The Tale of Cinderannie

In Which Cinderannie Says Goodbye

2008-06-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

I’m home again now – but you all knew that. Even if there are mysterious strangers lurk-reading, they still could have figured it out from my days count down several posts ago. Hello, probably non-existent lurking reader. This post is dedicated to you. And to everyone else who has been reading this blog for all these months and putting up with my sporadic and often very lengthy posting.
Perhaps part of me doesn’t want to go back and write about – and thereby relive – the last weeks of my stay at Disney, because I am quite content to be home, and fear that to remember will be to miss. I do miss certain things. They come in flashes – the Winnie the Pooh ride, Minnie’s House, Frontierland and Adventureland at night, the three o’clock parade… just momentary memories and missings. But I miss nothing the way I missed home while I was there.
My last week at Disney was a glorious time. I managed to give away a great many shifts, so that my second-to-last week was spent packing and my last week was spent playing. I planned to cram as many last rides as possible into the last few days. Friday was my departure day, and I had given away my Wednesday and Thursday shifts. Gloriously, my manager offered me an early release halfway through Monday, so I went to Animal Kingdom and was able to have a last ride on Everest – two, actually – and my one and only ride on Kali River Rapids. After that I went home and nearly completed my packing.
Tuesday was my last day of work, a day of many farewells. Everyone was sad to see me go and wished me well – Goofy insisted emphatically that I should stay there, and even shed tears on my behalf, wiping them dramatically from his eyes. [ Oh, here comes the missing: there was one thing that I didn’t get to do in my last week that I wanted to do – go and see Minnie and Mickey at their house. This was due to a change in plans that was definitely for the best (I’ll get to that later) but I do wish I could have told them goodbye. I miss them. ] I said goodbye to so many people, who were sad to say goodbye and expected me to be sad, but I was so glad to be going home. It reminded me of Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – “He tried to be sad for their sakes, but he was quivering with happiness.”
On Wednesday, I went to Epcot and Hollywood Studios, to do all my last things and say goodbye and ride last rides. It was fun. I got to ride Rock’n’Roller coaster in the front at the end of the night. I was at first by myself and was going to imagine Thad next to me but then a large man came and sat by me instead. The next day was to be my final day in the Magic Kingdom.
When I got home that night, I was missing Thad and rather wished I had invited him to come for the last day so he could spend a day at the parks with me and ride back with me . But it was rather late at night now and anyway where would he sleep? Overnight guests aren’t allowed at the apartments. And he wouldn’t be able to get a flight, not now. Yet I felt I couldn’t rest if I didn’t try, so I texted my mother something along the lines of, “Is it very expensive to book flights less than 24 hours in advance?” She replied instantly with, “Do you want Thad to come?” We texted, then called, back and forth for quite a while. My dad was on his computer in the foreign country he was on a trip to, looking for airline flights. My mom called my grandmother to see if she could see if Thad could spend the night with friends of theirs who lived in the area. In a whirlwind, we had it all figured out and settled. He would arrive at the Orlando airport at 12:05pm the next day.
I was rather late picking him up – first I had to bring books back to the library and couldn’t find the library because the map showed it in the wrong place, then I got stuck in perfectly horrible traffic. Fortunately, Thad was too glad to be in Florida to mind very much. As we drove, we discussed our plans. I had made reservations at Liberty Tree for us at 2:45. He wanted to do Mission Space and Spaceship Earth and Rock’n’Roller coaster.
We did a lot of dashing about that day, mad rushing to do things before then ended. We went to Magic Kingdom first and I don’t know what we did and then to Epcot for Mission Space, then back to Magic Kingdom and just barely made our reservations. Actually, we would have missed them except that I had already arranged with Ben that he would be our server and he very kindly served us even though really the restaurant was closing.
That was a lovely dinner. Thad had a bacon cheeseburger and I had my last meal of William Penn Pasta. We had planned to share an Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake – the best dessert ever. But then Joseph, one of the chefs, came out to us, and was taking our dessert orders, and was asking Thad what he wanted. Thad kept saying he didn’t want any dessert, but Joseph kept offering him more and more options, saying, “Come on, I’m giving you free dessert here!”
“Strawberry shortcake? Brownie? Or how ‘bout some ice cream? Would you like some ice cream?”
“Sure, okay, I’ll take some ice cream,” said Thad finally.
In a little while Joseph and Ben returned, with my toffee cake – and a dessert for Thad – three or four scoops of vanilla ice cream in a Liberty Tree mug, drizzled with lots of chocolate syrup, and whipped cream and a cherry on top. This dessert is not on the menu – I should know. It was made extra-specially for Thad. He licked the whipped cream off the cherry, and was going to set it aside, when he got a strange look on his face. I watched him in puzzlement as he put the cherry back in his mouth and bit it off the stem. Then he ate it with an expression of surprised, delighted ecstasy.
“I can’t believe that all theses years I’ve been giving away my cherries!” he cried despairingly.

After that we went back to Epcot to ride Spaceship Earth, and then to Hollywood Studios. There, for the first time, I rode Tower of Terror. I was scared out of my mind. But it turned out to not be nearly as bad as I expected! It was actually really fun! I was missing out, just like Thad with the cherries. Then we rode Rock’n’Roller coaster. We got to ride in the very front. It was glorious. When we came off, it was three minutes to park close, so we ran like maniacs back around to the front to go again. We were on the very last round to go. So I rode on the last Rock’n’Roller coaster of my last night at Disney.
Then we went back to the Magic Kingdom. We were on the Monorail as Wishes was going, which was pretty cool. (I have seen those fireworks so many times that not getting to see them from the ground didn’t distress me much.) I even caught a glimpse of Tinkerbelle flying.
Once we were inside the park, we watched the end of Wishes, then dashed for Space Mountain. We had about forty-five minutes until the park closed, and we wanted to hit Space, Splash, and Peter Pan’s flight. Yikes. After we rode Space Mountain – I got to be in front, I always forget how scary it is – we tried to buy freeze-dried ice cream for Bram but they didn’t have any and went to check the back and they took a long time and then I got sent to two different places and no one had any and the whole time I’m thinking “Auuugh, we have no time for this!” Finally someone said they had it at the Emporium at the front of the park which would be open after park close, so we dashed off to Peter Pan’s flight. Fortunately, they took our fast passes, which were long since expired. It was now less than twenty minutes to park close. I took in one last time the loveliness of Neverland. It was 10:53 when we got off the ride, and we ran like crazy people – Thad carried his flip flops – toward Splash Mountain. If only we could make it!
We made it, at 10:56. Four minutes to spare. So if anyone ever wondered, you can make it from the exit of Peter Pan’s Flight to the entrance of Splash Mountain in three minutes flat at a dead run. We were both panting and gasping. It was a lovely last ride. Splash Mountain is definitely one of my very favorite rides.
We caught some of my favorite parts of Spectromagic on the way back to Main Street. I knew I wanted to be in front of the castle at midnight for the “Kiss Goodnight,” the farewell at the park close every evening.
In between we managed to buy the presents I still needed to get, but the person had to go in the back for the freeze dried ice cream and I feared I would miss it. There was another one at 12:30, so it wouldn’t be too dreadful, but I did want to get back to the apartment sooner rather than later so that I could get a little sleep before we left early in the morning.
It was 12:01 – I stepped outside, looking for Thad; I had been separated from him in the crowded store. There he was.
“Has it gone?” I asked.
“I’ve been out here since five till and I haven’t seen anything,” he answered. I was still a bit stressed because I still had my WDW ID card and needed to turn it in. It was supposed to go to my work location, but that was quite thoroughly closed by now, so I planned to give it to one of the custodial managers who knew me. The park duty manager said that Heather should be coming from The West (Frontierland and Adventureland) [ oh there goes another pang of missing…] any minute, so I was relieved. She would have to come right past where I was. Just as I saw her coming, the Kiss Goodnight began. I could catch up with her when it was over. It must have been five minutes past midnight. It was as though it had waited until I was ready.
I don’t remember exactly what it says. It’s just the man’s voice who does many announcement things, I think he’s from the Mickey Mouse club, he has a sort of warm friendly voice – and he says something like I hope you had a wonderful time, and all your dreams come true. And Mickey says, “See ya real soon!” Goodnight, Mickey.
Thad and I meandered down Main Street. “I see why you wanted to see that,” he said. I caught up with Heather and gave her my ID.
Finally we left and got on the monorail. The ride back to the Ticket and Transportation Center, the drive to where Thad would sleep, and then on to the apartment.

The drive back home was fairly uneventful, other than my car starting to misfire. We spent only one night in a hotel – my goal was to reach home by suppertime on Saturday.
All the way, it seemed I watched time go backwards as it changed from eternal summer into spring. I nearly started crying when I crossed the Michigan border.
I made it in time for supper, arriving at about 5:30pm. It was so good to be there, and we had supper – I don’t remember now what it was, but it was good.
For the first few days of being home I felt really strange – as though I had a different personality and couldn’t find my old one. But I seemed to gather pieces of it back everywhere I went, to church and to my friend’s house and with my siblings, and it has long since been back entirely.

I don’t know what will happen next in my life. I'm done being Cinderannie - who will I be next? I am excited to have such openness ahead of me. I don’t think that I’ll ever have a career with Walt Disney World – Florida is just not home to me, and I don’t think it ever could be. But Disney will always have a special place in my heart, and though Florida might not be, the Magic Kingdom will always be home. I’ll go back and visit, someday, and perhaps someday I’ll be a seasonal employee to take advantage of the free admission – that’s the one thing I shall miss most; the freedom of wandering around the parks, just living there, every turn familiar and dear.

Thank you, everyone who has read this and been with me, supporting, encouraging, and enjoying. It was so good to have you along. So many lovely things happened. This chapter is done, a new one is starting.

Goodbye, Mickey! See you real soon!

In Which Cinderannie Speeds to Space and Sits and Stares

2008-04-29T20:28:00.001-07:00

One day I went with Dory shopping most all day because we needed to go to Michael’s to buy things for Kari’s birthday party and then to Wal-mart for groceries, and we got kind of lost trying to go to Michael’s and it took absolutely forever. All Florida lights are too long and every road requires you to turn around, and they don’t have nice turn-arounds like Michigan; you just have to wait for the next light. But we were successful in finding what we wanted to find, but didn’t get back until late afternoon. Then I went to Wednesday night church, which was nice, and when I got back I knew I had to go get Kari’s birthday present, so I went to Downtown Disney. But they didn’t have the present I wanted, because it was a theme park exclusive. So I asked what time the Magic Kingdom closed – it was about 11:30pm. It closed at midnight, so I should have just enough time to get over there and buy the present – a Tinkerbelle music box – before the stores closed. The main street stores are usually open till a half-hour after park close. And there were extra magic hours until 3am. I wasn’t sure if cast members can do EMH or not, but if they could maybe I could go ride Splash Mountain, which I had been wanting to do.
I made it to the store in good time, and soon found the music box and bought it. It was midnight, but I headed toward Splash Mountain in hopes of finding a kindly wristband distributor. I had asked at the gate whether we were allowed, and the girl said it depended on who you asked… from which I gathered that this was one of those bendable rules. Sort of like having to wear polishable leather shoes at Liberty Tree, which barely half of us do.
The wristband people at ------- wouldn’t give me one, so I trucked over to Splash in hopes of them letting me on even though it was past midnight. No go. Disappointed but not distraught, I decided to wander over through ------------ on my way out. There was another EMH wrist band distribution point there by ----------------. It couldn’t hurt to ask.
The person let me! I was so excited, and promised that I would just go on Splash and then leave, and that’s what I did. It was so much fun to be riding Splash Mountain at 20 after midnight! And I love that ride so much, too. Especially this one part where it’s like you’re in a cave with water splashing everywhere. Now I wish I could ride it right now. Well, I could. It’s 10:15 and I think the park doesn’t close until midnight. Hmm.

It’s now just over 24 hours since I wrote that. And I didn’t ride Splash Mountain. But I did talk to Dory, who came over, who had never ridden Space Mountain because she is scared of roller coasters. But recently she managed to ride Rock’n’Roller coaster with Tiffany. But Space Mountain has more ups and downs and is more jerky, and you also have to sit single file instead of having someone next to you to cling to. But when I suggested it – imagining the look on Tiffany’s face when we told her what she’d done, we decided to make a dash for it. The park actually closed at eleven, so we had to run for it. I drove superspeed, we ran to the monorail like crazy people – “will you make it?” the driver asked “sure,” we said – got to ride in the front, dashed off the moment it stopped, took a shortcut through backstage, and made it to the Space Mountain line at five minutes until eleven. The sign said 20 minute wait, but it was nearly a walk-on. She was shaking a little as we were about to get in line – and we got the front! – but she didn’t waver in her determination. I kept my hands on her shoulders the entire time, and we sang “Zip-a-dee-do-dah” for most of it. And she wasn’t too terrified! She was smiling when we got off. She says we need to go on one more time for her to truly conquer it, but of course we couldn’t do it that night since the park was now closed. On the way out we wandered through a lot of shops. I liked the crystal store with the pretty statues and the art of Disney store had some pictures I loved. There was one with Dumbo in the bubble bath and the light was all golden and it was so lovely I crouched down on the floor to just look at it. It made me imagine it would be in a hallway in Bram’s house someday, Bram’s house when he is all grown up, a big house with dark wood paneled walls and it would be in a hallway where the light is dim because that’s the sort of picture it was. And there was a picture I liked even more, my favorite one of all. It was about 18”x36”, tall ways, and it was of sleeping beauty, but not the Disney sleeping beauty exactly, it was more realistically painted instead of animation-looking. The coloring was all a warm red, with sleeping beauty laying on a bed at the bottom of the picture, and looming above her, through the huge window, was the dragon and the prince fighting it. It was so beautiful. If you want to see it, go to http://www.john-rowe.com/ and click on images, then scroll down through the pictures on the left hand side to almost the bottom and click the one with the scary red dragon. I sat on the floor in front of that picture for quite some time. Thankfully Dory was also liking wandering around the store.

In Which Cinderannie Makes Very Little Sense

2008-04-09T17:24:00.001-07:00

I cannot stand high heels. Tonight I was going to Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM) and I was going to pretend to be a movie star so I put on a shirt with sparkles on it and my earings with the crystals that Papa got me and borrowed my roommates high heels and wore my sunglasses and went. And I was barely through the gate and walking down the street before I wished I was at Magic Kingdom and the heels were driving me crazy. I'm not cut out to be a movie star. I would have gone over to MK but I didn't particularly want to walk around there in high heels either. So I came home and now I'm writing a blog entry and Tiff and I are going to watch Stardust. They all like it so I hope it's good.
I know there were a couple things from work I wanted to tell you about. Oh yeah, I got to do the dinner bell the other day. That means choosing a family to help open the restaurant and go up on the balcony and ring the bell. And all the characters come up too, and the family gets to get a picture with all of them. It was fun, but the script had gone missing so I had to improv it, and for some reason I couldn't pronounce "hospitality" for the life of me and kept stuttering. Dear me. But at least I projected, and got everyone's attention, unlike sometimes when you can't even hear the person and no one knows what's going on.
I keep realizing I have more high functioning autism characteristics than I realize. For one thing, because of my roommates friendly teasing when it happens, I realized that I stutter rather a lot. I didn't notice how often I get "stuck" when I try to say something and repeat the same syllable, word, or phrase over and over again. Also at certain points I get a sort of barrier to talking, like I don't know what to say unless it's scripted, either by standard conversation, or a direct question I can give a direct answer to, or actually scripted like at work. I realized this very vividly when I went to work one morning, having hardly spoken to anyone until I was there, and then I had to seat a family, and when I was at the table needing to say my spiel, I felt like I almost forgot how to talk. I had to make myself remember my lines, "You're seating in the ______ room and ______ will be your server," and I certainly couldn't make myself get out any of the usual pleasantries (have you dined here before? what have you done today? etc). It was weird.

Edit: Grr! I wrote more than this! And the computer ate it! Now I have no idea what it was I wrote. I told you about some other things... that I no longer recall.

Oh yeah, Tiff's birthday party! It was her birthday so we had a party and I made chocolate cake with mint frosting (which I made myself) because mint and chocolate is her favorite.

And I wrote about the stuck-up Disney Vacation Club people! And it got lost... and it's midnight and I don't feel like writing about it over again right now. I am officially frustrated. This has to be the weirdest, most irrelevant and disconnected post I've ever written. Probably related to my very emotionally charged days off. Well, I think I'm going to bed now. Hopefully a more coherent - and more positive - post will follow before too long.

In Which Cinderannie Has a Lovely Time, Works Too Much, and Has a Lovely Time Again

2008-04-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

Well, now, it's been awhile, as usual, but I have a good excuse this time, which is that I have worked 60 hours for the past two weeks. This is because it was spring break, when everyone comes to Disney. I really don't know what possesses people to come during peak times. Why would you want to come and have to fight all the crowds and wait forever in lines and not be able to get into any restaurants, when you could come in the fall and have almost no one there? It's ridiculous. But of course, people do it anyway, and then they are mad at me when I'm on door checking people in because they can't get into any restaurants. So that is the bad part of it being crowded. (And for goodness sake, the food at the quick-service restaurants really is quite good. I am sick of people saying it's "cardboard" or "fried junk" and being mad that there is no table service availability. If you're going to turn up your nose at the quick-service food, you should have made reservations. I have patience for a lot of things - mismade reservations, being late for reservations because you were caught in traffic, needing to add people to your party - but not that.)

The good part is that we open up the Diamond Horseshoe, the restaurant next door. It's basically an extension of our restaurant - it's the same cast members and the same food, with a makeshift kitchen area set up in the hallway. But the characters don't go over there. I like that restaurant because it's so beautiful inside. I only worked over there two days but they were so much fun.

There is a sort of bar area in the Diamond Horseshoe - just a long counter, with space behind it with a refrigerator built into the counter and more counter and cupboard space behind. This is where we set up the drink-making station (non-alcoholic, of course, just our usual drinks) and since the portable drink machine wasn't working, we had to use two-litres, and fetch pitchers of the drinks we didn't have two-litres of from Liberty Tree. There is not nearly enough space in that bar area for all the servers to be coming in and out getting drinks for their guests, so instead we have one of the seaters back there, and the servers write what drinks they need on a slip of paper and that person makes them and puts them on the counter for the server to pick up. They work with the stocker, who keeps the pitchers and the ice container full as well as getting glasses and coffee mugs. Now Brandy was the drink-maker for four days straight, because she was very good at it. And some days William was her stocker, and he is rather distractible and was always leaving her with no glasses left or no ice, so she was running around like a maniac. But then I was her stocker and she was glad to have me, and we had an excellent time working together - the time absolutely flew by. The five hours felt the way two hours does usually. And since she was going to be off the next day, and she had now taught me the system for the drinks, I was assigned to do drinks the next day. I had such a nice time. And Rob was my stocker, and he did a good job and we worked well together, and he joked that we would have our own bar, Rob and Joanna's, and I thought that this name actually had rather a nice ring to it, although of course I wouldn't really want to open a bar. But I had so much fun making the drinks that I thought that if it weren't for the sleazy drunk people I would probably enjoy being a bartender. If people always just went to have a nice time, and always only had one or two drinks apiece, it would be really fun. It's a pity that alcohol is abused so thoroughly.

I wouldn't want to leave Liberty Tree now, since I'm quite attached to the people over there, but if I could from the beginning have picked what shift and where I'd like to be, ideally, I would choose the opening shift at Cinderella's Royal Table. The reason for this requires me to skip back a bit and describe my morning there. I started work at 6am, as I told you before. But the opening work there is so pleasant. Everyone is still quiet and blinking themselves awake. You bring up the syrup and milk from downstairs, and then you fill up all the adorable little cream pitchers, and use this cool machine that you push the handle and it pumps syrup into the little syrup containers. (The little containers are called ramekins. I didn't know that until about a month ago - I always called them "syrup jiggies.") We also set up the soda machines for the day. And then when we were done with that we went out into the dining room for the pre-meal meeting. I was standing at the back of the dining room, with the big windows in front of me. I looked out, and I could see all the roofs and empty streets of fantasyland, and the sky was just starting to brighten to pink and gold. It was so beautiful I got tears in my eyes. And then, having started so early, we were done with the shift at 2:15. I like this arrangement.

Since I was done at 2:15 and I had a change of clothes up in my Liberty Tree locker, I went up to get them, changed, and went out into the park. I had not been wandering long when I got a call from Dory, wondering where I was because she was off of work and wanted to get together. "I'm in the Magic Kingdom," I said. "Where are you?" "At the Ticket and Transportation Center," she said. "Well, for goodness sake, get on the monorail and come over here!" I exclaimed cheerfully. "You'll be just in time for the parade!" And she was in time, and we went to Town Square where we found a place to sit and watch, and we had the loveliest time - we went on Jungle Cruise and Buzz Lightyear's space ranger spin and we got to ride the double decker trolley down and up main street! We decided to be seven years old for the day and we skipped and sang and had a sword fight with our knife and spoon from the pineapple ice cream and pineapple wedge we ate. So yes, this is the advantage of having to get up very early - then you have more day left.

Yesterday was so nice too, because Kari and I spent most of the day at the Magic Kingdom, and I convinced her to come on Big Thunder Mountain even though she doesn't like roller coasters, and it turned out she liked it after all. While we were waiting for our fast pass for that we went to Tom Sawyer Island and roamed around, and sat up at the top of the hill on a bench and ate our lunch and reminiced about our childhoods for about an hour - this is the beauty of being a cast member and not in a rush. And we had the most excellent ice cream from Enchanted Grove, which is a swirl of strawberry sherbet - made with real strawberries - and soft serve vanilla ice cream. Now that is deliciousness. And we ate it while we listened to a saxaphone quartet, and then we went on the teacups (I am so glad that I don't get dizzy so easily anymore like I did when I was younger, because I really like that ride now) and on Goofy's Barnstormer. We wanted to visit Minnie but she was busy spring cleaning. All this was while we waited for our FastPasses from Peter Pan's Flight to be ready because it was hours and hours. Oh and we went on the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, too.

Speaking of that, that makes me think of Mr. Owl, and I wanted to tell you that I was going to say that Liberty Tree was like hobbits and dwarves and Cinderella's Royal Table was like Elves, but I tend to be a Lord of the Rings geek and I didn't want to overdo it. So I was glad that you thought of it.

Something I like about Liberty Tree is that there is no skim milk to be found in it from one end to the other. Also our honey butter we make ourselves, from real butter and real honey, blended together in a giant mixer.

Oh here is something else I keep forgetting to tell you! One day when I was on the bus to work, the one that goes from the WestClock parking lot where the CP bus drops us off to the main tunnel entrance, I noticed a big building, and there were monorail tracks going into it. I had seen that before, and I knew it was where the monorails sleep, but then I noticed something else about it - through the windows on the lower floor, I saw a train! And there are train tracks going into it! So the monorails and the trains sleep in the same building, with the monorails on the top bunk, as it were, and the trains on the bottom. I thought that this was most delightful.

Well, Dory has just brought me a salmon, rice, and brocolli dish for lunch that she made herself, and as it smells and tastes wonderful, I am going to leave this entry as it is, with a last note:

44 Days until I come home!

In Which Cinderannie Meets a Photographer and Visits Cinderella

2008-03-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesdays look to be turning into quite exciting days. You see, Tiff usually has Tuesdays off. And Kari always does, because she has a class from 2-6. Dori’s days switch around. But anyway, after Kari and I’s grand morning at Epcot, we thought we might like to do that on most Tuesday mornings before her class – go to a park right when it opens and enjoy the non-crowdedness. The trouble was my days off had always been Wednesday-Thursday. But this week and next week it’s switched to Tuesday-Wednesday, so maybe I’m having very good fortune.
But besides the mornings, we have discovered something very exciting for the evenings. Let me back up a bit, to a week ago yesterday.

It had been a very rainy day, and Liberty Tree was so “dead” (our term meaning barely any guests were there) that the manager let me go home early. When I arrived home, I found Tiff, Kari, and Dori all in our room, getting dressed up. They explained that they were getting all “gussied up” (as Tiff described it) to go to Downtown Disney, just for fun. It sounded great to me, so I took a quick shower and then let Kari pick out my clothes and do my makeup. She has a knack for it and it turned out very nice, especially how she did my hair. When we were all ready we headed out. The sky seemed to be still threatening rain, so Tiff and Kari both brought an umbrella.
When we reached Downtown, we first stopped by Ghirardelli Chocolate. This is always the first stop we make at DD, because they give you a free sample of chocolate. You can’t beat that – and it’s excellent chocolate, too. Then we went to World of Disney. Kari had the idea of us going to wherever they do the Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique photos and seeing if they would take our pictures. I was uncertain at first if we would be allowed but agreed to ask and find out. The lady working near BBB said that the place was at the Photo center at guest relations, and she didn’t know if they were still open, but we could check it out if we wanted to. So we trekked over.
When we went inside the guest relations building, there were no guests. The two photopass photographers (a man and a woman) were standing around looking bored. I walked up and asked whether we were allowed to get our pictures taken in their little studio thing even though we hadn’t been to BBB, and the man (he had bright blue eyes and spiky hair) said “I don’t know, you can see we’re just swamped with guests today…” We all laughed and he beckoned us around to set our things down on benches in the corner. Then we all came into the studio.
“So, what do you want? Group? Individual?” We decided to do group pictures first and maybe some individuals later. And that was the beginning of over an hour of ridiculousness and fun, of poses both traditional and crazy. At one point Tiff said to the photographer,
“Is it just me, or are you having as much fun as we are?”
“You don’t understand!” he replied. “It’s been like this” – he gestured to the empty room – “ALL DAY!”
So we got lots of fun pictures, and then at the end he said that we should come back again sometime and do it again, coming at about that same time when no one was there, especially on rainy days, and that he worked Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. And we ended up going again the next Tuesday and getting pictures again, and this time at the end he said if we ever wanted to just hang out at the parks and have him take pictures of us, we should let him know. We couldn’t believe he was serious! So maybe sometime we’ll get to do that.

In other exciting news…
A little while ago, I was standing at the podium, chatting with the other seaters because there was no one to seat, and William (my trainer, if you recall) said something out of the blue that my brain at first didn’t process. It somehow connected to whatever we had been saying, though I don’t remember how.
“Yeah, you’re going to be cross-training at Cinderella’s.”

I didn’t say anything at first. My brain didn’t grasp the significance of what he had just said. Then it clicked. Me. Cross-training. As in training so I could work there. At Cinderella’s Royal Table. The restaurant in the castle. Then I started grinning and couldn’t stop. The rest of the day I kept repeating in a sing-song what I had heard a little boy saying at lunch one day –
“I’m going to Cinde-rel-la! I’m going to Cinde-rel-a!”

