JC: What is your favorite color today? Don't think about yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow - what is it today?
ST: Red.
JC: Red, and you're wearing red.
ST: I was wearing more red earlier but then I had to get changed.
JC: Can you describe red for me?
ST: I like deep, velvet-y red. Really red. Not really a fire-truck red, not just pure red, I like read mixed with brown or something. Or a fire-truck red if it were on velvet.
JC: A velvet painting of a fire truck.
ST: Yeah, I like deep-red red. I like to wear red with pink or orange. It balances out the red.
JC: That is a nice combo. That makes me think... lately I like seeing pink next to brown. You know what makes me think about it: my job... you know, I'm a gardener. I'm always seeing color combinations out there when I'm working. And just recently, within the last six months, I saw a crepe myrtle down on some wet pine straw. You know how pine straw looks when it's wet and fairly new, so it's that nice brown color with the pink blossom laying on it.
ST: That is a beautiful combination.
JC: I like your red-and-pink thing too. Isn't Paul [Thomas's] house red and pink? [Thomas is an Athenian visual artist, musician, and shopkeeper who has been active in the city since the early 1980's.] Have you been by his house?
ST: I've never actually been in it. I've been outside. It is pink.
JC: I think it's pink with red trim on the windows.
ST: I think you're right. I remember seeing it and being really surprised: "Paul's house is pink."
JC: Does your favorite color vary from day to day?
ST: I think it does. What I realized I like doing… I like having a specific color for each painting. I'll have a pink-ish painting, everything will be based around pink… or brown, or a tan-ish color, or blue. I like to get into a color and have that be the main color. Not throw tons and tons of colors into the same… though I love that too. This is just what I've been exploring recently. Just picking a color and exploring the variations within that color.
JC: Yeah, It's like jumping in a color, and swimming in it, and seeing all the different variations.
ST: And mixing different colors with that color to keep that color; it changes from day to day.
JC: Do you have a favorite color scheme?
ST: Well, I guess I would go along with that: just that I love to have the same color but in variations.
JC: Right, I got you...
JC: If you could snap your fingers and be in another dimension or realm, where would that be?
ST: You know what... yesterday I was researching on the Internet and I found this place that will take disabled people to Egypt and take them on safari, and now I'm really obsessed with the idea of going to Africa, so I think right now my fantasies are in Africa.
JC: Do you have a chair that can - this might sound like a silly question - maneuver through the sand?
ST: Usually that would just be solved with taking a push-chair and then going with friends. But I would really love to go on some kind of crazy adventure by myself; that's just really hard for me. But what's so cool about this organization… there are people who will drive this wheelchair-accessible truck and set up the wheelchair-accessible tent and help me through sand and stuff like that. So I'll be with people, but they'll be strangers; they won't be my friends. I mean, they might be by the end of the trip. So I think that issue will probably be solved.
JC: So they're there to assist when need be, and that includes maneuvering through sand and stuff.
ST: Also, to help me… normal safari guides. Guides through the pyramids or whatever you'd have.
JC: That sounds good. I hope you can do it. Have you looked into it?
ST: I emailed them. I was so excited. I mean, it's expensive, it's very expensive, but I feel like it's worth it. Mostly I'm just really happy right now here, so I'm not sure if it's the best time to do it.
JC: And there's no age limit on that. You could do it five years from now.
ST: Yeah, exactly.
JC: What kind of toys did you play with as a child?
ST: At my house? Okay, my best friend from when I was 6 until about 13 was this girl Erin Williams and we had three games that we'd play. One was… there were these little, teeny creatures that were little, plastic… but they had fur on them and they were like bears or rabbits. And they wore clothes, farm clothes and stuff, and they were called Sylvanians. So we played with these Sylvanians in our doll houses. They were great, they were all just really cute, they were all sorts of kinds of animals. They were old-fashioned-looking and they all wore clothes.
JC: Did you make plays up with them, have them say things to each other? Scenarios...
ST: Yeah, exactly. And at her house we'd play with Playmobile.
JC: What's Playmobile?
ST: Playmobile is little, plastic figures that have all sorts of insane accessories. They're really, really cool, you can still buy them.
JC: Do you mind if I put what your age is?
ST: My birthday was actually a few weeks ago. I'm 23 now.
JC: And what sign are you then? You're a Pisces?
ST: Yeah, actually born right on the cusp.
JC: So, you're between Pisces and Aries.
ST: And then we'd just play fantasy games.
JC: And the reason I ask your age is because… I'm 41 and I might not know some of the toys you played with and vice versa.
ST: Well, Sylvanians I think were really rare. I don't think they were very popular. It was really hard to get them. So whenever we'd find them, we'd buy all of them we could find.
JC: Do you have any of them around still? You've kept some of them?
ST: Yeah. The dogs have gotten a lot of them.
JC: The poodles…
ST: The poodles. There was one family of moles that I really liked and I think I still have a few of them.
JC: And does that friend still… do you still keep in touch with her? You see her sometimes?
ST: Yeah, she still lives here. We try to see each other. She's been in school, she just graduated; so we've had different schedules and we don't get to see each other that much but when we do… we're like sisters…
JC: She home-schooled with you?
ST: On and off… she did when I was littler... I think she home-schooled, for a few years anyway. But then she went to middle school and high school.
JC: What kind of games you did enjoy, or dislike, as a child… I mean, you strongly liked them or you strongly disliked… "ah, put that away, I can't stand it, I don't want to bring that one out"… any kind of strong leaning, either way?
ST: Actually, with these games - these games I just described - we'd play the same thing. We'd have the same fantasy. The fantasy was that we were kids whose parents had died, we were living on an island… the typical kind of kid fantasies. So we played that game, it always had the same pattern. That was probably our favorite game. I never really... actually, when I was little, I liked board games, but I think because they're so much about using your hands I never got into them.
JC: I didn't get into them because I thought… I don't want to say all of them - I like Scrabble; I always liked that.
ST: I came here the other day and played Scrabble with David actually.
JC: That to me was fun, but I never liked Monopoly…
ST: (joking) So capitalistic.
JC: I couldn't get into those games.
ST: Yeah, they always seemed kind of boring.
JC: You enjoyed fantasy games more than board games, basically is what you're saying.
ST: Yeah. And we'd play sports, but I'd have to make up my own rules. My best friend's brother was Alex's best friend… we played kickball but I'd make up rules because I obviously wasn't very good at it. I had a lot of fun, we'd get incredibly competitive.
JC: Do you have a favorite memory that you'd like to share? And you can separate that into early memory and late memory and have two different ones if it makes it easier, because it's really a pretty demanding question.
ST: That's a really good question. Memory's funny because you have so many but then when you try to think… they're all just there, piled away, and you almost need something to make them come back.
JC: Right, you need a trigger to make them come back…
ST: Can we come back to that one?
JC: Yeah…
