May 06, 2008
The buck of the collective state of insanity stops... there. Way over there.
I don't want to generalize or anything, because generalizing is wrong (yet so convenient!), but it seems like every human being on the planet is cranky and combative these days. I am rounding up of course, since I have not met every human.
Perhaps it's a widespread low-level depression, or a collective free-floating anxiety. Maybe it is a combination of financial stresses from an economy that is currently at a terror threat level of "Industrial Concrete Grey" -- that is the color they paint the inside of debtor's prison. People at the gas stations all across America are mad, people at gas stations in other countries are mad at Americans for being mad, and people in grocery stores everywhere are downright pissy.
This is because stuff is expensive. I am not so good at math, but I estimate everything at the store to be one gazillion times more expensive than this time last year. Give or take ten dollars.
Or maybe people are overwhelmed from the constant blaring news headlines yelling at us emphatically about how something new is going to kill you, maim you or rob you blind... tune in at ten for more details. (I always want to know... if something is THAT important, shouldn't you tell me now instead of making me tune in at ten p.m.? What if I get killed, maimed or robbed blind between now and ten? Where is your commitment to my well-being?)
People also seem poised to argue any point at any time no matter if that point has any bearing on anything at all. It is kind of like being in high school debate class when you got SO MAD about that thing that time ... and you can't really remember what it was but you were still SO RIGHT. For example, if you say, "Hey I saw a cute movie pre-teen girls might like..." people say, "You're an jerk who is perpetuating stereotypes about the differences between boys and girls!" If you say, "What can I use in this smoothie besides a banana?" someone writes you an email demanding to know what you have against nature's finest fruit. "How dare you malign the poor banana? People in other countries DIE to produce your banana!" And you are left to wonder A) when bananas became so dangerous and B) who has time to sit around scolding strangers about their smoothie contents.
What I am saying here is that everyone is batshit crazy right now and I believe it is global. It cannot possibly be limited to Encino-Adjacent and one block of downtown Los Angeles.
In full disclosure and with a nod to the observer effect on scientific research, I admit that I myself am not immune from the global beserkedness. No, I truly do believe that much like charity, true crazy starts at home. Case in point: last week I passively aggressively confronted the Coffee Pot Bandit. I saw him leave the coffee pot at work dry TWO DAYS IN A ROW and I lost my damn mind. Over a coffee pot. First (on Day One) I just stood in shock that he drained the coffee pot before my very eyes and sauntered off with nary a nod to a coffee filter. When I returned to my senses, I did the only thing I could -- I made faces at his retreating back as I held my empty coffee cup of rage. Later I tried to get my Deepak on and lower my blood pressure by imagining that Coffee Pot Bandit was actually working on a proposal to cure cancer so I cut him some slack and made a fresh pot of coffee and called it a day. Breathe in, breathe out, etc. But then when he repeated his performance the following day, I remembered OH YEAH, I WORK AT A BANK so he was totally NOT CURING CANCER! Then I was mad and confrontational! Later I told a joke about cameltoe. No one laughed. My whole day was just not right.
I would also like to mention I outweigh Coffee Pot Bandit by about forty pounds and he better not meet me in a dark alley. NOT THAT I AM HOLDING A GRUDGE OR ANYTHING.
It just seems like any old thing will set someone off these days ... even though coffee, in my defense, is more expensive per gallon than premium unleaded. (Or at least I think it is, it was a few days ago when I was formulating this hypothesis ... I haven't filled up my Jeep today and I could be wrong.) In just the past week I have seen a man on the bus yell at a woman for talking on her phone, I have witnessed two people get in a fight over a parking space at a grocery store, and I have seen a crazy person confront a poor unsuspecting coworker about leaving the coffee pot dry.
In my scientific reasoning brain, the one I use for making up statistics and also fooling people into thinking I am smart, I have surmised from my serious research of the topic that 97.3% of the population of Earth is collectively disgruntled and we need a vacation.
That is pretty much the end of my research. Because as you know, it's really expensive to fly anywhere or drive anywhere and people are really irritable when they travel. I am thinking a vacation alone in the bathtub might be nice.
