Lone Ranger

When I was getting ready to come out to Phoenix, I was a little concerned because I knew no one here! NOT A SOUL!!!! I was expressing this concern to my long time pilates instructor in NYC during one of our workouts......I said "Dan, what am I going to do, I have no friends or resources out there, how will I find the right chiropractor or pilates instructor or massage therapist to deal with the science project that is my body, or dance classes, or place to do my hair(sounds silly but these things are important to us girls), who will I go hiking with or have girl talk over Margaritas with......if I spend too much time alone I get a little weird! He said in the calmest tone "Marisa, it will find you, it always does".

AND it did!!! Within 2 days of my arrival, I had a wonderfully competent and very thorough chiropractor in the brother of a friend from NYC, a great pilates studio runned by a professional dancer who recommended an awesome instructor who likes to be productive but laugh as much as I do while working out. The best massage therapist I've every had who has been doing massage as part of his martial arts training since he was 6 years old. Serious stretching and massage all in one! 3 great groceries stores all within 2 about a mile of my apt. Healthfood, convenient food, regular food.

For those of you who don't already know this about me, I have a little obsession with grocery shopping. It's like therapy, walking up and down the isles, perusing new items, dreaming up recipes I could conjure up with an item from each isle. I like to go late at night or early in the morning when the isles are mine alone and sometime I get my groove on in the cereal isle or the frozen food section(granola and ice cream just make me want to dance)! It's like my own mini wonderland! I digress....

Finding dance classes at Ballet Arizona was like finding a home away from home. Everyone there was so nice and welcoming, no divas in site! And I met 3 girls on my first day of orientation were new to Phoenix, were easy and fun to chat with and we looked like we could all be sisters-weird but awesome!

So all that to say....my life in Arizona has been pretty amazing except for fact that I've sparked a fun interest with a great guy back home. Fun new friends, great resources and an apartment to myself.....Dan was right, if you stay open to the possibilities "it" will find YOU!!!

My Little Sanctuary

Adjusting to life in the desert was not as easy as I'd expected. I thought, "I love the heat it will be way better than those stinky sweaty 90 degree summer scorchers in NYC". Well.... no matter how you slice it, 120 degrees is 120 degrees, whether it's "dry heat" or not, it's just unbearable. Rolling down your car window on the highway is a little like having a blow dryer on high pointed right at your face. I'm pretty confident that the devil has a summer home in Phoenix :) The second day I was here I got into the driver's seat of my car only to realize that my black leather seats had turned into what felt like a frying pan. In my desperate plight not to burn my bottom any more than I already had I scurried to find a seat cover. The only things big enough that could create an adequate shield was my road atlas.....minor problem when you don't know where your going!!! It was an urban adventure to say the least!

I tend to think that I'm a tough girl, at least tougher than I look but this city had it's way with me. For the entire first week, I was layed out, other than forcing myself to go to work, I hardly got off the couch or left my apt. Even my car staged a protest, the battery died after 3 days of this hot mess! In that forced time at home I began nesting, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

OK....before I go any further...if you live in NYC and tend to covet the domestic amenities that rarely come with a NYC apt. or you get jealous and stage an "I hate NYC" day when you think about your college friends living out in middle America with a white picket fence.....then you may want to stop reading!! YOU'VE OFFICIALLY BEEN WARNED!!!

Anyway, in my sickly state I began to make my temporary living space a "home". Rarely have I had a significant amount of space to myself, I grew up in a modest house with 5 other family members and have lived with multiple roommates since. To have 800 square feet all to myself, is like a little slice of heaven! Then to add a big kitchen with a dishwasher, walk-in closet, a patio, washer/dryer(in my apt....I mean seriously?), more storage space than I know what to do with, 2 pools, a hot tub, 24 hour fitness center and a covered parking spot(my very own parking spot!!!!)......the good Lord just backed up the blessing truck!!!!

It has been so wonderful to wake up in the morning, cook a nice breakfast, sit on the patio with my journal and a book while the dishwasher is running and a load of clothes is in the wash with another in the dryer. Sometimes I get all the appliances going at once just because I can :) The washer doesn't even leave any marks on my clothes and the dryer never goes unbalanced like one washer/dryer unit shared by my entire building in my NYC apt. :)

No comparison to a tiny crew cabin I thought I'd be living in on the cruiseship for 6 months.

So here are the photos of my home away from home that I've been promising my Mom, Aunt Gail and Alison I would post for the past 3 months.

Welcome to my little slice of heaven at the Bellavista!

