Experience #33 Two Days of Firsts

There’s something about live entertainment that draws me in. I love the rising curtain and the anticipation of what will unfold on a stage where anything can happen. Pair that with my fascination of acrobatic feats, and it is no surprise that I wished to add Cirque’s Holidaze show to my list as a nice way to wrap up my experiences for the year.

The show was truly spectacular with my favorite act being the gingerbread boy who flipped endlessly through the air with the aid of the gingerbread man’s feet. When I thought he couldn’t possibly perform any more flips in the air, he’d return and complete even more than the time before.

From the balancing, to the jump roping, to the juggling, to the flying through the air, my date had me thinking about what I’d do if I were to perform in a show. I think I’d want to be the acrobat who twirled high above the audience on what appeared to be extra-long curtain sheers. Maybe it has something to do with my fear of heights and not being acrobatic in the least that attracts me to this particular performance. Who knows, maybe I’ll attempt it one day.

The trip to New Orleans was filled with firsts outside of seeing a Cirque performance though. For the first time I tried oysters. They were charbroiled (raw will never touch my lips. I draw the line there.), and I didn’t spit them out. That was a plus. I’m not saying I’m rushing back for more, but hey, I can at least say I tried them.

I also rode a streetcar for the first time. Even with all my excursions into New Orleans, I’ve never had occasion to ride one of the trolley cars. It’s much slower than the New York subway, but I suppose the South does do things at its own pace.

I also wandered into Faulkner House Books for the first time. It’s the smallest bookstore with the biggest reputation among authors. I’d love to be tucked away in a cozy bookstore like this one and sell people books all day. But for now, I couldn’t leave without adding books to my Louisiana books collection.

I also shared a cab with strangers, who ended up not being strangers. I walked through Santa’s Workshop and through Armstrong Park. It was certainly a great two days to wrap up an adventurous year. I look forward to what the rest of the year will bring.

Experience 31 and Unwanted Experience 32

Sometimes what I’ve learned from my experiences about myself has been more important than the actual experienced. Take for example this latest experience. With everything I’ve done with my children, I’ve never taken them to a live show outside of Disney World, so I figured it was about time.

Andrew saw the advertisement for the Phineas and Ferb Live show and asked if he could go. Andrew never asks to do anything, unlike his adventurous sister who constantly asks for things. I immediately purchased tickets to cash in on this rare occasion (Like the same day he asked; I didn’t want him to change his mind).

So Wednesday my two children and my godson piled into my car and headed toward Baton Rouge. (I will mention at this point that I’ve never actually driven to Baton Rouge. Usually someone else drives me. I promise this will become relevant at some point in this story.) From the moment we started down the road, I realized my complete inability to handle noise stimulation.

Two hours in a car with screaming kids, nearly two hours at a show where kids are encouraged to yell in participation, and two hours on a return car trip home plays havoc with my anxiety levels and makes me want to run towards an empty room in the middle of nowhere.

Surprisingly, my children remained quiet during the show as they watched attentively. It was the screaming kids around us this time causing the noise. I suppose my three had exhausted themselves in the car on the way to the show. Their one constant complaint was of wanting a snack, which they couldn’t eat in the River Center theatre. They sold the snacks, but you couldn’t bring them into the theatre, which didn’t make sense to me and definitely didn’t make sense to the three who kept asking for them. Cara’s only comment on the whole experience was that next time she wanted tickets in the front row because she wanted to be able to go on stage like the other kids that were able to dance with the characters. My first thought was how could my kids be so different? Andrew would have hid under the chair in mortification at the mere suggestion, and my daughter wanted to be onstage dancing so everyone could see her.

It was on the way home that my noise threshold reached excess. My GPS and I have a love hate relationship- it loves to get me lost and I hate it. Anyway, I ended up lost. (I still don’t know exactly where I was.) The kind police officer who gave me my first ever speeding ticket was ever so kind when he explained how to return to a place that I was familiar with. The kids, sensing that I was moments from a breakdown, remained quiet for ten minutes, the first time of the entire journey. (Maybe that had more to do with the police officer than me though since my yelling for quiet hadn’t made much of an impact before.)

