The Month of May – Adventures of Being a Party Princess

Tomorrow is the last day of May, which means June is practically here which means in my book, it is Summer.

This morning Max and I got up early to go play Smash Ball at the beach, something we’ve been doing pretty regularly since we moved into our totally awesome apartment. That’s right, I’m no longer living in someone’s dining room. It’s been a year since I’ve put my official race training on the back burner for the sake of my new record, so finding ways to play outside as much as possible has been a crucial element of my sanity. Lucky for me, I live at the beach, so there is unlimited access to butt-toning sand playtime.

Playing smash ball, especially if you suck and have to run everywhere to get the ball, is a GREAT workout.

May was a big month for me. I kicked off May with running the Leona Divide 50 miler, which is my only race this year due to recording. Truly, I thought I had no business being out there, but apparently my body just remembers how to run ultra’s and I REALLY enjoyed that run. I ran my 2nd fastest 50 miler that day with a time of 11:57, my fastest being 9:02 at American River. The day after Leona Divide I was up at 5am. It was MOVING DAY and it felt like Christmas for me! For a year I have been existing in a dining room of a 1 bedroom apartment with at least 2-3 other people. When I first moved in, it was an upgrade from the sofa I had been sleeping on for 7 months, but by the time I moved out, I was sharing a twin bed with someone else and I was losing my sanity. I didn’t enjoy being home anymore. I wanted s p a c e to rest my eyes, a sofa to stretch out on, a big open floor not covered with things that didn’t belong to me, a kitchen filled with my pots and pans, a bedroom with four real walls and a door that shut, and that’s exactly what I got. This new apartment is a serious life upgrade and I couldn’t be happier about it.

My throne. The kitchen is my new official work space. I love it.

My kitchen is bigger than my entire living space at my old place!! This is AMAZING.

Chalk board paint is pretty much the best.

At the end of the first week in the new apartment, I had my first show of the Summer at Genghis Cohen. I love this venue. It is quirky and small and intimate and charming and they are always so friendly to me here. The show had a great turn out. I thought my performance was decent. I felt tired I think from all of the activity of the preceding week, but lucky for me, no one seemed to notice that I was a little off my game. I drew in enough people to get paid decently, though Genghis Cohen isn’t the best at collecting from the door. Every show I’ve ever played there I’ve had people tell me that they didn’t pay to get in or that the folks collecting money didn’t ask them who they were there to see, thus, I don’t get paid for those patrons. Most shows, the head count I take from stage and the one they give me when they pay me are different numbers. I’m going to assume it’s because I’m so furiously popular that the rush at the door is too much for them to handle everyone I also played for over an hour and got to hang out with my friends and fans after the show. It was a great night – if you came out, thanks!!

Picture that friend Dominic Grossman took during the Genghis Cohen show on 5/13

Since music doesn’t exactly pay me enough to pay my rent (yet), I’ve had to get creative with making more money now that I have… like… a real place with responsibilities and electricity I want to keep on. I have been working on t.v. shows, but since almost everything is on hiatus until July, work has been really hard to find. My good friend and fellow ultra-runner, Summer, has been casting me to work on Hawthorne just about every week, which has been tremendously helpful, though still isn’t quite enough to get by on. This past month I haven’t turned down a single opportunity to work and the result has been a full wallet and an exhausted Katelyn. One way I tried to earn extra money this month is being a character at children’s birthday parties. Summer hooked me up with this job as well. She used to do it when she first moved out here and said it was good money and a lot of fun. Both of these things are true – it was pretty good money and it was a lot of fun!

I made a GREAT Rapunzel

Balloon animals! So much fun!

However, the driving got to me pretty quickly. I would be driving from Pasadena to Long Beach to the valley all in one day, sucking my gas tank dry and leaving me sweating in a my princess costume while rushing from place to place. Also, they don’t prepare you for the fact that you probably won’t get a chance to pee for 5 hours. This alone was not enough to get me to quit, but when I realized that the costumes weren’t being washed (omg, the smell was horrendous), and that the toys and magic tricks weren’t being replinshed, like, ever, I started to feel like a fool. I would arrive in a torn, stained, smelly costume with a balloon pump that didn’t work (actually had to run and get my own when I realized my boss packed one for me that didn’t work at all), not enough balloons to survive a day of parties, and 3 magic tricks, one of which didn’t work anymore. I felt like even though the company made over half of the money from each party, none of that was going towards cleaning costumes, replacing tools and toys and thus, kind of made me look unprofessional. Also, for some reason, after my 10 minute lesson on face painting (practicing with a pencil on paper) I some how wasn’t as prepared as I thought to draw artful sketches onto a squirming 3 year-old’s face with paint. When I tried to draw a horse it ended up looking like a glittery spider. I am NOT a visual artist. It was embarrassing actually. Max made a joke that I took way to personally when I was goofing around in one of the costumes and he said “You went to college!!”  It destoyed me. I shut myself into the bedroom for an hour trying to sort out what the hell I was feeling.

FML

The breaking point for me was when I showed up at a party in a park for a little girl named Jade. The directions were to look for a party by the sandbox. There were 6 parties in the park. None of the ones by the sandbox had ordered a pink-haired clown. I did eventually find the party on the other side of the park, but it wasn’t for Jade, it was for Jada, and they were insulted that I got the name wrong. Jada was 3 and had absolutely no interest in a clown that only spoke English, couldn’t blow up a balloon, and smelled like dirty socks. The following party was in a part of town that a 24-year-old girl in a costume as NO business being in. It made me feel like the company didn’t research where the parties were and thus didn’t have any interest in my well-being. I spent about 20 minutes just pulling myself together so I wouldn’t be this poor, pathetic, crying clown the rest of the day. I ended that weekend on an up note with parties that LOVED me, but in general, the job wasn’t for me. I could deal with the driving I think, but definitely not with the lack of care with the costumes and supplies. The job should be fun, not degrading.

Nothing says "I have self-respect and a reliable business" like this fine getup. You're all lucky I can't take a picture of the smell.

Held together with safety pins.....

We'll just call this "ventilation"

May finished up with pacing Summer (three mentions in one blog entry!) at the Nanny Goat 24 Hour Run. For those of you unfamiliar with this sort of thing, it is a run that goes for 24 hours. You run a mile loop over and over and basically run as far as you can in 1 day. Summer wanted to run the 100 mile option, which meant she needed to get to 86 miles by 24 hours in. My job was to get her through the night and into the next day, which is typically the hardest part of any hundred miler. You feel like a crazy person at about 4am during a hundred miler. Summer did amazingly well. We ran miles 63-86 together, getting her to 86 miles by about 6am, 2 hours to spare before the cutoff. She then continued on to finish her 100 miles with a PR of about 3 hours. Totally badass. She’s a rock star. I, on the other hand, was sore and exhausted after my measly 23 miles and had to smack myself the entire drive home to stay awake. For a rock star I am terrible at staying up late/all night. However, I am really good at sleeping all day, which is what yesterday was when I got home from the race.

Me (background) while pacing Summer (foreground) at Nanny Goat's this weekend.

Here’s what you have to look forward to reading about this coming month in my blog –  more regular entries, SO MUCH RECORDING, a road trip to Colorado, lots more job searching so I can pay July’s rent, beach trips, trail runs, and videos!!