My apt. is the one on the 2nd Floor

The pathway to the pool and outdoor grills

Pool #1

Pool #2(the grown-up pool)

Covered Parking-my very own space, no circling the block for a spot!!!

The Kitchen-check out the counter space Mom-hallelujah...AMEN!!!

Livingroom/Office(Thanks Mom for the pretty homemade blanket that just so happened to match the furniture perfectly!)

My Dance Dance Room!!! I've only hit my head on the chandelier once or twice :)
Patio (with my apt. mascot AKA the foam roller)

My "make pretty" bathroom towels (thanks Aunt Gail, it used to be more of display with the big towel but Mike took if down to dry off when he came to visit-silly boys) Oh....by the way, I have a wonderful new boyfriend named Michael...more on that in a later post!
The other side of the bathroom
Washer and Dryer-YAY!!!

Where I lay my head

MY WALK-IN CLOSET!!!!!

Travel Nursing

You might be wondering, what exactly am I doing out in the desert in the dead of summer?

Here is a brief description of what travel nursing is and specifically what I signed up for:

With the nationwide nursing shortage many hospitals across the U.S. hire travel nurses to fill in the gaps for seasonal or long term staffing needs. Usually nurses are required to have at least 2 years experience in their specialty area since they are given approximately 2 days orientation and then expected to jump right into the mix. A typical travel nursing assignment involves a 13 week full time commitment to work at a particular hospital, clocking three 12 hours shifts/week in exchange for free housing in an apt. with generous amenities, heath insurance, travel compensation and a nice salary. When the 13 weeks are up, the nurse has the option to sign on for an addition 13 weeks or go on to the next city of choice to work a new assignment.


I am working three 12 hour night shifts(7pm-7:30am) a week as a Float Nurse at Phoenix Children's Hospital. A Float Nurse works on whatever floor has need that night excluding the ICUs and Emergency Room. I work on 5 different floors, orthopedics/rehab/neurology(lots of child abuse :( so sad), oncology/hematology, gastrointestinal/diabetes, respiratory/cardiac, and then the 5th floor is any other random illness that a child could contract(I call this floor the funny farm-mainly because of the staff-not the patients).

For my musical theatre friends, being a float travel nurse is comparable to being a swing on tour with 2 days rehearsal! A little tricksy and challenging to say the least. Not something I'd sign up for again, but hey, live and learn!!!

Healing the Hurt

So, I finally let go......and the 2 days I spent in Nashville were some of the most restful and relaxing days I've had in a long time. My lovely and incredibly generous friend Alex, extended her home and sacrificed her bedroom so I could get some uninterrupted quality rest before embarking on the rest of my journey! Alex and I just so happen to share an affinity for white fluffy bedding which I thoroughly enjoyed on the top floor of her 3 story townhouse. I slept in til 11am and rose to beams of sunlight shining through every window and felt like a princess waking up in the top of a castle! (Stark contrast to mornings in NYC where I have to press my face against my bedroom window to see if the sky is blue or grey!) The bedroom even had a little alcove which was just the right size for my pilates and stretching routine. The rest of the days in Nashyville were spent doing some of my favorite things, listening to live music, sushi, a trip to Target, bochi ball in the park, great conversation over Maggie Moos and late night silly girl time at the Waffle House!

I find when I allow myself to breath deeply enough, fully enough and consistently enough...there is room....room to feel deeply, listen to what God is saying and to see Him more clearly in my surroundings and circumstances! After 2 days of deep breathing in Nashville the light finally went on, the last time I drove cross country I was with my best friend Shannon, we had just graduated from UCONN and were on a trip of a lifetime-6 weeks, covering as much of this great country as possible in my grandfather's van-with pb&j, rice crispy treats, an am/fm radio(which didn't get reception in many places which left us to our own musical abilities-yikes), the go-girls guide to the open road and just enough money to get by. It was the most eclectic and incredible trip! Little did I know just how precious that concentrated time with Shannon would be. Just 6 short years later she passed away after a long courageous battle with cancer.


Losing my best friend at such a young age in the midst of many other personal traumas was more than I could absorb at the time. Even though I've told so many of my patients families that grief is a process, now I'm really getting what that means. Sometimes it's gut wrenching and painful, sometimes it's sweet nostalgic strolls down memory lane, and some times it's just pure enlightenment and this trip across the country turned out to be all of the above.


Shannon was so many things to me, a sister, a best friend, someone who reminded me of who I was when I forgot, someone who kicked me in the pants when I needed it, my favorite partner in crime-somehow we managed to get ourselves out of trouble just as easily as we got into it(thank goodness), and a wellspring of genius, inspiration and fun!

