I’d made a $3000 mistake! Another woman, who represented one of the printers that Rita used, echoed that this is why it was important for new authors such as myself to attend workshops like this one.

I learned nearly two agonizing hours later that the reason indy authors want to purchase their own ISBNs is that there is a stigma associated with the “well-established” ISBNs that fall under the company I published with and some powerful people will not touch my book because they’ll recognize it.

I felt instantly relieved because I still see my $3000 investment as worth it.  I have a sense of completion for that story and confident that I’m growing as a writer. Besides, I believe in the quality of my book.  I just need to get motivated to promote it!

I was greatly disappointed that there were no healthy snacks available and anxiously looked for the conclusion of the workshop.  Other participants started dropping off until only half of us remained.  For one of the few times in my life, I actually heard and felt my stomach grumble.

I got a recommendation for a non-chain restaurant and was delighted that there was a huge steak place on our way out of town.  We opted to eat at the bar in order to avoid the 45-min wait, which turned out to be an entertaining spot since the bartenders were fascinating to watch.  Of course I had the inclination to flirt with one to get a free drink until I saw the security camera pointed directly at where all the drinks were made!

We both opted for a black Angus cheeseburger–I certainly was in no mood to shell out $30+ for a steak! And a much-needed glass of malbec was a sandalously-priced $12.50! I stuck to water, figuring I’d have a glass of wine at the birthday party I’d planned to attend once I returned to Austin.

The food was absolutely delicious and hit the spot. Again, I was happy to have such good company to curse at the other drivers on the highway and talk to in between.

I washed my face, put on my contacts, brushed my teeth, packed my wine paraphrenalia, including my impressive wine opener and headed for the birthday party, which was conveniently 5 min away.

I’d planned to stay about two hours or so, but hit my second wind and people started to arrive around that time.  I got to talk with people I had not seen in a while.  My only disappointment was that the designated DJ did not have any salsa on his laptop.  Who does that? I would have figured that as a DJ, he would have made it his business to have a little bit of everything, especially here in Austin. I did manage to dance the bare minimum amount to justify going out to a party, but I still need to have a good salsa outing in the upcoming week.