L.A.

I'm not quite sure if this is my 7th or 8th time to visit Jane and Toby in L.A. but it's always a pleasure. FOUR of those times have been with Alayna DewLittle pictured below. I love her. We have so much fun together outside!







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Here's my cutie pie Dunkaroo! He's not even 2 years old yet so when he says Carisse it kind of sounds like "Star Fish". So now he calls me Auntie Star Fish and I love it.








Laying out in Hermosa Beach. No June gloom this time!!!

Jane is the best cook I know. I'm not exaggerating here. She makes meals like this every night after a long day at work and a toddler. She inspires me. She makes me want to feed myself and others better. When I get back I'm going to see if I can mimic her...now all I need is my Pioneer Woman kitchen!

I went and spent one night with Kellie in Venice Beach. We grew up together. She moved to Texas when we were in 3rd grade. She was the coolest most popular girl in our grade...and that lasted all the way through high school graduation. We have always been so different. I was always super conservative and nerdy and she went out of her way to be nice to me and invite me to things. I've always loved her for being so sweet to me, and it was fun to have another slumber party at her Nana's :)

Our first time laying out at Redondo beach....pretty and all...but we walked to Hermosa Beach everytime after this. NOTHING beats Hermosa Beach in the south bay in my opinion. NOTHING.

This is chicken John. He rides his bike around and says, "Hey Chickeeeeen" to all the ladies and asks them to take him swimming. A few years ago he asked me to take him swimming and I said okay! So he stripped down and held my hand and we went in the ocean. We only went about waist deep...thank goodness because it was arctic waters and I was really nervous the current would knock him over. But it didn't and we made it and dried out on the sand together. I don't know where he sleeps at night or what he eats for lunch, but I hope to find those things out the next time I come to Hermosa, and thank him for making a great memory with me.

So my new phone has a panorama option!!!

Sometimes Duncan swordfights with rhubarb, because he's both Toby AND Jane's kid.







Ladies night out!

This is how I woke up Monday morning :)

Locals Shmocals.

How many jumping pictures can I acquire in a lifetime?

The End.

Myrtle Beach

Again, out of order. Blogger. Grrr.

Here we are at the END of our stay in Myrtle Beach at Pirates Voyage. It's like Medieval Times but way better. Good food. Pirates dancing, diving, and singing. Sea Lions. Mermaid aerial acrobats. Dogs. Pyrotechnics. FUN.

Myrtle Beach was the magical land of everything went right. The 3 star hotel we got less expensive off hotwire had an ocean view, and came with a free day at a water park and free mini golf! I haven't been to a water park since I was 15, and I forgot how much I loved them a thousand times more than roller coaster parks. So after riding everything possible in a few hours and Wild Water and Wheels, Terry told me to close my eyes and we pulled up to a roller skating rink! He had bought socks!!

My reasons for that level of excitement are two fold. #1 I love surprises. #2 I'm mildly obsessed with the idea of roller derby. I own Whip It.  I've researched bootcamps and rec leagues of roller derby in Austin. I had a birthday party complete with a green skirt and unicorn roller skates when I was a kid. I went to a teacher training this year where I sat next two an actual ex-roller derby girl and I pounded her with questions for seven hours straight.
So roller skating was a good idea :)




I mean, they were from Food Lion...

Terry at Pirates Voyage. He's such a good sport with all of my pictures.

TURTLE TURTLE! Terry isn't afraid of animals and kind of has a way with them. He said turtles like their necks scratched and showed me how to do it. It was my favorite part of that day :)

More Pirates Voyage...

Our ocean view balcony with our Myrtle Beach hitch sign that we used for 18 minutes.

Enter: "Herping". I'm not a snake kind of girl. I'm not a cat kind of girl. I'm pretty much solely a puppy kind of girl. Always have been. Terry is a snake guy. Maybe I would think that was crazy if he didn't know so much about them. But if you look at my roster, I've always been attracted to smart guys. And since this snake thing is to the level that he knows Latin names, researched them in the Amazon, and can even in my ear correct the speaker lady at the Alligator Adventure...well it's just neat that he knows so much.




At Alligator Adventure scratching turtles.

Myrtle Beach ocean view room!

2nd place in the Girls ages sixteen and up race.

My parents live one hour from where the hitch race begins. Terry was dying to meet Sadie, as shown in the picture below.

Hitch race 9

More pictures to come soon but these phone pictures will do for now. It saddens me that often times my tiny little IPHONE camera contains better pictures than my $600 dslr...but whatever.

Remember a couple of years ago when I threw around phrases like, "Mom, I promise I will never go on the hitchhiking race again"? Well, I thought there was just an assumed clause in there that said something like, "Unless I meet a super hot guy that wants to go on the hitch race". So there you have it Mama. I promise to never do anything remotely scary again unless a super hot guy wants to go, in which case, I'm only human. 