From Nashville onward I decided to retrace the steps our post-college roadtrip. Stopping at Graceland, judging the quality of a rest stop by the flavors of Laffy Taffy they had to choose from(sadly I'm not as good at knowing the punchline to the corny jokes on the wrappers as elementary school teacher Shannon was), a pit stop in Hope, Arkansas the birth place of former president Bill Clinton to see if the families there still kept their washer/dryers on their front porches(a very new and foreign concept to 21 year old Shannon and I), I sang at the top of my lungs to the Backstreet Boys and Garth Brooks across the plains of Texas, visited the best snow cone shack in the country, Bahama Bucks in Lubbock, TX(which is no longer a shack but a big pink building with free Wi-Fi and about 50 additional flavors), and made up faux identities and stories when approached by nosey strangers at restaurants along the way(a favorite past time of ours-tehe!!).

Through all of this, I felt Shannon's presence more strongly than I had in years, wondering what she thought about all of this, and I felt her smiling down on me.

Suddenly God made it very apparent to me that not only was Shannon with me in spirit but it was no coincidence that I could see things I miss so much about Shannon in my friends along the way. The camaraderie and sisterhood with Alex; the light, lovely and enlightened spirit of Jennifer Worrall in Dallas; the easy unconditionally caring bond of someone who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, with Luke in Fort Worth; and the old familiar friend who you can pick up with right were you left off -Lorissa Moffett-who was a long time twirling competitor of mine and dear friend. Shannon became quite the twirling connoisseurs during our days at UCONN, we used to pretend she was my coach so she could come down on the court at the UCONN b-ball halftime shows :)

1 week later I arrived in Phoenix feeling more free and alive than I've felt in years. I realized that sometimes you just need to let yourself go to the bottom of the pool no matter how deep or scary it may seem so you can push off and get back up above the surface, take a deep breath and get out of the pool. Hangin' out 4 feet below the surface, stuck treading water, is no way to live.

No one will ever replace Shannon but I feel so blessed that God has placed so many Angelic friends in my path to remind me that I'm never alone on this journey of life!

On The Road Again...

The day after my friend Kate's wedding, I packed up as many of my earthly possessions as I could fit in the back of my car and set out on a journey across the country! It was a perfect send off with a lovely Father's Day brunch with my parents, gramps, and brother and the warm fuzzies of having just spent the last 3 days with close friends at the wedding.

It was such a relief to have made it through the 5 weeks of turbulence and so exhilarating to be on my way into this new chapter of life. But there was so much more in store for this journey than I ever could have imagined.

About a month prior I had started to have difficulty breathing, my heart would race spontaneously, and I just couldn't get a full breath. I had never suffered from anxiety before but I think that's what was happening. No matter how hard I tried to relax or prayed for God to teach me or just take it away it wouldn't relent. All I got was that God wanted me to be patient and trust Him. I like to deal with things as they come up but there was more going on than I could absorb and it just built up and manifest itself physically. It didn't feel so good :(

The first leg of the journey from my parents house in Meriden, CT to NYC was like one huge deep breath. I could feel the old anxious skin shedding off and the hope of what was ahead filled my lungs and relaxed my senses. My friend Duff offered to help me drive the first leg of the trip to Nashville. We had a blast, hitting up the Crackerbarrel, watching movies, experiencing Sheets(the best rest stop in the great US of A),
stopping for gas by JMU :) , and landing in Nashville just in time for breakfast at the Pancake Pantry. Having someone there to help lighten the load brought about a huge revelation. It was like God yelled in my ear "Marisa....just let go....I've got you....I'm here to guide you....to take care of you....to lighten the load....just let go and surrender it all to Me"!

27 Dresses.....

Weddings...weddings...and more weddings! Since my early to mid-20s it seems a season does not pass without several friends getting engaged or married. I've been to more showers, engagement parties and nuptuals than I can count. I was actually the muse for the movie 27 dresses-you see....since I was soooo busy with my career in NYC they had to get Katherine Heigel to play the part(tehe!)