It finally appeared on my schedule for this week, and I trained there on Sunday and Monday. There was one bad thing about this. Because Cinderella’s is open for breakfast, and because when you train you have to learn everything, I had to be there for learning how to open at 6:00am on Sunday. The day of losing an hour because of daylight savings time. After having to close at Liberty Tree and getting out at 10:25pm. Needless to say, I was expecting to feel very sleepy. However, I actually had a surprising amount of energy and only had about a half-hour where I felt sleepy, right before lunch. Speaking of lunch… they fed us breakfast and lunch! And it was so delicious! I want to learn to make scrambled eggs that good. And cheesy breakfast potatoes and a deep-fried cheese danish with blueberry over the top, and for lunch a whole bunch of different things like fancy porkchops and couscous and `jasmine rice and a sort of mushroom sauce and other things I’m not sure how to describe. And for dessert a “chocolate cheesecake buckle” which is shaped like a giant muffin and tastes like a very moist very rich cupcake. And know what? I saw Cinderella in the break room and she said "Good morning" to me! I found this very exciting. And I am hoping that at some point I may actually see her enough - she 's generally busy with guests - to convey at least one of the messages my little sister has requested me to give to her.
I like Cinderella’s. The atmosphere is very different from Liberty Tree. I like both, and both are very suited to how they are meant to be. Liberty Tree is very relaxed and we tend to “wing it” a bit. It feels like a home meal, the dining room is mostly wood, all cozy little rooms and it tends to be loud and the characters are always being silly. Cinderella’s is, of course, much more royal. The dining room is full of the cool brightness of indirect sunlight, since one whole wall is all windows. It is open and airy, and gives the feeling of being in the clouds. Everything is run more precisely. If Liberty corresponds to the element of earth, Cinderella’s corresponds to the element of air. At Liberty one would half-expect to find a roaring fire in the fireplace and some dwarves or hobbits or ordinary workingmen cheerily having a beer and a pipe in some corner. At Cinderella’s one would expect the breeze to bring swirls of cloud in the window or to be able to reach out and touch a star. There are no chipmunks dashing about and saying that the other one smells, no Goofy sliding across the dining room with one foot up on a chair. The Princesses hold court, moving gracefully and graciously from one table to another, talking softly and sweetly. We address the families and “my lord” and “my lady” (the parents or brothers) or “your highness” and “princess” (the daughters). I had to catch myself so as to not be too casual in my address as I seated. We present each child with a wishing star – I am hoping to have one of my own at some point – and tell them that their royal attendant will be with them shortly. There is more room for role play, because there is a greater focus on fairytales. Liberty feels a bit more like an ordinary restaurant – if a restaurant with Minnie and Goofy, and all of the girls wearing bonnets, can be called ordinary – and we aren’t really taught to play up the colonial aspect much in the way we address the guests. Mostly it’s just ordinary restaurant talk with extra Disney friendliness. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I dearly love role play, and getting to be at Cinderella’s where the fairytale story is at the heart of the experience, where we are encouraged to be as in-character as possible, is a delight.
Another wonderfully fun thing about Cinderella’s is the possibility for making very delightful magic. You see, the restaurant is booked up three or four months in advance. However, throughout those three or four months – even up to the day of – people are cancelling. Now, these cancellations are filled within a few hours – or even minutes – of opening up. It’s all on the computer, and people at the dining hotline and all the resorts and parks have access to it, and most likely at any given moment someone is trying to find a guest a space at the restaurant during their vacation. All this to say, it is a delightful thing to be at the podium. Because families are always coming up to the podium hoping for cancellations. And at first, my trainer would always say that she had checked the next two weeks and there were no openings – which she had, only a few hours before. But she (being a full-time trainer who bounces between Tony’s and Cinderella’s) has not fully grasped the magic of randomly appearing cancellations. And I am generally in a state of over-active pixie dust and am always wanting to make extra magic, besides which I have this tendency to never give up on something. (This tendency occasionally results in me driving across town in a rush so as to be able to attend two different events on the same day/night because I didn’t want to give up on either of them. Remember the night of the St. Cecilia concert and the barn dance, family? It’s not exactly practical but I do enjoy them.) At any rate, when no one was coming to the podium to check in, I began searching through the reservations for the next few days, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I discovered that availability kept periodically appearing, at random times and for random party sizes. And it would be gone again shortly after. I treasured this discovery like a secret wish-granting knowledge in my heart, and waited. And when a woman came, saying that her family would be there for the next three days and was there any chance of finding a cancellation, I told her that we had been booked but I would look and see. (Incidentally, breakfast and lunch are in even higher demand than dinner, because there are no princesses at dinner, just the fairy godmother and the mice.)
“How many in your party?”
“Six.” Ooh, not too much chance of a walk-in, then. (Walk-in = someone cancels at the last minute / we manage to squeeze a party in because someone ate their meal quickly or whatever.) That’s more likely for a party of two or four. I might be her only chance. This was Monday night. I searched through Tuesday. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Nothing. Wednesday. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Nothing. Thursday. Breakfast, lunch – a table for six! At noon! Awesome! I double clicked it and clicked “accept” as quickly as I could. No one had better take this out from under me. Grinning, I told the woman that I had found her a table, at 12:00pm on Thursday. Needless to say, she was very happy. I took down her information and gave her her reservation card and was glowing for the rest of the night.
Oh dear, I’m on the fourth page already. But I must tell one last thing. The night was drawing to a close, and we were all in that passageway under the castle at the podium. It is so nice to just stand there, under the castle. Then the fireworks music began.
“Oh, I’m going to go see Tinkerbell!” cried another girl who was working there.
“Oh I want to come too!” I said. My trainer made no objection, so the two of us dashed off through the castle.
From standing right directly in front of the castle – where guests are not allowed to stand – you can’t see any of the big fireworks. But you can see Tinkerbell fly almost right over your head, and see the way they light up the castle right in front of you. A little bit after Tinkerbelle flew we went back into the passageway so that from the other side we would be able to see the fireworks.
“You’ll have to plug your ears for the finale,” the girl told me. “It’s loud.” That’s because the passageway through the castle has lovely, echoey, amplifying acoustics. So I did plug my ears. Oh and we had a very appreciative fireworks crowd, and it was fun to hear them ooh and ahh when we were out in front of the castle.

Well, it’s almost twelve-thirty at night, so I suppose I had better get some sleep…

In Which Moroccans are Delightful

2008-02-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

This post is just going to be a few mostly unconnected anecdotes of my life – which is actually probably how most of my posts will be from now on. That’s kind of how my life feels right now. The work schedule provides the structure and sameness in each week, but interesting things are always happening here and there.

So last week Sunday was probably the physically hardest day of work so far… we were open until 9:30 because the park had extra magic hours until 11pm. And Sunday is always our busiest day anyway, I suppose because Liberty Tree seems like a fitting place to eat, it being served family style and all. And they had me stocking during dinner. At first there’s always nothing to do because they haven’t used anything yet. I had just checked around again and found everything still full when one of the servers said, “The apple juice is out.” So I got the key from Kristin (a manager) and trucked downstairs to replace the syrup, glad that the apple juice boxes are half the size of the other boxes, and at the bottom, so it wouldn’t be too hard. Well, I got down there, replaced the apple juice… and discovered that a bunch of the other syrups were out too. (There’s two boxes per drink per station, so they were still working, but once the other box ran out they’d be done.) So I replaced them – I had to call in passing guys to lift a couple of them because they were on the top shelf. I replaced a total of nine syrup boxes. And then I went upstairs, and all the glasses at far side were gone. Bother, bother, I’d never let them run out of anything before. So I ran around replacing everything – near side was almost out too. And that was pretty much how it went the rest of the night, because we were so busy. And because the servers were so busy, they kept asking me to get things they ran out of that aren’t technically part of stocking, like lemon slices and sugar-free raspberry syrup and chocolate milk and the little cream pitchers. On the third or fourth “could you get us…” I started singing, “Cinderannie, Cinderannie, night and day it’s Cinderannie…” But they were so appreciative that I didn’t really mind. There are advantages to being small, one of which is that people have pity on you when you’re doing hard work. The bad thing, though, was that after stocking for five and a half hours, instead of going home I had to close. All that means is standing by the podium and waving goodbye to people until they’re all gone, so it isn’t very hard, but I was pretty dazed by the time I was going home...
Recently I got to be trained to be greeter, which means I learned how to check people in on the computer and make reservations. For some reason I find it to be great fun, perhaps because it’s interesting. I like calling people up to the second podium (the “door” person is the main greeter and is at the first one) to check in, and if they don’t have a reservation I ask on the radio how long they’ll have to wait. And I am very good at explaining about staying in the lobby. Because we don’t know which people will show up for their reservations and who won’t. So we might say that it will be 35-45 minutes because we have a lot of reservations, but then if several don’t show up and we can seat them earlier, we will. Sometimes the door people don’t explain very well and then when we say 35-45 minutes, they take their pager, and then half their party leaves to go get fastpasses from somewhere or something, and then when in 15 minutes their pager goes off we can’t seat them because we have to have everyone together, and then they are annoyed. We have to have everyone together because we are almost always fully booked and if we are having to wait for the rest of the party to arrive, order, and eat, that table takes that much longer to be done, and meanwhile people are waiting impatiently in the lobby. Know who the crankiest people are? The ones who are all by themselves, and they come in with no reservation thinking that they can just get in, and we tell them it will be 35-45 minutes (because we have a lot of parties of two coming in who have reservations). They decide to stay… but 30 minutes later they’re up at the podium yelling at me that it shouldn’t take this long for just one person and that they’ve seen lots of parties seated who came in after them. I explain politely that the parties were either of a different size, or had reservations, but they keep yelling at me anyway, and then say they want to see a manager. I like it when they say that; it means that Kristin or Mandy can deal with them instead of me. But other than those people, I really like greeting. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe I just like feeling in charge…

We have a lot of servers who are from Morocco: Brahim, Mo, Achraf, Najib, and Sebat, and a couple others whose names I don’t remember. When they all get together in one of the side stations (the place where they get drinks for the guests) they will all start speaking Moroccan. It sounds really cool. They all speak English very well too, of course, albeit with a charming accent.
One night, a couple weeks ago, I was seating a party of guests and I told them,
“Achraf will be your server this evening.”
“Does he speak English well?” one guest inquired, in that sort of haughtily anxious way someone might ask to be sure that the dishes are washed properly or that you’ll be dressing nicely for their honored guests.
“Yes, he speaks English very well,” I replied sweetly. I would have preferred to reply coldly rather than sweetly, but one must be polite to guests. I couldn’t decide whether to be extremely indignant or extremely amused. Over the next weeks as I got to know Achraf, I realized that he would get a huge kick out of it. So one night when he was in the side station and didn’t seem too busy, I asked him with a suppressed grin,
“Achraf, do you speak English well?” He looked slightly baffled, and George, who was also in the side station, said teasingly,
“Oh no, he doesn’t speak English at all.” I rolled my eyes at him and continued to Achraf,
“One of the guests wanted to know.”
“What?” he said, still baffled.
“Well, I told them that Achraf would be their server, and they asked me if you spoke English well. So do you?” I grinned, and he burst out laughing.
“Really?! They asked you that?! Just from the name? Oh no, what table is it?”
“Oh, it was a while ago,” I explained.
“Oh, man, you should have told me! I could have had so much fun with that!” He shook his head, grinning mischievously. “Can – I – take – your – order?” he said slowly, exaggerating his accent.
“Oh dear, I think it’s good I didn’t tell you at the time,” I said. But we laughed about it for the rest of the night, and periodically when he saw me he’d exclaim,
“I can’t believe they asked you that!”
While we’re talking about Morocco (sort of) I think I will tell you about my wonderful Monday morning. On Sunday night (this past Sunday, not the Sunday of stocking forever), when I came home from work Kari was over. So she and Tiff and I were hanging out. Have I told about Kari? Maybe not. She and Dori are Tiff’s friends from back home who started their college programs about halfway through January. Kari and I have connected really well, almost more than Tiff and I do. It’s cool. Especially since originally she and I were both worried that Tiff liked the other one of us better… yeah, that was pretty silly. But anyway, one of the things with us is that we like to always communicate openly what we are thinking and feeling, that if something’s bothering us, big or small, we’ll let the other person know so that we can work it out. In this case, Kari was feeling worried that we would never see each other because Tiff and I both have to work a lot. The thing that means the most to her is spending quality time together, and even though she knew in her head that we couldn’t help our work schedules, her emotions were still telling her that she must not be loved because we weren’t spending time with her. Well, I had the next morning off because I didn’t have to come in until 3:45 instead of noon, so since she was off too, I proposed that we hang out together. We agreed to meet at 10am and head over to World Showcase at Epcot, to be there right when it opened, at 11.
Well, we were at World Showcase when the golden morning light poured down on the nearly empty streets, and the cast members were just opening up the shops. It was beautiful. I’d only ever been at World Showcase in the afternoon, because I guess our usually way of doing a day at Epcot is to start in Future World first thing and then go over to the countries. Well, England is beautiful in the morning. We wandered through the tea shop, and admired the purple flowers growing on a trellis over a path.
In Morocco (see, it did connect back, it just took a while…) we wandered through the little shops that had all kinds of Moroccan things, all beautiful, and we each tried on a beautiful shirt – they are made of lightweight fabric, very flowing, and with embroidery at the collar and sleeves. Kari’s was tan with silver embroidery, mine was black with pink. Kari had been wanting a shirt from Morocco since she came in August, and the one she chose looked lovely on her, so she bought it. I liked mine a lot – for twenty dollars I would have bought it without thinking twice – but I didn’t like it fifty dollars worth. It was different for Kari, she’d been thinking about it and wanting hers for a long time – like me with my Scottish cloak. It was made in Scotland and it’s 100% lambs wool and so soft and beautiful. So I had my saved up special thing already.
Now the food in Morocco smelled absolutely wonderful, and we were getting hungry. We looked at the menu of Restaurant Makkaresh, the sit-down restaurant. We each saw and appetizer that looked good to us – mine was something that was either the same or similar to something I had with my grandparents on my birthday. Then we saw the Combination Appetizer for Two – it included both the things we liked the look of, plus one other thing! It was decided. We went in to the restaurant and we seated right away. It was almost empty. Our waiter was very kind, and it was peaceful in the restaurant. We looked over the drinks, and Kari decided to try the Moroccan coffee. I wanted to drink something interesting too, but it seemed that everything else was alcoholic and I don’t like coffee. Then I saw something called a “Moroccan sunrise” – non-alcoholic, a blend of pineapple juice, strawberries, and orange water. Oooh. So we both got our special drinks. And mine was really good.
Just after we got our drinks, another guy, not our waiter, brought us bread.
“Moroccan bread,” he said, setting it before us, and then, with a half smile, “and American butter.” It was real butter, at least, and not margarine. The bread was a small round loaf, cut in half with half for each of us, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Then our appetizers came. It was a small salad that seemed to have similar ingredients to a Greek salad but with a different sort of dressing. And the two things we had wanted, which were two kinds of pastries, one with beef and one with chicken. When I describe they sound strange – they were somehow both spicy and sweet. The pastry was light and flaky as pastry ought to be and had cinnamon and powdered sugar on top.
We ate almost ceremonially. First the salad, until it was gone. Then half of the chicken pastry. We couldn’t figure out whether to use our fingers or the forks. But trying to use a knife and fork made the pastry go all to pieces, so we just ate with our fingers – and then ended up licking them because how could you waste any of that wonderful cinnamon and powdered sugar? When our waiter came by I asked him,
“Are you supposed to eat the pastry with your fingers or a fork?”
“Well, we eat it with our fingers,” he said, “but you could use a fork if you wanted to.”
“Oh no, fingers work better,” I said. “The fork makes the pastry come apart.”
“Well, there you have it,” he said. So we ate with our fingers guiltlessly – and licked them almost guiltlessly. When we’d eaten about half of the chicken pastry we started eating the beef as well so that we could eat them together, along with the bread we still had some of. It had looked like a rather small amount of food, but the pastry was very filling and we were both stuffed by the end. When we were done, the waiter took our dishes away and then – to our surprise and delight – poured a little rose water into our hands from a golden bottle for us to “refresh” them with. We were walking around smelling our hands for the rest of the morning.

I had another very good time on Tuesday night, but I think writing about it will have to wait, since this is already four pages long. But later… and there’s pictures of that one that you can see if you let me know your e-mail address somehow so I can e-mail you the link to them.

In Which Cinderannie Starts a New Job

2008-02-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

Note to self: Never promise another post “tomorrow.” It’s not a good idea.

Anyway, the time has come for a post of some bits and pieces and anecdotes and descriptions from the Liberty Tree Tavern. They'll be a bit disorganized, but at least I’ll start with training.

How enjoyable your training is depends almost entirely on your trainer. My first time with custodial-specific training, was, as you may recall, dreadful, because I had a not-very-magical instructor whose personality did not complement mine. Then the next two days, I had a fairly good trainer, who if not extremely magical at least made training interesting.
For my first day of Liberty Tree training, I had a wonderful trainer. His name was William, and he is the best person I have ever met at staying in character. I and three other girls were training together, and we were all in our costumes. A note on costumes would, I think, be, good, so you can picture us. The girls’ costume is a top and skirt (but it looks like a dress) that’s a slate blue with floral trim, an apron, and a bonnet sort of hat. I’ll post a picture if I can get one. The guys costume is slate blue knickers and a white long-sleeved shirt with a navy blue vest over it. The knickers are supposed to button at the cuff, but the costume makers seriously underestimated the muscularity of our guys’ calves, so… very few of the cuff buttons get buttoned.
Anyway, William gave us the grand tour of Liberty Square. A lot of it was very familiar to me (“the attractions in Liberty Square are the Haunted Mansion, the Hall of Presidents, and the Liberty Belle steamboat”…) given how often I’d walked around in the area both as a custodial and on days off, but it was so much fun to trail around in our costumes! I felt like I really belonged there. Once a guest asked if he could take our picture. We agreed, of course, and I felt like a celebrity.
William warned us not to cross over into Frontierland.
“We don’t go over there,” he explained. “That’s too wild for us – they’ve got gunfights and cowboys and I don’t know what all else. We’ve got enough to worry about with our own war going on over here.” He’s the first person I’ve known who could say things like that without ever breaking – you know, doing the half-smile or wink, and without using an “I’m telling a story” voice. He said it like he was explaining not to cross the yellow line on a ride, or something like that – like he was perfectly serious about the whole thing. I loved it. This continued for the rest of the day, including when he was showing us where to get the pixie dust to put on people’s tables if someone had a birthday – “delivered to us by Tinkerbelle herself,” he declared. Putting pixie dust on the birthday tables is one of my favorite things – although I have a sneaking suspicion that the handwritten sign that recently appeared above the pixie dust reading “please do not grab too much pixie dust” was directed at me…
The second day of training was not quite as exciting. Ashley was our trainer. Although she was not as in-character, I’m still glad we had her for the second day, because William had a tendency to skip over details, and we needed someone a little more practical to fill in the gaps.
There are five different jobs that we do as seaters. (“Seater” is our overall heading, distinguishing us from “servers.”) I’m going to describe them all for you so that you know what I’m talking about later when I say that I did such-and-such.
Seating. This means that when a slip of paper with a family on it prints out at the podium, we take it and the menus they need, summon the family, and take them to their table. We used to call “Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that we are now seating the _____ family of the colony/territory of __________!” I thought that this was fun. However, we have a pager system now, so we just punch in the number of the pager and the family comes to us. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Sometimes the number is wrong or the pager isn’t working or whatever, and then if they don’t come we call. We also get a high chair or booster seat if the paper says they need one.
Table-setting. This means wiping off the table, sweeping the floor under it if it needs it, and setting the silverware and napkins (and at dinner, salad plates). We used to have to stack all the dishes on the table onto a tray for the server to take away. We didn’t have to carry the tray unless we wanted to. But there were some people from Tony’s restaurant over at Liberty for a while because Tony’s was closed for refurbishment. And at the rest of the restaurants seaters don’t have to bus tables. So the Tony’s people went back and told their people, “At Liberty Tree we had to bus tables!” And those people said, “Hey, they shouldn’t have to bus tables! The other seaters don’t have to bus tables. They aren’t getting busser pay. You can’t make them bus tables.” So we don’t have to bus tables any more, and the servers have to do it themselves. They have mostly taken it very well, although on one of the first days of it I did hear one of them singing, “I’ve seen better days…” But when it gets really busy we still bus them for them. And even when it’s not busy I do Patty’s tables, because she’s the nicest server ever and she used to bus her own tables when she didn’t have to. But the ones who never did their own and who would leave the trays for ages hoping we’d carry them for them… Kim the assigner (she figures out where to put which guests) declares I am not allowed to bus their tables because they need to learn to do it themselves. Another side note about table-setting: whenever I am wiping a round table I feel like I’m back home as a child wiping our dining room table for supper because it is the same color of wood and it was round back when there weren’t such a lot of us and we didn't put all the leaves in.
Folding napkins. Umm… it’s pretty self-explanatory. Fold it in half, fold the two sides into the middle, fold it in half again. Either in the GT office (which is crowded and claustrophobic) or in the Diamond Horseshoe (which is large, beautiful, and pleasant). I wouldn’t want to fold napkins every day, but it makes a very nice break if I’m feeling tired or want to pursue my own thoughts. Also it’s fun to be in the Diamond Horseshoe because periodically various interesting people come by, like the Frontierland street musicians. I think I have forever endeared myself to one of them because I knew that his instrument was a sousaphone, and listened with great interest to him explaining the different finishes of brass instruments. And sometimes the piano player who’s usually at Casey’s corner comes in and plays the piano that’s onstage to practice. When we’re table setting we fold napkins for the first hour (because no tables need setting yet) and when we get all girls and sit around the same table it feels like a quilting bee.
Fourth, set-ups. This means taking the folded napkins and putting a knife, big fork, and little fork on each one. (I am amused by the fact that while technically I suppose they are dinner forks and salad forks, I have never heard anyone refer to them that way. Even the managers call them big forks and little forks.) Then you stack them up and put them on the shelves according to how many – two, four, six, and eight, because those are the table sizes. Then when a table setter needs them, they just come take the stack of however many they need instead of having to count them. Oh, and I had better tell you that instead of “table for four” or “table for six,” we call it a “four-top” or a “six-top.” That’s also used to designate the stacks of napkins and silverware (aka “set-ups”), as in “I’m going to clean table 302, could you grab me a six-top?” Set-ups is another rather dull job, but it also makes a nice break because you can think about whatever you want to.
Last, stocking. This means bringing glasses, coffee mugs, trays, and ice to the drink stations on each side of the restaurant as they are needed, and taking the trash out of the drink stations when it gets full. It is hard work because the things are rather heavy, but it makes the time go by quickly. Some people hate it but I don’t mind it. Actually, it’s kind of fun. Especially like yesterday when Tam the server was impressed with how hard I was working and asked me if I wanted to work in his bakery someday when he starts it. I said, “Sure.” That seemed like the right sort of answer since of course I wouldn’t really promise to take a job sometime in the indeterminate future in an unknown location, but I liked the idea of it. Sort of like my mom and her friend saying they were going to run away to Tahiti. Stocking yesterday was actually very dull. For some reason nobody wanted to eat at Liberty Tree for lunch. Half the restaurant was empty, and we were all standing around bored. Although it was nice because I got to chat with some of the servers, and normally we’re all running around like crazy and can’t do that. Then when it was dinner time, we had a million people because it was raining outside and everyone wanted to come in and eat. We set towels out on the desk because everyone was coming in soaking wet…

Dinner at Liberty Tree is a character dinner, with Goofy, Minnie, Pluto, and Chip and Dale. I love them; they make life interesting… the first day I was table setting, I had put the silverware out on a table and was about to set out the plates, when Goofy came up and indicated to me that I ought to set the plates by standing in one place and frisbeeing them into their respective positions! I told him that I couldn’t do that, I would surely break the plates. “I could do it,” he said. I just shook my head and laughed. (And of course, he didn’t really say, “I could do it” out loud. But the characters say what they mean so well that when I think about it afterward, I can’t remember what motions they used, only what they communicated to me. So throughout my tales, I will say what the characters “said” as I understood it, quotation marks and all, rather than attempting to recall the motions they used to convey it. It’s easier.) And they are always teasing and goofing around, especially if we aren’t very busy or it’s toward the end of the night. Then Goofy will be balancing a tray on his nose, or putting one knee on a chair and sliding across the floor, pushing with the other foot as though it was a scooter, and Chip and Dale and Goofy will all be pulling each other’s aprons off, so the character attendants have to fix them… Patrick the character captain shakes his finger at them and scolds them, reminding me of a grumpy grandfather of several rambunctions children, who shakes his head and orders them to behave and pretends to be cranky but really loves them all.

I expect that’s enough for tonight. At least now you have a picture of what I’m doing these days. I’m working long hours, but enjoying it. And my coworkers are great too. Oh and Tiff (my roommate)’s friends Kari and Dory have arrived from Washington state to start their college programs, and we’re hitting it off just marvelously, especially Kari and I who spent all of today together and had a grand time. Most fun I’ve ever had running errands, I think. Oh and I bought my mother’s birthday presents today :-) It was the last day of the 40% holiday discount so of course I spent way too much money. I’m think I’m a bit of a spendthrift.
(Of course after thinking that I had to look up spendthrift on dictionary.com to see if that was true. Most of the definitions talked about spending money “wastefully,” “recklessly,” or “foolishly.” I don’t think I do that. But there was one definition that I think fits, from the Kennerman English Multilingual Dictionary. “A person who spends his money freely and carelessly.” That’s it exactly. I tend to spend money freely and carelessly. But then I make my own food cheaply (I can make a whole pot of hearty nutritious vegetable soup for a little over $5!) and don’t spend lots of money eating out to make up for it. But this is the last shopping spree type trip, because I don’t have the discount excuse anymore. From now on all purchases are thought about carefully and pondered for a few weeks before I decide if I really want it badly enough to spend the money on it. Okay, enough of me rambling about being a spendthrift…)
Oh and I have a library card now! At some point I’ll have to tell that story…

Love to all, and good night.

In Which Everything Changes

2008-01-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

For anyone who doesn’t know and hasn’t heard (which might by this point be no one), I am extending my college program until May – my new departure date is May 16th. I think I will tell everything of importance pertaining to the transition between apartments and jobs as it happened.

On January 3rd, I worked from 11:30 until 8:00. It was my eighth straight day of working, and the 4th of January was moving day, to a new apartment. When I found out that my schedule was going to be like that, I had planned out when I was packing and when I was sleeping, and as a result I was not horribly sleep deprived and had most of my things packed. I knew I would be up all night, however, because I and my roommates were all going to go out for supper, and then the custodials were going to Perkins at 1am after the closers were done with their shifts. Which meant that final packing and cleaning would commence at 3am. Yeah.
I called Tiffany, the girl who I met at the winter formal, to ask if she still wanted to be roommates. The answer was a very enthusiastic yes, so we agreed to meet at my apartment at 10am the next day. Check-in was to begin at 10:30 and we wanted to get there early for a better chance of rooming together and staying at Chatham.
When Nic came home from saying goodbye to a few of her friends from work, at around 10pm, we discussed where to eat. It was Nic’s birthday, so she got to choose, and she wanted to go to Earl of Sandwich. (It took us a while to decide because it was cold out and at first we weren’t sure we wanted to walk through downtown Disney when it was so cold.) When we finally decided we left in a flurry because we had just enough time to make it to the restaurant. Fortunately we made it in time and had a very delicious meal.
When we returned we were all packing, and not to much later I left and went to Perkins, where I joined all the other custodials. We took up an enormous table, there were about 30 of us, and we were rather loud. It was fun, except we were all kind of sad. I got lots of people’s Facebook names so we could keep in contact.
I was one of the first to tear myself away, since I knew I had lots of packing to do. I said goodbye to everyone. The hardest to say goodbye to was Ian, because he was the only one that I was really close to who wasn’t extending. He had been a wonderful encouragement to me, both by talking to me and helping me with closing trash runs. So I said goodbye to him, and to all the others, and went on home.
Most of the others were asleep. I just went on packing, and it went on forever, and finally it was nearly morning. Then we all got up because at 6:10 the shuttle would come to take PJ and Kara and Marijka to the airport. So we all went to see them off, and PJ and Kara and Marijka and Nic were all crying, and I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. Then everything got ridiculously confusing because we were there waiting and then a bunch of other people came who were also supposed to take the 6:10 shuttle and there wasn’t nearly enough room on the shuttle for all those people’s luggage and we had told the man that there were four of us (PJ’s friend was going too) and he had that in his head, and wouldn’t listen to us when we tried to explain that we hadn’t know about the other people, and he didn’t speak much English. I kept feeling like this was the part where you go find the grown up, except there wasn’t one. We were the grown ups. Ugh. Usually that sort of thing happens on a youth trip and then we go find Don, or Doc Carroll on the Greece trip, and then he comes and makes everything work. But eventually the man said that they would send another shuttle very soon for the others. So we sent off our friends, and walked slowly back through the dark to our apartment. Abby had driven, but somehow Nic and Dani and I wanted to walk anyway – it was like we needed the walking time to adjust to their departure.
Most of the others went back to sleep after this. I continued packing – slowly but surely, I was finishing. And at 10am when Tiffany showed up at the door, everything was packed except the food items (which wouldn’t fit in my car).
We went over to registration, and waited in line for a long time, and met a guy who neither of us remember his name, but we talked the whole time. And then we checked in, and requested a three- or four-bedroom apartment, on the second or third floor. Happily, they had one for us, a three-bedroom on the second floor. After we had gotten our pictures taken for our new housing ids, and completed other assorted paperwork and paraphernailia, we were able to start moving in.
The afternoon was chaotic and stressful – I still had to go back and get all the food items out of my apartment, do some last tiding, and put away all the food items – and then there was the pile of things that filled my whole side of the room. The comforting thing was that Tiffany has a similar personality to mine, so her side of the room was also completely full of stuff. It was also nice that she was very confident in herself and comfortable, which meant she could both say something friendly to me when we ran into each other and not leave me feeling “uncool” and out of it, and not feel the need to make small talk and ask me questions when I was running in and out. She made me feel at ease without “trying to make me feel at ease,” if that makes any sense. But also I lost my keys along the way, which was a problem because I needed to turn in my old apartment key. I thought they were dropped in my stuff somewhere, but they didn’t seem to be, and then I thought they must have been left in my old apartment so I went back there. A cleaning team was cleaning – fortunately the man was the accommodating, friendly sort, and looked up brightly when I entered. When I said it was my old apartment and that I thought I might have left my keys, he said,
“Oh, I did see keys!” He hastily dug into the trash bag on the counter, saying apologetically,
“I’m sorry, they told us to throw everything away,” and pulled out my keys. “They were under the couch cushions.”
“Thank you so much!” I said, and, surveying the amount of assorted junk that had been left in the apartment, said, “I’m sorry that we left so much stuff.”
“Oh, it’s all right, this was way better than a lot of them,” he said. “If there’s anything else here you forgot or want you can take it.”
Gratefully, I dug through the things on the counter and in the trash bag, and found my Eeyore mug that I had just bought! Along with a few other things I thought I might still want. Thanking him again – he even grabbed me a plastic bag to put the things in – I left, much happier than I had been and very grateful that I had been spared from the just deserts of my disorganization.
That evening, Tiff and I went to the apartment of the guy we met in line and watched Pirates 3. That movie is much better the second time. The first time I didn’t understand it very well. And then the three of us had a very interesting theological discussion. It came up because the apartment was creeping him out – when he had arrived the entire place was filthy, dirty dishes and trash all over, and he had found a notebook full of bitter, angry writing, and now it just felt, as he put it, “dark.” So that got us onto the concept of religion in general, and from there into what Tiff and I believed. He was very open and curious, and I hope that we get to talk with him again.
The next day was more unpacking and organizing… and I’m going to skip ahead a bit to the next things that are interesting. Actually, come to think of it, it wasn’t until the next day that I went to get my key. Yikes, maybe it was even the day after that. Oh dear.
Actually, I’m going to skip back a little bit, to something important that happened while we were checking in. When I came up to the last table of checking in stuff, the lady asked me,
“Have you heard from your new position yet?”
“No, not yet,” I said. I knew I was going to be working in one of the restaurants, but I didn’t know where yet – not even which kingdom or resort. I was hoping to stay in the Magic Kingdom – Cinderella’s Royal Table was my first choice, followed by Liberty Tree Tavern. I very much hoped not to be banished to a dull restaurant at a resort.
“Well, they should have contacted you. You might hear from them today, but I’m going to look them up here and get them to give you your training information.” She began paging through a booklet of papers that listed names and locations looking for my name.
“Wait, does that mean I get to find out my new location now?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. Just then she found my name. I read the words at the same time she said them –
“Liberty Tree Tavern.”
“Yes! Yes yes yes!” I cried, jumping up and down. She smiled, and I have no idea what she said because I was too excited. Just something along the lines of “you should hear from them soon.” And indeed, I received my training schedule via e-mail very soon.
So there is the account of me moving. I’ll post again tomorrow with what’s been happening in the mean time, and about my new job – there’ll be a good deal more Disney magic in the next post, so you’ll have to bear with this duller one.