After dropping my godson off, my children sensed my stress and did what they always do in that situation. They decided it was about time I laughed. My son succeeded first, but then my daughter said, “Raise your hand if you want boobies when you’re older.” That was it; the car was filled with laughter instead of quiet tension.(She always manages to come up with something that I have to wonder what is going on in that little head of hers.)

My children are great, though the next time we go see a show, it will have to be a much shorter car ride. But I’ll have to pay for that unwanted ticket before there is a next show. Sigh.

Experience #30 Become a Published Author

When I was in fifth grade I discovered a book’s magical ability to swallow you into an entirely different world. I devoured book after book, reading my way through the public library’s stock. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I wanted to create those escapes instead of just read myself into them.

My first story was nothing more than white paper folded in half with a red and blue marker title. (Not unlike what my daughter comes up with today). After several such “books,” I wrote what I believed to be my masterpiece. In seventh grade, I received an ivory Brother typewriter for Christmas and then I commenced the slow, tedious task of typing my great story without typing lessons. I surrendered to the arduous process, and an aunt took pity on me and finished typing that first story, all 128 pages.

Thrilled when she handed me those three neat and bound manuscripts, I preceded to share the story with anyone and everyone, anxiously awaiting their feedback. Was it so horrible that I should give it up or was it the best thing they’d ever read and I was on my way to becoming the author I dreamed of becoming?

That manuscript truly had a long way to go before it would be considered good by my standards today, but the process isn’t so different than what I’m doing right now. My book, Muddy Bayou, is now available to the public, and I wait anxiously for people to read it, wondering if people will deem it good or horrible.

Except of course today the stakes are higher. I’m no longer the eleven-year-old that didn’t understand what it took to become an author. I’ve always been the storyteller though. Even before I knew to write the stories down, I’ve enjoyed entertaining people with stories.

And a storyteller isn’t a storyteller without an audience. For years, I’ve kept my audience confined to a small few, but if there was ever a time to go for that dream, this would be the year. This year when I crammed everything that I’ve put off doing my entire life into one year, including putting my book out there for a wider audience, is the perfect year to take such risks.

I anxiously await your opinions, but I’m already working on the next story I will tell. I won’t take so long to share this one with my audience though.

My new website has a special page for you to leave your opinions once you’ve finished reading the book. So let me know what you think by leaving me a message and sharing your opinions with others who may want to become an audience of my storytelling.

Experience #29 Dating Etiquette

"Can we still be friends?” I’d like money for every time I’ve heard that this year. Just how many friends does a girl need though?

When I made my list way back last December, I was newly single and not ready to change that status just yet, but I figured I would be at some point. Dating is a foreign concept for me. I started dating my ex-husband when I was seventeen years old, and at that time dating still meant asking my parent’s permission and being home before curfew. That time is a long way off, but some things have not changed. After a year of dating , I’ve decided I don’t care for it much. Why might you ask?

1.       Dating is a game of numbers. Apparently, the more people you date the better. One date told me, I needed to date as many people as possible to figure out what I wanted. In theory I suppose it’s not a  terrible idea if you’re not quite sure what you like. In practice though, I’d say differently. My cousin has about eight women he’s dating at any given time. It seems to be his number. He claims he’s looking for the right one, but he does admit that he can’t keep them straight sometimes. So after trying to keep the names of his dates straight, I constantly think on my own dates if I’m one of eight or whatever this guy’s magic number seems to be. I like to know my odds, and the guessing that goes along with the game does not work for me either. It’s difficult to impress someone who can’t even keep your name straight.

2.       Dating requires a certain flair for dishonesty. Is it so difficult to tell someone, hey I don’t see a future with you, but we can have a little fun tonight? Or how about I’m dating everyone who’ll tell me yes so I can figure out what I want? Or even better, I’m really not interested in a relationship right now but this was fun. I haven’t met too many people who enjoy being single, but the way this game is played, many will be single a very long time or otherwise they will settle for whoever comes along that doesn’t play by these rules. Which brings me the last reason I haven’t taken to dating.