I do not know what the solution is... prozac dispensers in the hallways? Rum in the water supply? Gnomes who turn into male dancers named Fox? I do not know, I don't posit solutions I merely observe for science. But we should all agree right now to leave the coffee pot full at all times because until they invent a hybrid version of me that runs on part electric, part caffeine I really need at least that particular cup to runneth over.
Finally, in conclusion, ad nauseum, ipsum lorem dolar, I am certain there are people who will argue this hypothesis of mine. They will say, "But you're wrong! I'm not cranky or argumentative! I'm great! I feel happy and joyful!" and there is an explanation for this anomaly: these people are aliens. Because science doesn't lie.
Also if you know about any gnomes that turn into hot male dancers named Fox... do not hesitate to share this data with me. I will research the matter and report back to you. In the name of science.
Posted by laurie at 08:09 AM | Comments (193)
April 30, 2008
(no name yet)
So, there are some very important things happening in my life right now. Also, "important" is a word which varies based on who is using it, for example my boyfriend Al Gore may say he has important things happening in his life and you know, he's getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Usually when I speak of important things happening in my life it means I finally found a brand of panties that don't ride up. So what I am saying here is that it varies from person to person.
Very Important Thing #1:
Finally, like a bad fever or something, my state of grumpiness broke around 5 p.m. yesterday. Nothing happened to trigger it, I was just listening to music on my ipod and I realized I was no longer walking around with my face scrunched up.
Very Important Thing #2:
The weather has finally cooled down to a tolerable level. This is excellent news. I did not want summer in April.
Very Important Thing #3:
This one is really the most important thing, the other two were just teasers, although having my panties out of my butt and also having my face non-scrunched are pretty good. But this is BETTER than good news. This is GREAT news.
I am getting a new brother!!!!!!!
That's right, my parents are getting a Welsh Corgi puppy and he is sure to become The New Favorite Child as soon as they can bring him home in a few weeks. That's fine with me, besides I am really excited to have a brother who is obedience trained, the other two are really out of hand. Especially my older brother who is just a real piece of work. I of course am perfect.
Also, please note that I am the editor of this column and what I say has been fact-checked by me and is true. To me.
ANYWAY, my new puppybrother has no name yet! Last night on the phone I gave my two cents which was met by many groans and sighs. You see, when I was a baby I got a stuffed animal dog who I named Sam and carried around through thick and thin, dirt and bathtime. I LOVED that Sam. Then a few years later for Christmas I got another stuffed animal dog who looked just like Sam only smaller. So he was Little Sam and first Sam became Big Sam. After that all my dogs, real and stuffed, were named Sam. Or Charley. I have only owned dogs named Sam or Charley and I think this has worked out really well for me and for our family as a whole so I don't understand why they won't name him Sam or Charley, depending on his personality.
But my parents do not share my predilection which is why I guess we kids aren't all named Guy #1, Guy #2 and Guy #3.
So, what do you think they ought to name my new puppybrother?
Isn't he the cutest? Doesn't he look like me a little, especially around the nose?
Needs a name!
Posted by laurie at 07:54 AM | Comments (257)
April 25, 2008
Bookworm
There is nothing better in this world than spending a day completely sucked into an awesome book.
Somewhere around mid-2006 I realized I wasn't doing much reading. I was knitting and writing and working and commuting and carrying on ... but not much reading was happening in my limited free time. I didn't want to give up my commute-time knitting for reading so I discovered the audiobook and life was lovely. Exhausting, but lovely. And things have kind of progressed at that level, with me downloading all kinds of great books and lectures and finally I discovered podcasts and that is delightful, etc. And then I went on a little vacation at the end of March and found myself in a strange place with an ipod that was on the fritz and no TV. No TV! No ipod!
Whatever would I do?
Good thing I packed some books and I could kick it old school, me and the paperback. YES I JUST SAID KICK IT OLD SCHOOL.
I'd brought a few philosophical and self-helpish pieces I needed to read for research and I packed a Joseph Conrad I'd been meaning to read for oh ... 15 years ... because I am nothing if not behind on my to-do list. I also packed an Anne Rivers Siddons paperback (love me some paperback romance) and then there was the Jodi Picoult.