In Which We All Choke on Poison Ocean

2007-12-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an amazing day. I woke up at 9:30 at started getting ready for the graduation picnic. My roommates were around getting ready too – in a leisurely fashion – and although the picnic started at 10 we didn’t leave until past 11. We all dressed up a little bit for it, just because we felt like it. Marijka tried to get me to wear a skirt of hers but it was a bit short, so I just wore my nice jeans. Dani was glad because she was in jeans too and didn’t want to be the only one not wearing a skirt. Incidentally, I don’t own any dressy shirts, other than the button-up ones I bought just for this so that I would have “professional” clothing. I hadn’t realized this until we were getting ready. My version of “dressing up a little bit” is to wear a shirt I feel pretty in and take a bit of extra care with my make up. Hmm. I suppose it’s not a bad thing.
When we got there we first signed up for the paddleboat races, then wandered about a bit, and then went and got our graduation Mickey ear hats! They are like the regular black Mickey ear hats but with a graduation tassel. They came in just one size, which meant that mine was too big and PJ’s was too small, but we all put them on with great delight anyhow. We were going to get our certificates, but then decided that having to carry them around for the rest of the picnic would get old rather quickly, and we would get them just before we left.
We then saw a line for meeting Mickey in a graduation outfit, so we got in line. While were in line we took several pictures of all of us together. Then after waiting a while we realized that we had to be at the paddleboat races at 12:35, and that we still needed to eat, and it was nearly 12:15. So we ditched the line and went and got food. It was normal picnic food, hot dogs and hamburgers. Marijka’s friend Lindsey (she’s from Iowa) and I were greatly disappointed in the corn on the cob. It was dreadful. But the hotdogs were all right.
After lunch we scurried over to the paddleboat dock and got on our life jackets. The teams were PJ and Nic, me and Abby, Dani and Kara, and Marjika and Lindsey (but the last two had to go on the next race because there wasn’t space). There were eight teams per race. They lined us up on the edge of the dock – and fortunately no one was cheating-prone and we all lined up evenly. They said “Go,” and we went. I instantly realized that paddleboating was harder than I thought. My legs hurt very quickly, but we kept going. We were supposed to go around the buoy but we went different ways and had a head on collision. For several moments the four boats (there were two buoys, one on each side) were all stuck, bashed into each other. Abby and I were the second to break free, and pedaled madly away. One boat was way ahead, due to the fact that they didn’t bother going around a buoy. So they were disqualified. We were close to two other boats, but couldn’t pull ahead of them, so we got third. I thought third of eight wasn’t bad, and we won water bottles (but they were cheap boring plastic ones, so it wasn’t especially thrilling). I was exhausted after that and had to sit down for a little. Then we got our certificates, and were sitting in chairs, until I heard them doing Disney trivia over the loudspeaker and hopped up to go see if I could win a prize. Unfortunately, the prizes were more boring waterbottles. And they were doing it by choosing a random person with their hand up and not by speed. Rats. They also occasionally gave beach towels, which I would have loved to win, but since I wasn’t in the front it was no good. Ah well. The exciting thing was that while I was up there, both Kara and Marijka’s names got called for caricatures, so we got to watch them be drawn. Marjika’s was good but Kara’s wasn’t done as well – they didn’t capture her the way Marijka was captured.
After that things were starting to close down, so we walked back home and got ready to go to the beach. I couldn’t find my swimsuit so I just dressed in clothes that I didn’t mind getting wet. We all crammed in one car even though there were six of us – Kara and Marijka double buckled – because we didn’t want to spend the gas money for two cars. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was certainly fun! We didn’t know how to get there (to Cocoa beach, the closest one to us) other than what freeway to get on and which direction, but since there weren’t any have-to-have-a-plans among us, we just went for it. (I only have to have a plan if it’s something that can be missed or ruined, like going to a play. A spontaneous trip to the beach can be just as fun if it ends in being lost, if everyone just laughs at the adventure.) Fortunately, there were signs all the way there, so we made it no problem. We stopped at a gas station when we were almost there, and Dani and I were hungry so we bought egg rolls and taquitos, which were surprisingly good. As we were going down the little road to the public access beach entrance, Dani said,
“You can smell the ocean!” and then Dani and Kara and I were all coughing at once. Dani and I thought we had both just happened to choke on our food at the same time, and Kara jokingly said we were allergic to the ocean. We got out of the car and went gleefully down the wooden path to the sand. The water looked pretty but it did smell rather bad. We waded a little, but the smell made swimming uninviting. And we were all coughing more and more. At first we thought it was just the salt in the air, but when it just went on and on with all of us coughing and choking we thought there had to be something else. And the sand was an ugly dull brown gray, and Marijka and I both thought this was a travesty.
“The sand in the Philippines is white!” Marijka complained.
“The sand in Michigan is golden!” I bemoaned.
“This is the color of the sand at Rocky Point,” Dani declared cheerfully. She was really the only one of us who liked that place, and her only because it reminded her of where she used to vacation with her family.
Then Dani picked up a jelly fish.
“Dani, drop it!” I cried.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s a Portuguese man o’ war!” The beach was full of them, of all different sizes. We had to watch our step. (This also confirmed our decision to not swim.) And dead fish too. And we all kept coughing the whole time, and the sand was dull and ugly – it reminded me of one of those apocalyptic scenes in a movie where everything has gone wrong and turned desolate and poisoned.
So we walked down the beach to the pier and went up it to look at the shops. We went in two of them, and tried on hats. And then we went to a little ice cream store and bought two cups of ice cream and shared them between us all – cotton candy and “garbage can,” an ice cream with 7 kinds of candy bar pieces in it. We thought that that was a frightful name for such a nice ice cream. Dani bought it because she was the only one with cash and they only took cash. We asked the lady about how the air was making us choke – PJ’s allergies were kicking in and his eyes were watering like crazy – and she explained that it was the red tide. It’s an algae bloom and it releases a neurotoxin that kills the fish and things. Great.
We went back to the car after that. On the way we saw an old lady out walking her dog – wearing a surgical mask. That was encouraging. We were pretty glad to get back in the car and leave.
The way home was interesting – it was a toll road and we were scrambling for cash because we had almost none. We just barely came up with enough change to pay the last toll.
When we got back it was about seven o’clock. We changed clothes and then went to the Magic Kingdom to get our hats embroidered with our names. We were going to take the bus, and left just in time to catch it. And then when I was getting on I realized I had left my housing ID. And the driver wouldn’t let me on the bus even though I had my Disney ID and my driver’s license and all my roommates there. It made me so mad – more because of the blank, completely indifferent way he just shook his head to tell me no than anything else. No “I’m sorry, we just can’t make exceptions,” no nothing except a blank face and a head shake. I hate it when people don’t care. I hate it. I would have liked to just walk past him onto the bus, just to make him react. But anyway, Dani was very sweet and walked back with me so I could get my ID and we could drive to Magic Kingdom while the others took the bus, and talked to me to help me stay calm. I’ve been fighting panic attacks for the past few days and this wasn’t helping. But I grabbed my ID and car keys, and we called the others to have them meet us at the TTC so we could take the monorail together.
The monorail was mostly empty, of course, since the park was closing in just over an hour. PJ was enjoying saying “Por favor, manténganse alejado de las puertas!” along with the monorail announcer, and he was very excited when I told him that they have shirts that say that. So when we got there, as soon as we had gotten our hats embroidered – mine says “Jonesy” because that’s what all my roommates call me, I love having a nickname – we went to the Emporium so that he could buy it. Then it was time for the fireworks so we went out into the street to watch them. Kara had never seen them before. Then we were hungry, especially Kara, so we all piled in my car and went to Denny’s. Abby joined up with us there – I forgot to say she didn’t come to beach because she had to take an exam – and we all had a nice meal. Then we went home, not quite so squishedly because we had Abby’s car as well as mine. We all went to bed pretty fast because we were so tired. And that is the tale of yesterday.
Today I baked cookies, and that’s all. And I need to go to sleep.

In Which Two Very Full Days Go By

2007-12-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

(Note: This post turned out rather long, so if you want to skim, be my guest.)

I don’t really want to write this post. I don’t want to relive the day before yesterday again – I’d rather forget about it, at least for now. But you deserve to know what’s going on, so, here goes, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Since I didn’t get home from work until past 3am on Tuesday night (I left work at about 2:30 and then had to stop at Walmart to get cardstock and a hole punch and a gold pen for wrapping Christmas presents), I decided to go to the 4pm audition instead of the 10am one, since the 10am would have given me about three hours sleep. So I got a reasonable night’s sleep and got up in the morning feeling quite well. I did a load of laundry so that I would have the exact clothes I wanted for the audition, IMed my good friend Ali for quite a while, and wrote out notes to go inside the Christmas presents for my friends and family.
Since I was feeling creative, and missing my friends and family and wanting to make things as pretty and nice as possible for them, I was decorating the little cards by painting a holly rubber stamp I had (the leaves green and the berries red) and stamping it on the little cards. Nic came in as I was painting the stamp. She came to a dead stop in the middle of the room and stared at me.
“No – no, tell me you’re not – you are.” She surveyed my cards spread over the table, and shook her head. “I am officially calling you Martha Stewart.” Now, “Martha Stewart” is one accusation that this very disorganized and crafting challenged girl has never gotten. So I decided to take it as a compliment, even though she didn’t mean it that way. As long as I can stay out of jail…
I left for auditions at 2:45, and arrived at about 3:10, twenty minutes before the stated half-hour early. I went in, trying not to feel self-concious about my shoes as I saw what everyone else was wearing. You see, everyone was wearing either tennis shoes or simple black dance shoes, neither of which I own. I was wearing my Cinderella shoes, and had brought my ballet slippers in case. But looking around I felt that ballet slippers would be ostentatious, and I was afraid that my Cinderella shoes would not work well for dancing in and might fall off or be slippy. A few people were in Converse, and I thought perhaps I should have worn those. But no, I’m not fully used to them yet, and they might have been awkward for dancing. One girl was in flip-flips and didn’t seem to have brought other shoes with her, so she must being going to dance barefoot. Perhaps I could do that.
I had filled out my form and stood in line to turn it in, and received my number – 239, got measured – 5’3” as usual, and got my picture taken – I hate how I can feel when I’m smiling fake but I can’t fix it. Then I sat down near the girl who I met at fairy auditions – the feisty one – who I was happy to see was there. And I found out her name is Carrie. So Carrie and I and the few other girls who were her friends all sat in a circle and chatted. And they started calling out numbers at apparent random, but soon we figured out that they were checking our record cards and calling out those who had too many points. Two or three of us started cringing in panic, especially Carrie who thought she was just barely under the limit. I knew I was all clear because I don’t have anything on my record at all. They kept moving up the numbers – and then Carrie got called. And we all were sad and worried. And she came back, and told us that she had too many and couldn’t do it. And we were all bummed for her together.
After what seemed like an extremely long time, they finally called everyone together to sit on the floor and hear announcements and information. Much to our disappointment, the man said that they had a very successful audition tour this year, and as a result there were very few spots available, and so if it happened that there wasn’t a role in your height range, then through no fault of your own, even if you were a great dancer and very animated, you simply wouldn’t be able to get a role. Rats. But we all were taken into the big dancing room to be taught our combination, by the same small perky lady who taught the dance combination when I auditioned in Lansing. It was nice to see a familiar face.
It turned out to be an extremely easy combination, and my shoes weren’t a problem at all. I danced it with enthusiasm and accuracy, and looking around at everyone (there were about 60 of us) it seemed to me that I was doing the steps better than many, and being more animated than most. This was very comforting to me, though I wasn’t sure if I just thought that because I couldn’t see myself and I actually wasn’t being as animated as I felt. At any rate, when I was doing the combination for the second time, I managed to catch the eye of one of the audition watcher people and smile at them, and have them smile back at me, without missing a step. I felt that the smile that had been returned to me was a genuine smile of pleasure, that that person liked what she saw.
When we had all done the combination, they told us to sit on the floor and chat amongst ourselves while they talked, and turned some bouncy music on. We were all pretty full of nervous energy, and all of a sudden two people were standing up and dancing to the music. It wasn’t thirty seconds before every person was on their feet and dancing around. It made a nice way to pass the time, as well as being a lot of fun. I saw one girl who had been amazingly animated and good at dancing, so I told her so, which made her happy. I couldn’t help thinking that if she didn’t get in, nobody was getting in. She looked like a character when she danced.
Finally they turned off the music and had us all sit back down. Then they called off numbers into three groups. First group called off – no me. But no girl-who-was-characterish either, so I didn’t give up hope. Second group – no me, no girl-who-was-characterish. Third group – everyone who was left. I looked around. In this group were a bunch of the people who I had noticed as not being able to dance. Rats. Rats rats rats. Unless they were going to split us up again, this was it. The guy took us out to the main lobby where we had been waiting before, and we waited, and then another guy came and told us that they didn’t have parts for us. When he was done talking, I stood up and quickly got my bag. I could feel I was going to cry so I went right out to my car. As I was leaving, I heard people talking about it maybe making a difference if you had put you were available for full-time because maybe they needed full-time people not CPs. When I was in my car I started thinking. I had only put available for CP because these were the extension auditions, and I thought that was what we were supposed to put (they use the same forms for all the auditions). What if I had messed things up for myself? I could do full time. I didn’t know what to do about this. I was driving away, but then I turned around and came back. I had to know. The audition people were so friendly and kind. It wouldn’t be to awful to just go and ask whether it made a difference – after all, they’d already said no, what more could they do?
When I slipped back into the lobby, I was happy to see that the same girls I had been talking to were gathered in a circle in the same place as before the auditions. I dropped to sitting on the floor with them, and told them what I was thinking. They agreed that it couldn’t hurt to ask. So I took a deep breath and walked over to the audition people.
“Can I help you?” said a man with gray hair and a kind smile.
“Could I ask a question?”
“Sure. You can ask two if you want.” I laughed, and said,
“Well, you know people always speculate after auditions, and we were speculating, and I wondered if it made a difference if we put we were available for full time.” I paused briefly, figure out how to continue, and he said,
“Who’s speculating – your little circle over there?”
“Yeah,” I answered with a half-smile.
“Well, then, let’s go over there, and I can answer all your questions instead of you speculating.” So, much to my astonishment, he walked over with me to our little circle and plunked down on the floor.
And we had a wonderful talk. He explained that the full time didn’t matter – it was basically a height thing. And really, he asked, would you rather be turned down because you’re a bad dancer or because you’re just the wrong height? We discussed our options and where we all would go from here. And he said that if we wanted, we could audition again at the end of May before graduation, and that we could also after going home audition at next year’s college program auditions. And he talked about our majors and professional internships that might be available, and in general made us feel like worthwhile people who had a hope and a future instead of rejects. When I left, I felt much better and not so much like I was going to cry. I thought I was going to be okay.
Then, on the way home, I took the wrong road. But it looked like if I could take a road left, I would end up where I wanted to go. But there were no roads left. Then it said “Toll Plaza one mile.” Uh oh, better turn around. There was no place to turn around between the sign and the toll plaza. What the point of the warning sign was, I have no idea. So I had to drive through, and pay $1.50. Ugh. So I thought I’d better turn around now and go back, since this road wasn’t working out for me. And after I turned around, just a few hundred yards from the toll plaza, I discovered that there was another plaza on the other side of the road. I explained to the lady what had happened, but she still made me pay another $1.50. So I’d had to pay $3.00 to be on a road I never wanted to be on. $3.00 could have bought a churro with chocolate sauce, or funnel cake, or a cinnamon roll at the Main Street Bakery. And I started to cry and couldn’t stop. I wasn’t crying because of the $3.00 really, of course, I was crying because I couldn’t be Alice, or Wendy, or flying Tinkerbell, or even a fur character. And I cried most of the way home, managing to pull myself together before I came into my apartment.
To my happiness, Nic was the only one there. If I was going to pick one of my roommates to have around if something had happened, it would be Nic. She gave me a hug, and then went out and bought me pizza because I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was 6:30. And we sat and ate pizza and talked and I felt better.
Then I checked my e-mail, and called my mother and told her about everything, which was a relief, and finished writing the present notes. Everyone gradually came home and started getting ready for the college program Winter Formal which was that night. Earlier that day – I forgot to write about this – Marijka found a dress that fit me of hers and so I was going to wear it. As soon as all the notes were written I started getting ready. It is fun to all get ready with a bunch of girls, I like it. The sensation of the evening was Dani putting eyeliner on Abby, because she doesn’t normally wear makeup – and she went from fairly pretty to gorgeous. Every time another one of us saw her for the first time, we just said, “WOW.” Dani did my eye make up too, and it turned out pretty good but it wasn’t the sensation Abby’s was, which was okay with me. Besides, the fact that I had been crying didn’t help. But I turned out cute in my borrowed dress and shoes and I was satisfied.
The formal was… not my thing. The best part was meeting Mickey and Minnie. And meeting a girl who was wearing a crown of pearly white beads and a cloak with a silver design on the back. I watched her walk by at one point and thought, “Kindred spirit! There’s my people!” So before we left I found her and talked to her and when I told her that I saw her and it was like a breath of fresh air and that I thought she was a kindred spirit she said,
“Christian?”
“Yes!” I said, astonished. That hadn’t even been what I meant! She was just “weird like us.” Well, we hadn’t been talking for five minutes before we’d decided that if her extension request is approved, we’ll be requesting to be roommates next semester. Her name is Tiffany. There is just one trouble in my mind, and it is this: I think it has been good for me to room with people who think differently from me. I am a bit worried now that rooming with Tiffany, who thinks like me, will be a copping out and going back to my comfort zone, instead of branching out and reaching out and experiencing those who are different from me. But if God doesn’t want me to room with her, why did he bring us together so suddenly and randomly like that? I am uncertain.
After the formal we all went out to Perkins. Nic and I shared a Belgian waffle, and we both got milk. It was nice. And when we got home it was about 2am, and I started wrapping presents, because I had to send them off with my grandparents the next day. I had forgotten all about the formal when I had planned my time frame for the presents, and had been planning on getting them wrapped that evening after auditions. So I wrapped from 2am until nearly 7am, and then slept from 7 until 9:45.
Needless to say I was a bit sleepy all through the next day, but I had a grand time with my grandparents at Epcot anyway. I even got them to go on Soarin’, and they liked it. And we watched the candlelight processional – which included a reading of the Christmas story and lots of Christmas hymns. It was so lovely and so refreshing. There was even a part where the narrator told about Jesus as a grown man, and everything she said was accurate. I was amazed. Although it was the truth and nothing but the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth – they left out the resurrection. It was weird, I don’t realize how much I am inwardly anticipating the description of the resurrection during a description of Jesus’ death until it doesn’t come. But anyway, they did mighty good for a secular environment. I didn’t have to cringe at anything, and I enjoyed it very much.
After that we wandered on through the countries, rode Maelstrom, and ate at the Cantina de San Angel, which was delicious, especially since we were so hungry. We wanted to get dessert after that but everything was closed, so we just ate the candy we bought in Germany instead. Buying that candy was an amusingly spur of the moment thing. We had wandered through many shops in different countries without buying anything, and admired many things. In Germany in the candy store I told them how the dark chocolate Toblerones (chocolate with toffee and nougat bits inside) were amazing, and Grandpa said something like, “Then we’ll buy you one.” It is odd – when Grandpa Richard offers to buy me something, I can just accept it happily, whereas with Grandma Sally I have to think about whether I should or not. I think it is because with Grandma Sally, she is a grandmother, and wants me to be happy, so she offers to buy me everything I like, and if I accepted everything she’d be spending a ridiculous amount of money and I’d have more stuff than I knew what to do with. Whereas with Grandpa Richard, he just rarely and randomly declares that he’s going to buy me something. But anyway, then at the counter there was almond bark which Grandpa Richard loves so Grandma Sally told him he could get some, so he got a nice big piece, and then there was hazelnut praline which Grandma Sally loves, so she got that. So we all three left the shop with candy we loved, all trying to tell ourselves we weren’t going to eat any until after dinner even though we were soooo hungry, but while we were in line for Maelstrom we all ate a bite anyhow. And then ate the rest after dinner (but I didn’t eat all mine because you can only eat so much dark chocolate at a time).
When we got back to my apartment they came in and waited and chatted with me and my roommates while I unwrapped and rewrapped Bram’s present because I found something in Japan that he had to have. Meanwhile Kara and PJ (he’s Kara’s friend and visits us a lot, I like him, he is friendly and pleasant to be around) were watching one of those crime-stopping shows, CSI Miami I think, which I try not to watch often because they always seem to be about creepy twisted crimes and I have decided that being entertained by the sort of thing, even by the stopping of it, is not healthy for my imagination and mind. So anyway it was another creepy one about this mental institution where they torture the prisoners and a cop goes undercover into it to expose them, and anyway it was scary and I thought Grandma Sally and Grandpa Richard would be offended by it and I was trying to wrap the present as fast as possible so they could leave (usually my roommates are really good about turning off the TV when my grandparents are here but Kara had been wanting to watch this episode for ages), but then I looked at my grandparents and they seemed to be somewhat fascinated by the episode and were asking Kara about the plot of it to figure out what they missed. So either they were being incredibly polite good actors or they weren’t offended by it. Grandma you can tell me which it is :-)
Oh dear, this is getting way too long and there’s still another thing I want to write about. Ah well, you can skim if you’re bored.
Next week, on the 10th,11th, and 12th are our graduation picnics. My roommates and I were all going to go to the Wednesday one and go to the beach afterward. I hadn’t gotten my ticket yet because I’m a horrible procrastinator and I had never walked down to the front desk to get it. Then I got the college program weekly e-mail yesterday and it said that no more tickets were available for the 12th. Oh no oh no oh no, was the 12th Wednesday? I grabbed my calendar and flipped it open. Yes, the 12th was Wednesday.
“Oh no!” I said aloud. How could I have done this to myself? I am so stupid!
“What is it?” asked my roommates Dani and Nic and Marijka who were in the room. I explained, and they began trying to figure out what to do. Maybe I could still slip in somehow to be with them, and at least I could still go to the beach with them afterward. Then Dani said,
“Well, go right now to the front desk and ask,” and the others agreed,
“Go right now, go right now.” Inwardly I wasn’t sure what the point was of going right then if they were sold out, but I was hating myself for procrastinating, and ending my procrastination at that moment, even if it wasn’t going to do any good, seemed like a sort of penance or atoning action or something. So I went, yelling at myself all the way. I had an impulse to pray about it, but I felt that I had absolutely done this to myself, and not only that but I did this to myself continually and when things went wrong I always hoped it would work out somehow and I was completely irresponsible and I needed to take my lumps this time and not keep thinking that I could get away with procrastinating and that someone or something else would make it come out right in the end. In the words of Jiminy Cricket, “You buttered your bread, now sleep in it!”
So I arrived at the front desk, and told the man I needed a graduation ticket.
“Which day would you like?” he asked,
“Well, I’d like the 12th, but it said it was sold out,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” he said, smiling ruefully. I was starting to ask if I could be put on a wait list or something when he held up his hand to me, and, looking past me, said, “Hold on.” Thinking that someone either important or who looked desperate was coming, I stepped to the side and looked to see who it was.
A couple walked up, each holding a ticket, and the girl said to the man,
“We need to switch from the 12th to the 11th, is that all right?”
I stifled a shriek. The man smiled very big, and traded their tickets, tucking one into the ticket box and handing the other to me. I signed my name to say that I had received the ticket, and clasped it to my chest, almost in tears.
“I wasn’t meaning to be rude, telling you to wait,” the man said. “I just saw them coming up behind you.”
“No, no, that’s fine, that’s wonderful!” I said. “I’m so happy. All my roommates are graduating on the 12th and I wanted to be with them.” And I flew back to my roommates to tell them the good news. So that is my tale of getting what I absolutely did not deserve. And normally I hate those dumb stories where the angels discuss what God does and are baffled by it, but I couldn’t help that a picture came to mind of my guardian angel saying to God,
“You know, if you keep getting her off the hook like that, she’s never going to learn to stop procrastinating!” I know it’s inaccurate and heretical, but it made me smile nonetheless. And I’m going to prove him wrong, and leave right now to go to the park lost and found to ask about something I lost, because I’ve been putting that off because I’m afraid they won’t have it and I’ll be sad. But no more, I’m going today.
Love to all.

