Honest Living

While I love love love my new job at Point Park and teaching film style video production again is like a dream come true, I'm still stuck in that nebulous adjunct zone of low pay and underemployment. I'm not complaining though, I am and always have been aware that when I moved here this job would be a continuation of my thus far life-time of part-time-facultyness and a grand segue into dissertation-writingness. I am deeply thankful for what I have and what it brings to my exploding resume. And of course, the complete and total satisfaction I get when the switch is on and I'm leading a class of potential future Oscar winners.

So, to supplement my meager and embarrassingly low income, I am embarking on a not-so-new set of skills and talents: babysitting! Growing up, I took care of my little sisters. Then I watched my mom's friend Pam's kids and she was a baby factory, producing a new child every 1- 2 years. I paid for my much of my undergrad education from babysitting money. I've set up a profile with sittercity.com, paid for a background check (which I passed!) and I've met four families now through the site or word of mouth that I'll be working for starting tomorrow! It's an honest living that keeps me out of smoky bars slinging drinks to idiots until 2 am or a shitty retail job at Border's. I'm too old for both, and kids keep me real. They make me smile. They pull me out of my stressful life and their world becomes top priority for a few hopefully smooth hours. Then it's cash in hand and I'm free to resume my stress! So, even though this isn't part of my grand life's plan (PhD by 35, Pulitzer by 40, Oscar by 50), it certainly will do in terms of paying my always gone over cell phone bill. Kudos to a new career move and here's my card: Kristine Trever, Professional Babysitter.

First Day of School

I love teaching film and video production. Period. I f'n LOVE it. Especially the Intro courses, where there's limits and parameters and wide-eyed freshmen and sophomores who hang on to every word and actually listen to you.

I started my first day of teaching Production I at Point Park University in downtown Pittsburgh today and it was awesome. Working once again in a truly dedicated and equipped filmmaking program is a breath of fresh air. Not that I hated working over in Mass Comm/Broadcast Journalism at VCU, but it was like hanging out with the not as handsome cousin of my true love interest.

This is the reason I pursued this pesky terminal degree, this PhD, this (as my friend Sascha hilariously refers to it) Doctor of Nothing. For in the end, it's a full time faculty position in a film and media arts program that I want and desire. It is my goal, my career dream, as the protagonist of my own flawed life. It is my controlling idea, my driving force. The PhD and all the hoops to jump through are merely simpleton antagonists standing in the way, but not for long, of achieving these goals. Make no mistake, I haven't been in college for 14 years because I love research...I don't. I love cinema. I love cameras. I love story. I love sharing what I know with eager minds and open hearts.

Best part, the folks I work with are friendly, helpful and cheery! My co-Instructor (yes, I team teach the class plus we have a TA!) has been wonderful in showing me the ropes and making sure all the bases are covered. And, he's Hungarian! I know every school and program has it's quirks and undersides, but I'm optimistic as usual that this is going to be a really rewarding and perhaps long-term place for me. I feel comfortable and relaxed here, the atmosphere is serious but fun. Kind of like me!

And the building where the Cinema and Digital Arts program lives is absolutely stunning. There's no way, no matter how foul your mood is in the morning or how hungover or tired you might be, that you can't feel a sense of being surrounded by beauty when you walk into this place and simply feel good. The building used to be an old bank, so it's opulent, spacious, covered in columns and huge windows and marble. Ornate and detailed, there's even a vault converted into a little lounge in the basement. Working right downtown is fantastic too...as if I needed one more excuse to let myself get lost in the city.

Sometimes I want to cry because for the first time in years I am happy. I feel real happiness, peace and calm in my busy, hectic, crazy, silly life. Then I cut that out and laugh and smile because I did this, I made this happiness happen. No one did it for me. But for those of you that supported, helped or believed in me along the way, I thank you. This happy, smiling, crying, laughing teacher and almost doctor, thanks you.