I SO did not want to buy or read that book. My friend Courtney has been telling me for a while that I needed to read something by Jodi Picoult because she's an author who writes prolifically and has a huge fan base and blah blah blah good for understanding the market. But every time I went to the bookstore I'd read the blurbs on the backs of her books and they all seemed so depressing. I am all about the feeling BETTER in my limited time here on earth. I don't want to volunteer and pay money to feel BAD. That is just crazytalk. This is why I stopped watching the news.
Oh, yeah. I stopped watching the news. It started by accident, really, not as a statement to the world or a life change or anything. The local news was showing a really wretched story over and over again on the TV and I just decided to avoid TV news for a week or so until it all went away because I was crying before work every morning about some horrible thing that had happened in some other state to people I did not even know. I thought, "Maybe I should stop watching the news in the morning while I'm getting ready for work. I can watch the weather channel if I need to feel connected to the traffic alerts." That's why I watched the morning news anyway, for traffic and weather.
There is no way to avoid the news entirely, of course, since the elevators at work show nonstop news all day. And WHY do we need TV in the elevator? Why? Is fifteen seconds of silence too much time alone, untended? All that screen in the elevator seems to do is shout nonstop about the election or polls or pundits and so before long I found myself stopping ALL my news watching at home, even the nightly network news. (Full disclosure: I do watch "The Daily Show" which is now my main source of TV news. I am so Gen XYZ123.) It hadn't occurred to me how much news I watch and read -- I am and will always be a newspaper girl, so to this day I won't even consider giving up the paper -- but that's reading, which is different from watching what a network feeds you, which is what I realized I had been doing for a very long time.
And I guess things went on pretty much the same in the TV department except in January I cut out the news. Then one day I was programming the Tivo to record the about-to-air new season of American Idol and it showed all the episodes coming up -- it was something like 36 hours of television programming for one show. ONE SHOW. And I sat down right there on the floor and on the back of the light bill I added up how many shows I watch a week and with "Dancing with the Stars" coming up and a new season of "Survivor" and you know I love my Oprah and add in some CSI, or The Closer or whatever... it came out to something like 45+ hours a week of television. Even if you skip through the ads and the boring challenges and the singers you don't like, people. THAT IS A LOT OF TEEVEE.
So I opted out of all reality, including Dancing and American Idol and Survivor and I cannot believe it -- but I lived to tell the tale. I am still alive. It is maybe a miracle.
And so anyway, back to the original thread of this story which started about 17 paragraphs ago, when I found myself on vacation with no TV and no ipod and no movies I started in on my pile of books. I think I read six books in five days and it was AWESOME.
Usually I listen to books in audio form while I commute and multitask. But it was awesome not to multitask. In fact, I am here today to share with you the truth: I HATE MULTITASKING. It felt decadent and delicious to sink into a good book and sit still and read, just get sucked into a good story and forget everything on the to-do list, forget all the worries and anxieties of real life.
And my friend Courtney was right to insist I pick up a Jodi Picoult book. I decided on "My Sister's Keeper
And it sucked me in! The storytelling was careful, the characters were interesting and the plot was intriguing. I really could not pull myself out of that book, I think I stayed up half the night to finish it. I went online to amazon.com to find the link to it and I started reading the reviews and I was surprised to see so many bad 1-star reviews. This is why I don't read reviews. They usually have more to do with the person leaving the review than they do the book itself. Or maybe I just have less desire to critique books now since I know how hard it is to write one and I'm all, "Good on you for finishing this whole thing!"
Also -- did you know you burn more calories from reading a book than you do while watching TV? Seriously. That's scientific facts right there.
So what are you reading? Got any good book recommendations? Right now I'm reading Le Mariage
• Plain Truth
• Prep
• The Years of Extermination
I don't have as much time as I like for reading, but I'm thinking that freeing the Tivo list of so many programs will help. I find it really hard to relax in the tiny spaces I manage to have for myself, and I guess it became habitual to use TV as a perfect way to zone out, calm my mind down. But books are good for getting my mind off the worries and to-do lists, too.
If only vacation were a full-time job and reading could be my full-time zen...
But hey, at least it's Friday.