In Which Cinderannie Auditions

2007-11-26T13:59:00.000-08:00

Well, well, my birthday has come and gone, and so has Thanksgiving and the two weeks my family was here. With all that having happened, I’m not sure what to write about. I think I’ll just write about whatever scattered events come to mind.
First, a little about my birthday. My grandparents were here all day, and we went to the Magic Kingdom and to Epcot. At the Magic Kingdom, when we first came in, there were cast members turning a jump rope for kids to jump, and I took a turn and jumped 20 times. Grandpa Richard jumped in while I was jumping, jumped several times, and jumped back out again! I ask you, how many people over seventy can do that? I asked him at one point during the day how old he felt, and he said that right then he felt fifty, but when he was biking he felt thirty. I have come to the conclusion that the number one attaches to oneself is completely immaterial. For instance, I felt about sixteen throughout that day, despite it being my twentieth birthday.
I can’t remember what rides we rode on, because I’ve been on most of them several times, but I remember that we rode the Liberty Belle steamboat because Grandpa Richard really wanted to ride it to see how it worked, and that we went on the Haunted Mansion and Grandma Sally didn’t particularly like it, and we didn’t ride Splash Mountain because we didn’t want to get wet. We got sundaes at the Plaza Ice Cream Parlour, and the person taking orders had everyone in the whole shop sing to me. And we went to Tom Sawyer Island, and Grandpa Richard let me wander off my myself for a little and that was fun, and then we came back and shopped at the candy store in Frontierland and they bought me lollipops and Jelly Bellies, and we ate lunch at the Plaza Restaurant, and eventually took the monorail to Epcot. The food and wine festival was going on there, and we wandered through the countries, sampling whatever food looked best. And it poured down rain and got very cold, and my grandparents bought me a rain poncho so I would not freeze. And we watched Illuminations.
Oh and my father called me while we were on the monorail but it was so loud that I couldn’t hear him at all, so he called me back a little later once we were at the park. He was in Mexico at the time. I was glad he called.
(I’m sorry this is coming out so weird and choppy. I haven’t felt very well since yesterday and my brain has gone away somewhere else. Bear with me, and skim whatever gets dull.)
Oh! I know what is an important thing to write about!
I was sitting at a table in the Main Street break room during my break and I heard some custodial guys who I knew talking. They said something about auditions for the Disney fairies! My ears perked way up. They were teasing each other about auditioning.
“Why don’t you audition?”
“Because I’m not between 5’ and 5’5”!”
I am 5’3”. I was halfway to their table before I knew I’d stood up.
“Okay, back up about three sentences,” I said. “What’s this about auditions?”
My friend Richard explained that he’d seen a poster for them in the Fantasyland area, around the Entertainment base. That night I searched and searched for it – I felt so self conscious wandering around the Entertainment area in my custodial costume – but couldn’t find it anywhere, so I asked Abby (my roommate, who’s in Entertainment) about it when I got home that night. She said it was a type-out audition, so no movement was required, and told me when it was. I later found a poster – it was in the elevator, which is why I couldn’t find it. I was very excited at first because I knew that one of the fairies looked like me – but unfortunately, when I looked it up, I found that that fairy wasn’t one of the ones being auditioned for. I didn’t look especially like any of them. But it couldn’t hurt to try anyway.
The auditions were the Tuesday that my family would be here, at 9am and 7pm. I wanted to go to the morning ones, so that I could have the rest of the day with my family not worrying about it. I wasn’t sure whether to dress professionally or casually (and I always end up deciding wrong for any event where it’s unclear…), so I decided to bring more than one outfit so I could change based on what the others were wearing.
I had been going to get up at 6:30, to get to the morning audition at 7:30 (we were supposed to arrive an hour early but I wanted to give myself even more time) – but I got so little sleep that I slept right through both alarms I set. So I had to go to the night one. I was just glad that there were two audition times.
I spent a glorious day at Epcot with my family, and then at 4:30 I left them to go to the audition. It was at the Animal Kingdom rehearsal facility. I arrived as somewhat of a wreck from running around Epcot, and had brought clothes to change into and a hairbrush and such with me, thinking to get ready in a bathroom before going in. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a bathroom in the building, or if there was, it was past the hallway where lots of girls were lined up and I felt far too self-concious to past through or ask one if there was a bathroom. So I went to a building that was next door (bringing the flattering casual clothes I had packed with me, since all the girls I saw were dressed casually) and wandered around it – it was an office type building, and I simply endeavored to look like I knew where I was going, and no one stopped or questioned me. That building was like a maze. “There’s got to be a bathroom here!” I thought. “This is ridiculous!” Finally I found it. I changed, and combed my hair, and put on make up, and generally got myself feeling very pretty, which is good for my self confidence. I was a little worried upon leaving the bathroom that I wouldn’t be able to find the exit of that maze of cubicles, but it was actually quite close to where I was. I must have walked about four times farther than I needed to in order to get to that bathroom.
I put my stuff back in my car, and went back to the Rehearsal facility, and got in line. Fortunately, the girl who got in line behind me looked friendly, and we ended up talking to each other throughout most of the very long line. Another girl in front of us joined in our conversation also. She was a very – what is the word? – forward? brusque? – no, that’s not right; I can’t think of the word. At any rate, she said what she thought, positive and negative, without any beating about the bush. She was the sort of dynamic personality that is bound to have personality conflicts with some people. But for me, it made her extremely easy to talk to and I enjoyed her company very much. Give me a person who says whatever comes into her head rather than a person who makes up pointless small talk. It’s much more interesting and, for me, more comfortable. She had short red hair that matched her personality perfectly.
When we got to the front of the line, the three of us turned out to be numbers 500, 501, and 502. The girl in front of me (I never did find out her name) was at first quite pleased with being the one to get 500 – until we realized that because of the way they were dividing us into groups of 50, she would be separated from us.
A few groups before us, a girl came out of the audition crying. At first I think we all felt sorry for her – until she called someone on the phone and started talking to them, hollering and swearing about how it was so unfair and they always pick the same people for face characters and on and on. I and the red-headed girl, at first without making any actual reference at all to the girl on the phone, started to talk about how you have to be patient and persistent when it comes to auditioning, that you can’t let yourself become bitter about not getting parts because then your cynicism and pride will just come through in your personality and auditions and you’ll never get it, you just have to keep trying, and know that some parts just aren’t right for you and accept that but keep trying for all different things. At one point the red-headed girl said with a smile, “I feel like we’re warding off negative energy.” And we were. We had to keep repeating to each other what we knew was true so that we wouldn’t be affected by all the negativity coming from the poor girl on the phone.
Eventually the red-headed girl’s group was called, and we wished her luck. A little later it was our turn. We were supposed to line up by number – this was easy for me, since I was the first in line. We waited, lined up in another hallway, for it to be our group’s turn to go in. I was nervous and very excited. I was just standing there smiling, and thinking that it would be a relief to get some of this energy out by running up and down the hallway a few times, and the guy who was taking us in asked me if I was okay. It’s so weird – when I’m just plain nervous, it doesn’t show that much, but if I’m a little nervous + excited by the fact that it’s a significant event, I look like I’m traumatized, even if I’m actually very happy. This keeps contributing to me not being able to give blood, because I have always wanted to, and think of it as a significant event (perhaps because of the association with Christ’s blood being given for us), and although I am not afraid of needles and can get a shot without flinching, as a new experience it makes me slightly nervous – and then I look like I’m traumatized, I get an adrenaline rush from the excitement which makes my pulse be too fast, and they don’t let me give blood. But anyway, I assured the man that I was fine, and a few moments later we went in.
All we did was stand in lines of ten, talking to each other while music played and they looked us over, then switch, the front line to the back and everyone else moving up, until they’d looked at all of us. Then they called out the numbers of who they wanted to see. I wished that I could have not been in the first line. I didn’t like having to keep waiting knowing that I’d been evaluated right off. I would rather have had the anticipation, to imagine that perhaps I’d caught their eye while a few rows back and now they were going to see me in front – but anyhow it didn’t work out that way. And when they called the numbers, I didn’t get to have the anticipation of “oh, my number’s coming up! Will they call it?” because I was 501, the very first number, and I knew from the moment they started with 503 that neither I nor my new friend were called back. So we waited for the rest of the numbers to be called, and then left.
I have a love-hate relationship with auditions. I always wondered what exactly the phrase “love-hate relationship” was supposed to mean, until I realized that auditions are the one thing that it’s true of for me. I love the theatre atmosphere, the anticipation, the togetherness of all the nervous people waiting together and reassuring each other. And I hate that no matter how unlikely I tell myself that it is that I will get a part, I can’t help hoping and dreaming and imagining. My brain makes up stories and visions for everything. And then when I hear the “no,” in whatever form it comes, it’s a loss – a loss of all the story I had created, of my part in that story.
I think the hardest part of this one for me was the thought, “If I’m not a fairy, what am I?” If the one part that I was the exact height range and body type and personality for, I wasn’t fit for, what was I fit for? I knew that this didn’t really make sense – I didn’t have to just look like a fairy, I had to look like the specific fairies they had, and I had gone into it knowing that I didn’t. But I still felt it. But there, reassuring me, was a whole chorus of quiet, steady, persistent voices in the back of my head that talk to me at times like this, gently repeating their wisdom until it penetrates into my mind. Voices telling me that this is not where my significance comes from, and that they have all felt this way before too. Z, telling me that I’m part of God’s story. Don, ruefully pointing to his sticking out ear and telling about times he’s felt inadequate – and then repeating, “I am a blood-bought child of God.” Pastor Louie, talking about when people have criticized him for what he does or how he preaches, and describing, with pauses to be able to continue speaking without getting choked up, the grace of God in choosing us. I don’t know where I would be without my church – or my family, who encourage me in all my endeavors, and never tell me that it can’t be done.
So thus ends the chapter of me trying to be a Disney fairy. But extension Entertainment auditions for college program are December 5th… (dun-dun-dun!)

In Which Cinderannie is Surprised

2007-11-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

Well, on the 29th of October, I was working from 7:15pm-1:15am. I had spent the few days before that getting things ready – doing some cleaning and errands and miscellaneous things that needed doing, so that everything would be ready and done before both my birthday and the start of National Novel Writing Month. So I went to work fairly happily, knowing that the next day would be spent entirely with my grandparents, at the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. And it just got better. I had my favorite zone to sweep in Tomorrowland – the one with the Fantasyland bridge – and I had my favorite trash run. That’s the bag trash, with the lightweight cart, where I get to go inside Space Mountain. So work was great, and the manager gave me a card and a little gift bag.
When it was nearly midnight, I took my gift bag and card and went over to a little wishing well off of a path that no one ever goes on, and I watched on my watch as it turned midnight, and my birthday. The way I think of birthdays is a little odd. It is my (in this case) 20th birthday starting at midnight. But I don’t turn 20 until I wake up in the morning. And I am not officially 20 until 7:54pm, which is my birth time. So yes, that’s how it works. Because I’m crazy. So once it was my birthday, I opened the card and the bag – which had candy in it. And then went back to finish my trash run.
When I arrived home, at nearly 2:30am, I was walking up the stairs and the thought occurred to me that perhaps my roommates would yell Happy Birthday or something when I came in. But I thought probably not. They were usually in bed at this time. As I unlocked the door, I noticed that the top lock was locked too, which was unusual. “I wonder if they locked it just so that they could hear when I was coming,” I thought, but didn’t take the thought very seriously. So I went in.
“Happy Birthday!” all my roommates yelled, and squirted me with a good deal of silly sting. And I went and looked around the apartment which was all decorated with crepe paper and confetti and banners. And then we had cake that Abby made, and they got birthday candles – we aren’t supposed to have candles – and we went out on the deck to light them and sing so we wouldn’t set off the fire alarm. We were lighting them when we noticed a security person in a golf cart right below our deck. Oh dear. In a giggling panic we gathered around the candles trying to block the glow, and they sang,
“Happybirthdaytoyou, Happybirthdaytoyou, HappybithdaydearJoanna, Happybirthdaytoyou!” and I blew them out, and we dashed back inside, cracking up laughing and hoping that security didn’t come knocking at our door. Which they didn’t, and we just ate our cake happily. And then I went to bed, at nearly 4am.

More to come…

In Which An Important Revelation is Made, and Cinderannie Muses on Her Strange Thought Processes

2007-11-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

First, an update on things pertaining to the last post. I did get my car started, and also have now gotten a new gas cap (a gift from my grandfather) and changed the oil. So my car’s all good now. My shoe I never found – it did look rather beat up and dirty so perhaps someone thought it was abandoned and threw it out. And then I lost the other because I left it in the Toontown breakroom and even though I knew right where I left it and came back first thing when I got to work the next day, it was already gone. So I had to buy new shoes, but my sweet mother gave me money for them.
I have to add a bit of interesting story to the tale of the shoes. I didn’t tell you about this before because I am not the only one in my family with an overactive imagination. But now that it’s over I can tell the whole thing.
A few nights before I lost my shoe (or maybe it was just the night before? I don’t remember), I met a young man from England, another custodial, Andy, down by the custodial clocking-out place. He and I got to talking and ended up riding the bus together. He was talking about various musicians he liked, most of which I had never heard of. Then he asked who I liked, and I said he’d probably never heard of them.
“Try me,” he said.
“Skillet, Flyleaf, Red…” I started to list. And he said,
“Skillet!” and started to sing, “And I rest in the wonder of your love… We sing that in our youth group!” Well! So then he told me all about the youth group he helps lead back home. It was so comforting to hear someone talking about church.
When we got back, I got off the bus first because it stops first at Chatham and Andy lives at Vista Way. So I told him goodbye and went home. Then, a little later when I’d taken a shower and gotten ready for bed and was checking my e-mail and Facebook, I discovered a Facebook message from him saying that I’d left my shoes on the bus, and to call him so I could get them back! Since it was about half an hour after he’d left the message I decided to message him back instead of calling, in case he had gone to bed. The next day we arranged for me to drive by and get my shoes. I was going over there anyway to use the internet. So I went and got my shoes, and ate a strawberry he offered me from the carton of strawberries on the counter, and I felt like he wanted me to stay longer but I wanted to have time on the internet and also time to get ready for work, so I said goodbye and left. And afterward I didn’t know what to think. He was nice, and tolerable looking – and from England! – and I really didn’t feel attracted to him. But I never – or very rarely – feel attracted to someone in the “like” way when I first meet him. It always grows out of a friendship or at least having known them for quite a while. And it’s so frustrating around here (and even in some ways at home), because it seems like if a guy and a girl get along then the expectation is that they get to know each other through dating, but I don’t want to date someone unless I’m possibly going to marry him, and I can’t know that without getting to know him first! So it’s like I have to decide in the first days after I meet a guy whether I like him enough to marry him, and my default reaction is “No, I don’t want to marry this person” – but then I feel guilty, thinking, “well of course you don’t want to marry him now, he’s a stranger, you can’t just write off every guy you ever meet like this” – ugh, it’s terrible. Honestly I’m usually very relieved when a definite reason comes up why I couldn’t marry the person anyway, because then I don’t have to feel guilty for writing them off. Because there have only been two guys in my whole life who I knew for sure that if they wanted to pursue/marry me, I would say yes (and one strong maybe). And sometimes I feel guilty for being too picky or something.
Man, none of this monologue has been about Disney at all. I’m sure you’re all bored to death. But I wanted both to get these thoughts out and to share them with you so that you can share your thoughts and advice on this matter.
So, back to the tale of Andy. We had seen each other around a bit and always said hello and talked. (Well, mostly he talked. He’s very talkative. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it depends on what the person talks about and whether they are talking because they like the subject or just to hear themselves speak.) It was nice but I was still nervous about the possibility of him asking me out, and trying to figure out whether I should be not writing him off.
And then I gave him a ride home the other night, because I had driven, and it’s faster to drive than take the bus home. And as we were driving, we were talking about our plans and dreams about the future. And he said,
“Oh and I just got permission from my girlfriend’s dad to ask her to marry me!”
Well, talk about an “Oh” moment with a capital “O”! The amusing thing was that I felt like I should be sad, but actually what I felt was unqualified relief. So thus ends that aspect of the tale of Andy, although hopefully the friendship will continue – more freely, since I now don’t have to worry about the liking/marriage/romance aspect.
Okay, that’s all for the moment, but soon you’ll get a very enthusiastic update on the greatness of the past week. I thought you might like to read this in the meantime, though.

Oh, and Rad, GB is a Disney-loving man from my church who my family has known – oh for ages, I think. You know, maybe you should all introduce yourselves to each other in your next comments. Various ones of you keep asking who the others are.

In Which Cinderannie Has a Misadventure

2007-10-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I figure I owe you all a quick update, right? Nothing particularly exciting has happened lately – I went to the advanced ballet class because it was the only ballet day I had off, and it wasn’t quite as awful as I was expecting. I couldn’t do a few of the combinations but another girl in the class showed me how to do a few steps I had trouble with at the end of class.
I did have a bit of an adventure last night. Yesterday I had left my car at the magic kingdom parking lot, because I forgot when I was going home that I had driven, and took the bus back. So I was going to drive home last night, and I went and set my stuff in the front seat and saw that my parking lights were turned to on. Oh dear. Needless to say, when I put the key in and turned, nothing happened at all. Not even a squeak. I asked a guy parking nearby if he had jumper cables, and he did, but he had just recently started driving and neither of us was sure of how to jump a car. I ought to know this. I think I should have someone give me instructions, and write it down and keep it in my car. That would be the sensible thing to do. At any rate, I didn’t want to damage the battery or get electrocuted, so I thanked him and decided to just leave the car and take the bus home. So I went and waited at the bus stop for the bus. Given that it was now past 2am, it was no surprise that once I got on the bus, I curled up and fell asleep – after putting on my socks because it was freezing on that bus. I woke up just as we were arriving at Chatham, so I quickly gathered up my things. Darn it, darn it, WHERE IS MY OTHER SHOE?? I looked around, under the seats, bother bother bother, oh no we’re pulling away! Oh but we stop in front for people to get on, I’ll just hop off, no, no, we’re not stopping! Augh!
Once we had reached Vista Way I had satisfied myself that the shoe was really not on the bus. Which meant it was either left in my car or at the bus stop. Rats. And did any busses even run from Vista to Chatham at this hour of the night? I got off the bus and went to look. (It was about 2:50am at this point.) Only one bus was still running, the Downtown Disney bus, which fortunately stopped at Vista and then Chatham. But it wasn’t coming until 3:25. Lovely. And I wasn’t even supposed to be on Vista Way property after 1am! I plunked down on the curb to wait, holding my costumes and my one shoe, probably looking like a refugee. A security dude came up to me.
“What’s your story?” he said. So I explained. He said, “Okay,” and told me I could wait at the nearby picnic tables. So I did. And it was the chilliest part of the night and I had just been asleep which always makes me cold so I was freezing. And finally the bus came. But just one or two people got off, and I saw that there was no one left on the bus, and since no one would be getting on the bus at Chatham at this hour, he might not stop there! He got off the bus and I went and asked him,
“You are stopping at Chatham, yes?” He looked at me inquiringly.
“I suppose... Why, do you need to go there?”
“Yes, I live there.”
“Getting home a bit late, aren’t you?”
“Well, I worked late in the Magic Kingdom and then I was going to drive home but my car is out of batteries and I lost my shoe somewhere along the way and I was looking for it on the bus so I missed getting off at Chatham so I had to get off here and you’re the only bus still running at this hour,” I finished, sounding a bit pathetic even to myself.
“Poor baby,” he said, half-joking but kindly. “Yes, I will take you to Chatham.” So I went and got on the bus and waited for him to come back, very glad I was getting home. When he came back he said,
“Okay, sweetie, let’s get you home.” And when we got there he said, “Here we are, sweetie.” I hadn’t been called “sweetie” in a while. It was kind of comforting. I think he must be a grandfather. Anyway, I got back home at about 3:45, very relieved. And had a shower and some vegetable soup.
So that was my adventure of yesterday. I am hoping to find my shoe and get my car started today. Wish me luck.

A Couple Days of Updating, and some random thoughts

2007-10-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone. I'm giving up on catching this thing up, so what I'm going to do is post a bit I have written, and then at the end some snippets of e-mails I sent my mother, that tell things I've been doing and thinking about.

I spent Sunday afternoon sleeping, because I had to work from 7:45pm-3:45am. Cleaning the Fantasyland restrooms. Thrilling. I had been dreading it, but it turned out to not be bad at all in the end.
When I first got there I went to the restrooms by Peter Pan, and started out by disinfecting the baby changing table. (Incidentally, that always makes me imagine someone putting their baby on the table, folding it into the wall, and pulling it back down and getting a new one. I kind of want to write a story based on that.) When I went back to the storage room to get the sink-cleaning chemical, there was that lady! The one who nearly drove me to tears the last time I was cleaning the bathrooms by scolding me about leaving the door locked (which I did this time, since the park was open)! And she insisted that she was supposed to be here, and that her manager told her she was here until eleven, and when I showed her on the schedule that I was clearly supposed to be here at that time, she just reiterated that she was told to be here until eleven. Taking a deep breath, I decided that this was okay, we could just work together, since it was a busy night it wouldn’t hurt for the restrooms to get extra cleaning. It looked like she was going to go sweep the floor, so I took down the cleaner for the sinks and started to walk into the bathroom. She stepped into my path.
“I am here until eleven. Go talk to a manger.” Rats, this stupid lady was going to drive me to tears again. I don’t know what it is, but when someone speaks harshly to me and I don’t expect it, it makes me cry. It’s very annoying because it happens when you most want to be collected. At any rate, I said – quite politely, considering,
“Okay, I’ll do that.” And I went backstage to the fantasyland base where the managers or coordinators were most likely to be. But none were there. Fortunately, just then someone came through with a radio and when I begged him he let me use it. The manager wasn’t available, but I got a hold of a coordinator. I explained the situation to her, and she kindly told me to just sweep around the Peter Pan and it’s a small world (yes, it’s supposed to be uncapitalized, that’s how it’s always written, even on signs, it’s weird) area for now, and she would find the manager and figure out what was going on and then come find me. Much relieved and comforted, I did so. It’s so nice when someone else is going to take care of a problem. And it was also nice to get to go sweep, because it meant I got to chat with guests and also watch the fireworks.
One man I talked to was a seasonal Disney employee who had previously been on the college program.
“Yeah, it’s a good experience, being away from your parents and all, and you can have a lot of fun if you get out and party and stuff,” he said. Blink-blink-blink.
“Nah, I’m 19, and my roommates and I have a rule that nobody’s allowed to do stuff to get themselves terminated, because we like our apartment and our roommates and don’t want to have to move.” (If roommates leave then people have to move around to consolidate and make room for new CPs.)
“Ah, you can keep it on the DL,” he said. I couldn’t believe my ears. I turned to his three-year-old son, sitting there in the stroller.
“Small one, don’t follow in your father’s footsteps. Trust me.” But that was all the more I said on the subject.
From that and from other things he said in the course of the conversation, it was clear that he believed in doing anything he could get away with. There was no wife with him, and he never mentioned her. I’ve got to say, as much as I despise divorce, I could not judge his wife too harshly if she left him. He wasn’t very creepy, exactly, in the augh-run-for-your-life kind of way – he was just empty of any rectitude (look that word up in the dictionary if you don’t know what it means), or any reason to do anything but what he felt like doing. Oh siblings, my dear siblings, the next time our mother yells at you for living to do whatever you can get away with, tell her, “Thank you, dearest mother, for preventing me from growing into a horrid creepy empty person with nothing to live for.”
When I eventually talked to the manager and the coordinator, it turned out that mistaken double-scheduling had been going on all night. They decided to just have me go and help with bussing until it was time for her to leave. I didn’t mind that a bit. It meant that over a third of my shift was spent sweeping and bussing, which made the whole thing go faster. And I also got to “go above and beyond” – there was a family there who had been told that Ariel was going to come back at 10, and she wasn’t, and they were very disappointed. So I called guest relations at City Hall, and got them to get Ariel to write the girls personal autographed notes that they could pick up on their way out. J
Cleaning was actually fairly easy, except for the first round because that lady had not done a thorough job and the back of the toilets were dusty and they were not so clean as they ought to have been. But after I’d gone over everything thoroughly once it was easy. Cleaning restrooms isn’t that bad, and the time goes by faster than when you’re sweeping. And I actually get less dirty, because I don’t have to do trash runs. My long nap held up for me and I didn’t get as tired as I expected – in fact, when it was all over, the shift I had been dreading, it was just like, “Oh, was that all?” But I wasn’t thrilled about having to get back on the bus in just over 12 hours. It was a bit strange, hearing the birds start to chirp as I was going to bed. Needless to say nothing got done on Monday morning except sleep and a bit of e-mailing.
Monday I was in Tomorrowland. Since I was doing both a zone and a trash run I had done before, it didn’t require a lot of thought, which was good. But it wasn’t very crowded that night, and at one point, a little before my 45 minute break, I noticed that there was a very short line for Space Mountain, which I hadn’t been on since getting here to Florida. And I’d brought normal clothing, to change into for the bus ride home. Hmm. Hmm-hmm-hmm.
Well, as you can probably guess, the moment my 45 minute break started, I bolted down the stairs and ran down the hallway to my locker. I changed into my street clothes, ran back upstairs, and, slipping my Disney ID into my pocket, entered the world of Guests. Because my locker was at the opposite side of the park, and because my costume has a belt and buttons and takes some getting out of, all this took about 15 minutes. 30 minutes left. I arrived at the Space Mountain entrance. Wait time, 20 minutes. Ooh, cutting it close. But I didn’t have to take my clothes all the way back to the locker, I could keep them with me. And besides, the wait times aren’t always accurate. I went inside.
I was able to walk right up, almost on. I couldn’t have been in line more than ten minutes, including the time it took me to get to where there were actually people waiting. I didn’t get to sit in front (I like it best in the front…) but I still had a grand time. I love that roller coaster.
Toward the end of my shift I spent a good 10 or 15 minutes playing with a little girl named Julia. She and her mother and grandmother were sitting at a table, just resting before the long trek back to the park entrance. I started talking to Julia and before I knew it she was chattering away, whispering secrets in my ear, tickling me, and then we were chasing each other around the planters! “Isn’t it a shame that she’s such a wallflower,” her grandmother said, rolling her eyes. Julia wanted me to “catch” and tickle her back, so I just tickled the top of her head. A good improvisation if I do say so myself. I think the most endearing thing about her was that she didn’t treat me like a grown-up. We were ageless, equals, just having fun.
Okay, so since I’m a week behind, I’m skipping to the highlights. Tuesday I went shopping. (Note: shopping, to me, means going to Walmart for groceries and other necessities, not to the mall, unless otherwise noted. Just so you all know.) I know I did other things too but I can’t think what. Oh yes, I finished working on Ali’s birthday present. I’m sure I did other things… oh well. Must not have been anything too exciting.
Wednesday I went to the Magic Kingdom again with Marijka. We did Adventureland this time – Pirates of the Carribean (it has Jack Sparrow now, which improves it, but it’s still not a “love” ride for me, like Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh are), Jungle Cruise, The Enchanted Tiki Room (sibs, you aren’t missing anything by not seeing this one, trust me), Aladdin’s magic carpets (whee! That one’s fun), and the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. Marijka wasn’t so interested in the tree house as I am and so we went faster than I like to go. Of course, I have a definite tendency to wander slowly through everything… Then we had just 15 minutes before we needed to leave (we both needed to be somewhere at 9), so we made a dash for the Astro Orbiter. Unfortuately, although the line said 20 minutes, and we had a little flex time, it ended up being more like 35. I was just going to the college group so it wasn’t a big deal for me, and Marijka called her friends that she was going to meet up with and they had changed the meeting time to 10:00 anyway. So that was no problem. The Astro Orbiter is set up like the Dumbo ride, except it’s way up in the air and goes about two or three times faster. Which means it’s pretty thrilling – you kind of feel like you’re going to fling out into space. Marijka shrieked and clung to me the entire time, which I thought she probably would… it reminded me of riding with Rebecca, who did the same thing. J
We took the monorail back to the TTC and drove home. We got home at about 9:30, so it was too late for me to go to the college group, but I didn’t really mind. I’m going to go tomorrow, anyway.
Thursday I was working on Main Street, doing normal street sweeping. I don’t think anything interesting happened, other than me having three trash runs. But they were bagged and quite easy.
Friday was insanity. I hadn’t gotten home until 2:30 that night, which meant I was in bed at 3:30. I was meeting a friend, John Dickensheets at the Ticket and Transportation Center at 8:00, which meant getting up at 6:55. He was in Florida for a conference and had the day free. So we and his friend Lisa parkhopped all day, and saw all four parks. In one day. And me on three hours sleep. It was so much fun! I was really happy because I was afraid it would be awkward since I don’t know John super well (I mean, you can’t help knowing someone pretty well once you’ve spent weeks with them in the sound booth for shows, but we weren’t especial friends or anything) and I didn’t know Lisa at all. But Lisa was an absolute kindred spirit, and the three of us got on fantastically. My new Facebook profile picture (yes, the one with the Figment hat on my head) was taken that day. I would like to write more about all the fun things we did, but it’s so late that it’s early and I am tired, so I will just say that John teased Lisa and I all day, saying that he was touring Disney with the Lollypop Guild, because we are both so short and tiny (she is even smaller than me!) – we had to look very amusing going around Disney because he is fairly tall.
Fortunately, I was on Main Street again for work that night, doing parade clean up. I had to do a pushbroom instead of a vacuum and I like vacuuming better because it’s so much easier. I feel very inept at pushbrooming. But parade is still one of the easiest things to do, and I was extremely glad that that was what I was doing on three hours sleep and a day of park hopping.

So now I will just post a few snippets of things that have been happening, because I’m giving up on catching up. These are from e-mails I sent to my mother, but they give the general idea of what’s happening with me, and what I’m thinking about.

Tues, Oct 16:

I cooked today. Last week I went out and bought vegetables from the produce aisle - new experience there - and today I washed, peeled, and cooked them and they're in the crockpot being made into soup. I don't think I'd ever held a turnip in my life before. Do you peel turnips? I didn't know so I peeled it just in case. Since you peel potatoes and carrots. I hope the soup turns out okay. It smells good at any rate. Do you like thyme? I like the smell but I never had it before as far as I know so I hope I like it. I didn't put cabbage in even though the recipe calls for it because you only needed 1/4 of a head and I didn't know what the heck I'd do with the other 3/4 and I don't like cabbage anyway. And I bought real quaker oatmeal that you cook, and today I finally managed to cook it without boiling over the milk, and I had it with strawberries, and it was really really good.

Wed, Oct 17:

The soup turned out pretty good, and it made the apartment smell very delicious. I think it came out exactly as the recipe intended. I liked it, and Abby liked it. Marijka didn't particularly care for it. (She didn't say so, but she did the only-eat-half-of-it thing.) It's very much a vegetable soup - there's nothing in it but vegetables. It's good - especially because the turnip gives it a little bit of substance because it's not overcooked - but there's nothing comforting about it. It needs something. I supplied the something by eating it with club crackers, but I'd like to figure out what I could put in it to make it right. I feel like what it wants is something like cornbread. It needs some sort of substance thing - I wonder if barley would work? And some sort of warm-but-not-spicy flavor, like what cornbread has. Hey, I wonder if I could put corn in it? Does corn turn into absolute mush in a crockpot?

Friday, Oct 19:

I'm killer homesick. I don't think I've ever been homesick enough to cry before in my life. Don't get me wrong - it's not that debilitating can't-cope can't-think-of-anything-else homesick of a miserable kid at camp; I'm not miserable here and I don't actually want to give it up and come home - I just miss everyone and everything. And I'm sick of still being homesick because I've been homesick off and on for two or three weeks straight. It's kind of funny - when I was younger and went on youth trips I'd feel guilty that I'd never get homesick, like I must not love my family very much if I didn't miss them at all. Now I feel guilty for being too homesick, like I ought to be coping better and getting over it. Is this normal?
I went to a seminar/panel discussion thingie for Entertainment tonight, and met the Technical Director, Assistant Technical Director, the stage manager of Lights, Motors, Action!, and the Character Director. So yeah, that was pretty sweet. (I sound like Thad...) And I found out lots of things that made me happy. Someone asked the panel, "If you want to get into Entertainment, but your major isn't in an entertainment field, how much will that hinder you?" And three of the panel members simultaneously held up a "zero" hand symbol, and the other three laughed. And I almost cried for happiness, because one thing that I have worried about rather often in contemplating my life is that there will be lots of things I would love to do that will be closed to me because I am not a theatre major. And they said that basically a degree shows that you can make a commitment and carry it out, and beyond that, no matter what you learned they're going to teach you to do it their way anyway. And I also talked to David, who was doing the introductions and faciliating, and I asked about the end-of-season auditions (for next college program) and they're December 5th which means I have a month and a half to keep doing ballet, and then he asked how tall I was and I said " 5'3" " and he nodded, pleased, and explained that between 5'7" and 5'9" is the "dead" height range that nothing's really in. So yeah. Oh and somebody else said that the same person has played both Alice and Sleeping Beauty. I about passed out. And they were so encouraging about just doing whatever you're doing really well, and that was how someone would notice you, and it was so wonderful because that's what I had thought originally but it didn't seem true down in the dark tunnel surrounded by cynical people who don't believe in magic anymore. And now I know - it's the people who keep believing in the magic who move up. The people who have been in the same custodial position for years and are cynical, didn't stop believing in magic because they were stuck there, they're stuck there because they stopped believing in magic and started being cynical. And they also said to be proud of whatever role you're in because they're all important to the magic. So this week I'm going to go to work with a smile, I'm going to go above and beyond, and when somebody asks me what my role is I'm going to say, "Magic Kingdom Custodial," as proudly as I would say, "Entertainment." Because that's the Disney magic. And the people who are higher up in the company still believe in it. So there.
That's all my ramblings for tonight, I guess.