3.       Patience. I have none. Zilch. I don’t like games where I have to follow someone else’s rules. I’m not impressed by messages that pop up on my screen that say hey beautiful or even worse, hey sexy by people I don’t even know. I don’t want married men approaching me when they have supposedly already found Mrs. Right. When I find Mr. Right, I don’t want him to have Mrs. Right waiting at home. If you want to get my attention, find out who I am first because none of those things impress me. (Someone actually told me he never read a book in his life after I told him I was a writer. Really? Was I supposed to be enthralled by this?) I don’t want to wait around for someone to tell me that they just aren’t interested at this time when they’ve clearly shown it through their behavior.

Because when it’s all said it done, I already know what I want. I’m not looking for a bunch of people to be small pieces of my life, I’m looking for someone to share my entire life. I know that may come as a shocker to those people who think I’m missing the romantic trait, but I do think love should be like a country song (The good love ones of course). I do think one conversation can decide whether you’re interested in a person or not. I don’t think I need to date eighty guys to figure out what I want; I just need to meet the one guy that figures out that I’m the one and he convinces me of that (or hey, it’s the twenty-first century, it can work the other way around, too).

I’m not saying I believe in the fairy tale version of love either. I think the reason why first marriages fail is because people learn the hard way that love actually takes work. Not the day to day compromise of living together but the actual love that comes so easy in the beginning requires effort to maintain.  I also believe that if you play love as a game and you win, you might not be satisfied with the prize forever if it was simply about the winning.

So I will do it like I do everything else,  my own way.  It does mean I go on fewer dates, but it also means that the ones that I do accept actually mean something.

Experience #27 Hello Web

It’s amazing how productive I can be when I tell myself I have to complete my list of 33 by the end of the month. In January I was worried that I wouldn’t get this far, and now the year is nearly over. I will admit that I’m worried that I won’t finish, but I haven’t entered into panic mode yet, so for right now, nothing crazy happening. (Notice the use of yet. I should probably not be left unsupervised if December 31 comes around and I haven’t accomplished 33. I am a perfectionist after all, and not completing a list will ruin perfection. You can’t mess with perfection.)

Back to being productive though. For the last few years I’ve said I wanted to have my own website. It’s what writers are supposed to do. At least that’s what I read in writer’s magazines and writers have told me at writer’s conferences. It’s one of the things that I didn’t place high on my list of priorities though, mostly because I know nothing about website creation. This goes along with one of my perfectionist strategies that has worked well for me: avoid what you don’t know to prevent a meltdown when you fail. Obviously, this strategy does not fit in well with the adventures of 2011. Along with this year’s adventurous spirit, I’ve also decided that I need to get serious with writing.

Hence, my very own website is born at jessicatastet.com.

I’d like to say it was easy or fun, but it was neither. I only confirmed that I know nothing about website creation, and lack of knowledge is not something I admit to easily. Not being website savvy meant spending hours reading about how to do the slightest adjustment, and many moments of frustration when it just wouldn’t do what I wanted. (I must add that I’ve come to the conclusion that this perfectionist personality trait may need to be left behind along with some other traits that just don’t work anymore.)

It’s all been worth it though. My site is up and running, and I’m quite proud of how it turned out. I’ve even posted a sample from my upcoming book, Muddy Bayou. To find out more about the book, keep checking my blog and website in the next coming week.

Experience #26 Anybody for Some Football?

This past Friday I did something I never thought I’d do. I attended an LSU football game. I know. Doesn’t really seem like a big deal. But frankly even though this particular item had made it onto my original list of experiences, it was one I thought I’d never complete. I added backup items on my list just for this purpose

It’s not that I didn’t want to check this one off my list. Obviously I had willingly added it to my list. But the fact that I understand nothing about football did have plenty to do with my reluctance. I mean I know that the players make touchdowns and the team has a quarterback. I haven’t completely lived under a rock living in this area of big football fans. The simple truth is my attention span tends to wander when I don’t understand something... quite frequently I might add.

What I learned at the game though was sometimes people watching makes attending a football game worthwhile. (I’m sorry to all you football fans.)  I came away from the game believing that people are passionate about football in ways that I just may never understand.