Posted by laurie at 02:00 PM | Comments (201)
April 18, 2008
Change of Email ... and moolah
Please update your address books, do people still have address books these days? From now on, please use the cool new email page if you need to email me. Or the cats. You can also find that link in the main navigation at the top right-hand side of this website, cleverly named E-Mail.
This new system is awesome and will help filter out the spam and hopefully help me improve my response time to email which is right now something like 2.75 years per letter. Or maybe I will still be slow and poor at corresponding, but either way it will filter out the spam and for that I am thrilled.
Also on the subject of change... have you noticed the changes to the five dollar bill? I got one the other day and I stared at it for a good long while wondering if I had just been slipped a fake fiver. Then with my massive powers of deductive reasoning I decided it must be REAL because no counterfeiter would go crazypants and make a bill with a giant purple 5 on the back. You'd never guess I work in the world of finance, would you?
Posted by laurie at 11:53 AM | Comments (48)
April 11, 2008
Katie & Armando, Part II
Sarah Everhart had lived two houses down from Katie and Ernie for five years. She’d felt envious on more than one occasion of Katie’s childless freedom, jealous of the tiny convertible she drove.
“That woman will not appreciate that car until she has a baby of her own and can’t find room for the car seat and the diaper bag,” she told her husband, as Katie tore off with the radio blaring some unintelligible Spanish ballad. “She better enjoy it now.”
Three weeks later, as Sarah fixed her makeup for the KABC news interview, she wondered what awful criminal had found Katie in her car, top-down, music loud. She wondered if the ten pounds added by TV cameras was a myth. She said aloud to her husband, “If there’s anything good to be said, at least they didn’t have children. Can you imagine?”
- - -While Sarah Everhart was readying for her close up, Katie was lying on a double bed in a beachside motel in northern Mexico. She stretched, slowly, feeling each muscle. She liked the burn, the deep down ache, that came with every stretch. It had been a good night, a crazy uninhibited night, and she rolled over into the empty place where Manny had been and rubbed her face into his pillow. She could still feel him, male and warm, and their smells mixed together on the rumpled sheets and pillows.
Her kidnapping had gone exactly as planned. Armando had met her at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a West Los Angeles mall. Her two duffel bags, both new, carried the only reminders of her past life. That’s how she thought of it now -- her past life. She had gone shopping for a few new things, some T-shirts and shorts and a backless dress that Ernie would have been embarrassed by. He maybe would have remarked she ought to hit the gym a few times before wearing that dress in public.
Armando had told her exactly where to park, the structure was old and the only security cameras were at the front entrance. She had thrown the duffel bags into the back of his waiting truck and kissed him on the neck. They both acted like it was a little weekend trip, no big deal, just park your car in that spot right there, OK?
As she pulled herself into the passenger seat of Armando's truck it crossed her mind that Ernie would just now be getting ready for his 10 a.m. staff meeting. The whole day was just beginning, really.
She pushed that thought out of her mind, shut the truck door and pocketed her old car keys. She’d get rid of the keys somewhere else.
They had missed the worst of the morning commuter traffic and Armando pulled the truck onto the freeway headed south towards San Diego. They didn’t talk much, didn’t stop even for gas. Manny had been as prepared as she was.
Even if Katie had backed out at the last minute you could always use a full tank of gas.
Poor Katie, she has NO IDEA what she's gotten herself into. She's a coward, really. But a romantic coward I guess. It's hard to like her sometimes.
When I first introduced Katie & Armando, I was talking about how at some point "Katie & Armando" had become synonymous in my life with "Someday." As in, "someday I will have a life that is perfectly settled and then, when that ideal time arrives, I'll have the time and energy and know-how to make my dreams come true."
I was surprised how many people emailed me or commented that they related to my craziness. And even more surprised by how many people confessed that they had a Katie & Armando of their very own -- they wanted to write their own book or build their own proverbial ark or travel somewhere or organize their craft room or decorate the house or plant a real garden or find a new job, but were also putting it off until "someday" when conditions were just right.
Some folks said "someday" stayed far away because they were too afraid of the problems that might happen or situations that hadn't yet transpired. It was interesting and surprising to me to hear it because you know, I thought I was the only one who worried about that stuff.