In Which Cinderannie Escapes the Ghosts

2007-10-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

I tried to post this last night, but my internet connection died. So I'm posting it now.

Wednesday I spent all day home, and took apart a crochet blanket I made. This is because I had run out of yarn and in between, the company had changed the colors of that type of yarn, so I couldn’t get more. So I ended up with this strange 5’ by 1 ½’ piece of crocheted cloth that was too skinny for a blanket and two wide for a scarf. Rats. So there it was, hanging around all the time, and me not knowing what to do or how to finish it. So I realized, if I took it apart, I could make a blanket that was around 3’ by 4’ with the yarn. So now there are a whole bunch of balls of yarn in my crocheting bag. It was a bit of a wrench, taking it apart, because I worked on it in the waiting room of all my appointments when I had my brace, and there was a lot of history attached to it. But it was so pointless the way it was, and there was no way to salvage it because it would look silly with other colors of yarn. And I could have left some of the end and used it as a scarf, I suppose, but it was supposed to be a blanket, it just was, and I feel like it would always have bothered me that it never got to be a blanket. So anyway, I’ve taken it all apart and I’m going to make it into a blanket.

I also painted a couple pictures – I am not talented in that area at all, but I have fun with it anyway. And, to my surprise, Dani ended up really liking one of them and claiming it to keep in her room. She says it reminds her of her home in Arizona.

It was our one month anniversary of moving in, so we all wanted to go out somewhere together to celebrate. Nicole had mentioned craving Buffalo Wild Wings (oh yeah, forgot to say, I’d picked her up from the airport because she’d just gotten back from visiting home), and Dani and I were discussing it and I mentioned that, and she said,

“Didn’t you say you didn’t really like Buffalo Wild Wings?” I was surprised and pleased, both that she would remember that I had mentioned that, and even more, that she would decide on not going there just because I didn’t like it. But I told her that I didn’t mind going once in a while, it just wasn’t my favorite place, and since Nicole wanted to go it was okay with me. So we figured out what bus we needed to take, and when everyone was home, we got ready to go. We all kinda dressed up because we were in that sort of mood, and Dani tried to teach me to walk in high heels – ha. It didn’t work very well. I only got it right once, when Dani told me “walk like you know you’re the hottest thing in the room.” Yeah, that’s my personality all right… I didn’t wear them out, they were too uncomfortable.

We had heard that on Wednesdays there was a cover charge to get into Buffalo Wild Wings, but a couple of my roommates had been there on a Wednesday and they hadn’t been charged. So Dani called to see, and they said there was no charge. So we all went out to the bus stop.

At the bus stop I met Herberto. I now know the true meaning of the saying, “He thinks he’s God’s gift to women.” I have never in my life seen a guy who was so full of himself. He was dressed in a nice suit, and came and sat next to me on the bench. I said hello and he introduced himself, and I asked where he was going all dressed up and he said he went somewhere – “Margarita Blue”? – anyway I’d never heard of it. Must be some fancy night club. At first I was just like, “he’s friendly,” and then when he said his name was, “Herberto” – it was the complete opposite of Alejandro, who just said his name like it was his name – this guy said “Herberto” like he was saying “The King of England.” He was well aware of his own attractiveness, which of course made him completely unattractive. In a few moments I got up and wandered across to the other benches where the other girls were. He crossed one leg, spread his arms out over the back of the bench, and then lit up a cigarette, holding it in his hand like he was on the cover of a magazine – he was the most perfect picture of arrogance and conceit I’ve ever seen. I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I had to walk away, trying unsuccessfully to hold it in. The good thing was, I figured he was so self-confident he’d never suspect I was laughing at him.

Of course, looking back, I can’t help but wonder if deep down he’s actually severely insecure. I think people who seem really arrogant often are. Poor guy. But honestly, him there, in his designer suit, with his cigarette… he was just too much. Oh, and apparently he called me “sweetie.” I didn’t hear him, but Nicole was saying on the bus that as I walked away he called me sweetie, and she was thinking, “Oh, don’t you call my girl ‘sweetie’!” I like being part of somebody’s “my girls.” I never had that before. I am part of a group, all of us who do “intellectual discussion,” but we aren’t the sisterhood sort. So it’s kind of fun.

Well, we got to B-Dubs, as those in GR call Buffalo Wild Wings (people don’t call it that here, it’s strange. Every time I forget and call it that people give me weird looks), and there was a sign on the door saying “$10 cover charge for those under 21.” Needless to say we were very miffed. We tried to explain that we had called and been told there wasn’t one, and Dani went and talked to the manager, but in the end it was useless, and we ended up going to TGI Fridays instead. At first Kara and Nicole were saddened by this, but then we ended up having a good time at Fridays and Nic even got to get buffalo wings there. They have amazing desserts.

Thursday I slept in because we got back really late. I was working in Liberty Square, which was lots of fun, although I felt really tired during the shift – from staying up late, I suppose. It was a Halloween party, and the most exciting part for me was emptying the trash in the Haunted Mansion at 1am when no one was in there – but the ghost host voice still talks. It is not a good job for someone with an overactive imagination… I almost didn’t go in to part of it; I had to make myself. We were supposed to go in the exit, and then there’s one can there, then we go through a hallway to the part where you get on the ride and there’s two cans there. But when I got there the exit was all locked up and I couldn’t get in. There was another door to the side of it, though, that said, “Servants Quarters,” the same thing the other cast-members-only door had said, so I went in. It was just a little hallway, with bells on the wall like for ringing for servants – which I half expected to start ringing – and also a vanity with a mirror. It wasn’t too terribly creepy, except that I could hear the voice of the ghost host coming through the door at the end of the hall. There was a trash can there, not one of the usual kind that’s metal but just a square plastic can with no lid with a black trash bag in it. I figured I might as well get it while I was there – probably cast member trash. There were double doors in the hall. I peeked in, in case it was a way through to the queue line. Nope, creepy storage room. I shut the door. I’d better check the door at the end of the hall in case it went to a place with more trash. Reluctantly, I pulled it open. Yes, there was a trash can, the same kind as in the hall, that had been left in the room. Not technically part of my route. But it was only a fraction of a second that it took me to take this in before realizing that this was the stretching room, basically the creepiest part of the whole thing, and the ghost voice was talking, and I looked up and there was that picture that changes from a person to a creepy skeleton and it finished changing just as I was looking at it and I shut the door again hastily. My trash dolly was full anyway. I went back to the dumpster and dumped it. I had to come back to the Haunted Mansion to get a couple bags I’d had to leave behind. I was fully intending on not getting that trash bag that was in the room. It wasn’t one that I was supposed to get anyway. Until I heard a quote from the Silver Chair in my head. It’s referring to Jill, thinking about Eustace, after she climbs out of the hole she fell into and says that she doesn’t think the passage goes “anywhere much.”

“She felt sure that he knew that she had funked it.” “Funked it” is English slang – or was in the days of C.S. Lewis – for chickening out, not doing something because you are too scared to do it. And I realized that that was exactly what I was doing. And I remembered that courage is doing something when you’re scared to. So I decided I was going to get that can. I went into the hallway where I was before – and to my surprise, the door at the end of the hall, into the stretching room, was open! A maintenance person must have been in there. It was still creepy, but much less so. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s much less scary if the door is propped open than if you have to open it. It takes some of the mystery away, I guess. So I went in and got the trash – while not looking at the transforming picture. And then I saw that there was another door propped open on the other side. I peeked through to investigate. Hey! The queue line at the ride entrance! With the two trash cans I was supposed to get! It wasn’t that scary getting them, especially because I kept hearing my keys clink in a very janitorial fashion, which is one of the most ordinary, non-ghostly things you can imagine. Also, hearing the ghost voice proclaiming that the room had no windows and no doors while three doors were propped wide open took some of the spookiness out of that particular proclamation… so anyway, I got the trash and got out of there. Whew. Afterward, when it was too late, I realized that I should have looked for that other hallway so I could get the trash out of the exit area that I was locked out of. Oh well.

I think if I ever did it again it would be a little less scary, having done it once. I’d kind of like to. I should make friends with the ghosts. And I know you’re probably all thinking, “She such a fraidy cat. It’s just the Haunted Mansion. It’s more silly than scary.” But I must mention three things in my defense. 1) My emotions are very susceptible to music, and there was creepy music playing outside for Halloween, plus all the creepy sound effects that are always around the Haunted Mansion. 2) The dividing line between reality and my imagination and stories has never been very clear for me. All my life I have let whatever story was around me become very real to me. This is a lot of fun when pretending in elementary school, makes Disney all the more magic, makes the Easter Drama an incredible experience, is conducive to good acting – and is not so great in the Haunted Mansion at 1am. 3) Everything is very different when you’re alone. It’s all very well with a crowd of people around you who are laughing and joking and being ordinary, but when you’re by yourself… I’d like to see you go in there all alone and see how you like it.

On Friday I had to hang around the house all day because a Dell person was going to come fix my computer. And then he got stuck in traffic and couldn’t get there before time for me to leave for work. Grr. I worked on Main Street – not parade this time, just normal sweeping. I was on the “hub” area, which means the circle in front of Cinderella’s castle that is the center of the park. The nice thing about this space is that because it’s so busy, we put bags in the trash cans so we can just grab them out, so doing trash runs was really easy. The other nice thing is that it’s so crowded during the parades and fireworks that you couldn’t possibly sweep, so the coordinator lets you stand out of the way and watch. It was my first time watching the Halloween fireworks from Main Street, and I enjoyed it very much. At the end I was closing the hub trash, and it was being really easy because I had just done it, so all I had to do was take out the last bag and rinse the plastic liners, and since there was only one or two pieces of trash in each one, I could do it all in one trip. Until I realized there was a can I had been missing every time, and so of course it was three-quarters full, and wouldn’t fit, which meant a whole ‘nother trip. (“A whole ‘nother” is absolutely atrocious grammar, incidentally. But it’s such a useful phrase.) Rats. But just then another guy showed up who had been sent to help me, so I very thankfully had him get it. It’s so nice when someone comes at just the right time. (Ha, unintentional Romans reference…)

Saturday I didn’t have time to do anything, because they scheduled me for an earlier-than-usual shirt, which meant that I had less that 12 hours at home. I worked Friday from 6:30pm-2:00am, and on Saturday from 1:15-7:15pm. With bus rides, that means about 8 hours actually home. Lovely. I was working in Toontown, though, which is easy. I felt really tired, though – actually I was feeling tired on Thursday too. I’m not sure why that is – I should pay attention to how much sleep I’m getting. Also it could be because it’s been warmer lately (highs in the 90s, lows in the 70s) and the heat saps my energy. Oh, I thought of something else – during the time I had energy, I was making an effort to eat healthy, and then in these days I had kind of let that slide. So that could be related to it as well. At any rate, the only interesting thing that happened was a conversation with a couple from Florida who had season passes. If it’s in the middle of the day, the people I end up talking to are either grandmas who are waiting with little ones while the moms and dads take the middle-size and big ones on Space Mountain, or Floridians with season passes. Because those are the people who aren’t in a hurry. So we discussed oranges. Apparently you can’t just go pick oranges, like you can just go pick apples in Michigan. (Every time I think about apple picking or mention it, I can smell the smell of the orchard and feel the “feeling” of apple picking and getting pumpkins. I miss Michigan and I miss my family.) This is because the oranges in Florida are used for juice and are not as nice for eating. Oh, and I had to wear a dorky bright yellow baseball cap with a bright blue brim all day, because I forgot my hat, and with a shift in the middle of the afternoon I would definitely pass out if I didn’t wear one, and they were out of the white straw ones like I wear when I went to Costuming.

Saturday night, Abby and Nic and I watched a couple episodes of Gargoyles that Abby had.. It’s a 90s cartoon TV show. It was pretty good – although I burst out laughing when the high-tech guy needed the gargoyles to rescue floppy disks, and popped in a VHS tape.

Sunday morning I went to an Episcopal church. There was a traditional service at 8am and a contemporary at 10:30. I ended up going to both. I really felt like singing hymns would do me a lot of good – and I did enjoy it. However, it was all older people, which I don’t mind, but I thought I would like to meet some people my own age also. So I decided to go to the 10:30 service as well. At the continental breakfast after the first service I met a few of the people who were there. I’ve noticed a lot of people here are quite racist against Spanish-speaking people, and my word it makes me so mad. I was talking to this old lady who was telling me about her friend who interviewed for a job at Disney, and that the lady who interviewed her was Hispanic and that she watched her look around the room at the other people waiting who were also Hispanic, and that she just knew that she wouldn’t get the job because the lady was “saving it for her kind.” Now, perhaps that was true. But from there she went on generalizing that “that’s how they all are,” and I said, “You can’t generalize from that, though. All Hispanic people aren’t the same any more than all Caucasian people are the same. Just because one person was like that doesn’t mean they all are.” And she said, “But birds of a feather flock together, you know that saying.” And then she kept talking and I kind of zoned out mentally, until I heard her say something about “their kind,” and “our kind have to stick together,” and I got up abruptly and threw away my trash, screaming under my breath (do you know what I mean by that? If you ever did it you do), “They are my kind, they’re my sisters!” I don’t know if she thought I was rude to get up so suddenly but it was less rude than getting into an all-out argument with her, which was what was going to happen if I didn’t leave the table.

So here’s my question – how do you combat racism and live in peace at the same time? What’s the right thing to do when someone is making comments like that? Any advice is appreciated.

Fortunately I had another far more pleasant conversation after that, with a lady from Michigan – Holly, in fact, the place where the Michigan Ren Faire is. She had just been up to visit, and could tell me that the leaves were just beginning to turn. She had been living in Florida for ten years, but she told me with great delight that as soon as her house sold, she was moving back home to Michigan. Once a Michigander, always a Michigander, I guess! J

I enjoyed the service very much. One thing that was kind of funny is that they use those video powerpoint things like we do, that have the words of the song with movies in the background, like the “you rule, you reign,” one, except that they have recordings with them so that you hear the recording of them instead of just us singing. I am not so much a big fan of that, but it was nice to sing the songs. And, oh happiness! The “fracture anthem” (the song we sing during the breaking of the bread for communion) was to the tune of “Sing Alleluia”! Oh, that was lovely… it was also lovely to take communion twice after not getting to have it for ages. They use real wine for it there – the only other time I’d had it was when we used it for communion in Greece. This wine was nicer; it didn’t taste nasty. I liked it for the same reason I like only drinking grape juice for communion and not at other times; it’s a stronger taste than what I have in any other drink. Wine was the same only more so. Also it gives me a warm feeling inside, which is pleasant. Kneeling at the rail to receive communion, and the way they say “The body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven,” each time they give it to you, is very special.

The sermon was quite good. Nobody’s going to measure up to Louie, of course, but it at least was based on Scripture and had thought in it.

Well, that’s enough for tonight. It’s 10:16, and I haven’t really been getting enough sleep lately. So… you’ll have to wait until later to hear more. But I figure five pages is probably quite sufficient… maybe eventually I’ll get the hang of the one-post-a-day-thing…

Four Posts - Six Days, and I'm Caught Up!

2007-10-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Post #1: In Which Cinderannie Eats a Delicious Dessert and Has a Somewhat More Successful Time at Ballet

I spent nearly all of Wednesday the 26th writing blogs, so there’s not much to tell about it. In the evening I went to Breaking Bread again. It was nice to know people there this time. One guy, Steve, I met due to a disagreement about ovens. He was giving an example of a commercial for Home Depot, where the wife is saying that her oven is 10 years old and she needs a new one, and the husband says, “It’s only 10 years old!” and the wife says, “But in oven years that’s like 90!” Steve said that this was just a marketing ploy, and that ovens are really good for 40 years. And I said that no, ovens are not good for 40 years – they may last longer than 10, but I’d like to see him bake decent cookies in a 40-year-old oven! And then he said that he didn’t bake. My point exactly. But anyway, Breaking Bread was good – especially the singing at the beginning. It’s a lot like Cornerstone’s Evensong. The problem with that is that at Evensong I always go to what I affectionately dub “the Pentecostal corner,” where people lift both hands or kneel or dance, and I’d gotten used to dancing – or at least moving to the music – and I kept wanting to do it there! I couldn’t help swaying…
After the class a bunch of us went to Alehouse again. This time I brought $5 with me so that I could get something to eat. Steve and I split chips and salsa and “Cap’n Jack’s Buried Treasure,” a completely amazing ice cream cake. Chocolate and caramel and heath bits… wow. We talked pretty much the whole time. He was nice, and asked me questions about back home. It was nice to talk about all the people and things I miss. The funny things was that I’m used to being the one who doesn’t talk in a gathering like that, so sometimes I just wanted to listen to the general conversation and write in my notebook, but he was too nice to let me be “left out.” Ah, the oddness of being antisocial... I had parked right behind him, so when we went to our cars we talked for a little. (And no, I don’t like him that way, so y’all had better not start getting any ideas.)
Thursday night I went to ballet again – this time on time, and with Marijka. I was nervous, but happy to be on time. Before class, we met a few other girls from the college program – including one who is “friends with” Jasmine! The others were character performers as well.
I did the barre portion with no problems, and even the combinations (for those who don’t know, a “combination” is a series of dance steps) went better this time. Plus, when I didn’t get a step right, the teacher would come over to me and show me how to do it. Once she had me go back to the end of the line and do the combination over again. It’s funny – a few years ago, I would have felt awful about being reinstructed and sent back. Instead, I was thrilled. Because if she’s taking the time to teach it to me and have me do it again, it means she thinks I can learn it. The only combination that I couldn’t do at all was the last one. All the others I got at least partially. And I did ask her to show me a step at the end – glissade (is that how you spell it?), which I’d learned at the class in GR but couldn’t remember. She showed it to me gladly. And since I’m working this Thursday I can’t go, so I asked her whether the beginner class was on Monday or Tuesday (since I had today, Tuesday, off), but the beginner class was Monday.
“Oh, too bad,” I said. “I have Tuesday and Wednesday off.”
“We have class Tuesday,” she said.
“It’ll be completely over my head,” I said, making what books call “a wry face.”
“You are doing good,” she said consolingly, with a smile. So that was nice. Much to my annoyance, I have Tuesday and Wednesday off again next week – maybe I’ll get up my courage and go to the advanced class. I don’t know, though – what good will it do me to go to a class where I can’t do any of the combinations? But how can I learn if I never go to a class? Advice is appreciated.
I left the class feeling very encouraged, however – I’m learning! I can do this! And the teacher thinks I can learn! I just can’t let myself be intimidated by having Jasmine for a classmate…

Post#2: In Which Cinderannie is Teased by the Tweedles and Rescued by her Roommate

Friday the 28th, Lydia’s birthday, was a grand time. It was another Halloween Party, and I was in Toontown again. This time, however, I was assigned to be a treat trail sweeper – so I got to spend the whole time walking up and down the path, seeing Alice and the Mad Hatter and the Walrus and the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Once as I was sweeping the area in front of the train station, at one end of the path, the Tweedles came by. I waved at them, and Tweedle Dum came over and tweaked my nose! Then, later, I was sweeping up the path during a time when there weren’t many guests coming through. No one was talking to the Tweedles at the time, so they came over to me. Tweedle Dum stole my broom and dustpan and started sweeping with them! Tweedle Dee and I had a surprised conversation over this, and then both stood there with our arms crossed, glaring at him, until he returned them. Then they both hugged me from opposite sides, nearly squishing me. I was laughing and laughing. Then they let me out, and pointed to the Queen of Hearts who was walking away. They weren’t just hugging me, they were hiding me! Those Tweedles pretty much made my night.
I also got to interact a bit with the White Rabbit – who pointed in astonishment to a lady who was dressed up as the white rabbit – and the Queen of Hearts, who I curtseyed to, my toes appropriately turned out. They were all so much fun.
I saw a little boy in a Thomas costume, too, so I followed after them so I could say,
“It’s the number one really useful engine! Hello, Thomas!” This was at the beginning of the fireworks. He didn’t reply, and then I saw that he had tears in his eyes.
“He’s scared of the fireworks,” his dad explained. Hmm, why does it not surprise me that the child in a Thomas costume is afraid of the fireworks? Disney needs a fireworks refuge spot for children with high functioning autism. I asked another cast member later where the spot is that most muffles the fireworks, so that I could tell people who needed it. He recommended the arcade, which was right by where we were. I hope that they thought to go in there – although it’s pretty flashing-lights-and-noise-ish. It still might be better than outside with those ridiculously loud fireworks, though.
My clock out was 12:15, just 15 minutes after park closing, so there were still people around when I was leaving. I like this, because I don’t like having to stay for an hour and a half after closing when all the people have gone home – I find it a little depressing. But this shift was just right.
On Saturday morning I went shopping at Walmart, since I had deposited my paycheck the day before and now had money for groceries. I’d been living off my roommates’ groceries for the past week because I didn’t have any money, so it was time for a grand Walmart trip to restock the fridge and cupboards. I took requests for things that they wanted. It was a fun trip, and I was moving quickly since I had to work at 4:45. I was happy as I was checking out – I’d made it in plenty of time. It took less time to shop than I thought, which never happens to me. I loaded up my groceries, shut the trunk, took my cart to the corral, went back to my car, felt in my pocket for my keys – oh crud. Other pocket. Purse. Run back to the cart – the cart guy took it! Run to the cart guy. Not there. Go back and look on the ground under the car. Look inside the car – no, door’s locked. Feel in my pockets again. Come to the sad conclusion that I have locked my keys inside my trunk. Rats.
I thought rapidly. Well, worst case scenario, I could take the bus back to the apartment, and then take the bus to work. (There wasn’t time to take the bus back to the apartment, get my spare key, and take the bus back to Walmart.) My milk and things would spoil, but at least I’d get to work. Abby, my only roommate with a car, was at work. I wasn’t sure what time she got off, so I called and left her a message. I asked a Walmart employee for advice, but after reviewing the options he was as much at a loss as I was. So I thought, maybe another roommate is around and knows someone with a car. So I called my roommates. Nicole answered her phone.
“Hi Nicole. You wouldn’t happen to know someone with a car and some spare time, would you? I’m at Walmart and I locked my keys in the trunk.”
“I’ll be there in three minutes,” she said. Wow! Wait, she has a car? Oh yeah, that’s right, she and Kara and Marijka are always going places, how did I think they were getting there?
“Hang on,” I said, “let me tell you where my spare key is. It’s in my top nightstand drawer, probably fallen toward the bottom, not the house key and not the square key but the one attached to a little furry critter thing – ”
“Got it,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
“Thank you!” I said, and she was gone. And there I am, standing outside Walmart, singing that country song that goes,
You find out who your friends are -
Somebody’s gonna drop everything,
Run out and crank up their car,
Hit the gas, get there fast,
Never stop to think,
“What’s in it for me,”
Or “It’s too far – ”
You find out who your friends are.
Yeah, pretty much I have amazing roommates. So she gets there, in about ten minutes, apologizes that it took so long – “I swear I was hitting every light!” – and drives me over to my car. Needless to say I thanked her profusely. And we got home, she helped me unload the groceries, and I caught the bus to work on time. Wow.
I was working in Toontown again. After the excitement of the parade, it was a little dull. I had a trash run, which was ridiculously easy because the person before me had been delayed in doing his, so he was doing it right before me, so there was barely anything in the trash cans and I could do it all in one trip. The only thing of interest that happened was that a little girl was crying in a stroller outside County Bounty, and I went over and talked to her and showed her my pins and got her to stop crying. Before I left I gave her one of my pins – a Tinkerbelle one that we get a lot of – and she didn’t say anything (she hadn’t said a word the whole time), just held it and tilted it back and forth to see it sparkle. Her grandmother kept telling her to say thank you, but honestly it was really late and she was probably exhausted and I really didn’t care if she didn’t say thank you or not. I was just glad I got to make some magic.

Post #3: In Which Cinderannie Has a Very Good Day

Sunday (wow, I’m finally writing about the week it really is!) was a wonderful day. In the morning I went to First Baptist again – oh yeah, I forgot to write about church last week. Oh well. At any rate, Abby came with me this time. We went to the college group Sunday school. Blythefield spoils me for everything. We talked about what contentment is, but the teacher never actually made a point as far as I could tell. He kept seeming like he was going somewhere and then never getting there.
Both Sundays I had the same experience with the service. I started out by cringing at the obnoxious upbeatness of the worship leader, then made myself focus on God and not him (“minor on the minors,” says the voice of Pastor Louie in my head) and started enjoying the singing. Then the pastor comes up to give a welcome and I cringe at his emotional way of talking – the kind you expect to be punctuated with “oh, yes,” or “thank you Jesus” every other sentence – but then when he starts preaching he makes good points, and I enjoy the sermon. So thus it went. I kept crying during the whole service – at the beginning because I missed Blythefield so badly, and then during the sermon because the topic was “because you gave” and they showed several videos of people giving their testimonies or getting baptized and they made me cry. And I cried at the end of the service, because he called up a couple who was sitting near the front, to tell of how a year previous, the husband was calling him saying, “Please pray for me. My wife has left me and I don’t know what to do.” And they prayed – and she became a believer, came back, and was baptized, and just a few weeks before the couple had renewed their vows.
That afternoon I took a nap, since I had to work until 12:45 that night. And what a grand night of work it was. I was on parade clean up. This means that I spend the first hour sweeping on Main Street, then report backstage before the parade to find out what I’m doing. I was supposed to be pushbrooming (my computer thinks that should be “mushrooming”…), but they were short a vacuumer, so I volunteered. It wasn’t that hard – it was kind of fun, actually. And I had a really good pushbroomer to work with, who got all the trash right in front of me, so it was easy. And the best part is, we get the vacuums out there and ready to go before the parade even goes through – so we get to just stand there and watch the Halloween parade! Twice! We also pushbroom and vacuum after the fireworks, so we got to stand backstage and watch the fireworks, too. After the 2nd parade was over and we had vacuumed and put away the vacuums, I and another guy who had vacuumed went and asked Bud (he was our coordinator, and a mountain man if you ever saw one – he’s my favorite coordinator) what we should do next, since there was over an hour before time to clock out.
Bud told us to take the trash and recyclables out of the avac room and sweep it out. I got the trash, the other guy got the recyclables, and we carted them over to the compacter and the recycle bins. There were also bags of trash just laying beside the recycle bin so I tossed those in the compactor as well. I bet someone was zoned out and tossed them on top of the recycling and then when the recycle people came they just left them there. Then I went back to the avac room and swept it out. While I was there a guy came over and showed me how to squirt the lemon cleaner on the floor and then spray it around with the hose so that the room smells nicer and the floor gets clean. The avac room looked waaaay better when I was finished with it and I was very pleased, especially because now the poor person closing main street trash wouldn’t have to do it.
Oh, and something else – earlier Russ (the manager)had said he had something for me. It turned out to be a Guest Service Fanatic card, awarded to me for helping with the BDO trash run the other night. So I get to put it in the drawing box and maybe win a prize. Once I was done cleaning the avac room, I ran into Russ, so I asked him what to do next. He offered me an early release, or I could go sweep on Main Street. Since it was only 25 minutes until time to leave anyway, and since I had energy left, I went to go sweep.
It was such fun. I love Main Street at night. And everyone wants family pictures in front of the castle before they leave, so it’s great fun to go up to the dad who’s taking pictures of the rest of the family, and say, “Would you like a picture of all of you?” and they say “Oh yes, thank you!” and are so pleased, and I take their picture. And I had my lanyard, so people were also doing trading. And then I looked at my watch, and it was time to go. I started walking toward the door to backstage – and then realized that for the first time ever in my history of working anywhere, I didn’t want to be done with work for the day. I didn’t want to leave Main Street and go downstairs to clock out. I wanted to stay up there and sweep and take pictures of everyone and pin trade. And I had to laugh.
Well, I did go, since I’m not supposed to clock out late, and told myself, “You can come back tomorrow! Good grief!”
See, I told you it would get better! :-)

Post #4: In Which Cinderannie Gives Away a Pin, and Catches Up This Blog

Monday was another beautiful day. I spent the morning cleaning, since we had an apartment inspection that day – which we passed beautifully. Apartment inspections! We didn’t even have those at Cornerstone! But hey, our apartment’s clean – and they gave us rice krispie treats for having a clean apartment.
Before I went to work I stopped and renewed my pin lanyard – we can trade in six pins at a time for new ones. Thankfully, they didn’t mind that I’d given away a pin. That night, I was working – I thought – at Casey’s, a restaurant on Main Street, bussing tables. But when I clocked in the computer said I was a BDO sweeper. I asked another custodial standing there and he said that it always says Casey’s even if you aren’t there. So I went to the Main Street stock room to look at the schedule. I wasn’t on it. Fortunately, just then the manager (Diane, the manager who gave me my pin lanyard) came in, so I asked her what was up. She looked at her schedules, and it turned out that I was supposed to be at Casey’s. Good grief. So I went over there, and went to the stockroom to get my cloth for cleaning tables and look at the schedule to see when my breaks were. It turned out I was a floater between Casey’s and the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor (or “the Cone shop,” as we nickname it for some reason). Yay! I get to move around! Casey’s looked like it was in good shape, so I went across the street to Cone, and it turned out I was the only one there! I didn’t mind this, however, and it turned out that the pace was perfect. Enough to keep me moving, but not enough to be overwhelming.
It rained off and on, and in between I dried off the tables and chairs. In the section of tables right outside the ice cream parlor, the people were always happy I was drying the tables and sat in them, but down in the smoking section they were not very nice and mocked me for drying them when it was just going to rain again. And I’m thinking, “Well, you’re standing there! Maybe you’d like to sit down in a dry chair at a dry table!” What most annoyed me was when one of them said, “She gets paid by the hour,” implying that I was just killing time. It made me so mad, because I’m not that sort of person, who is inefficient and lazy because I get paid by the hour. But other than that I had a really good time, although I delayed my break because I was the only one there and it was busy enough that if I left for 15 minutes things were going to turn into a mess. When I did go on break, we had cupcakes! Yum! Normally I don’t like lots of frosting, but for some reason I was in the mood for it. Chocolate cupcakes, with bright blue frosting. I was quite sure that my teeth were turning blue…
It poured down rain for a little while that night, and I ducked under the Plaza awning with the guests and chatted with a couple for a while until the rain let up. And I went on a mission to find where the nearest place with hot drinks was for another man. It was the Main Street bakery. He went there, and I wasn’t surprised when he came back with his coffee – and cinnamon rolls. Nobody could go into a place that smells that amazing and get nothing but coffee.
Spectromagic was delayed because of the rain, but we did have it. I was doing a trash run over at Casey’s during it, so I didn’t get to see much, but I did catch sight of the dancing butterflies – my favorite part. After the trash run I went back to the ice cream parlor, and did a little sweeping. While I was there, a boy (about 10 years old I think?) came up to me wanting to trade. I had a pirate Dale and a pirate Chip, and he chose the pirate Dale, trading me an Ariel for it.
“It’s his first trade,” his mother said. I congratulated him. Then I noticed that he didn’t have any other pins on his lanyard, which meant that even if he wanted Chip, he couldn’t get it.
“Well,” I said, “in honor of your very first pin trade, and since Chip will be awfully lonely without his friend Dale, I would like to give you this.” And I took pirate Chip off my lanyard and gave it to him. He had the biggest grin. (If I’m going to keep giving pins away, I think I should probably buy ones to replace them. We’re not really supposed to give them away… but it makes such good magic!)
A little more sweeping, and it was time for the fireworks and almost time for me to leave. I and a few other custodials stood and watched the fireworks together. It was fun because I was next to Shay, who loves the fireworks as much as I do, so we could be enthusiastic together. The best part was that they started 15 minutes before my clock out time. We’re allowed to clock out 10 minutes early, and we’re allowed to take 5 minutes of walk time – which meant I could watch the fireworks guiltlessly and on my own time. It was lovely. And even though I’ve seen the fireworks almost every night for nearly a month, they still give me chills.
After the fireworks I went to go clock out – and once again, I didn’t want to leave! I was so happy, and as I walked down the main tunnel after clocking out, I just couldn’t hold it in any more and I twirled in a circle with my arms out, right in the middle of the tunnel. Everyone probably thought I was insane, but I didn’t care. Maybe I can spread some Disney magic underground. I was grinning at everyone and waving and saying hello. “Hello, Fantasyland attractions people!” and then, “Hello, Fairy Godmother!” And I started giggling again. I just walked past the Fairy Godmother! In the tunnel after work!
I love my job.