There's a lot that goes along with being a bridesmaid, The Time-to travel, searching for just the right gift, shopping for dresses, weekends devoted to showers, parties, wedding weekends; The Dresses-the puckering and squeezing in the weirdest places that give you fat in places you never knew you had it; The Money-oh dear...I wish some bank would create a high interest savings account devoted to bridesmaid-dome. One year I took a stroll down the isle 5 times in 6 months! It brought me to my knees and I prayed "God, if You wanted me in all these weddings, would you please just show me the $$$". What do ya know, the next month I booked a job modeling bridesmaid dresses that covered all 5 dresses-seriously-you gotta love a God with a sense of humor!!!
But seriously, I love it....I love every single minute of it!!! Having an excuse to spend all this extra time with my nearest and dearest girls and their families! Getting a front row seat to 2 lives integrating into one, there are few things in life more beautiful! There is a stunning vulnerability about a bride who knows she is in the center of God will. In addition, one of my favorite things about being a bridesmaid is the opportunity to serve these lovely ladies who usually wouldn't ask for help otherwise. I could care less what I have to wear, stick me in a burlap sack-but I will say I've got some wonderfully kind and confident brides to call friends who have been very gracious with their selections! Good thinkin'...because just like in 27 dresses you might be wearing those same dresses on my special day! :)

This whole stream of thought(or blog rather) was prompted by my dear friends Kate and Geoff's Wedding on June 14th. It was a wonderful 2 day event in Connecticut, with friends and family, old and new, from near and far! Alison Walla went above and beyond as our resident Martha Stuart Jr. But beyond everything else what mattered most to this gracious couple was that at the end of the day they would be husband and wife and that made everything else just icing on the cake!

New York City Vacation...and the BEST FRIENDS EVER!!!!!

My family has called me a Gypsy for years now but never have I felt more in touch with my little nickname than over the 5 weeks I spent in CT and NYC from early May to mid June. I'm used to being the one to offer up my fold out couch in the upperwestside apt. God has so graciously blessed me with, not the one living out of my a suitcase and the trunk of my car unsure of who's couch I will be sleeping on next. It was all very humbling and a huge blessing in disguise.

When friends and acquaintances got a whiff of the mess that happened with Norweign, I was flooded with emails, phone calls and text messages offering a place to stay for 3 days to several months-FREE!!! Enough people extended their homes that I would have had a place to stay thru the duration of my sublet in late December, AMAZING!!!! The love and support I was bombarded with made my heart swell clear out of my chest! Thank you to Jenny J and Lindsay, Lee and Amanda, Erica and Chasity, Kristen and Seth, Emily and Thom, Kevin and Stephanie and the girls of 2B for sharing your homes with me and thank you to all of the other wonderful friends who offered!

Those 5 weeks were a huge lesson in "surrender"! My apt. is occupied, no idea where I'm going or what I'll be doing for the next 6 months, aaahhhhhh!!!! Then it dawned on me that I had a choice, I could freak out OR I could let go and enjoy my first ever NYC vacation and time with my family in CT. I went for option #2 . Within 2 days of being back home, a friend suggested travel nursing and I had 2 recruiters calling me asking where I wanted to go, "I don't know"(I was suppose to be in the middle of the ocean for the next 6 month for goodness sake!!) One said "just get out the map, close your eyes and point", which was essentially what happened. I ended up getting a job at Phoenix Children's Hospital! Yes folks, Phoenix in the summer in all it's 120 degree glory!

During those five weeks I felt like the ground was constantly moving underneath my feet but it brought about a deeper sense of security than I've ever felt before. Not relying on anything but the fact that God loves me so much and therefore He had to have a wonderful purpose for this ridiculous situation, brought about a sense of joy and freedom that allowed me to enjoy the moment and my present surroundings like never before!

In those 5 weeks, I witnessed the home life of beautiful healthy marriages(makes me to excited to spending my life with the right man), had teenage-like bonding time in slumber party fashion with my girlfriends-married and single! Took a boat ride in central park for the 1st time, spontaneous rooftop cocktails, an awesome ghetto beach outing with Patrick, spent time with Jenny J her last weeks in NYC before her 8 month tour in Asia, all 5 of us-"my girls"-were in the city together for 1st time in over a year, preparations for my dear friend Kate's wedding(the most amazing bridal shower dinner parties ever), quality time with my family-especially my Mama, the Trinity Spring Concert, Jessica's 25th Birthday, being available for one of my closest friends who fell ill suddenly, hang out time with my nurse friends and a company happy hour(what's that?) to celebrate my coming and going, and the list goes on. This is not NYC as I know it, gosh I've had it all wrong for so long! I realized just because I wasn't running myself ragged and collecting a paycheck didn't mean I wasn't working and serving a purpose for God's kingdom, not working so hard was actually more fruitful to the people in my life and me too!
All in 5 weeks-thank God I wasn't on that boat in the middle of the Atlantic!!! Here's to hindsight!

TAKE 2!