One evening last fall I was driving home from work in my Jeep. It was late, I'd been working some long hours to complete a project and the bus only runs until 6:30, so I'd had to drive for two weeks in a row. Traffic was bad and I was grumpy and hungry and I was really angry. I'd had a bad conversation with someone and we'd argued and I was crazy upset about it.
That night I spent the entire drive home having an angry and cutting conversation with the offender. She wasn't in the car with me, mind you. We weren't on the phone. I was completely alone, and I gave her a piece of my mind, oh you know I did. I carefully rehearsed how I'd say each verbal bombshell and when I thought through her every response I got angry all over again. I felt betrayed and misunderstood and I kept on and on at it, saying and re-saying everything I wished I'd said the first go around.
When I pulled into my neighborhood I noticed my house looked weird. It looked weird because it wasn't my house! I was so wrapped up in my mental dramatics that I had turned onto the wrong street. That's when it dawned on me -- I must have spent a good hour and a half having an imaginary confrontation with someone who was most likely already home and having dinner, blissfully unaware of me and my emotional tsunami. I'd not only re-hashed the event twenty times, I'd conjured up an entire NEW argument and given us both speaking parts in a play of my mind's making (my speaking parts were far more eloquent, of course.)
I'd wasted all that energy on one thing that was past and something new that hadn't even happened yet.
And in fact the big, eloquent and acerbic confrontation of my imagination never happened. The next day I woke up and shrugged the whole thing off. The person I'd quarreled with left me a conciliatory voicemail and in time the entire event just washed away, all that energy wasted on nothing. Crazy.
I'm glad I pulled into the wrong driveway that night. It woke me up a little, snapped me out of my head. I try to catch myself before I get too far inside my head with stuff like that anymore, like spending three days before my dentist appointment already feeling the pain. I try not to waste two weeks before a vacation worrying about the stuff that could go wrong. Sometimes I can't stop the chattering in my brain so I get out a pen and a piece of paper and I write it all down, every worry and every fear and every possible scenario of doom. Then after I record every free-floating anxiety (and it can take some time you know, I've had five pages single-spaced, back and front of worry!) I write down exactly how I wish the event/trip/conversation would go. After I'm done, I fold the whole thing up and put it away in a shoebox. One day after I die, someone's going to find that shoebox and have a hearty laugh at Ye Olde Crazypants. But it helps me in the moment to get all the worry out of my head and into some one else's capable hands. In this case, it is the shoe box's capable hands. Whatever works, you know?
I get a lot of emails asking about how to write, or get published, or get past the fear and anxiety of what might happen "when..." I never have all the answers. Everyone is different and I'm certainly not an expert anyway. I've addressed as many questions as I could in other columns, and I'm happy to do what I can, I know how good it feels to complete something and see it through and if you want it then I want it for you, too. I want you to have your someday.
A few folks who specifically mentioned book-writing as their own personal Katie & Armando talked about the fear of failure ("someone will reject my submission...") and conversely, the fear of success ("I might have to go on book tour and people will be disappointed to meet me...") Having been in both places, all I can say is that these fears pretty much have zero to do with the work, which is writing the book. Once it's written, once it's completed, then you can start to worry about the next step. And then after that, the next. If you try to worry about all possible problems and roadblocks and failures and successes and reviews and readers and events at the very beginning, you will never put pen to paper. And without writing the actual work, none of your fears mean squat anyway.
I know people want me to be able to give them details, a plan, the specific bullet-points and mechanics of exactly how to get published. A powerpoint presentation would do nicely! But I can't give it to you -- I don't have the answers. I don't know what will work for you. I don't know where you are in your head or your plan or your book. I do know that worrying about all the what if's will keep you far away from your goal. All that wasted energy on something that hasn't even happened yet.
When you do have questions about the mechanics -- how to get started or where to go once you've got a manuscript -- there are plenty of great resources out there far more knowledgeable than Ol' Crazypants. Spend a few hours in your bookstore or library looking at the bazillion guides for aspiring writers. Go up and down the shelves and find books like yours, see who your competition would be and see who publishes them. Then go online and find out if they take submissions. But even if you know all that you still need something to submit. So put your fears in a shoebox and write. If you find you need external motivation to write, there are tons of groups you can join and workshops and classes and online this and that.