Today I pretty much spent all day e-mailing friends and working on this blog, with the result that I am now caught up! Hurray! Now you can actually know what I’m really doing! Finally!

I love you all.

Three Posts; Five Days

2007-10-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

Post #1: In Which Cinderannie Sends a Present and Almost Faints

On Friday the 21st I wrapped Lydia’s presents and mailed her package. It was fun to pack everything up. I had a terrible time finding the post office, however – it was hidden in a strip mall, tucked toward the back, and with no sign except a paper in the window! Government! I drove around that area at least three or four times before I managed to find the place. You’d think they could have a sign up above their section, like every other store in the strip mall… it doesn’t have to be fancy – just block letters saying, “POST OFFICE” would suffice! Once I was inside, they were very nice, however, and helped me figure out which size box I needed. I packaged everything up, taped it, and sent it on its way – and by the time I got back, had just enough time to pack food and dash to the bus.
I was excited for work – it was a Halloween party night! I was working in Toontown, so I wouldn’t be able to see the parade, but I would see the fireworks as well as everyone in their costumes. I started work at 3:15. Earlier in the week I had looked at myself in the mirror with hat on and hat off and decided I liked how I looked better without the hat. However, this was a mistake…
At about 5:15, I was finishing up a trash run. A lady came up to me, wanting to know where Cinderella was. There is a number, the Chip hotline, that we can call to find out where any character is at any time. I had the Nextel radio on me, so I attempted to figure out how to call the number – I had a terrible time getting the dumb thing out of the holder, it was so embarrassing – only to realize that you couldn’t use those radios to call normal numbers, you could only call other radios, or if you could I didn’t know how, because the Chip hotline was just four numbers. I was feeling very hot, and frustrated by my inability to help this poor lady who just wanted to know where Cinderella was – and I was starting to feel sick. I looked around for another cast member to help me. Finally I found another Custodial who had been there longer than me and knew that Cinderella was in the County Bounty tent, just a short distance from where we were, and if for some reason she wasn’t, the people there would know where she was. I was getting lightheaded now. I got back to the lady, told her this with a smile and apologized for the delay. She thanked me and headed for the tent. Just as she was leaving, I started getting tunnel vision. I stumbled to a bench and groped for it as my vision went dark, thinking “Don’t pass out, don’t pass out…” Fortunately, I managed to sit down on the bench and keep my consciousness. I breathed deeply a few times, my vision came back, and knew I needed to get to the air-conditioned break room. Never mind the last can of my trash run, if I passed out in the middle of Toontown it was not going to be good. Still feeling sick, I made it backstage and into the breakroom and collapsed at a table. I knew I should drink water, but I wasn’t sure I could make it to the cooler, and anyway there were never any cups. There was a man sitting at the table next to mine. This was no time to quibble over being forward.
“Excuse me sir?” I said. He turned. “I’m sorry – I just almost passed out out there – would you mind getting me some water?”
“Sure,” he said. I was expecting him to just go to the cooler, and at most have to fetch cups from somewhere – but he disappeared to somewhere and came back with a cold bottle of Dasani water. I thanked him very much. Some places they provide water bottles for cast members, and I don’t know if he got it from one of those, or if he paid for it out of a vending machine. I would have liked to have paid him back for it if he did, but by the time I had drank some and was feeling a bit more coherent, he was gone. So thank you, wonderful Photopass man.
Once I could think, I called the other Toontown custodial Nextel, and asked that person if they could get the last can on my trash run. The guy, Michael, not only did this, but also came to the break room to check on me and make sure I was okay. It was funny – we learned about asking someone who is hurt or whatever three times if they want a paramedic called, and also telling them it’s free – because sometimes someone will be like, “no, I’m fine, I’m fine,” but if they think about it they realize it would be a good idea. And when he came he did the asking three times and saying it was free thing to me! It made me laugh. But I told him no, I would be okay now that I was in the coolness and had something to drink, and thanked him for finishing my trash run.
It had been time for my break when I came into the break room. It was just supposed to be a 15 minute break, but I stayed there 25 minutes, and had some trail mix that I brought, because I knew that if I didn’t stay there long enough to cool down thoroughly I would just go out there and pass out again. Fortunately, when I did go back out, I was fine.
We had “track talk” (when all the custodials from Toontown and Tomorrowland meet and get any news) at 6:00pm. The only important thing there was that everyone who was sweeping needed to occasionally go up and down the Alice and the Mad Hatter’s Treat Party trail because people drop candy a lot there. I liked this, because I get to see all the characters (the Alice is so perfect! I love her!) and listen to the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack music.
This was the only 8 hour shift that I’ve had so far – I finished at midnight. I was really tired going back, from walking all that time, but it was a good night. Seeing everyone in their costumes is so much fun. And the HalloWishes fireworks are LOUD!

Post #2: In Which Cinderannie Has Two Terrible Days

On Saturday the 22nd, I worked in Fantasyland, bussing tables. At first it seemed like everything was a mess, because two of us were doing a trash run in the same area at the same time, and it seemed like there were too many custodials in the area getting in each others way, and everything was frustrating. But then a manager came by, and I asked her about the schedule, and it turned out that I was the cause of all this confusion – I hadn’t understood the schedule, and I was actually supposed to be in a different area, a short distance away – Scuttle’s landing, instead of The Fry Shoppe. Rats. So I go over there, and of course it’s a bit of a mess because I wasn’t there, so I dash around, sweep up and wipe the tables, and empty all the trash. By time I finished with all this, it was getting dark out. The lights were out that were around the tent that was over the tables, and I thought, “that’s weird, you’d think they’d want them on when it’s dark, but maybe they only use them when Ariel is here doing a show (there’s a stage inside the tent).” But then a little later the manager came and said, “Have these lights been off the whole time?!” and they were supposed to be on and maintenance should have been called… honestly, that whole shift I felt like I was doing everything wrong and couldn’t fix it. I don’t know what was wrong with me. But another girl I talked to, who took me to where the trash that can’t go down the AVAC goes so I could know where to put it, said that everyone feels like that the first time they do a new type of shift. So that was comforting.
After the park was closed and my area was all clean and the trash was emptied, I still had a little less than an hour before my shift ended. I went to ask the manager whether I should go to Main Street, since that’s usually what we do. But instead, she said,
“Okay, I’m sorry to ask you to do this, but could you please close out the male Peter Pan restrooms?” Of course I said, “Sure,” and went. I was doing okay, despite being tired and frustrated, until as I was cleaning I left the stockroom door open, because I was going back and forth getting different cleaners for different things, and then the lady doing the female restrooms told me crossly that I had to close it and lock it every time. After she had gone I yelled under my breath,
“There’s nobody here but you and me, lady! Who do you think is going to come steal or eat the chemicals!?” And to my frustration tears came into my eyes. I blinked them back and went into the restroom, carrying my cleaner, and to my surprise, there was a man in there cleaning!
“Oh, hello,” I said. “My manager told me to close these out.”
“Oh. Well, we will help each other,” he said in a Spanish accent, and we did. You would think it would be awkward, cleaning a men’s bathroom with a man, but for some reason it wasn’t. He wouldn’t let me clean the toilets and urinals, insisting that he would do that. So I cleaned the sinks and mirror and swept the floor and checked to make sure there was enough toilet paper and paper towel, and then before I knew it, it was time for me to go clock out. I thanked him very much, and gladly went to go home. It was nice of him to show up before I went to pieces.
I’m sorry that I’m going to tell about another crummy shift, but I figure you want to know what’s really happening to me. Don’t worry, this next one (Sunday the 23rd) was the worst day, and after that it all gets much better – indeed, right up to wonderful. But first…
On Saturday I was working in Tomorrowland again. Everything was going well, until I had to do a closing trash run. Ian, another custodial, had show me where everything was, and I thought it was going to go okay. But for some reason, things always take me longer than they take other people (except assembly line things. Then I can go the fastest. I wonder why that is?), especially the first time I do them. I was supposed to clock out at 12:15. But it took forever, and I was finishing the outside trash cans at ten to midnight and still had to do the bagged trash inside the rides. At that point I still thought I would make it, even though I also had to clean the dumpster area – I didn’t realize how many cans there were inside Buzz Lightyear, Stitch’s Great Escape, and Monster’s Inc. I got through Buzz, and it was 12:15. Then Stitch – it’s the old Alien Encounter, which was designed to be scary, and they haven’t changed the pre-show areas at all. It was a little creepy but not too bad when I was in there at first. Then I went to do Monster’s Inc. and realized I’d left the roll of plastic trash bags behind. So I had to go back in and look for them. Ugh. I practically ran out of there… shudder. It was nearly 12:45 when I finished Monster’s Inc. The trash cart was so heavy I could barely push it. I sang songs as I went back to the dumpsters.
All the trash liners on the cart had to be dumped into the compactor and rinsed, and then I had to sweep up the area. We aren’t supposed to clock out more than 15 minutes past our scheduled time, but by this time I figure I might as well be hung for a – what’s the expression? A dollar as a dime? No. A horse as a rabbit? Definitely not. I can’t remember at all. Well, anyway, I figured now that I was here I might as well clean the dumpster area thoroughly, so I got it all swept up and hosed down. As I was finishing the last of it, maggots started crawling from under the dumpster. Lots of them. Ugh ugh ugh. Thankful that they hadn’t come until I was done, I fled with my trash cart, left it in its spot by the Carousel of Progress gate, and went to clock out with great relief.
I had missed the bus that afternoon, so I’d had to drive to work. Fortunately I’d paid very close attention to where I parked, so I didn’t have any trouble finding my car. Getting home, on the other hand, was a different story. I got so lost! In the middle of nowhere! And when I did get to somewhere, everything was closed! I turned around, hoping that I could retrace my way back to Disney, and wondering what my mother would think if I called her at almost 2am telling her I was lost in Florida. Well, I didn’t get back to exactly where I started, but it was with extreme relief that I saw a Disney logo on a sign. I was over at Buena Vista video headquarters, and I have no idea where that is in the Disney complex, but all I knew was that once I was within Disney either there would be signs to tell me how to get home, or I would find someone who was awake and working. I drove along – stopping at a lighted building to see if anyone was there, but no one was – until I saw, with great relief, a sign that said “All Guest Areas” with an arrow pointing to the right. From there I just followed the signs until I knew where I was and could get home. And I was sooo glad to get back…
Thus ends the account of the two worst days of work so far. Again I say, don’t worry, it all goes up from here.

Post #3: In Which Five People Notice Cinderannie

On Monday the 24th I worked in Tomorrowland again. I went with some trepidation, given my previous experience, but when I looked on my sheet I didn’t have a trash run at all! So it was an easy night, nothing but sweeping and chatting with guests, and drying the tables after it rained. There’s nothing much to tell about it, other than that I was talking to a guy doing a trash run during the fireworks, and the music was playing and everything was beautiful, and then suddenly he said he’d ask me to dance, but I wasn’t wearing gloves. At first I was thinking, “Huh?” But then I realized that he was wearing gloves and his hands were dirty from the trash and he didn’t want to get my hands dirty. So I said, “Well thank you.” It was nice. I was glad that there was that excuse to not dance, because I wouldn’t want to slow dance (which is the only kind you could do to that music except waltzing, and somehow I doubt he knew how to waltz…) with someone I wasn’t in a very serious relationship with, but trying to explain that would have spoiled the moment. So it worked out very nicely. But that’s the only interesting thing that happened that day.
On Tuesday it was another shift in Tomorrowland. I had one trash run, which Ian showed me all the cans for, but it was in the middle of my shift and it was easy, and I got to do the zone that includes the Fantasyland bridge instead of the one in front of Space Mountain where I had been working. One of the best parts of the day was Diane, a manager, coming up to me and giving me a pin lanyard! So now I can trade pins! It’s so much fun, and it gives more opportunity for guest interaction. Oh, and since on this day my shift started at 3:30pm, I wore a hat so as not to pass out.
At one point during the evening, I was talking to Ian about the fireworks and how I always want to stop sweeping and watch them.
“Oh, we can!” he said. “The managers don’t mind if you’re just sweeping. If you’re doing a trash run, you’ve gotta keep going, but if you’re sweeping you can stop to watch them. Do you want to watch them with me tonight? I’ll show you my favorite spot to see them.”
“Sure!” I said. What is it with guys and fireworks? It’s nice being noticed, but it’s also a little strange. Oh, and some guy on the bus asked me out once. I turned him down - nicely; I’m not going to date unless there’s a possibility of marrying the guy, and any guy who asks a girl out after one conversation is not marriage material. I’ll try not to let all this noticing go to my head. :-)
Watching the fireworks with Ian was nice. It was sort of funny; the place that was his favorite spot was the place on the Tomorrowland bridge where Tinkerbelle goes right over your head – it’s the same place my family watches them; I’ve known about it for years. But I didn’t tell him that. :-)
At one point during my trash run, I was coming out of the backstage area with my trash dolly when a manager saw me and said,
“I like your smile out there. You’re doing good.” So! A manager noticed me smiling! This is good. And I got noticed again, by another manager, later that night. I was over at Main Street, Toontown having emptied of guests and been swept, and it was almost time for my clock out when a manager named Russ came up to me and, rather desperately, asked if I would do him a favor. I said sure, and he told me that his cast member was missing and could I please start on the BDO (Bus Drop Off) trash run. So I took off with the trash dolly he pushed at me, and quickly started on it. I finished half of it in only 15 minutes, and meanwhile another person had been doing the other half. Russ came back, thanked me very much, and said to just call the deployment base when I went to clock out and tell them that he said to extend me. But it turned out that on my way back another manager lady came up to me and said that they’d gotten me an extension until 9:50 (I was supposed to clock out at 9:30) and I was all set. So it was nice to be able to be of help, especially because he was so appreciative, and it didn’t take long at all.

Two Posts: A Flashback to a Week Earlier, and Thursday

2007-09-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

Post #1: In Which Cinderannie Meets a Handsome Stranger, and Goes to a Parade

So I realized that I left out something fun that happened on Wednesday the 12th of September. This was the cast preview of the Mickey’s Boo to You Halloween parade. I was very excited about it, having never seen any Disney Halloween parade before. Marijka wanted to go too, and we decided to dress up. She put on her blue ballet costume, and ballet tights and shoes, and Dani, who works at the Bibbidy Bobiddy Boutique, did her hair in a lovely bun and put glitter in it. I was supposed to be a gypsy, but my attempt at layering skirts and scarves didn’t go as well as I was hoping, so I ended up just in all black (skirt and t-shirt) with an orange scarf tied around my hair.
While the two of us sat waiting at the bus stop, I caught sight of a nice-looking young man standing a short distance away. He looked pleasant and friendly, and since I was in an outgoing mood, I looked up at him and smiled and nodded in a greeting sort of way. He smiled back. I looked away, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he kept looking at me! Well! I was flattered.
About a minute later, having noticed a girl dressed up in a gorgeous, mermaid-like green dress, I went over to compliment her on it. This brought me closer to the young man I had smiled at, and after I had greeted the girl, he walked up and said to me,
“Excuse me, you are going to thee Halloween parrade?” in an beautiful accent I wasn’t sure of the identity of – it was like Spanish only more European.
“Yup!” I said with a smile. “The bus should be here soon. I’m Joanna, by the way.”
“I am Alejandro,” he says.
“Nice to meet you. Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Italy.” English steals that word of all its beauty. He said it, “Eetahlee” – which doesn’t look nice spelled, but try saying it out loud. Go on, do it.
Now I am not the boy-crazy ooh-and-ah type, but honestly… it took a little bit of willpower to not just melt in a puddle on the floor then and there. But I kept it together, kept what Michelle calls “the boy smile” off my face, and attempted to not look as though I was thinking “ooh, Italian!” because he probably gets that a million times a day. I just said,
“Oh, that’s cool,” and then the other girl said something to me and I was talking to her. He never said anything more to me, and I must confess I worry that I was unsuccessful in hiding my reaction and that he disappointedly assessed me as just another swooning girl. Rats.
The bus came shortly after that. Marijka and I sat toward the middle, and Alejandro sat toward the front. I didn’t see him after we got off the bus, and I haven’t seen him since, so who knows what happened to him.
On the bus Marijka was fretting about being the only one dressed up. I told her,
“It doesn’t matter if you’re the only one if you look good. It’s only weird to be the only one dressed up if you look goofy. And you look gorgeous. Just smile and look confident. You look amazing, so you can pull it off.” I think I convinced her at least partially.
When we got to the Magic Kingdom bus stop, from which other buses take us to the main tunnel entrance, I was surprised to see an enormous crowd. Normally you can just hop on the next bus to the main entrance, but we had to wait for three buses before we could get on!
When the bus dropped us off at the entrance to the main tunnel, I thought we would just follow where everyone else was going, but they seemed to all split in different directions, so I just thought, “Oh, whatever, I’ll just pick a staircase up and we’ll go from there.” Marijka was excited to get to see the tunnels. We came up around fantasyland, and were a little worried that we would miss the beginning of the parade, since it was a few minutes past when it was supposed to start. But I was hoping that since there was such a jam at the buses, they’d delay it until everyone got there. We hurried through Fantasyland – it was so weird to see it deserted! – until we got to Main Street, and were happy to discover that not only had the parade not started yet, there was a nice spot for us to sit on the curb and watch.
It was a grand parade – lots of characters, magical music, a band of skeletons, and candy at the end! One thing stood out to me that night, though, besides the magic of it – all the characters dance. Characters who are just on a float in the regular parade, dance in this one. I may as well confess to you all now that I do treasure dreams of someday being a character. And now I knew that if it was going to happen, I have to learn to dance. I would have thought this was an impossible dream, because I always thought of myself as being no good at dancing, but there were movements that I couldn’t do at all in the beginning of my Voice and Movement class at Cornerstone that I can do very easily now – so I can improve, with teaching and practice. How far I can improve is another question, but I’ll never know if I never try.
After the last of the parade went by, Marijka and I thought we would go back out the way we came and beat the crowds – but the security people said everyone had to go out the main gate. Since there was no beating the crowds anyway, I did what I had always wanted to do – I followed the parade, all the way down Main Street, laughing and dancing to the music all the way. For a while Marijka stayed on the sidewalk, but then she came and joined me. As we were coming to the exit, we found Abby! We hadn’t even know she was there. So we got to ride the bus to the Magic Kingdom bus stop with her. From there, the bus back to the apartments only comes once every 20 minutes, and there were a good many more than one bus’ worth of people there. Oh dear. The first bus we just let go – it was hopeless to try to get on it. We were going to try for the second bus, but it was no good. It was getting very late, and Marijka had to get up early for work in the morning, so Abby and I encouraged her to make a dash for it and get on the next one, and fortunately she made it. Abby and I took the next one after that. And, as seems to happen to me rather frequently, I ended up sitting next to a guy who talked my ear off the entire bus ride home. Although his conversation was more interesting than some.
Given how late we went to bed, I was glad that I had the next day off – which was the day that we all went to downtown Orlando. So now you know one of the reasons for me being inspired to take the ballet class.

Post #2: In Which Cinderannie Buys Presents for her Sister, Cinderella, and Attempts to do Ballet

On Thursday the 20th I went shopping for Lydia’s birthday for most of the day. First I went to Cast Connections, the place where cast members can buy overstocked and discontinued merchandise for a large discount. It was cool, but I was disappointed by the lack of Princess things (Cinderella is Lydia’s favorite). So I left there and took the bus to Downtown Disney. Now this was fun. I may hate shoe shopping, but shopping in a place as cool as Downtown Disney, when you are free to spend guiltless money for someone who you know will like what you get, is grand. I had so much fun picking them out.
Toward the end of shopping I was getting hungry, and I had seen a stand with “churros” – long cinnamon sticks that you can dip in hot fudge or caramel. They looked amazing, so I bought one, with chocolate sauce. Wow. It was really, really, good. I highly recommend them. As I was finishing it and walking back toward the bus, I saw one of the stands that’s everywhere advertising the Disney Vacation Club. They’re promoting it a lot, and I was curious about what it was, so I went to take a look. They man working there came up and asked if he could help me – in a nice, meaning it way, not a “what are you doing here” kind of way – so I said I was just trying to figure out what it was and how it worked. He told me all about it. Basically, you pay a lot of money (I mean a LOT of money), which purchases a share in Disney real estate, and then for 50 years you can stay for about a week once a year free at any Disney resort, anywhere in the world. So if you were a young family, and you were going to go to Disney a lot in the future, and you had that much money (ha), it would eventually pay for itself, and be really cool, plus you could use it with your children and grandchildren. Coming up with the cash in the first place (it’s like $16,000) would be interesting, though…
When I got back, I had just time to grab some supper and dash around getting ready to go to ballet. Abby and Marijka both had other things they were doing that night, so it was just me. I left with just enough time to make it there, which was foolish – I got lost again. So once again, there I was, arriving at the building 20 minutes after the class started, feeling stupid. But if I’m ever going to get a character role, I have to learn to dance, and I wasn’t going to put off starting another week. So I took a deep breath, got out of the car, and walked into the building and upstairs to the desk. There I told the lady I was here for the adult class, explained that I had gotten lost, and asked if it was still all right if I went in.
“Sure, they’re still on barre [the first part of the ballet class],” she said. So I paid my money and went in. As I was coming in the door, the teacher saw me and gave me a bright encouraging smile, so I felt better about going in.
The barre exercises were pretty much what I was used to from my other class, although she did different combinations so I had to really concentrate to follow along. Then we did the crossing-the-floor combinations… oh dear. They were the difficulty we did at the end of my Voice and Movement class at Cornerstone; about two steps beyond where I was at the height of my ballet class. If I had just come out of that class, I could have picked them up all right, but being three months out of practice it was a bit of a disaster. At one point I had the impulse, “You can’t do this at all, just leave and go home,” but my thoughts instantly replied, “No way! I am not giving this up after the first time! How am I going to get better if I don’t do it?” So I stayed. It is frustrating, because this was the combined beginner/advanced class, and the beginner class would be better for me but it’s on Monday nights and I work Monday nights. But hey, if it’s over my head, that’s good, because it means I have opportunity to get better. The only thing is, at my class in GR I was comfortable enough with the teacher to ask her after class to show me certain things I didn’t get at all, and she would always show me until I got it, and seemed very happy to do it. But I am too shy to ask this teacher, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick them up without slower instruction. So maybe tonight, when I have ballet again, I will get up my courage and ask her to show me one step I don’t get. And if I ask her for a step or two every night, eventually I’ll get somewhere.

Four Posts! Thursday night, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday+Wednesday

2007-09-27T09:56:00.000-07:00

My mother told me that I could post more than one post at a time, and my fans (wow, I have fans!) would still read it. So I'm trying out this theory... and posting four posts at once. It's insanely long. So, if you're not my mother, and you want to skim to whatever parts you find most interesting, go ahead. And if anyone's lurking (for those who don't speak netspeak, read: "reading and not commenting/posting"), go ahead and leave a line. I don't care if you don't have anything clever to say, I'd just love to hear from you.

Post #1: A Night on the Town - Joanna, Abby, and Marijka Style

Thursday was a day off. Looking at my receipts, I see that I went to Walmart and bought a few things I needed. I also called my sister Rebecca in the afternoon because she had had surgery that day and I wanted to see how she was.
I had discovered that there is an adult ballet class at the Orlando Ballet school. I had really enjoyed the adult ballet class at home – it was improving my flexibility and posture, and giving me exercise, and making me feel like a dancer. Abby and Marijka wanted to come and try it to, so we all went together.
The sky as we drove was amazing! The sun was setting, and the sky was filled with towering clouds. One half of the sky was golden, and the other half was bright blue. We couldn’t stop admiring it, and Abby took pictures with great delight. I’ll have to get them from her and post them.
Unfortunately, we left a little late, and then got lost. The result was that we didn’t get to the building until twenty minutes after the class had started. So, sitting in the car in the parking lot, we had a discussion, and decided to call this our finding-out-where-it-was expedition, and go next week. We had seen a library as we drove, and wanted to get library cards, and we could also explore downtown Orlando a little, so it wouldn’t be a complete waste of gas, and at least now we knew where the building was.
We went ahead and went inside to find out more information about the class, and even got to peek in so that we could see what people wore. It was like the one I went to in GR (I love how my city can just be two letters, it’s almost like an affectionate nickname the way those who live there use it) – a mix. Some in tights and leotards, some in tank tops and loose-fitting capris or shorts, but everyone in ballet slippers. And guess what! Orlando Ballet does the Nutcracker! I can have one of my Christmas traditions! (Granted, it’s an intermittent tradition because of the cost, but I think it’s worth splurging on this year.)
After we had looked around the building and found out what we needed to know, we went back to the library. It took us some circles to figure out where to park. We finally ended up parking in this lot that was inside a gate. We thought sure it would be not allowed, but there no signs anywhere that said “reserved,” or “permit parking only,” or any of those depressing phrases that mean you can’t park in a good spot. So we parked there, and went into the library. Books! Books! But when we went to the desk to get a library card, the lady said we couldn’t get a card unless we had proof of Florida residence, which meant some sort of official paper that had our Florida address on it, like a paycheck stub or whatever. Today had been the first payday, and none of us had gotten our paycheck yet. So we were out of luck. This was depressing, but we had excitement – we had seen a lit fountain out in a lake while we were looking for parking, and we wanted to go over there and explore.
When we walked back to the place we parked, we discovered that the gate was closed! Oh no! My car was trapped inside! Now what? Being small enough to fit through the bars, I decided to slip in and investigate. Maybe there was another exit. The other two (they are both thin as well; Abby is tallish and Marijka is a little shorter than me) followed, and we looked around but there was no other exit. A lady came in a different way and went to her car – there must be a way out then! I went up to her and was going to ask how to get out of here, but she was on her cell phone and I didn’t want to interrupt, so we decided to just follow her. We were walking over to my car when she pulled out of her space. She drove up to the gate and it opened!
“Hurry! Hurry!” we cried, flinging ourselves into the car. What if you had to have a special card or something! We’d have to follow close behind her!
The gate closed before we reached it – but when we pulled up to it, it opened automatically. All our worry and fret for nothing! Laughing, we left the parking lot and drove out, heading for the fountain.
It took a little bit for us to find it again, because I had forgotten when exactly we saw it, but then I remembered and we drove around looking for a place to park again. We found a spot – parallel parking, ugh! It was a park, with paths through trees, along the edge of the lake. It was lovely, and we walked along it, looking at the fountain and at the ducks and swans that swam in the water. I was amused by a sign that forbid being in a horizontal position anywhere in the park…
After a bit of walking, we came to a playground.
“Look, a playground!” I said. There was a moment of hesitation, and then all three of us were running full speed toward it. The first section of it was disappointing – only a small play structure, and baby swings! But then we saw this amazing space-age looking climbing thing across the way, and ran over to it. There was a swing there, too, and promptly started swinging while Abby and Marijka climbed on the structure. It was the best superhero training thing ever – all different climbing-on things, and then there was this circular tilted spinning thing you walk on and it moves under you, until it gets going to fast and you panic and jump off – at least that’s how I used it… And other spinning things, where you can jump on crouched down so it starts spinning and then pull your way up the pole to a standing position, which makes it spin faster and faster until you think you’ll surely be flung off. One of my favorite things about having done dance is that I don’t get dizzy and sick from spinning nearly as easily as I used to. I wouldn’t have been able to do those at all before, but I did them three or four times and I didn’t get sick at all.
Finally, it was getting late, and we decided we should probably head home since Abby had to work early the next day. When we came crashing in, still talking, our roommates looked up in some surprise. So we gave them our account of our downtown adventures. I like being crazy. Who would have thought I’d find two people I could play on a playground with?