So this was my team this year! I could NOT have asked for a better team. Jasmine is a beautiful woman with a sweet spirit who happens to speak Espanol and brought her own sign-making materials. She left precious notes for our drivers and worked the road for a solid 16 hours with me. I love her, and if I hadn't been so distracted with hot guy, I would know her entire life story by now and she would be my best friend. Our team name was "HTB and the Double V's". HTB is a evolved nickname for Terry. Before I knew him, I referred to him as "Hot Terry" to all my friends. Then Randy started calling him Terr Bear in order to publicly embarrass me with behind the back bear claw gestures at poetry slams. At some point it combined into Hot Terr Bear...and then eventually shortened to HTB. Randy has since decided to protect his lady card by dropping the "H" and simply referring to him as "TB". So there you have it. HTB and the Vagabonding Vixens. Or, HTB & VV's. Perhaps a one syllable word will suffice the next time I need a team name.

I would also like to take this time to point out the ATLANTA sign on the right...which I am over proud of.







 

And here we are in the back of Larry Angel's trucker cab...

This is the whole crazy hitching group at the bottom of Raging Rainbow Falls! This is where we camp for the rest of the week after a long day of hitching. Gorgeous! At Gorges State Park in North Carolina. Immediately after posting this picture, my Mommy dearest sent me several emails with links to modest one-piece swim suits...because she hasn't actually been swimming with me since I was 11 years old...

Sorry Mum. Agree to disagree. To which she replied "Whatever".

So with Terry's black lung cough all week, and my body a Thanksgiving meal for bugs in the forest...we made the decision to leave a day early. Got there Monday night and left Thursday afternoon. We had made record time with nice drivers hitching on Monday that I was SURE we had used all of our lucky juice for hitching to Myrtle Beach. But nope, nope. Chester and Edith pulled up to a stop sign on my corner, let us in, stopped by their house and got us a phone book to chase rental car companies. Terry scored us a car at the Asheville Airport and voila! No more hitching.

So, these pictures are out of order because that's what blogger does and I'm too lazy to fix it. Here's Jazzy!
(I hope she likes her nickname because I love to nickname everyone. I called one of my smaller male students "Baby Unicorn" for the better half of this school year. I can't always explain myself)

This picture has nothing to do with the hitch race at all. I try to make everything a surprise for Terry. EVERY. THING. And then I can hardly wait and I just want to tell him all about my surprises before they get here. Actual quote: "Carisse, if you tell me ahead of time then they aren't surprises. They're just plans."

Sooo...I googled snakes in Austin and found a Snake Farm in New Braunfels. He loved it! And then he put this lizard on my shoulder. Who is Terry you ask? Oh, just a hot guy with a golden heart that kissed me on the dance floor back in February and kept coming back ever since...

It was around this time Monday morning that my Mother began her prayer and fasting for my safety...

Here's all the crew with our pretty signs at the beginning of the race! Aaron's Mom's house inVan, TX. Let me say a few words about Aaron Bell. Aaron is my crazy friend, who is dating my crazy bestie Darby, and together they pressure me to do crazy things that I never regret. Like staying out past 9pm. Aaron encouraged me to put in my resume that led to my move to Austin, Aaron introduced me to Terry, Aaron made a phone call that got me a new job, and because of Aaron I've had the pleasure of experiencing hitchhiking, paddle boards, kayaks, canoes, jumping off stuff, mopeds, side cars, scuba diving...and a thousand other things I can't remember right now that make me feel like a kid again. And Darby does all of these PLUS decorates my house, prays with me, and talks me off the ledge 4 out of 7 days a week. Love them so much.

Terry and I on one of Aaron's scooters. This is Terry's impression of my scuba face.










Back to The Great Hitchhiking Race 9. This was our second ride, William, a roofer by day and MMA fighter by night that made us listen to podcasts about peace and harmony and UFO's...

WWIII

Byrd sent me this picture a long time ago and it cracked me up! But I'm not here to talk about monthlies today. If I could replace the word "uterus" with "brain" this picture would apply to my current professional school year. Life goes on around me...meanwhile back inside my brain is WORLD WAR THREE. Dramatic. I know. But there it is...everytime I have a long stoplight, everytime I have a waste-of-time meeting and space out, everytime I have a long drive to Dallas...the battle ensues inside my head.

I'm a worrier. I am my Mother's daughter. I don't WANT to be. Maybe that's why I make myself do things outside of my comfort zone?  Attempts to become a more laid-back person. But this is how I get with major life decisions. And I have one coming up. Should I stay or should I go? Risk is involved.

