I was working on the farm, Sunshine Organics. My Americorps term of service was almost up (on July 15th, which, incidentally, is the day I will be induced if I don't have this baby before then) and so I was volunteering on the farm for service hours and also working at the school with the elementary school kids, helping with the set for their play, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was really cute. Every day I would wake up at my trailer and get ready and put on Judy's safety vest and we would ride the bus to Entiat where we would hang out in the school until 12, when we would ride the bus up to Chelan and work on the farm until 4. Then I would either see Ben, if we were seeing each other, or ride the bus back to my trailer, where it was HOT. Often I slept at the farm, on the couch or in the yard. Once I didn't have to work at the school anymore it just made more sense for me to move out to the farm because my trailer was melting apart. My candles melted and ran in rivulets down the walls, and my chocolate chips melted in the cupboards. I slept on wet towels because otherwise I felt like I was on fire. In the morning I cooked pancakes and hardboiled tiny little potatoes and kept them in the fridge to eat throughout the day. I guess I spent a huge amount of time at the river, because it was shady and cool and Judy and I could swim and there were all the free cherries we could eat. Which was a lot. Enough to give me the shits most days. I smoked a lot of menthol cigarettes. Juliette, by the way, was living with Ben, which was for the best because she probably would have roasted in that trailer and I never figured out how to get her onto the bus. The saftey vest I put on Judy in the mornings was so that we could lie and say she was my service dog and they bought it.
So I moved out of that oven and onto the field at the farm. I strung a rope and hung tapestries and put 4 pallets out with my king sized mattress on top. Getting the mattress to Chelan was an adventure; Grace and I got it at 5 in the morning from my trailer one day (it is very fucking cold sometimes in the morning) and I just clung onto it in the back of the truck for 30 miles on the highway up the mountain and it was heaving and flapping and I was so scared and cold and I cramped up all over. I felt like the smallest monkey holding onto an airplane or something. But having it out there was totally worth it because late July and August is shooting star season and every night Ben and I would see shooting stars when we lay in bed. I woke up to the sunrise every morning and I knew how the moon waxed and waned. The view....I will try to find a picture of the view. The glacial lake, the mountains, the llamas and the sun and the orchards. It was a beautiful place to sleep, even if for the most part I wished that I had a real home and that all of my things weren't getting so dirty and wrecked. All the workers from the orchards drove past and kicked up dust and saw me naked all the time. Granted, I looked fabulously tan and thin and in shape and also I cared less about being seen naked than I ever had before in my life.
In the mornings I would walk down to the greenhouse to make my coffee, and then I would make some oatmeal in my coffee maker and pick some strawberries to go in it. I put hot chocolate mix in both the coffee and the oatmeal, until I ran out and had to start chipping away at this brick of brown sugar I'd been hoarding.
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