While my friend extolled the complexities of the game to me, I occasionally (so maybe more than occasionally) stole glances around at nearby fans. Most watched the game quietly at the anxiety-filled moments or cheered at the exciting ones. The interesting fans yelled and cursed as if they had a direct connection to the coach’s earphones. One particular old man nearing 90, if not having already arrived, cursed in a manner that made me openly stare before I realized that my occasional glance had gone on too long.

Of course besides from people watching, I also noticed that nearly an entire stadium of over 93,000 people were wearing purple and gold. One lady’s sweater was mistaken for crimson and a nearby fan jumped all over that. I was glad I’d gone buy a purple shirt. For once, I didn’t mind dressing like everyone else. Don’t worry it won’t happen again.

The most surprising part of the day was that I actually enjoyed watching the game. I even found myself standing when not being told to do so to see. Typically when I’m put in a large group of people my attention span is like a child on a sugar high. I actually managed to pay attention to about 80 percent of the game and even more surprisingly with a little help from a friend to understand what was happening.

Who knew?

Up a Wall

Julius Caesar said, I came, I saw, I conquered. I returned to the rock walls at Slidell Rocks, I studied them closely, and the conquering part? Well that is where things get interesting.

I enlisted my sister as my spotter this time around. She promised she wouldn’t let me fall, though she also wouldn’t make promises to not laugh at me. So after we let the children run around a bit, it was time to take on the wall. The wall is a thirty-five foot straight climb. It doesn’t sound like a great distance, but when you’re staring up at it – or down – the distance feels much too far.

My sister and I clipped into the harness gear, and I was feeling a bit uneasy. (Okay, that is an understatement. Have I mentioned yet that I’m terrified of heights?)

My son rushed over and asked, “Mom, give me twenty bucks.”

“Why?” I asked, thinking this was a good stall tactic (on my part that is).

“So I can buy snacks in case you don’t make it.”

My sister chimed in with a smile. “Where are the car keys in case you don’t make it.”

At this point I’d already placed my hands on the rocks in starting position. This was not easing my tension.

My godchild Hayden chimed in. “Oohh, she’s not going to make it.”

At this point I made a comment about bringing the wrong cheerleaders with me today. Everyone laughed as I attempted to climb, teasing that I was going to fall or that I wasn’t going to make it.

I didn’t make it. I didn’t even reach my head above the yellow line on this first attempt. So I immediately tried again. This time my “cheerleaders” were distracted and were trying to tackle some rocks of their own. I made it higher, but I had trouble finding the rocks I could use to push myself further up that wall.

My sister’s job was to lower me so I could return to the floor. At this point she hadn’t quite got the hang of it, and she released me too fast. I slammed into the wall -  not even the one I was climbing.

I drew the attention of the owner, who walked over and said in a sarcastic, but the nicest way possible that it had been very graceful.

It had been plenty of things, but graceful was not one of them.

I took a break and watched others climb up the walls, amazed by how some made it look so easy. I hadn’t even made it high enough for my fear of heights to really kick in.

I decided to try again on a different wall. This wall still stood thirty-five feet tall, but it had larger rocks. (Large in rock climbing does not come anywhere near my definition of large however. It simply meant I could place my toe on the rock versus the tip of my shoe.)

This time my “cheerleaders” stood quietly around. My son had designated himself as photographer, and he stood by waiting.

This time as I climbed I had to think about what rocks I could use to push myself further to the top since the rocks were spread further apart. When I reached the half way mark, my sister started helping with the path, and Andrew began snapping pictures. Cara also shouted out “Go Mommy” during this. About three  quarters up, with my heart pounding and blood pumping, my son called up for a picture. I looked down and the distance between myself and the ground hit me. (Insert a few choice words that I hope Andrew wasn’t able to read on my lips.) The fear of heights had kicked in AND I realized that I’d also have to go down.

After returning my eyes back to the wall ahead of me instead of below where the people looked much too small, I took several deep breaths. I decided that I was going to make it to the top just because I’d said I was going to do it, and I did not want to have to repeat this again.

