It’s been years since I headed out of town immediately after school on a Friday. The mission for this getaway was to attend a writers’ retreat. My regular schedule’s so jammed packed that it’s a vacation to abandon it for a spell.
In less than an hour, I arrived to the resort ranch and immediately saw some other writers from my group. We herded into the reception area where the woman who had organized the whole thing sat, distributing room keys.
I was so tempted to take a shower to wash off the stress from the day, but I’d arrived late enough to be on time for dinner. I washed my face and walked over to the dining hall. At least three groups were meeting and the tables had signs placed on them to show where each group was expected to sit.
I normally don’t make spaghetti and meatballs when I cook pasta; so it was a real treat to have that on the buffet. I sat down at a table for four and one woman announced that she had a spaghetti story, which she shared with us. She ended the story, stating that she knew it was strange to have a spaghetti story. That encouraged me to tell them my spaghetti story.
When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania, I went to the market and bought tomatoes, carrots, garlic, and spinach to make spaghetti sauce from scratch for the first time in my life. I’d sauted all the vegetables and added them to the boiled and mashed tomatoes that formed the sauce.
When everything had finished cooking, I arranged the pasta and sauce attractively on one of the cheap, bright orange plastic plates. Then I turned to my roommate and proudly said, “Look at my spaghetti!”
Her response: “Teresa, you have rat shit in your hair.”
Indeed I did. The other ladies at my table wondered out loud whether or not rat shit was in the spaghetti. Yet, my spaghetti had been delicious. Moreover, I’d learned during that time of my life not to look too closely at my food. In other developing country experiences, I learned about the medicinal properties of tequila.
After dinner, most of us went upstairs to write. One hardcore group sat in a boardroom setting that had large pleather swivel chairs and plenty of electrical outlets. I knew that was the place for me. Even though I had read through the three submissions that I was critiquing, I had not gone through each one to make edits. I sat there and for nearly two hours, I went through each line and edited. Fortunately, only one out of the three needed extensive editing and I had started with that one first.
I was the last one to emerge from the boardroom. I joined the circle of writers, sharing their writing experiences. It was a terrific bonding time with stories, drinks and lots of laughter. I’d heard that retreat for most of the seasoned members was the time that they became a part of the group.
I slept poorly for some reason, but at least I was on time for breakfast the next morning and rested enough to be clearheaded for our critique session. I volunteered to be the first one critiqued and it was not as gut-wrenching as I’d feared. As a matter of fact, I received a lot of good, useful feedback and practical advice. I made some of the minor changes in the moment and wrote notes to myself, but so far, no one has emailed her critiques/edits to me. I, on the other hand, emailed each writer as we’d begun to discuss her submission. Just goes to show who was the Virgo of the group!
After lunch, I hit the road in the hopes of catching my 2 pm tango lesson. Everyone at the writers’ retreat seemed intrigued by the fact that I took tango. As a drove north on the highway, I called my mother. She always thought that I kept myself too busy, but I don’t know how to do things differently and still make the most of my life. Plus with a bluetooth device, I could talk and still pay attention to the road.
I felt too tired to reenter my normal routine. I danced tango as best I could, but when I returned home, I napped for nearly two hours. Then, I made my famous “Screaming Orgasm Chocolate Cheesecake” for a Valentine’s Day celebration at school and at my Spanish class. Then I cooked for the week.
Since the night was still young, I went to a house party hosted by a fellow capoeirista and his roommate. I was interested in seeing more pictures that he’d taken during a photography project in Kenya. Just to prove that Austin is truly a small city, turned out that a few of the people at the party, I’d met a few years ago when I’d first moved here.
Some more capoeiristas showed up and before anyone could say axe (pronounced ah-SHAY), we formed a samba de roda, which brought the other party goers to the TV room to dance. There were too few capoeiristas to maintain a true samba de roda, but at least we were all having a good time.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s all I really want to do on the weekends in order to rejuvenate myself to face another week at school.