This one's for Vaupel

Moving is exhausting and bruising. It's a self-abusive love affair with a strange place and known things. It's fun and painful, it's a new yet familiar relationship for me, yet this time it's mine. I'm covered in little black and blue kisses all over my knees and shins. I think even my pelvic bone is bruised. Tonight I tried to convert the "stink room" into an office space. This is a huge room, the one that came with the FREE 101 Dalmations border, the room where I keep the cat boxes, about 2/3 of my books, my records, my PC, and my unpaid bills. I measured for a new desk (Ikea?) and went through a million files and the last 90 % of the last 90% of the boxes. Only 2 boxes left in that room on purpose (the rest contain VHS tapes of my Woody Allen collection and there's a huge box of all my student's reels from years of teaching at WSU). I realize that I not only need a huge desk for editing and bill paying (I'm gonna do my writing in the dining room/kitchen/hallway -- on the butcher block paper I bought) but I need filing cabinets and an entirely updated filing system. Nothing's been touched since 2008. Boo.

Some of my best discoveries of moving have been the many facets of my incredible wardrobe -- the red and white polka dot chacha dress I've actually never worn in public and the many cute scarves and bracelets I own. I actually found two Pewabic tiles I thought lost since I left Detroit. Still wrapped in newspaper, they were at the bottom of the box with my taxes and Wilson's pet records.

But the best part about moving is going through the boxes of old letters. Mostly in floral print hat boxes that have withstood nearly a dozen years in my life and about half that amount in different moves in 3 different states. Un-noticed and overlooked, Purloined Letters of sorts, I dared not revisit these boxes while in the meat grinder relationship with Christian. What, I might remember I once had ambition and goals? Or that I was desired? Dare I not even look for then, during those moves, I would have crumbled. But today, I've been so fortunate, today I dare. I've even found a bunch of letters from friends and lovers tucked in photo albums and random paperbacks like Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native (found a good one in there!) What was I thinking when I placed that letter from her there? A fantastic amount of letters from Mike Field sending me back to our carefree days from ages 19 - 25 when we were amazing penpals, best friends and much, much smarter than we

are now!

The real treasure was finding the massive stack of love letters written to me by my ex-boyfriend and former fiance, Miguel. We met when I was 21 and working at Majestic Cafe. I had braces on my teeth and wore chunky heeled shoes, long black pencil shaped skirts and a lot of metal jewelry. My hair was short, choppy, multi-colored but often bleached blonde and I was in the throes of kicking a terrible stint with my nasty roommate and her always having bad influences around. I had dated a lot of the guys in who came in to the bar. What can I say? I was young, living on my own Detroit, getting my useless Film degree, making a shitload of money, and I was cute. Cute like a 12 year old.

Miguel came around towards the end of my run at this mostly negative time of my life. He also looked 12, and acted 12, but was only about 9 months younger than I. He persistenly asked me out, I consistently denied him with the adage "I'm sorry, I don't date patrons." But he was so HOT. So hot. Slim but muscular, built but wiry. Dark, short curly hair, eyes like a dragon. Piercing and powerful. After countless occasions, gifts and notes of his a

ffection left for me at the bar on my night's off, I finally gave in and called him. We went out the next night. We went out and we went all the way. All the way off and on for the next 3 years. "We knew all the answers and we shouted them like anthems!" That's how we lived.

Weeks later I quit Majestic and moved into a tiny studio in a converted house on Prentis, moving in next door to my new and forever since best friend Heather. We moved into our new places on the same day and pretty much haven't stopped talking to each other every single day since ('cept for those few nasty occasions I care not to revisit). I started waiting tables and day bartending at Cass Cafe, making 1/2 what I'd made just months before at the suckhole. No car, no telephone, shitty little hole in the wall apartment with a standup shower too small for even me, I pulled my GPA back up to 4.o and engaged in the best sex of my young and not-so- innocent life with this hot young man.

What I discovered in the treasure trove of his letters was a photograph that he took of me one day on break at the Cass Cafe. He must have surprised me while enjoying not only a

cigarette but perhaps even a plate of french fries!

So, here's the first installment of what might be many of the Letters from Miguel. Read for yourself the brilliant intent, extent and playfulness of his love for me. It matched mine. I make no excuses, I loved this idiot guy. Ten years ago, to the day, likely. Perhaps he's the root of the reason I am obsessed with love letters.