Termite TV - Life Stories

Well... it's hard to remember my life before babies were born... but I um... I feel like one important part of my life story is growing up with a big family. I had six brothers and we lived in a big old victorian that my parents bought in a seaport town in northwest Washington... and, um... I don't know, just that whole geography and experience of growing up is really... determined the direction of my life. And, um, I went to college pretty close to my hometown and studied first philosophy, and then I got into the arts, and graduated with kid of a combination and then I went to live in Port Townsend, somewhere I had grown up, of course, I always want to go back to Port Townsend, I'm just... addicted to my hometown, and I was living in a cabin and I had separated from my boyfriend that I was living with and I was really depressed, and I got a job working in a nursing home, which was equally as depressing... and I met Tom there. He was a night nurse, and I was working graveyards, so we had a lot of time to talk... and um, he had a daughter at the time who was almost two and we started living together and he was in a graduate program in counciling so that kind of determined the direction of our life for a while. We moved to Seattle for a while where he started a business for a while in counciling with his colleague... and I took a lot more art classes and thought maybe I'd go into counciling, and I decided, you know, I really wanted to serve people and I had been active with like, Catholic Worker in Seattle, but I didn't really want to work with addicted folk, and that seemed to be the course I was on. I just wanted to be closer to the arts, and if I was going to make an impression it would have to be through the arts because I didn't have enough energy for anything else it seemed like. So I started taking a lot more art classes at community college and I went out and got into film, and went to Temple for a couple years, so we went and lived out there. I was in college for a lot of years in my life. I'm thirty-seven now, and um... seems like I've only been out of school for maybe four years... And I finally decided I had finished going to school when I had my first baby, Levi, who you'll meet in a minute here. And then I had river last year when I started teaching on the Indian reservation. I came down here to Arizona from Washington to teach middle school art. So I've got a hundred and fifty kids right now... mostly all Pachi kids, and... we have another little home we go to in Washington that we go to. It's this, kind of a remote community that emphasizes sustainable living, so we built our own little cabin. We don't have any electricity there but it's a real cozy place to go. It's hard for house keeping... It's harder now that I have two kids... but um... Come here, Bubs, come here! What else? It's hard to just talk! It's hard to just talk when I love this little guy! Yeah... I've kind of been in the moment. I've probably, not since childhood have I lived my life moment to moment so much . I can't seem to remember what I'm supposed to do tomorrow or what I did yesterday... and um... so it's kind of an existential point in my life right now... I'd like to move back to Port Townsend of course. My husband gets tired of hearing that, so he's probably going to let me move to Port Townsend next time we move... at least for a while before we decide where else to go. I'd kind of like my son Levi to go to the Bahai school in India, so we might travel over there and check that out... um... right now, Levi who's four goes to the Montessori school. He has a teacher out on the res[ervation]... he likes it... and River's taking care of Vi's dad for the day... and my friend sometimes who also has a baby his age... and we live in teacher's housing... I can't really tell you about anything except what I'm doing now... because I can't... i don't know, it's hard to think about... we live in a trailer park behind my job, and it's nice because I can nurse River during my lunch break and during my... um... my prep. I get to come home or go to the baby sitter and nurse him. So he's still six months old now, and he is almost completely just nursed... eats a few Cheerios... um... yeah... Boy, if I was to look back into my life story it would be a lot different because there's so many details, and when I grew up in my big family it was... we did a lot of stuff... snow skiing, and camping, and... I was heavily into sports and I don't care about sports anymore... at all... I think I've burnt out.