Well sometime life doesn't go along the way we plan! 2 weeks into rehearsals after learning all of the shows, I was brought into the office by a very somber group of production staff and our choreographer who put her arm around me and whispered in my ear "We love you, and you are a beautiful dancer"(never a good sign)! They informed me that Norweign Cruiselines considers me a liability and will not let me go on with the contract, due to my previous back and foot surgeries(all taking place over 3-7 years ago)! What?!?! How can this be, the doctor cleared me and they have had my paperwork for over 2 months? Negligence, pure negligence on the part of Norweign's administration!

My stomach hit the floor and a flood of emotions from way more than just this incident rose up in me! Most of you reading this know all that I've been through with my health over the past 7 years and also know how hard I've worked to get back to dancing and clung to God's promises and His power to heal. I bust my tail and have been doing much harder gigs over the past 2 years and then some dude in an office who's never met me decides that I'm not well enough to perform on a cruiseship...jigawhat! Even so, if they weren't so negligent with processing their paperwork, I would have known before subletting my apt., giving up my jobs and agencies and uprooting my life!!!

SO, I cried for about 10 minutes(the ugly cry) and then felt this huge sense of peace come over my heart.....this is way too ridiculous for God not to have something way better to come out of it! So I said just that, pulled myself up by my boot straps(or maybe it was my jazz pants) and walked out of the office! They gave me 2 weeks severance and offered for me to stay on for the next week to give me some time to figure out what to do and help the cast with blocking until the replacement came(doesn't sound like much of a bargain). But I took it, and we made lemonade out of lemons!!!

My cast and our choreographer were amazing, they were so supportive and called multiple contacts to help me get another job. The cast even stayed in the studio for 3 hours after 6 long days of rehearsals to help me put together an audition video, then Hayden, one of the other dancers, built me a website and edited a reel for me to send out! Amazing!!! Yes folks, there are Angels among us and namely the cast of the Majesty!!!

So I packed up my bags and went on a mini audition tour of the southeast hitting up Pigeon Forge, Myrtle Beach, and got to visit my dear friends Blaire and Travis in Charleston. It was an adventure-I found myself without my audition songbook, singing songs I've never sung before on a microphone acapella on a stage in Pigeon Forge(Um...I can probably count on 1 hand how many times I've sung by myself on a microphone)...Random...but by the grace of God it went well.. and then I find myself sitting on a balcony overlooking the beach in a hotel that was payed for by the theatre in Myrtle Beach, (what a blessing but what..where am I?) It was all very surreal! I was given 1 offer but most theatres were finished with their hiring for the season and didn't have anything available until the fall. The opportunity I was given just didn't feel right so I packed my bags and flew home.

To add insult to injury, I had given up performing jobs to do this and they were no longer available. Then a week later Norweign did the same thing to 2 of our other cast members for more minor medical issues, if all actors were honest about their medical history Norweign would have no performers on their stages!!! This was actually my second incident with Norweign. In February a week before I was suppose to start rehearsals for a Hawaiian Cruise contract they canceled the contract because they sold the ship we were suppose to go on.

Bottom line, people should know about the business mishandlings of Norweign and I would recommend that all performers who value integrity and a secure work environment avoid working for Norweign Cruiselines at all cost.

Embarking on a New Adventure.....

Hey Everyone! Check it out, the reigning Miss Computer Illiteracy USA has a blog!!! Seriously, this is the dawn of a new era!!!!

I promised to keep you all up to date on this new adventure so here it is! I've been wanting to do a blog for a long time because life is crazy and crazy funny, particularly mine! And since you just can't make the stuff up that occurs in my life, and I have a poor memory, I figured I should document it somewhere. It's taken me going away to dance on a cruiseship to make it happen.

For those of you who are in the dark with what I'm talking about, here are the detail:

I'm going away on a 7 months dance contract with Gary Musick Company out of Nashville, TN. I will be one of 8 performers comprising the production cast(the lovely folks in the picture) on the Norweign Majesty, traveling to Bermuda, Northern New England/Nova Scotia, and the Carribean. We rehearse in Nashville from April 15th-May 10th and then board the ship to begin one week of rehearsals and 6 months of performances at sea. Our first home port is Charleston, SC, then Baltimore, MD and Philidelphia, PA.

It was difficult leaving NYC and all of the amazingly wonderful friends that I'm honored to call my NYC family! Thank you to all of the people who helped to get this journey underway and for the loving send off! I hope I can as good a friend to you as you've been to me!!!

LET THE JOURNEY BEGIN.........