Close your eyes and imagine your workplace wherever that may be. Whether that's an office, or a classroom, or an oilfield...picture your workplace. Picture your workplace messy, at ALL times. Paper airplanes and scissors precariously dangling from the cieling, trash on the floor at all times, food stuck to tables, seats, and walls, graffiti on any surface that can hold ink. Trash overflowing.

Picture your bosses. A team of degree-holding, dillusional, peers who gave up a long time ago. They like things to be done the way they always have been so they are not required any extra work, even though those ways haven't worked in years. They believe everything is fine the way it is and that troubling occurences at work just cannot be helped, out of their hands. You go to them, with proof-documented working suggestions to make a better place. They listen to you, smile, and ignore you, until one of THEIR bosses tells them to implement a new plan. THEN they will change things at the drop of a hat, no matter who it affects.

Picture your customers/clients/students. They bring knives to the workplace and occasionally use them. Little to no consequences occur when this happens. They walk out of meetings, no consequences. They fail to turn in deadlined papers, no consequences. They curse you out on a daily basis, no consequences.

You want to grow in your profession. You got into it for a reason. You want to be the best in your field. Five years in, you should be able to do this job in your sleep. You should be so good at what you do that you are free from worry at this point. You were great at this position in a different location. You loved your job then. Now, you dread going to work every day. You've been counting down the hours for 38 weeks until your contract is up. With fifteen days left, you are so close to being done forever. But what if you quit...and no one else hires you next year? What will you do? How will you make money?



I was discussing this with a wise person recently who said, "Money is freedom". It's true. I remember what it was like to work by the hour on commission. I remember what it was like to have 3-4 jobs at a time in order to save up for the freedom of vacation. I also remember the day I got my first teaching job.  I couldn't believe they were going to give me TWICE as much money as I had been making. And I wouldnt have to work holidays, and I'd get a two month vacation in the summer. I was ecstatic. And I totally used all that time off and money for freedom. Since becoming a teacher I've had the luxury of easily affording experiences in Vegas twice, Guatemala, Hawaii, Laos, Thailand, Nashville, Malaysia, Bali, Mexico, California, the entire East Coast, and Key West. Money IS freedom. I love kids but I work to make money. I make money to enjoy the planet.

So the dilemma comes around July 12th. I have my application turned in to every school district within an hour radius of my apartment, plus a few private schools. So far I've had ONE private school interview that never called me back. I've had a neighboring district contact me for an interview, only to never respond to my replies. July 12th is the last day I can back out of my current contract with this hellacious school for the next year. Lots of districts hire in late July, even in August. But that's a risk to take. If I quit July 12th without another teaching job lined up, I'll be risking my freedom. I'll be chancing the possibility that I may not have to work at this place, but I may have to spend all my free time at 2 or 3 other jobs just to make the same amount of money I'm currently used to. Is my sanity and less stress worth leaving this place? Is it more important to me to leave this failing, stressful environment and take a risk? Or is it more important to know I will have my security and financial freedom next year? What would you do?

My poor friends and Mother. I've exhausted their ears to death on this matter. I've spent most of my 3 mile runs around Townlake hashing this out. I'll talk to anyone and everyone who will listen and give me advice. It's like I'm waiting for the right magical words that will give me an unwavering peace. Everytime I make my mind up to leave, I start to worry about financial freedom. Everytime decide it might not be the end of the world to stay at this job, something at work makes me so angry I grow a gray hair.

There's a battle going on inside my brain. Help me Lord. Please give me some direction and peace.

Daydreaming

I've really grown to LOVE smoothies in the morning. And coming up with recipes. This way I get all my fruit servings in the morning, salads give me all my vegetable servings for the day at lunch, which leaves me to eat whatever I want for dinner. I've lost 10lbs since I weighed myself in Dallas this time last year.

Take me here! Somebody!!!

Travel Patches

Spring cleaning happens several times a year for me. ESPECIALLY this year, moving from a three bedroom house to a 700ft. shared apartment. But, there is something about getting rid of excess that is so freeing. Something about having more space that feels good. And, something about living with less that feels more efficient. 

AS I was cleaning yesterday I found a box with some of my travel patches. I say some, because I could have sworn I had patches from Haiti, Belize, Costa Rica, L.A., and Guatemala...but maybe not, you never know with me and my memory. But even these few that I found set my mind to wander. I have to get out of here for the summer. It's not Austin. I LOVE Austin, and I am so thankful I get to live here and soak up all the fun it has to offer at the ends of every work day and work week. But SUMMER...Summer is explore time. Summer is get outta here time. I haven't been international since the summer before last (Guatemala/Mexico). All I want in life right now is to hike something with a pretty view, without a jacket, and lay on the beach when I'm done. That's all I want. Hiking shoes and a swim suit and plane tickets.