Post #2: Shoe Shopping, and my First Working Day

The next Sunday, the 16th, I had thought about going to church in the morning, since I was working in the evening and wouldn’t be able to go to the evening service. But I had to do training until 10:45pm on Saturday night, and then it’s a half hour bus ride home… and I couldn’t find the motivation to get up early and go to a strange church. If it was Blythefield it wouldn’t have mattered – I’ve gone to Blythefield after working all night – but I didn’t feel up to going somewhere new. I needed white socks for work – the only ones I have have blue cuffs, which they said wouldn’t do :-) , and black shoes. The specifications for the shoes were: plain black polishable leather with no decoration, closed toe and heel, cover all of the top of your foot, and no Velcro allowed. Just the sort of shoe I avoid like the plague. So I spent all afternoon shopping for shoes. Ugh. I’m not a huge fan of shopping at the best of times, but shopping when you don’t even get to buy what you like is awful. I couldn’t find a single pair of shoes that met the specifications and I didn’t think was ugly or horribly uncomfortable – except for two pairs: one that was slip on style with elastic diagonal criss-cross straps, which I thought I could wear if I wore pants so that no one could see the unconventional top, and one pair of soft black leather Converse All Stars at the Converse outlet. (Thad, you would love that place. I’d like to take you there.) Needless to say, neither of these pairs of shoes came in even close to my size.
So after driving to two different Walmarts and going to a whole bunch of outlet stores (in the pouring rain… nothing like walking into a high-class prices-way-over-my-budget leather shoe store looking like a drowned rat!), it was getting close to when I needed to work and I was starting to think that I was going to have to go to work another day in my “Cinderella shoes,” which are black ballet flats. I love those shoes, but one cannot walk for six hours straight (my usual shift time) in them without being in a good deal of pain. So there I was, at the last Walmart, trying on shoes, when I caught sight of a pair of black leather lace-up boot-looking shoes - hey! I actually liked the look of them! They had silver rivets in the lace holes, and metal hooks for lacing toward the top, and they had a sort of British look, I thought. So I got a pair of eights and tried them on. Hmm, they felt okay, but they were a little big and the arch support was too far forward. I got a pair of seven-and-a-halfs and slid them on. Perfection. They were so comfortable, the leather was soft instead of stiff, even at the cuff (I can’t stand shoes cutting into the back of my heel), and they fit my feet perfectly! Hurray! I looked at the brand – Earth Shoes. Of course. Just the brand that all my favorite sandals and my snowboots are, coming to my rescue again with a pair of comfortable shoes.
I had just time to buy them, get home, get ready like a maniac, and catch the bus to work. I would be working in Tomorrowland, and it would be my first time working by myself.
When I got out there, I had to ask another custodial person where the supply room is – that’s where the sheet that says what we’re supposed to do when and when our breaks are is. I was in zone two, which is around Space Mountain, and I didn’t have to do a trash run.
It was so nice to finally be on my own, just hanging out in Tomorrowland and keeping it clean. It rained for a little while, and when it let up I dried off the tables and chairs – and was gratified to see that people started sitting in them right away. I am useful! Besides, it’s fun drying tables. We have this tool called a squeegee that’s like a mini windshield wiper that gets the water right off. I liked pretending that I was really working at a spaceport – after all, one of our “basics” is “I stay in character and play the part”!
My zone included the long walkway from Tomorrowland to Toontown, and while I was down there I decided to dry the benches so people could sit there. It was starting to get a little dark by this point. I dried off a bench and was wringing out my cloth when I felt something sharp prick my finger painfully. I dropped the cloth instantly – had there been a thorn caught in it? But no, it hurt worse and worse! Ouch! It had to be a wasp sting. I kicked the cloth and there was the wasp. I quickly stomped on it. My hand still hurt a lot, and I was thinking I needed to go to First Aid. So I’m walking down the path, and half my hand is swollen, but as the pain lessened a little I realized that I’m not allergic and I don’t need first aid for just a wasp sting, this is silly. But it hurt so much it made me think instinctively that I needed to do something about it – it was my first time getting stung with no “grownup” around to go tell that I got stung. It stopped hurting after a while, of course, and the swelling disappeared.
One other thing of interest happened. Everyone gets a set of Pixie Dust pins when they first start work. These are to give to a guest who you see being magical – someone who’s especially enjoying the park, like skipping down Main Street or twirling around, or who does something nice to make magic for someone else. They come in a set of two, so that the guest can give the other away to someone else they see being magical. I had mine with me in the blue bag that we attach to our belts to carry things in. As the fireworks were going (they haven’t gotten old at all yet… I still gasp whenever Tinkerbelle flies), I caught sight of a mom and daughter sitting on a bench watching, singing along to all the songs and swaying back and forth in rhythm. A Pixie Dust pin moment if I ever saw one. So I went up to them, and said to the daughter,
“For some of the most enthusiastic fireworks watching I have ever seen, I would like to award you this Pixie Dust Pin.” Before I could continue explaining about it, the mom said with a gasp of delight,
“Do you know what these are? You keep one, and then give the other away to someone else who you see being magical!” So much for my speech, but they were happy so I didn’t care. They thanked me, and I thanked them for helping make the magic, and I went away smiling.
I also used my other magic that night – my No Strings Attached form, which is a way to give something to a guest who has had some sort of a problem – things like replacing a dropped ice cream cone or giving someone priority entrance to a ride. There was a man who was there for the Extra Magic Hours (when resort guests get to stay three hours past normal park closing time), but he had gotten a flyer saying that the EMHs went until midnight, when they actually ended at eleven. The result being that he was coming up to Space Mountain at 11:05, having never gotten to ride it yet, and was very disappointed. So since he was going to be back the next day or the day after, I gave him my form so that he could get right on Space Mountain without waiting in line when he came back.
I finished work at 12:15 – in Tomorrowland, we meet at the Lunching Pad restaurant a half hour after the park closes (11:30, that night), and then all go over to Main Street to help pan and broom, since it doesn’t empty out for at least an hour after the park closes, because everyone shops in the stores. It’s a good strategy, leaving the stores open so that people can buy things at the end of the day. I was pretty tired by the time it was time to go, but I do love Main Street at night. It’s all lit up and looking like the idealized small town that it is… and the bakery smells amazing.

Post #3: In Which Cinderannie is Late for the Parade

Since I had worked until past midnight, I slept in on Monday morning. That afternoon I worked in Toontown, which was fun. I wasn’t supposed to have trash runs until after I did my assessment, which would be Tuesday, but they had me scheduled for one anyway. The Toontown trash run is easy – Toontown is small, so it’s not broken into zones, which means that you just do all the pink and yellow Toontown trashcans and you’re done – no figuring out which is which.
I was supposed to go over to Main Street at eight o’clock. At five until eight I had just finished my trash run and was going to Main Street, when a lady with three kids and a Make-a-Wish button came up to me asking whether this was the Toontown Train station, which it was. She seemed a little distressed. I didn’t know if the button was just because she supports Make-a-Wish, or if she was really there with Make-a-Wish, but either way I wanted her to have the best time possible, so I asked what the trouble was. Her husband and daughter were separated from them, and she thought they were supposed to meet at the train station but she wasn’t sure, and he had the cell phone, and she only had a dollar and it cost two dollars to call on the pay phone. Well! I could do something about that. So I dug in my bag for a dollar I knew I had with me, and gave it to her, telling her it was the Guest Emergency Fund. I’m not sure if it’s against the rules to give the guests money or not, but I don’t remember anyone saying so, and it is in the rules that our goal is to make sure every guest has the most fabulous time of his or her life, so I’m glad I did.
The result of this was that I was quite late getting to Main Street. And I thought I was just supposed to pan and broom there during and after the Spectromagic parade, but then I ran into Courtneyd (it’s pronounced Courtney, her grandfather David died on her due date and the D is to honor him, you may think that’s weird but I think it’s kind of cool), one of the trainers and the most cheerful of all the custodial cast members, and she explained that I was “Parade” so I was supposed to be there at a bit before eight, with a pushbroom, and go along with one of the Powervacs pushing trash from the sidewalks into the street in front of it. Dear me. I apologized for not doing it right, and they all said that was okay, and then after our supper break we went to the Adventureland bridge to clear up after the second half of the parade and this time I did what I was supposed to. I’m not fond of the end of parade clean up where we’re down by the front entrance, because at that point the vacuums can reach everywhere so the pushbroomer is kind of useless. We can’t even go around spot sweeping with the broom, because we don’t have a pan, and trying to walk around with the vacuum and sweep things into it makes me dizzy because I have to keep spinning around to see where the vacuum is, not to mention the way that the vacuum goes in circles to get everywhere. So yeah… I definitely missed my pan and broom, which enables me to just sweep something up when I see it. By this time it was nearly time for us to leave, anyway, though, and when another useless pushbroom girl and I found a grandmother and granddaughter just sitting on a bench, we welcomed the chance to “take five” and talk to them. So we had a nice conversation until it was time for us to go, and it made a pleasant end to the night. I think I’ve said before that guest interaction makes me so happy…

Post #4: In Which Cinderannie Completes her Training, and a McDonald's is Ridiculous

On Tuesday the 18th I had my custodial assessment. All this meant was that I went with a trainer and he asked me questions about how to do everything and I answered them, as well as taking a written test. I was a little nervous about this, not because I was worried about knowing the material, but because my assessor was a guy who had kind of given me the creeps when I’d met him earlier. He was just, I don’t know, too friendly. I think the girls reading this will know what I mean. But I think that when I glared at him when he put his arm around me once, and spun out of it, he got the message, because he was fine during assessment, and I’ve seen him around since, and now he’s friendly but not creepy. He gave me Skittles yesterday, actually, because he’d gotten them in a gift bag and he says he doesn’t need all that sugar. He wasn’t creepy about giving them to me, so I accepted them and thanked him.
There was a lot of waiting around for things to happen during assessment… the assessor kept disappearing for ten minutes at a time. Since I had my notebook with me, I didn’t mind this. I just wrote. And it was nice to spend time seated in the air conditioning, since I’d spent the past two working shifts walking nonstop. That was the one thing about the good training days – it was very hot.
After my assessment was completed and I had passed it, they said that I should spend the rest of my shift (until 8:45pm) panning and brooming around my area, getting to know where the restrooms and smoking sections and everything were. They said I should go to Tomorrowland and Toontown, because that’s where it said on my schedule I would be working, but I’d already been there for two days and I knew it was likely that I would eventually be elsewhere, and I hadn’t been in Adventureland or Frontierland during any of my training and I didn’t know those areas very well. So I took the long way around to the East (that’s what we call Tomorrowland and Toontown), and went through Adventureland and Frontierland (“the West”) on the way. In Adventureland I met another custodial, and he gave me a tour, showing me where the AVAC room was. (The AVAC is a marvelous tool – you dump the trash in it, and it all gets sucked down pipes at 70 miles an hour and turned into dust.) Eventually I made my way to Tomorrowland, and then to Main Street when the park closed. This time I had my pan and broom, so it was much more pleasant. I got to have a nice conversation with a girl who worked at a popcorn cart while I swept up the popcorn that was spilled around it. It was nice talking to her because she loves working at Disney and loves her job. I have to keep an eye out for those people and talk to them, because if I get talking to the cynical ones too much it depresses me. But I notice that the higher-ups are mostly all enthusiastic… it’s the ones who believe in the Disney vision, not the cynics, who stay in the company and move up.
On Wednesday, I was tired from working late nights, and Abby and I spent all afternoon e-mailing and watching Top Chef. The most amusing thing about this is that neither of us are TV watchers at all, so we would periodically groan at how ridiculous we were being, watching reality television all afternoon. But we were so tired, and it was an interesting show, and made a nice break.
In the evening I went to First Baptist Church, first to their ‘Focus’ Wednesday night service, and then to their college group. Focus, at seven, is just a sermon. The pastor who teaches it is going through the book of James. I listened, and took a few notes. It was okay, but he was no Louie. And I think he misinterpreted what “be slow to speak” means.
There was an hour between Focus and the college group, since it wasn’t until nine, and I was very hungry for supper. And then I realized I’m a complete moron, because I hadn’t brought money to eat out. Fortunately I had a good deal of change in my car, including two dollar coins. So I had enough to get quite a good meal at McDonalds. However, when I paid with my change, I noticed that I had a Canadian dime, with a sailboat on it. I was just about to grab it back and trade it, thinking that I’d like to keep it with me, when she shoved it back toward me.
“That’s not a dime,” she said. I blinked in astonishment.
“Yes, it is. It’s a Canadian dime. We use them like normal change – I’m from Michigan so we get a lot of them.” But she shook her head, and called over another worker.
“Do we take these?” she asked her.
“No,” the other lady said. So she handed me back my dime, and I fished for another one. I couldn’t believe it! They just rejected my Canadian dime!
When I had my food – the service was not so good, they didn’t even give me a fork for my cinnamon melt and the melt was quite short on icing – I went and sat down to eat quickly so I could get back to the church. I also called my mother back, since she had left a message on my phone.
When I came into the college group (they call it “Breaking Bread,” like we call ours “Ecclesia”), there was a table that had a sheet for newcomers to sign. I was walking up to it, feeling a little uncertain, when a redheaded girl came up to me and said,
“Hi! Are you new?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. She introduced me to a couple people at the table and had me sign up. One of the people, Megan, was from Michigan.
“Michigan!” I exclaimed. “Then you will understand this! The lady at McDonald’s just rejected my Canadian dime!”
“They rejected it? No way! Floridians!” So we commiserated, and she said, “I’ll buy it off you! I don’t think I have any left!” As I was taking it out, I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it up, but when she took it she looked at it with a smile and said, “This makes my day!” and I was glad I gave it to her. I wished afterwards that I had just given it to her and not taken her two nickels but it happened rather fast.
The college group was rather like a combination of our college group and Nitelife, because it was college age, but it was at night and all lit up. I liked it; it felt familiar. And they were playing Skillet and Flyleaf music before it started, two of my favorite bands, so that was comforting. We sang a song I hadn’t heard before, but I really liked it. And the study they were doing was on Paul’s missionary journeys, so that was cool because I was just in Greece.
After the college group, several people were going out to a restaurant, so I went too, since it seemed like a good way to get to know people. One guy who I met, Michael, was also new, having been invited by some people who were doing “Free Hug Day” at University of Central Florida. He offered to give me a ride over to the restaurant, since he’d have to come back toward the church anyway to get on the freeway to go home. Trusting my instincts, I accepted. It was nice to not have to worry about getting there, although it turned out that the restaurant (called Alehouse - it’s kind of like Applebees except the music is louder) was just down the road. I didn’t have any money left on me, so I just got water. That was probably good though, since I wasn’t hungry at all. It was nice to sit and listen to everyone and become familiar with their faces – Nicole, who has a round friendly face and brown curly hair, and is outgoing and spunky; Tiffany, with black hair, who is calmer but still outgoing; and Megan from Michigan was there too. There were others at the other end of the table but I didn’t really meet them. The restaurant was “as cold as Taco Bell,” as my family says. I was in flipflops and shorts and a t-shirt so I was freezing. Because of this, and because I was not in a very talkative mood so I wasn’t getting to know people as much as I would like, I was ready to go before the others were really done. Fortunately, Michael was wanting to get home, too, so we said goodbye to the others and he drove me back to my car. It was around midnight when I got home, and I was glad that I had the next day off.

Two Posts in One - Covering Five Days!

2007-09-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

I'm going to catch up yet! Get ready for a bit of a marathon read, because I'm going to cover five days at once, in two "posts" (but they'll both be part of this one). And there will probably be more later today.

Post #1: The Magic Kingdom

Okay, so I’ve mixed up my days but good. You know how I just wrote about Monday being so great and how I went to Epcot? Well, that actually happened three days earlier, on Saturday. The amusing thing was that I first wrote it as happening on Saturday and then second-guessed myself and changed it. But I was right the first time. I figured this out because I realized that what really happened on Monday, which was a grand trip to the Magic Kingdom, happened before Tuesday, because I was writing about Tuesday and remembered talking about it to someone on that day. I actually went to Walmart and bought bins and things on Thursday after the meetings, according to my reciepts. But anyway, now I’m going to tell you about the real Monday. It’s going to be long, so if you want to skim, I won’t be offended. I know my mom will read the whole thing, though :-)
I found out, while talking to my roommate Marijka, that she had never been to the Magic Kingdom. So since we both had Monday off, we thought we would go together. I went somewhere Monday morning – oh yeah, to get my ID! And I did look for my ID at Taco Bell and the Commons on Saturday (not Sunday) before going to Epcot, which I had thought I did at first, because I thought I did more than just banking that morning, and I was depressed before I went to Epcot, which I thought I had been, because I had had two failed errands, one being not finding my ID! It all makes sense now. So, anyway, I had found my ID, and I went to Vista Way for a little while to check my e-mail. As I was coming back to the apartment at around noon, I was feeling a little tired and not sure if I really felt like trolling around MK (I’m going to abbreviate it from now on, I’m tired of typing it out every time, and it’s going to come up a lot…) all afternoon. But when I came in and had put away my stuff, Marijka asked me with sweet uncertainty whether we were still going. I knew that once I was there I would be glad I was, and how could I say no? So I said,
“Yes, we are!” And we got ready, and took the bus to the Ticket and Transportation Center (TTC), which is where those who drive to MK park. We could have taken the bus right to MK, but I didn’t know exactly how to get from where the bus drops you off to the actual entrance, and anyway, it was her first time and I wanted her to have the full experience, complete with monorail.
When we got to the monorail, I went right to the transportation worker and asked,
“Could we sit in the front?” He confirmed that it was just us two (only four at a time can sit in the cockpit), and sent us on up to the front loading section, telling us to talk to the man there. Grinning at Marijka, I went up to him and asked again,
“Can we sit up front?” the cockpit was empty, and he said that yes, we could. For those of you who have not experienced this – if you ask, you can sit in the very front of the monorail, where the captain is. This means you get a full view out the front window, instead of just peering through the small windows on the sides. It’s like flying.
I watched eagerly out the front for the first sight of the castle. We went through the Contemporary resort, and then, finally, as we came around a curve, there it was!
“Look!” I cried to Marijka, pointing.
“Oh!” she exclaimed softly. Friends, the “Oh!” of a first-time sight of Cinderella Castle is absolutely priceless.
When we came into the park, it was just starting to rain. Fortunately neither of us is too traumatized by getting wet, so we weren’t discouraged by this. It was about 3:15 as we were coming in – and there came the parade, down Main Street! We were just in time to see it! We stood next to a building so as not to get completely soaked, and watched it come. I love that parade.
When it was done, and the rain let up, we walked down Main Street, discussing where we wanted to go. She knew instantly that she wanted to go to Fantasyland first, and since that’s my favorite place, it was okay with me. We were standing in front of the castle, deciding the best way to get to Fantasyland, when a man came up to us, holding two fastpasses in his hand and saying something about Splash Mountain. English wasn’t his first language, so I wasn’t sure what he wanted at first, and was trying to explain Fastpasses and direct him to Splash Mountain, but it turned out that he had to leave, had two fastpasses for right then, and wanted to give them to us! (For those of you who don’t know about fastpasses: they are a way to not have to wait so long on a ride. You get a fastpass, and it gives you an hour’s range of time later that day to come back. It gives a limited number out per hour of the day, switching to the next hour when it reaches the quota, so that the fastpass line is a good deal shorter.) Well, we had been going to go to Fantasyland first, but we weren’t going to pass up an almost waitless ride on Splash Mountain, so we headed for Frontierland.
We hardly had to wait in line at all! We just walked through the corridors until we got to where the fastpass and the standby lines meet, and the cast member came and let us through. We ended up sitting right in the front! As the log car came around the curve where you go past where the others splash down, a car came down the mountain into the water, creating a terrific splash – we got SOAKED! And we had just started to dry out! Marijka shrieked and I laughed and laughed. We got way wetter then than we did on the actual splash down. Oh, and Papa, I remembered to hold my hat in my lap… so that my favorite hat would not get eaten by Splash Mountain.
“So, where do you want to go now?” I asked Marijka as we came out of the ride.
“Fantasyland!” she said instantly. So we found our way over there – and went on every single ride. It’s a Small World, Peter Pan’s Flight, Dumbo, Cinderella’s Carousel, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh… we even went on Snow White’s Scary Adventures, which I’d never been on before. It was rather creepy – I wouldn’t recommend it for small children. And also Mickey’s Philharmagic, which I hadn’t done before. It was odd – although I was enjoying everything, I wasn’t feeling much of a sense of magic. “Dear me, I’m getting old and cynical,” I thought. Having something tangible often helps the way I think of things, so I was thinking of buying some small item that I liked as a symbol of the fact that the magic would continue no matter how old I was. It was just then that we did Mickey’s Philharmagic. It was wonderful! It’s set up like it’s going to be an orchestra concert (it’s a 3-D movie really), with Goofy stage managing (no one in their right mind would let Goofy stage manage anything!). Then something goes wrong backstage, and Mickey, the conductor, has to dash off to fix it, giving strict instructions to Donald not to touch his sorcerer’s hat, which he leaves on the stand. Of course, Donald does, and the result is an adventure through several classic Disney songs. The Peter Pan song “You Can Fly” in 3-D is amazing – I felt like I was really flying with them! In the end it dissolves into chaos, until Mickey appears, the hat comes down on his head, and he conducts furiously to sort everything out in a beautiful finale. I loved the whole thing so much that I ended up buying a stuffed Mickey in a conductors outfit with the sorcerer’s hat. And I don’t know if it was just that it was something I hadn’t ever done before, or that I loved it so much, but that show brought back the feeling of magic for me.
It rained again later in the afternoon, but we just walked through it, laughing all the time.
“My friends would not believe I am doing this!” Marijka said, laughing. “Walking in the rain and getting all soaking wet! At home I am the girly-girl!” I laughed, saying that I never would have guessed. By the time we had done every ride in Fantasyland, it was eight o’clock and we were starving. We wanted to go to a sit-down restaurant, because we would get a discount there and also we were tired and a delicious leisurely meal sounded nice. Unfortunately, I had forgotten/ didn’t realize two things. Firstly, you need a reservation for a sit down restaurant in the Magic Kingdom because everything fills up so fast. Since there were only two of us, they might have been able to fit us in somewhere if it weren’t for the second problem – almost every restaurant in the MK closes at eight! So there we were, soaking wet, very hungry, trailing from restaurant to restaurant and no place to eat! Finally, we found Cosmic Ray’s, a place in Tomorrowland that stays open until the park closes. We split a meal of ribs and mashed potatoes, and it was delicious. When we finished eating, Marijka wanted to go and see Mickey’s house. When we got there, the lady working there said that if we wanted to we could go meet Mickey – there was no line! I couldn’t believe it! So we got to walk right in and see him! And for the first time, I bought an overpriced picture – because the only camera we had was on Marijka’s phone and it didn’t take very good pictures, and I wanted a picture of us with Mickey, soaking wet and grinning. When we came out of the picture buying place, the fireworks were just starting. We ran through Toontown and Fantasyland, oohing and ahing as they burst over our heads, until we got to Main Street where we could see them well.
We ended the night with the classic shopping through the Emporium on Main Street, and a monorail ride back – in the front again. It was a perfect, classic, Magic Kingdom day.

Post #2: Training

On Tuesday, I had to get up ridiculously early in the morning to take a class called “Once Upon a Time is Now.” Looking at my schedule, it seemed to me that this was the training class for everyone working in Magic Kingdom, and I was right.
We met in the Disney University building, and, just like the Traditions class, we started out in the cafeteria. Odd place for a class, but I suppose that it’s because it can hold lots of people and it’s right by the entrance to the building. We didn’t stay there long, however. Soon our instructor, Bob (I met him when I first found out my assignment, he’s a great guy, very friendly and enthusiastic) was telling us that we would be boarding our pumpkin carriages that would take us to the Magic Kingdom – but if we hadn’t had enough coffee yet this morning they would look like Disney buses. I couldn’t help grinning at this.
That morning was wonderful. We spent it all touring around the Magic Kingdom, and Bob and another instructor – James, I think? – told us about lots of things about it. For instance, did you know that Main Street slopes upward toward the castle? This slows you down at the beginning of the day, when you’re entering with lots of energy, so that you get a nice walk along Main Street building up the castle instead of just dashing in. Then, at the end of the day when you’re exhausted and leaving, you get to walk downhill to the exit.
While we were standing near the statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, James was telling us about how the park is always being updated – that it’s never considered a finished work, and that Walt Disney would walk around the park, asking people in Fantasyland whether they thought they were doing it right and telling the stories correctly. As an example, he explained how the Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was taken out, because although many people made a fuss about it, very few actually knew anything about the story behind it, and only about 13% of the people who came to the park went on the ride.
“Can anyone tell me what fairytale Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was based on?” he asked.
“The Wind in the Willows,” I said promptly. He turned to me in slight surprise.
“Okay. Now name five characters from it.”
“Rat, Mole, Toad, the weasels…” I searched my brain for another – I knew I knew more.
“Badger?” suggested Bob.
“Badger! Of course! I knew there was another!” I said.
“Well,” said James, sounding impressed, “Very few people on this tour can do that. I’d give you a critter if I had another one.” (During the training classes we get ‘critters,’ small figurines of Mickey and Friends characters, when we help with something or answer a question correctly.) However, later he did get one from somewhere, one of Mickey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and gave it to me. It’s sitting on my nightstand right now, along with the Minnie one I got in Traditions.
I was in a rather chattery mood that morning, because I was happy, and as we walked I kept telling the instructor about things from my experiences at Disney that pertained to whatever we had been talking about. I think that I might have been driving them crazy… but at least I was enthusiastic.
Then came the afternoon. And the next day. Both of which only the fact that I was in the Magic Kingdom made endurable. They were both custodial specific, and involved trailing around the Magic Kingdom and the backstage areas being shown all the cramped janitors closets. The first afternoon was the worst, both because of the contrast between the magical morning, and because of the instructor. She talked down to everyone, especially those in our group who didn’t speak English very well. She kept teasingly saying that they weren’t listening well because they couldn’t answer her questions, but she had a thick New Jersey accent and it was no wonder they couldn’t understand her. The next day was a bit better because the instructor was actually competent and talked to us like adults – but they still both felt completely janitorial and very unmagical. And it was so dull, because we were just going over the same things again and again…
Thursday was a day off. I can’t remember what I did at all, other than calling my sister Rebecca because she’d had surgery that day. Oh yeah, I just remember what I did in the evening! But I’ll make that a new post, because I want to finish off about training so I don’t leave you on the depressing note.
On Friday and Saturday, things were much better. I got to have my real trainer, Erica. She’s not much older than me, and much more cheerful than the other two. And for those days we were doing actual practical training, where we polished the brass drinking fountains and washed the telephones and swept and dried off the counters in the bathroom and such. It’s slightly odd, but actually cleaning the restrooms and sweeping and things was much more gladdening than talking about doing it. For the day and a half with the two dull instructors, I felt as though I was going to hate being custodial. I looked at the other pretty costumes in the costume building – the dresses and things that those who work in some of the restaurants and stores wear – and I was so jealous. I knew it was silly – You’re working at Disney World, for crying out loud! my self yelled at me. You can go to the parks free any time! You actually get to walk around the park instead of being stuck in a building all day. Get over it! But I still felt depressed. So I was glad when I got the practical training and felt so much better. It also helps when the girl at a cart selling bouncing balls says to me, “I’m jealous of you guys. You at least get to walk around.” And I’m enjoying it more and more because I’m getting more used to the walking so I’m not so exhausted. Guest interaction is definitely the highlight – I always leave a conversation smiling. I love being able to talk to people about where they’re from – and kids love to tell me about their souvenirs and what they’ve done that day.

More to come...

