A few vignettes from Housekeeping:

Carlo e Valentina

First was the day when someone dropped off a car-load of toys in the free bin. There were paints, colored pencils, crayons, Mickey Mouse ears, books on art, and the remnants of what was evidently an intense study of Italian; not only textbooks galore, but a tan apron with pictures of cheese and the word FORMAGGIO across the front. Monique and I got a little aggressive as we tend to do with toys, and she left wearing the Mickey Mouse ears, while I left with everything else. Luckily I ran into Brandon on the way back to my tent, while I was wearing the apron and carrying all the open text-books and yelling broken Italian at no one in particular, and he was working but he made me follow him around for entertainment. Ten minutes later found us sitting on a bench reading through one of the partner exercises, where he was Carlo and I was Valentina and Valentina really wanted to take an exotic vacation but Carlo was having financial hesitations so it was all very typical, really, and this is about the time that my boss, Robin, drove by and yelled at me. Our Housekeeping outing was that night, and Robin was concerned about the fact that I had not yet tired of my Italian books.

"I want this to be a nice, quiet dinner, Liz!" She yelled, drowning out Brandon as he struggled through Carlo's latest lame excuse to Valentina. "I don't want to hear any Italian in the restaurant!"

"I'm just getting it out of my system!" I yelled back, but she had already driven on. And indeed I did and it was a lovely outing and Robin told us none of us could order a salad so I ordered one, and all the Italian books went on a shelf on my porch where I can easily take them out to practice (much to my neighbors' dismay).

The Jester and Hare Buggy

The next day Monique and I were working B shift together, and we were fresh from Sadhana, with energy buzzing up and down and out the chakras. Of course, this happened to be Retreat Week at Omega, where the 300 participants of the Mindfulness workshop take to the main lawn every half an hour to do what the rest of us refer to as Zombie Walking. Monique was wearing a turban with ladybugs on it and Mickey Mouse ears, and I was wearing the jester hat, and we had just gotten a huge tub of free chocolate milk from the cafe, and our cart was decorated with a crazy quilt and dangling pink and orange umbrella, and it was kind of a ridiculous time for us to be driving right through the midst of the Mindfulness walkers.

As we mounted the hill, very very slowly because Sofa-Face is dying a little more each day, I saw the participants closing in on each side and I saw the Mickey Mouse ears and jester prongs in my periphery, and I have never ever in my entire life had to use every muscle and ounce of will in my body to try not to laugh. The wave would rise and press at my throat and I would clench and suppress and hold and it would go down, and there would be a moment of pause and breath and then it would come again. Monique said she had an out of body experience. A part of her was above the cart seeing us and what we looked like, seeing the mindfulness walkers see us. But somehow another part of her steered the cart through and up the hill, and I only almost lost it once, when I snorted, and Monique growled, "GET YOURSELF TOGETHER!" and I replied that "I am, I just COUGHED!" And then we were almost up the hill and soon we were clear and of course we convulsed in giggles, and then Melissa came by and we all had some chocolate milk and then we cleaned a few bathrooms for good measure.

Then later that day there was Deeksha, the Oneness Blessing, and it was a triple Oneness Blessing because there were three Deeksha Givers, and trippy music was playing and anyway I got high as a kite. I put on the Formaggio apron and the freaksha hat and everyone followed me laughing down the hill, and at some point I wandered into the art hut still high, and started rummaging around in the corner for paints and dropped everything and eventually used what was apparently printing ink for a painting...

"That's the wrong kind of paint, Liz," Ben said, warily, to which I yelled back, "That's why I need SUPERVISION!"

And I then made this very ridiculous drippy work while randomly interrupting people's conversations with "that's what she said" jokes, and I was kind of like some delinquent drunk jester in the corner who no one was quite sure what to do about. So that was a great night and it involved several more wanderings and midnight food raids, which are my favorite.

The Jester and Hare Buggy get Detention

Monique and I were working together, AGAIN, and so it was really only a matter of time before we got in trouble for too much fun. We started off the day by checking off all of the tasks on our list to boost our morale. Then we tooled around and read Allure's magazines tips for transforming daytime hair to evening hair.

"And the part is..."

"Slightly off-center!" Yelled Monique.

"Correct. And your bun?"

"Tousled, with two strands loose at the nape!"

And so on...

It was turning into the kind of day where it seemed only natural to take an extended lunch break. Unfortunately, Robin had seen us go to lunch at noon. And she had also gone to the cart to write a note on our sheet, the same sheet where we had checked off every single task already. And she was present when we came strolling down the hill at 1:30.

"LADIES?!" Was the first thing we heard, and it was all downhill from there. Our sentence was a deep clean of Long Pond bathroom, plus an extra half hour on the cart. 5:30 found us still tooling around campus with forlorn looks on our faces. We had run out of things to read in Allure magazine; now we decided to use our time to do good deeds, like deliver the Sat Gnome's laundry, and chant, and plunge the code brown in the library. We caused a bit of a scene when we found the "Event in Progress" sign stuck outside the door- never was there a more appropriate sign for outside a bathroom. But anyway, by the time we got back to the shed Robin was in a better mood, and we discussed the upcoming Staff Appreciation Fair, in which Housekeeping was required to have a booth, and before we knew it Robin had put us in charge. Which seemed like not only extended punishment, but punishment for the entire staff....

To be continued...