With hands shaking, I pulled myself up to the top, my sister calling for me to touch the bar at the top.

I looked down again, my heart pounding harder. My sister called and asked if I was ready to come down. Hmmm…. No. She laughed and asked if I was going to stay up there. Hmmm… maybe. She had after all let me slam into a wall at only ten feet up. Thirty-five feet was a long way down.

Maybe I’d climb down a bit first. Of course, that’s not how it’s done. You have to let yourself go, hold onto the rope, and trust that they will lower you down slowly as you kick yourself away from the wall.

My daughter took off running, yelling that she couldn’t watch this. Truthfully, I didn’t want to watch this either. After struggling down the wall a bit, I finally let go of the wall and kicked myself off. (I’m not saying this was graceful either.) She did bring me down without incident though.

Though I probably took three times as long as everyone else to climb to the top, I did it. And though my entire body was shaking as I reached the ground, I still made it to the top. I also have the video to prove it. Andrew figured out how to use the video feature on my camera and thought it would be funny to record me coming down. I suppose he thought I’d slam into the wall, too.

Experience #25 Be Careful What You Wish For

This weekend I wanted adventure. I wanted a distraction from all the work I’ve been doing. I just wanted an escape before I had to get back to the school schedule and final that’s due in a week. Next time I will be more specific with my request for adventure.

On Friday I had to go to New Orleans for my appointment at the American Laser Center. It was the last appointment of the day so it was dark and everything had closed when I exited the building.

The first sign of trouble was when I couldn’t get my key to open my door. I thought the battery might be weak inside of the key, but it turned out to be the other battery, the one in my car.

So there I was in the middle of an empty parking lot, doors locked, waiting on my sister and her husband to come rescue me.

For an hour and a half I was paranoid for every cat that crept across the parking lot or piece of paper that flipped across in the wind.

When someone pulled up and switched out their vehicle for an empty car across the parking lot, my imagination streamed scenarios of CSI quality with a story spinning in my head of a body dump and facing danger as a witness. (Did I mention that my imagination is crazier than most?)

It all turned out okay in the end, but I was determined that Saturday I would have an adventure of a different variety.

I actually went out the first time as a single woman… in my entire life. Every other time I’ve gone out it has been with the ex-husband or a boyfriend. My friend Paula and I had a nice girl’s day/night out, with others joining in of course.

I also answered the question that Donna and I discussed a few weeks ago when we’d gone watch her son’s band play. How many drinks does it take to be the first one on the dance floor? Apparently for me the number is six, which of course leads to the fact that I can’t recall the last time I’ve been on a dance floor. Add another one to that list for the year. Paula was quite helpful this weekend. She’s even agreed to future experiences.

Saturday definitely made up for Friday’s unexpected nerve-wracking experience. Saturday night’s ending was ten times better and much more promising.

I did learn something this weekend that caught me by surprise. Apparently everyone is learning that if they do something with me, I will write about it later. That’s probably true. Might be why I’m having trouble finding people to join in anymore. It is true in most cases, but I only ever make fun of myself, I promise. So no need to worry (So Paula all those things that you told me not to write about, you’re safe… for now).

The Cats and Experience #24

I learned the hard way that I’m not an inside animal person. At the same time I moved into my new house, I gave in to my children’s repeated requests for a pet and agreed that they could bring two kittens into a house that I’d painstakingly painted and decorated.

I believe that I’ve exhibited more patience than I ever have in my entire life during the past few months of sharing my living area with these cats, affectionately called Scooter and Milkshake. They remained inside even as they ripped holes in Cara’s new comforter and scratched the paint off the freshly painted door frames. I tolerated the rearranging of doll furniture in the dollhouse I’d spent months building and carefully gluing each shingle on its Victorian frame. I did lose my cool when they shattered an expensive vase by pulling everything off my dining room table. In the middle of the night while picking shards of glass from the floor, Andrew begged with chocked up voice, providing ideas to prevent it from ever happening again.