An Afternoon at a Park

2007-09-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

Monday turned out to be a grand day, although in the morning it didn’t look like it was going to. The first thing I did was drag myself down to the front desk, $50 in an envelope in my handbag, to go get a new housing ID. I told the man there that I needed a new one, showing him that it was the last day for my pathetic piece of purple paper. He nodded, and said “just a minute” or something like that, and began looking through envelopes of IDs that had been turned in. I thought it was nice of him to check just in case, although I had already been to see if it had turned in a few days ago. Then, suddenly, he turned to me, holding up an ID, and said,
“Is this you?” And it was! It really was! He smiled, and got out a binder where they file papers on everything that gets turned in. He showed me where to sign to say that I came and got it, and said,
“Then we can consider this matter closed.” I liked how he said that sentence, and I will probably end up using it in a book for something. So I had my ID, and my $50, and a lot of worry off my chest. It was a good feeling.
The rest of the morning was running errands, mostly unsuccessfully. I needed to put cash that I had into my credit union account, and none of the ATMs would let me. I also put gas in my car because it needed it. And they said that I could make a deposit at the Vista credit union (inside, not at the ATM), but I got there and it had just closed, at noon. So I was a bit frustrated, but buoyed up somewhat by my newly found ID and my plans to go to Epcot that afternoon, since I had the entire day off. I was going to go home first, and drop off my laptop (I brought it so that I could go to Vista Way and use the wireless), and put on sunscreen, and then go to Epcot.
But I made a wrong turn after I went to the credit union, and after a bit I found myself on a freeway-looking road. This was clearly not the way I had come. I was just about to find a way to turn around, when the archway over the road appeared –
“Welcome to Walt Disney World.”

Well! I was going to Epcot anyway… and I had everything I needed… I began to giggle involuntarily. I would just go! To Epcot! Because I wanted to! Practically accidentally! I followed the signs, laughing and grinning all the way. I wasn’t sure if I would have to pay parking, but I had enough money with me if I did. I pulled up to the gate, and said to the security guard,
“Hi, I’m new and it’s my first time coming.” I held up my Disney ID. “Do I have to pay for parking?”
“You have to pay fifty dollars,” he said, in mock seriousness. Then he broke into a smile.
“No, no, you don’t pay. And if you are with someone, you can get one car behind you in free.” I thanked him very much, and went on in.

I spent a whole afternoon and evening at Epcot, doing whatever I wanted. And there was no rush or pressure to get through everything and ride everything and see everything, because I can come back whenever I want. So I rode only my favorite rides in Future World – Soarin’ and the Figment ride – and then went to the half with all the different countries, and wandered there for the entire rest of the day. I spent a good half an hour in a bookstore sitting in a winged armchair reading a pop-up version of Alice in Wonderland. I walked through every store and looked at everything. I bought pretty chopsticks – not to eat with, but to put in my hair. I rode the Maelstrom ride in Norway, and ate a cloudberry pastry. And at the end of the day, just before Illuminations, I walked home. I knew I had to get up early in the morning – I had training at 7am – and I wanted to save Illuminations for another night. Today had been a day for quiet walking and eating delicious things and feeling like I was wandering around little towns in other countries. Another night would be the time for lights and bedazzlement.

A Shopping Trip and a Sunday

2007-09-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

Saturday was not especially interesting – I spent most of the afternoon at Walmart buying bins and things I needed so that I could store things under the bed, and also jeans because I didn’t have any without holes in the knee. I had considered going to one of the parks, but since having things still packed because there was no place to put them was making me crazy, I decided that I needed to go shopping first.
I missed the bus to go back to my apartment, but fortunately another one came in a few minutes.
“Does this bus go to Chatham [my apartment complex]?” I asked a girl who was waiting to board. She told me it did, so I got on, happily, if awkwardly due to the amount of things I was carrying. (Fortunately, since I had bought bins, I could just stack everything inside them and carry it that way.) It turned out that we were going to a couple other places before we made it back to Chatham, which meant that by the time we got there it would have been almost as fast to just wait the hour for the next bus. However, one of the places we stopped was Downtown Disney, and I’d rather sit in an air-conditioned bus for an hour and get to wave at Downtown Disney than sit the same amount of time in a hot Walmart parking lot while my milk spoils.
The rest of Saturday was spent in unpacking and organizing everything. When I was done my room seemed much more comfortable and I felt much better.
Sunday was Global Custodial Training. This means that anyone in any of the parks or resorts or wherever, who is custodial, goes to it. And learns about how to use the various chemicals and tools, and about safety, and about blood-borne pathogens, and other grippingly interesting things like that. And it’s not park-specific, so it was rather devoid of magic. Fortunately, even though it was supposed to go all day, we got through the first lecturing part quickly (I got to go to the front of the class and demonstrate the pan-and-broom and the push broom…) and could go on to the computer lab where we took classes on the computer. These were on safety, asbestos, and on helping guests with disabilities. I turned off the audio narration so that it would just let me speed-read and click through it and then take the tests, so I was the first one done, and it wasn’t even 12:30 yet. They were going to all go to the Magic Kingdom (I changed my mind, I’m putting in the “the,” it’s making me crazy remembering to leave it out every time) for lunch, but I hadn’t been to the Magic Kingdom yet, and I didn’t want my first time to be in this thoroughly unmagical atmosphere (my spell check thinks “unmagical” should be either “unmusical” or “numerical”; which do you think fits better? They both have their merits), so when he said I could go ahead and clock out and go home if I wanted to, I took him up on it. (Wow, that sentence turned out really long, with too many parenthetical clauses. I hope you don’t mind. If it didn’t make sense, just go back and read it, skipping over the parenthetical remarks, and it should make more sense.) That meant all I had to sign the form saying that I didn’t want a Hepatitis B shot (I’ve been to Mexico and Greece without one, I think I can handle the dangers of Disney World), and I could leave.
During the afternoon, I drove around to Taco Bell and to the Commons (where the housing meeting on the first day was) to see if they had found my ID. They hadn't. I also took a bus over to Vista Way where the wireless is, and was able to finally get online for a while to check my e-mail. I looked up directions to First Baptist of Orlando, since they had a Sunday night service.
I took a couple wrong turns trying to get there, so I was about 15 minutes late, but I was so desperate for church I didn’t care. Usually I hate going into a service late. And it’s a huge church so the parking lot was confusing and it took me a bit to figure out where I was supposed to go in. I found it eventually. They were singing, and it seemed like a pretty relaxed atmosphere – a few people were toward the back, sitting at tables talking quietly while the singing went on – so I wasn’t too shy about just going in and finding a seat. I just wanted a back edge seat, but there weren’t any open except one where someone was in the next one over. So I went there, and felt a bit awkward and self-conscious about standing right next to someone who I didn’t know.
The lighting was concert-style – all different colors of lights on the stage, and twirly lights on the ceiling. It was cool and beautiful, and it’s good that people with a gift for that sort of thing can worship God by doing it well for his church – but I would have given an awful lot for a single-guitar and candlelit Vespers. It was good to sing with other believers – it was good to be in a Christian atmosphere. The sermon was about praising God even when things are going badly – one that we’ve all heard many times, but we always seem to need to hear again. While we were singing, I noticed a young woman across the aisle from me, singing with such genuine passion and love for God that it warmed my heart. Much to my surprise, the pastor giving the sermon called her up to share what had been happening in her life. It turned out that a friend of hers had offered her some weight-loss pills to try. Momentary loss of reason (that’s a useful phrase, is it not? I stole it from the song, of course), and she took them. It turned out they were from Mexico, and were contaminated. A few days later, at her job with an airline, they had a drug test, and she tested positive for amphetamines. Despite explaining the situation, she lost her job – a job she loved. But it had also been the thing that defined who she was. Losing it taught her to have her whole identity depend on God, not her career. It was so amazing, after seeing how much joy she radiated as she sang praise to God, to hear her story.
As I was leaving, though, I was overcome with how badly I missed Blythefield. I was glad that no one talked to me, because a kind word probably would have made me go absolutely to pieces. When I got home, though, I was comforted by the presence of my friendly roommates – and by calling my mother. Nicole, Kara, and Marijka went out for the evening, but Dani was at work and Abby and I stayed home. I was happy that I had the next day off, and was hoping to go to Epcot - after I went and paid $50 for a new housing ID, since today had been the last day for my temporary pass.

Traditions and Dinner with my Roommates

2007-09-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

On Friday I went to Traditions. This is the class that teaches you all about being an official Walt Disney World cast member. I wasn’t sure if it would be boring or not. Parts of it were – the parts that are required for anyone being an employee anywhere, the parts about safety and OSHA and harassment, but they got through those as quickly as they could, and everything that was specific to Disney was interesting – it was all about what makes Disney magic!
First off, I’m a cast member in a costume, not an employee in a uniform. You might think that this is just a silly matter of semantics, but it’s not. It’s a whole worldview. (Sorry, CUers, had to put that in…) We are treated and honored as members of the cast of a show, not lowly employees. The costumes are for beauty and the visual effect for the guests (not customers!), not for boring utilitarianism. Even my costume, which is one of the most boring ones, has some bright yellow and blue on it, and it’s bright white instead of a dull gray, which would be more practical for cleaning, but wouldn’t look as nice. And the guests really are guests, not just customers. It’s the whole thing Walt Disney started – if you focus more on making the guests happy than on making money, the money will come. The goal, oddly enough, that we were taught as the main point of Walt Disney World, is not to get as much money out of each person as possible. It is to do everything in our power to make sure that every person in the park has them most fabulous time of his or her life. Of course, there is some focus on making money – it’s a business. There are the little shops everywhere so that people will buy things, and of course they’re overpriced. But you have to make some money to make the magic possible. And a sort of summing-up of all this is where I come in.
I’m magic – every cast member is. If I watch a little girl trip and drop her ice cream cone on the ground, I can take her and her parents to the nearest ice cream place and get her a new one, for free. If a little boy loses hold of his balloon and it goes floating away up over Cinderella’s castle, I can get him a new one. Can you imagine this happening at, say, Michigan’s Adventure? As much as I love that place – if I lost my ice cream cone there, and a custodial person tried to take me to the place to get a new one for free, they’d laugh in our faces. And I learned in my more role-specific training today, that we can do it without asking anyone for anything up to $30, and even if it’s more than $30, we can call a manager and ask about it.
The four values are safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency. In that order. Although I think show and courtesy might be tied, actually. But at any rate, my personality is a big fan of the fact that efficiency is at the bottom. It’s there, and it’s important, but it’s not the most important thing.
I think that by the end of the class many people were jealous of my placement in Magic Kingdom. Because really, it’s at the heart of the magic. And I’m so glad I get to spend most of my time for the next semester in one of my favorite places in the world.
We play along. We curtsey to the little girls and call them “Your Highness.” When someone asks how Tinkerbelle flies, before the fireworks show, we say, “With pixie dust, of course!” No matter how old the person asking is. Because in Magic Kingdom, fairy tales are real. For just one day, we can make everything almost perfect. It won’t be perfect, this side of heaven. But we can give people a taste. And maybe it will whet their appetite for what things are really supposed to be like.
On Friday night my roommates and I (except Nicole, who was doing something else) went out to eat. We were going to go to a place called Sizzlers, because we could get a discount there, but we haven’t fully mastered the confusingly named roads of this area yet, and we couldn’t find it. So we went to Ponderosa instead. It was a little more money than I wanted to spend, but well worth it for the sake of bonding with my roommates. And the food was good.
We were talking about languages, and I was telling about how my dad spoke Spanish because he grew up in Venezuela. And then they wondered why, because it was pretty clear I wasn’t Hispanic. (Nicole and Dani are, and Kara’s Japanese, and Marijka’s Philipino. So now you can picture them slightly more accurately, in case you were picturing them with blond hair or something. No one has blond hair in our apartment.) So I told them that my dad’s parents were missionaries in Venezuela. A little later my family came up again and they asked what my dad did. I couldn’t remember the catechism answer (what is it again, Papa?), so I just said, “He’s the coordinator of Spanish language ministries at the Institute for Religious Research in Grand Rapids.”
“Oh,” they replied. And of course the next question was,
“Is your family very religious?”
“What do you mean by very religious?” I asked. They were stumped for a moment as to how to explain it.
“Well, do you go to church – as a family?” Kara asked.
“Yes.”
“Every Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then,” she said, as though that settled the matter. I knew it didn’t, of course, but decided not to pursue it right then. That sort of thing is better with only two or three people, not five, unless you know each other quite well. At least that’s how it seems to me. Talking about it further when four people are required to listen for the sake of politeness is too much like preaching. We hadn’t got beyond the small talk stage yet, and Christianity doesn’t make good small talk. It’s all or nothing. But that’s enough of me philosophizing, and that’s also the end of the account of Friday.

More Meetings, and Shopping

2007-09-14T17:20:00.001-07:00

This post describes Thursday, September 6th.

The next day I had to be over at Vista Way again at 9:30 for another meetingish thing. I was going to take the bus that arrived at around 9:15 (taking the bus that arrived at 9:29 seemed like it would be cutting it a bit close…), but then the bus driver wouldn’t let me on without my housing ID (I had lost it, if you remember from the last entry.) I had hoped that he would let me on based on the arrival check-in badge around my neck, which we were to wear for the first week, but he was utterly stoic and unfeeling to my pleas. I went and sat on the curb to pull myself together, and then went to the front desk to ask him what one was to do when one was such an idiot as to lose one’s housing ID on the very first day. He was very kind, and gave me a temporary ID (I dubbed it the Pathetic Piece of Purple Paper), which would last me three days, and if I didn’t find it by then I would have to pay for a new one - $50. I fervently hoped to find it.
Fortunately I was in time to catch the bus that arrived at 9:29. I couldn’t find my way from the bus stop to the pavilion, but fortunately I wasn’t the only one, and several of us lost new ones banded together and made our way there. It turned out to not matter especially – it wasn’t a meeting really, just staggered arrival times for another follow-the-signs day.
The best part of the day was finding out our locations. I’m sure my mother has already spread the word to some of you – but I get to work in Magic Kingdom! (And yes, it’s “Magic Kingdom” not “The Magic Kingdom.” Personally, I think it sounds better with “The,” but everywhere I see it written or hear it said on anything official, it’s just “Magic Kingdom.”) I am very excited for this, because Magic Kingdom is my very favorite place. And I am regular-plain-old boring-white-costume pan-and-broom and empty-the-trash custodial, so I’m sorry if that disappoints anyone, but I get to be paid to wander around the Magic Kingdom and I like to clean places I love anyway, so I do not mind. And this is the tale of Cinderannie, so it has to start out with cleaning. Who knows how it will end?
We also signed up for classes. I really want to take the Entertainment class (it’s only supposed to be for theatre majors, which I’m not), and I showed the lady my letter of recommendation from the theatre professor at Cornerstone, and she let me check the box for it. The lady at registration said when she saw my form that I would be on a waiting list after the theatre majors got first pick, and then I showed her my letter, and she said, “Oh, I see,” in a that-might-make-a-difference sort of voice, but then she just stapled it to the form and said they would call me. Which they haven’t. I think tomorrow I will call them. I really want to take that class.
That’s everything interesting about that day (which was Thursday). I had the afternoon free and I went shopping at Walmart and spent more money than I ought to have, on things like office supplies, but that’s not interesting, except for me missing the bus back from Walmart and having to take another one that went around to Downtown Disney. I didn’t get back hardly any earlier than I would have if I’d just waited for the normal bus back, but I’d rather spend an hour on an air-conditioned bus seeing Downtown Disney than spend it sitting in a hot Walmart parking lot.

Arrival Day

2007-09-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Note: I posted yesterday as well, so if you didn't read that one yet, you should read it before this one, if you want to.

Now to tell about check-in (and everything else that happened the first day I was there). We followed the signs to where we were supposed to park, and then I sat in the car a bit combing my hair out and getting to look presentable. Then we went up to the check-in table. Thad couldn’t come with me through any of it – he had to go right to the Family and Friends Pavilion. So I gave him my keys so he could get his book out of the car, since they said this was going to take about two hours. They gave me a notebook-size hand book with lots of information in it and forms I had to fill out. After that it was like a scavenger hunt – we had to keep following the signs from one station to the next, doing all the things that needed to be done, like getting our apartment assigned and getting our picture taken for our housing ID.
I wasn’t expecting to get a choice of housing – it had been implied that we would just be assigned housing when we got there – but the lady at the desk asked me which apartment complex I wanted, Vista Way or Chatham. Remembering the advice given by a friend of my grandmother’s, I chose Chatham. She said she had a three-bedroom available, and was that fine? I said yes, it was. The three and four bedroom apartments are cheaper and there would be a greater chance of me being compatible with at least one of them. They gave us lots of papers, and we had to get fingerprinted – the guy asked what color my hair was, and I didn’t know what to say! It’s reddish blondish goldish brown, but that wasn’t one of the choices. I saw afterward that “Red” included auburn, so perhaps I should have gone with that. The guy said strawberry blonde was an option, so I said yes to that, but it was just included in “Blonde,” and my hair isn’t blonde. I suppose since I’m not planning on doing any thing that would require my fingerprint record to be looked up, it doesn’t really matter. How would you describe my hair color?
By the time everything was done – and I’d run around to get my keys from Thad so I could get my registration and proof of insurance so I could get my car sticker – I just barely had time to catch the bus to make it to the noon housing meeting. It was supposed to be two hours long. With apologies to Thad for him being put through this, I left. The housing meeting was just as dull as I expected. You from Cornerstone – or probably any other people who’ve stayed in dorms – know the drill. Lots of rules and policies. And at the end a spiel from Vista Credit Union (the Disney credit union) about how we should all sign up for it. But I am loyal to my credit union ever since they graciously canceled my overdraft fees that I deserved, and have no intention of joining a different one. But I had to sit through the spiel – and through waiting for the people who wanted to sign up to do so – before I could go rescue poor Thad. By this time it was two o’clock, and neither of us had eating since breakfast, and we were ferociously hungry. So we went to Taco Bell.
We had just time after eating to find my apartment and unload my things. On coming to the apartment complex, I discovered to my dismay that I didn’t have the housing ID I had just gotten. I had had it in my pocket, and now it was gone. Fortunately they let me in because I had the temporary one-day pass on my dashboard, and I went and found my apartment. It is on the third floor of building 19. All the beds were taken but one, which was actually something of a relief because it meant I didn’t have to make a decision. At first I thought no one was there, but there was someone in the room with the one empty bed. She was rather tall, with long red hair.
“Roommate?” she asked cheerily.
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m Joanna.”
“I’m Abby,” she said. And we both said something polite, and I said I liked her ninja turtle sheets. We were both trying to be friendly at the same time, and not be awkward, but of course it didn’t work very well because how can you not be awkward when you’re trying to convey that you want to be as friendly as possible, but you’ve never seen each other before in your lives? She helped a bit as we unloaded, but then she just stayed up in the apartment so we could leave the door unlocked (it locks automatically when it closes). Two people just being able to come in and out is quicker than three people having to fight with unlocking the door every single time, I think. At any rate it’s less frustrating.
Once everything was in, it was time to take Thad to the airport. I followed the signs, and dropped him off at the Midwest gate, and we said goodbye, and I drove away. And then I was really and truly alone, and I searched through the radio stations so as to avoid crying. I found one Christian station (but it’s not a very good one, it doesn’t play much of the best music) and then another one in Spanish! The Christian Spanish station is very nice, and I know just enough Spanish to know from the feel of the song and scattered words the general idea of what the song is about.
The apartment is lovely – large and spacious and airy and the walls are all white instead of that horrid dingy yellowish color of the Cornerstone dorms and apartments. That evening I met my other apartment mates – Dani and Nicole and Kara and Marijka – but I couldn’t keep track of their names just yet. I spent most of the evening unpacking. Some of the others hung out in the kitchen area talking, and I thought I ought to so as not to seem antisocial, but I couldn’t stand leaving my boxes all there disorganized and a disaster and needing unpacking, and anyway I’m no good at small talk.
The other roommates wanted to just all buy groceries and split them, as opposed to everyone having their own groceries and cupboard. I was rather skeptical of this idea – what if they liked things completely different from me, or expensive things I couldn’t afford? But when four of them came back from that evening’s Walmart (the spell check thinks I should spell it “Wal-Mart,” but I think that looks weird, like writing “Jell-O,” or capitalizing Styrofoam or Kleenex or Tupperware) expedition, the resultant groceries might have come home in my mother’s van, when she came back from an shopping trip particularly suited to my tastes. Sliced cheese, and also good block cheese, and sliced turkey, and bagels, and frozen turkey breasts to cook, and cereal, and I don’t remember what all else, but it was all just perfect, and I knew this system would work out fine. So I took a bunch of things out of my cupboard and added them to the pantry as my contribution to our groceries (I also had given them $5 when they left). We also bought a water filter jug because the water here smells and tastes like a dirty dishrag.
This concludes the account of my arrival day.

The Second Travel Day

2007-09-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

I am sorry that this has not been updated at all. I don’t have internet in my apartment, because my computer’s VPN connection is not working, so the only way for me to get internet on my laptop is to go to the wireless lounge at the other apartment complex. However, I have now decided that I shall simply write entries on Microsoft Word, and then copy and paste them into Blogger whenever I get internet. And now, tonight, I’m picking up wireless from somewhere in the living room of the apartment, so I’m going to take advantage of it and post. There are going to be some back entries, while I tell about what has happened since the last time I wrote. I will post them just one at a time, because if I post them all at once you won’t read them, I know you won’t. So you’ll have to gradually catch up to what’s really happening to me.

So, to start with, I left off after my very first day of driving. The second day did not involve any adventures. It involved driving through “Georgia forever,” as my mother has nicknamed the state. It was rather dull. The only interesting thing was having a lizard in our hotel room, which Thad named Timkins. I will upload a few pictures Thad took of him when I have a better connection. He was very cute.
The hotel room was clean but didn’t smell nice; it smelled like someone had been in it before us whose luggage all smelled of cats. And the hostess was very rude to us at the continental breakfast. We got up rather early since I wanted to get to Disney at around 10, so as to have plenty of time and not be in a rush, so we were the only ones eating breakfast. There was a TV blaring the news loudly. Since we were the only ones there, I turned it all the way down so we couldn’t hear it, planning to turn it back up if someone else came. A few minutes later, the hostess (that is what you call the front desk lady at a hotel, isn’t it? Or is hostess only for restaurants?) came in and turned it back up. I thought she just didn’t know I had turned it down, and thought we wanted it up. I left it, though, while we ate – until it started blaring sordid details about some book that had been published about Anna Nicole Smith, which wasn’t my idea of pleasant breakfast ambiance. So I went and turned it off again. The hostess instantly reappeared, and told me – in the tone one would use with a child who is being frustratingly naughty – that she had just turned it back up, and that I couldn’t turn it all the way down because people wanted to hear it.
“We’re the only ones here at the moment,” I answered. “I’ll turn it back up if anyone comes.” And then she said something else and I said something else, I don’t remember what exactly, but it was along those same lines, and then she said, again in the tone an annoyed mother would use with a five-year-old who was talking back,
“The TV is turned up, and that’s just the way it’s gonna be.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I’m in the area,” I replied, and went back to eating my breakfast. I was astonished, afterward, because I never think of quick replies. I always just sort of splutter, and think of a really good comeback ten minutes later – or the next day. But I said that without even thinking. I would have liked to also say that my family was coming down later and they had been asking us for our recommendations, and that I was I keeping a blog that many people would read, and this would certainly go in it. But I think that would have been overkill, and I just would have been perceived as a screamy customer. Understated is better in that sort of situation, I do believe. But at any rate, the place was Quality Inn South in Valdosta, Georgia, in case you care.
It was interesting – I hadn’t thought of myself as being especially sensitive, but I have noticed that whenever a stranger is rude and harsh to me without cause, I go slightly to pieces. Even if I don’t think I feel bad emotionally, I almost always have a strong physical reaction – I shake, and sometimes get tears in my eyes involuntarily. That’s how it was when a guy cussed me out once (not on this trip) when I didn’t deserve it – I thought I was not really caring, other than being stunned that he was doing it and thinking him a complete jerk – and then I suddenly found that I was crying. It was the same here – I didn’t cry, but I did start shaking and my heart was beating very quickly. I didn’t really feel upset, though. I don’t know why I always get that physical reaction.
We left the hotel at a little before seven thirty. It was nice because we were in Florida quite soon, early enough that we didn’t call my sister right away to tell her we were in a new state, which is what we had been doing. Then we just drove, and got to the Vista Way apartment complex, which is where the check-in was, without making any wrong turns. But if I tell about all the rest of this day this entry is four pages long, so you’ll have to wait to hear about check-in until tomorrow.

The Very First Post

2007-09-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

Hello, family and friends of the family,

This is Joanna, writing the very first Cinderannie journal. I wasn’t expecting to write one tonight (“We drove all day and then stayed in a hotel” doesn’t make very exciting reading) but the day turned out a bit more interesting than I expected.
My brother Thad is traveling with me, and then flying back to Michigan. I am extremely glad to have him along. We left at about 9:30 this morning after hugs and goodbyes from all my family and siblings. And… we drove. Indiana is rather pretty, being basically all farmland. In fact, Thad and I were getting extremely hungry (as we traveled down a strange road that didn’t know whether it was a freeway or not – one minute there would be exits and then next thing you know there’s a stop light), and turned down a somewhat promising looking road (meaning there was a hotel and not just farms), but the only thing there was Pizza Quik. It didn’t look like the sort of place one should eat at if one wants to be in good health later. So we turned around in the long driveway of a beautiful farmhouse on a hill, and stopped at the next place we came to, a Subway-Citgo travel plaza-ish thing. Neither of us are Subway lovers but it was good and we were starving, and it was the only thing to eat besides raw corn out of fields as far as we could see. Then, five or ten minutes after we were back on the road, we reached the city of Kokomo.
It was the twin of Alpine. Stores and restaurants everywhere. IHOP, Steak’n’Shake, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Kohl’s, Arby’s, TJ Maxx, Best Buy, Burger King, Wendy’s, Outback Steak House, JC Penney… yeah. Out of nowhere, emerging from the everlasting fields of corn, a gleaming metropolis. And we’d already eaten. Highly unfortunate. But we couldn’t have known.
Round about 6:45pm, my car’s oil light started blinking, and I remembered that I’d forgotten to check the oil before I left, and it probably needed more (it leaks). So we got off at the next exit (we had just gotten into Tennessee), and pulled into a BP. And noticed it was smoking. Oh dear. So I popped the hood (it stopped smoking quite quickly) and checked the oil. Lower than it ought to be. And then I noticed that the coolant was far lower than it ought to be. Dear me. So I went inside and bought coolant. There was an old man in line behind me, thin with a long somewhat scraggly white beard and a friendly, honest, mountain man face.
“Do you need any help with that?” he asked, motioning to the coolant. For a brief second I was baffled – it wasn’t that heavy! – but then I realized he meant with whatever car issue was causing me to need to buy coolant. “No, thanks,” I said with a smile, “It’s just low on coolant.”
But when I got back to my car I discovered that that was not the only problem. The coolant hose was leaking, a thin steady stream. Rats. Just then the old man came out, so I went up to him and said somewhat sheepishly, “Excuse me, but since you offered help… the coolant hose is leaking.” He came right over and examined it.
“Do either of you have a pocket knife or anything?” he asked. I pulled mine out, I must admit somewhat proudly. I am not a completely useless girl, I do have a pocket knife. He explained that since the leak was right near the end of the hose, I could just take off the clamp (Thad was better at seeing how the clamp worked than I was; it was covered in grease and it was hard for me to perceive it until I looked at the clean one at the other end), cut off the end of the hose, and reattach it (there was plenty of slack in the hose to allow this). He also advised reversing the ends of the hose since the end attached to the coolant reservoir didn’t have any pressure on it so we could put the more damaged end there. All this would have to be done after the engine cooled down. I thanked him very much, and Thad and I bought drinks and sat in the car waiting for it to get cool.
We ended up having to use pliers (I’m double not useless, I have a tool chest!) to get the clamp off (after our first attempt, when it was still too hot, and we had to wait again), and then discovered that the end of the rubber hose had melted and then re-hardened and as a result the clamp was impossible to remove from the hose. So I cut off the damaged end, and after futile efforts to get the end of the hose out of the clamp, I went in and bought a new clamp (or actually, I bought six, as they came together). They were a different type than the other one. “You’ll need a screwdriver,” said the lady at the counter. “I have one in my tool box in the trunk,” I said (proudly).
It took some effort, but we got the hose all back on correctly, and the oil and coolant filled up, and by the time we had gotten washed up it was a few minutes past eight. I was quite pleased. My car had broken down, and my brother and I had fixed it, with advice from a friendly Tennessean (they were all so nice!), and I hadn’t even had to call my dad, and I’d even figured out what the problem was all by my own self! And used my own pliers and my own screwdriver and my own pocket knife to fix my own car. I was glad Thad was there. It was a friendly not creepy gas station, but what if it hadn’t been? And I was stuck there for ages waiting for my car to cool? Besides that, he understood the clamp better than I did.
Okay, I was going to write about the adventures of Nashville, but this is quite long enough and I need to go to sleep. Suffice it to say that although we were never exactly lost (we always knew where we were on the map) we went down at least three wrong freeways and if I never drove through Nashville again it would be okay with me. And people think Grand Rapids having three freeways is bad… at any rate, we got to our hotel all right, and it’s time to sleep. We’re going to sleep in a little tomorrow because it’s a good deal shorter drive. And not so much confusing freeways, and hopefully my car will not break down. But if it does, I have confidence that between me, my brother, my tool chest, my pocket knife, and friendly Southerners, it can be fixed.

Good night.