Week 7

Seven. Seven seven seven seven. Seven? Seven! That's seven sevens! Except now it's nine. Yeah. Seven isn't significant or anything, my brain just does silly things when it's low on human interaction, which I kinda felt like it was this week.

The week did start off with some absolutely lovely human interaction, as I had a couple fantastic food adventures of soup, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, and paleo buckeyes with the best food adventuring buddy ever. Actually, come to think of it, it seems like Emily and my ~20 year friendship is essentially based on a combination of food adventures, mutual ongoing gastrointestinal distress, and goofy videos. And I'm pretty okay with that. I'm also unbelievably grateful that I now live only about 25 minutes away from her rather than 16 hours. Ohhhhhhh my goodness am I happy about that fact. Especially now that the homesickness and loneliness are starting to creep up a little bit, but more on that later.

Back to the human interaction part. So, on Tuesday, I had an 8-hour shift in Fantoon, or, the much smaller costume warehouse where only the Fantasyland, Toontown, and Costuming costumes are kept. And, compared to the other very busy costuming warehouse, it's reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slow in there. I prettymuch sewed buttons on chef coats for 8 hours because there was absolutely nothing else to do. I was just really happy there were buttons to sew! It made the time go by considerably less painfully slowly. One nice thing about Fantoon though is that you get to listen to your own music. For someone who actively avoids pop music but is forced to listen to it consistently for 8-hour shifts in the other warehouse and now has an intense and burning loathing for every song on the top 40, this was an incredibly beautiful and sweet relief.

Most of Wednesday was spent in my apartment by myself, doing the things that I do in my apartment by myself - reading, violin-ing, plotting (for stories...just to make that clear...), writing, and internetting. Lately, the internetting has involved watching quite a bit of Breaking Bad, and staring at millions of pictures of hot air balloons on facebook, both of which have been making me really start to miss good ol' ABQ and its many splendid inhabitants. Especially because Fall is my favorite time of year, and apparently, Anaheim thinks Fall looks exactly like Summer, and there are no hot air balloons, roasting green chiles, or bright yellow quaking aspens in a place called the Santa Fe ski basin...

However! Anaheim does have Disneyland, which happens to have this neat thing called the "Dream Suite" - a super-exclusive, fancy, magical suite designed by Walt himself, which I had the privilege of touring with other CPs Wednesday afternoon. It was gorgeous, and there were all these little buttons called Walt's "goodnight kisses," which were essentially just little surprises that made the rooms come alive with music and sound. My favorite was the bathroom, oddly enough. There was this already gorgeous bathtub that lit up like the night sky and played peaceful music. I had to laugh at myself when I realized I was almost crying just by looking at a bathtub.




Stock photo from the interwebs, so not illegal! :D Anyway, this is the bathroom in all its magical, starry glory.


The view from the patio.

After the tour, a couple of my roomies and I wandered around the parks for a bit and had dinner there. We wanted to go have a bonfire on the beach, which I have never done and was super excited for, but then around 8:00 we realized the beach closes at 10:00, so we ended up not going. Instead, we came back to the apartment and played beer pong with water. It was the first time I had ever played beer pong, and, though I was completely sober, I was terrible at it. Not really surprising though, considering I'm terrible at anything that has to do with balls, projectiles, and sports in general :P

Thursday was class day, and the first class day where we were able to go into the parks. We didn't have very much time though, and we had a worksheet to fill out. Basically, we had to go talk to various cast members, ask them a question, and evaluate the cast-member-to-guest interaction through the lens of being a cast member yourself. Not terribly exciting, but informative. After that, I found myself in Disneyland all by myself, which was interesting. I went into Jolly Holiday and bought a raspberry-rose macaron (OH MY GOODNESS SO GOOD and totally worth the slight throat-swelling from the almond flour...hehe...) and sat out on the terrace and people-watched. It was quite lovely, but what made it even lovelier was this awesome jazz pianist that came and started playing right by where I was sitting. Already in a great mood, the pianist THEN starts playing Beauty and the Beast :) After he finished, I told him it was my favorite and that he totally made my morning, and he got the biggest grin on his face. I just love how there are so many little moments like that - how you never know how something so small can make someone's day, and how even just telling that person they made your day can turn around and make theirs.


The macaron. Look at its beauty! LOOK AT IT!!!

Thursday night I worked and nothing particularly exciting happened. Friday, nothing particularly exciting happened. Saturday morning, I worked and had to have a discussion with one of the managers because I had spaced and forgotten to clock one of my lunch ends a week earlier.  He was really nice about it and made sure to let me know that as long as it isn't a regular occurrence they're not going to hold it against me or anything and that clocking correctly is in place to make sure I get paid correctly and everything. It wasn't a huge deal. But I still felt really bad that I messed up and had to be called into the manager's office. I didn't cry though, which I feel is a big step for me! Geez that sounds pathetic...I really hate how easily I cry when I feel someone is even vaguely disappointed in me. But, as evidenced by Saturday, I'm getting better about it.

When I got back home, there were people setting up for an event in the plaza outside our building, and they had an Appalachian group playing for it. I got ridiculously excited about it, especially when they started playing songs I knew, like my favorite, "Greasy Coat." But soon, it made me feel kinda lonely. It made me remember that I don't know anyone here who knows "Greasy Coat" and can play it with me. I've been playing all my fiddle tunes a lot by myself here, partly because I forgot to pack any actual sheet music, but also because I just love playing it because fiddle music makes me happy. But what makes me even happier is playing fiddle music and jamming with other musicians.

I was starting to get a little sad just sitting there and listening to the people jamming it up outside my window, when I realized it was Saturday. I then remembered this thing I had heard of called Downtown Disney Swing (swing dancing) that happens every Saturday night, and decided to go, even if I was just going all by myself. It's a social dance, therefore, I'll just meet new people doing this fun thing that I used to love doing back in Albuquerque! It'll be great! What could possibly go wrong? Well, it ended up being more of a concert. The live band was quite good, and I was enjoying listening to them. Hardly anybody was dancing though. Slowly, more people started getting out on the floor, and they were pretty amazing swing dancers - like, holy cow. These people probably did competitions and stuff. Another thing I noticed about them was that they were all couples. Not just dancing partners - actual couple couples who only danced with one another. Nobody mingling on the outside, nobody asking strangers to dance - just couples happily dancing with each other, or happily watching on the side and giggling at their little children wandering out onto the dance floor. And then there was me, suddenly feeling quite alone.

So I went back home and ate cereal. But I'm feeling better now! Haha, but really, I also got to skype my brother and one of my really good friends, and that seriously made a world of difference. So, even though I haven't made a ton of friends here yet, I still have an absolutely fantastic support system back home, and the friends I do have here are all in this with me and I know I can count on them to make me smile when I'm feeling low :)