There's professional help available, too. My friend and publicist Kim Weiss has a whole business devoted to helping people along the process, her website is called Help Me With My Book.com (I love that name!) and Kim and other professionals like her can help steer you in the right direction and coach you on things like platform and proposal and marketing.
I hesitate to give advice on this or anything, I think advice is probably the one thing truly more divine to give than to receive. But I get asked for advice a lot when it comes to writing. All I know for sure is that if you worry so much about things that haven't even happened yet you can worry yourself right into paralysis. Don't get so worked up about a future that hasn't happened that you stop making progress right now. Right now is pretty much all you got.
I still catch myself sometimes having those imaginary conversations, trying to re-say something in just the perfect way, or worrying about the future. I try to stop myself before it goes on too long. I sometimes have to write a letter to the shoebox. Then I breathe and try to remind myself that all I have control over is this very minute. Worrying about the ending is silly. No one knows how it ends! The ending isn't here yet -- all that's here is this one moment, this one paragraph, this one conversation.
Sarah Everhart sat down with the reporter from KABC. She hoped the news crew in her living room only noticed the antiques, not the coffee table from IKEA.
"Will the coffee table be in the shot?" she asked the photographer.
"No," he said. He was adjusting the light, moving it into the right position. "Can you turn just a little to your left please?"
Prompted by the reporter, Sarah gave a character description of her neighbor Katie. Sometimes she trembled while talking about the day Katie had gone missing, and at one point she started crying. Just a few tears, though, not enough to really make her mascara run.
"I just want her to be OK," she said. "You never hear about stories like these turning out very happy."
That part of the interview was used to promote the story on the ten o’clock news.
- - -"A local southland woman is missing this evening, and police and searching for leads in the case."
Cue soundbite.
Posted by laurie at 11:10 AM | Comments (44)
March 13, 2008
Yawn
Those teeth could use a brushing.
Do you brush your teeth at work?
People do this, you know. They bring brush and assorted accouterments into the shared ladies room at work and scrub-a-dub dub away. I don't know why, but the smell seems oddly incompatible and dare I say just plain gross. Maybe it's the locale. Maybe it's the sharedness of the space. For some reason it just icks me out.
I once saw a guy flossing on the bus, though. That was FAR ICKIER.
Speaking of the bus or any public transportation including subway, train and airplane.... you know those rolly bags people carry around? Wouldn't it be nice if instead of departing from chosen method of transport with rolly bag in tow and stopping to drop the case, extend the handle and get case in rolling direction thereby blocking the flow of traffic and making people in line behind Rolly Bag Commuter want to kill him or her, wouldn't it be nice if RBC either A) moved aside to get their luggage under control and allow people to pass or B) carry their rolly bag out of the way of foot traffic and then do all the finagling their little hearts desire without impeding the flow of traffic?
Also, hi long sentence!
Friday yet?
La Soba avec le teddy bear.
Posted by laurie at 10:27 AM | Comments (95)
March 12, 2008
A little complaining, a little swatching
The time change has not been easy on this old gal, my body does not want to eject from the warm bed each morning. That is how I ended up on the bus with wet hair and two different colored socks on, luckily my pants cover the latter issue.
I am really very professional. Obviously.
Speaking of socks, even though I have two scarves I really need to finish up before starting any new projects I made a little teetiny swatch of that cool sock yarn I got from SuperCrafty over the weekend. I cannot believe I am knitting anything on a size four needle! Crazytalk!
This yarn really rolls in stockinette, I had to use tape to get my swatch to lie semi-flat for measuring (and picture-taking.) So whatever shape this alleged hat of mine takes, it will definitely need a treatment on the brim to keep it from rolling. I looked through a few books last night for ideas but I couldn't find exactly what I'm looking for. I want to do something easy enough that even a beginner can make, so I may fall back on Ye Olde Ribbing but we'll see.
It looks like I'm getting seven stitches to the inch with this yarn. I can't tell what the ball band says you're supposed to get since it's all in metric and yo! yo! word to your metric! I only do inches and feet yo!