I watched as they began to destroy my house as my children became more creative in their excuses and their solutions to the problems. Looking at their longing faces, I couldn’t bring myself to remove the cats from my house though they ripped through every material surface I’d redecorated with.

That is until this past weekend when I finally put them out. So what finally made me decide that our inside pets would become outside pets? That would be the decision of our pets that they were too delicate for the litter box and the bath tub would be much nicer.

This was the final straw. After several days of this, I gave fair warning to my children that I was moving the cats to our patio. The days leading up to that move was filled with more begging and guilt trips than I care to mention.

The day of the move was tear filled, and I may have given in to stop the water show if the cats had not reminded me that morning with the bath tub. I moved them outside. They didn’t appreciate it however. The cats continually tried to sneak back in every time the door opened, and several times Saturday, Andrew chased one or the other through the house. His concern means that every twenty or thirty minutes he checks to make sure they are still there (side effect being that he gets out from in front the television more).

Cara broke down into sobs when Andrew told her that her cat had run away. (It had not.) So though I did not change my mind with the waterworks, I was feeling pretty guilty.

I decided to take them to the skating rink for the first time. My daughter had recently gone for a birthday party, and she’d been asking daily to go back. My son had never been on skates and had slipped and said he wouldn’t mind trying (This is my code to move ahead at full speed and get him to do it since he never tries anything).

I had not worn skates for over ten years, but I found myself promising Andrew that I would do it with him. The whole time I was convincing him it would be okay, I was also thinking that the floor would be much further down than it was the last time I’d skated.

I did it though just to get Andrew to put the skates on.

I didn’t fall, but I also didn’t remember how to skate so it made for a very anxiety- filled and unnerving experience. I also learned that though I’m looking for adventure this year, my son is not. It seems that though my daughter leaps into adventure, my son needs to be given more time to decide on his own to try something… or not. There is no leading him into adventure.

So I’m not sure how many of my experiences he will be participating in the future. It’s best that I stop pushing so he doesn’t drive me mad. I did get him to put on the skates, but he quit as soon as he fell, which was before he even made it to the rink.

I did succeed in getting their minds off of the cats for a few hours though. Of course, when we returned after dark they were crawling around outside searching for their hiding and sleeping cats.

The cats remain outside. The only one thanking me is the house though.

Experience #23 Finding a Picture that doesn't Evoke the Delete Button

There’s something to be said about feeling beautiful. When I imagine beauty, I recall the glossy pictures of the fashion magazines that I’d comb through as a teenager, hoping that their secrets would be hidden somewhere in the beautiful and flawless faces.

All vanity aside, feeling beautiful doesn’t really happen often. Most of the time we judge ourselves in comparison to our ideal beauty standards and usually we fail miserably. I know I will never match the models I used to know by name and all their vital statistics.

I hate photographs of myself. I view them with a critical eye and see fault in each one. I’ve deleted more pictures of myself than I’ve ever saved. I joke that if I take one hundred pictures, I might get lucky and like one, maybe.

When I decided to take pictures for my website and book cover, I knew that I wasn’t going to be taking them myself for they’d never survive my harsh opinion. So I enlisted the help of Paula who is beginning what I’d call a long, prosperous career in photography. Even after seeing her beautiful pictures, I was still leery. It would still be me in front of the camera.

We chose typical Louisiana settings for the photos because my book is set in a fictional South Louisiana town. The locations were places I knew and had visited before. I thought this might bring comfort to an anxiety filled experience. Paula clicked away as I wondered what I was supposed to do with her lens pointed at me. I trusted that she knew what she was doing, because I didn’t.

In the end, the pictures came out amazing. It fascinates me how a photographer sees something through the lens that the normal critical eye will miss. I suppose she sees the world through her own special lens in the same way I see a story- in a way only I can see it.

This experience puts me one step closer to publishing my book, which was the whole goal of this experience- to lead me closer to what I’ve always wanted since I wrote my first story in sixth grade. She even snapped a picture that I’m going to use for the cover.

Do check out Paula’s website. She does wonders with a camera. Everyone should feel beautiful at some point in life and a photograph can make it possible to remember that moment.

Paula’s website: www.infocusforalloccassions.com