Insomnia came over me last night. I should have been really tired because I was outside the majority of the day yesterday, but instead, I woke up around 3am and didn't get back to sleep until probably 5:30 or 6am. So, I grabbed my phone and started looking at maps. There is a lot I could explore in the Carribean. Puerto Rico is only a $400 ticket, I've never been to the Bahamas, or the Virgin Islands, or Cuba (look, i know what you're going to say...but I have friends who flew there from Mexico City no problem and loved it). I've never been anywhere in South America either but I'm really looking at island beaches and cheaper plane tickets right now. And, as great as all of these places look and cost...my mind keeps heading back to Hawaii! What IS it about that place? I can't explain. Maybe it's the pulled pork at the Grass Skirt Grill. Maybe its some of the most beautiful views my eyes have ever seen. Maybe its the absolute PERFECT temperatures and the fact that I can spend an entire week in my swimsuit and no one even notices. Maybe its that one of my best friends, Randy, really wants to go back too so I wouldn't have to travel alone. Maybe I want to try and spend a month or so there? Whatever it is. I daydream about that place. Even tempted to submit a resume or two out that way. Not that I'm trying to leave Austin. I want to give Austin at least another year to explore. But I, in no way feel married to this city, and if I've learned anything at all in the last six months, its the utter reality that our lives are short and we only get this one shot to see and do the things we dream about. 

On a side note, even though I hate being cold and am ill-equipped for anything below 50 degrees, I REALLY want to see the Northern Lights. C'mon, sun particles dancing with Earth's atmospheric gases to make pretty lights in the sky?? I mean, I'm already obsessed with the phases of the moon so I can't imagine witnessing something so space nerdy as the Aurora Borealis. I'll flip out. According to my research, Norway, between November and March, is the best place in the world. You can ride behind sled dogs, out to an igloo to spend the night, see the lights, and they pick you up in the morning. How cool would that be??!! I'll have to get much better at my night photography and star trails before then. Over and out.

Best Spring Break Ever

This year marks the best spring break I've ever had, and I didn't even leave Texas. This one goes in the history books. I left Friday night and got a little time with Alayna in Dallas. The next morning, on to the 'rents house in Winnsboro for a little country rest. Had a GREAT time with mi Mama! We got to catch up, walk in the woods, get our nails done, and watch our stories. They were even great sports about letting me shovel a veggie smoothie into their systems.

Wednesday rolled around and the Orthodontist did NOT give me the 100% certainty that my braces would be off in April, which is going back on his pinky promise, but I'm going to start doubling up on my rubber bands every moment I'm not at school to ENSURE these puppies are off before school gets out. Want. These. Off.

Back to Austin  late Wednesday afternoon and had no idea just how much fun awaited me. Three guests came to stay with us Wednesday night; Terry, Ginny, and Ashley. Terry rented a convertible for a few days and was sweet enough to take us around town!

Here is my terrible motion shot with the ole 3G...

We met Randy, Alex, and TM at the Luster Pearl to see Local Natives!!

The next morning we took Ashley to her first paddle board on Town Lake....

My country girls love their BBQ so we went to the Salt Lick...

And here's a picture with Ter-Bear, we made sure to not get ANY pictures together on this trip. At all. None.

We got to see Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Antones!! This was probably my favorite show, I just love her....she broke out into Ludacris halfway through one of her songs...Terry knew every word...(faint)...

Another favorite was Gregory Alan Isakov at Maggie Mae's Gibson room. We got comfy chairs for this one, and Darby made besties with the violin player. Some song about "I'll feed your horses".... so good. I need to buy that tonight.

Terry found CAMEL RIDES FOR FIVE DOLLARS. It was the most brilliant idea he could have had. Wajiha was coming back from visiting Pakistan, you know, the middle east...and we decided to ease her back into western culture with a camel ride when we picked her up from the airport. HAHA. And it cracked me up because Wajiha got on and the camel posed proudly, I got on the camel didn't do anything, Terry gets on...and the camel lets out the roar of a dying lamb. Hilarious.

My biggest regret ever in life to date is not getting more pictures this week. I'm a wanna-be photographer for Pete's sake! We had so many more fun memories to capture too. Kayaking where we lost and found masks and gopros and turtles, sxsw shows, dinners with friends, Saxi Taxi the smoothest ride in town, snow cone talks, Unicycle Football, Jumpoline Park backflips and races, dirty swimming pool jumps, wine and cheese at Alex's til 4am, 2.5hr taxes, disc-golf consistency, living room dance lessons, T-Love raps. Just a gorgeous, and wonderful week.

It's been a long December, and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.

Spring is here.

I leave you with a gem we found at sxsw:

http://youtu.be/BZYAyr3-B38