Oh wow, that was cheesy. It was like I was overtaken by Yo! MTV Knits! for a second. If I start doing the cabbage patch, call security. Or send wine.
Posted by laurie at 10:17 AM | Comments (97)
March 10, 2008
Mmmm, yarn.
Over the weekend, Faith and I went to Allison's house to hang out and eat Greek food and chitchat. Did I take any pictures of the food? No. Did I take any pictures of Allison's adorable child? No. Did I take any pictures of the three of us goofing off? No.
The only thing I brought out my camera for? YARN.
I am a sad, pathetic human.
I had no intention of drooling longingly over the SuperCrafty yarn room, but alas. We can only hope I didn't drool on anything 100% wool....
Just a tee-tiny glimpse of the Fantastic Yarn Room Of Loveliness.
Allison has tons of new yarn in, including a pretty hand-dyed hank I got a preview look at (it's not online yet, but will be soon!):
Gorgeosity!
I've been doing so well budgeting my money and not buying extraneous magazines at the market and not doing retail therapy when I'm stressed out (gotta save those pennies and dimes for cheap airfares, you know...) so I swear all Scarlett-style as God is my witness that I diligently tried very, very hard not to indulge my inner yarn hoarder, but I couldn't help it. MY INNER YARN HOARDER IS REALLY BOSSY. I ended up with some Misti Alpaca chunky in this lovely blue color. But look at it, how can you resist? I think Misti Alpaca may be the softest yarn I have ever touched, I love it. I'm going to make a seed-stitch scarf out of it, Allison was making one while I was at her house and it looked so pretty and classic. (She was using a size 11 needle, knowing me I'll be knitting it on a 19 or something.) (Whatevs.)
She also had all this crazy sock yarn and I couldn't help it, I succumbed. I have never purchased sock yarn in my life, and here I am now the proud owner of two skeins of this pretty string. I say "string" because wow, it's really way smaller than my normal monster-chunky yarns. But I think it may be a good change for me, especially since the weather has warmed up and this is the time of year when I can't bear to touch wool (I sadly have two scarves languishing, waiting for me to finish... but the sun came out! How can I knit big scarves when it's 85 degrees and sunny?) (I know, it's a tragedy.)
ANYWAY. This sock yarn stuff doesn't just make stripes, it makes stripes interspersed with a pattern, how cool is that! I toyed briefly with the idea of making my first ever pair of socks, but I am much more likely to use this yarn to try creating a hat that looks like one I saw on a complete stranger a few months ago and still I can't stop thinking about that damn hat. It was like a tobaggon, but longer and slouchy and so cute. I even bought teetiny size 3 and size 4 needles!! I normally would have capped my budget on the yarn spending alone, but SuperCrafty has the best price on Addi needles ever, so I splurged. I can't tell if this column is turning into a SuperCrafty ad or a mea culpa for yarn shopping but I'm so excited about my new purchases, this is the first yarn I've bought in three or four months. So that's not too bad, is it?
Posted by laurie at 10:15 AM | Comments (71)
March 07, 2008
A love note for Patrick Swayze
Today I had planned to share with you some more misheard song lyrics, but I am pre-empting that delightful flashback with this one:
When I was in high school, me and all my friends were obsessed -- OBSESSED, I tell you -- with Dirty Dancing. We all cut our jeans off and rolled them at the knee just like the long knee-shorts Baby wore in the carrying-the-watermelons scene and we all sang "Love is Strange" to each other ("Oh Sylvia... Yes Mickey? How do you call your lover boy? Come here, lover boy!")
And later, when I was a grown woman living in California I stood in line with another completely different group of girlfriends reminiscing about "Dirty Dancing" -- this time all of us were older and wearing Ugg boots and all us gals had grown up in different parts of the country and met as adults living in Los Angeles. But we were first in line for the opening night of Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. The movie theater was packed that night with hundreds of other women our age, hoping it would recapture some of the magic we all carried around from the first movie.
While it didn't quite measure up, I would like to inform you that when Patrick Swayze made his cameo appearance on the screen in that sequel all two hundred or so women in the audience stood up and CHEERED. We hooted and hollered and carried on in some sort of crazy tribal nobody-puts-Baby-in-the-corner frenzy.
And then there was that scene from Roadhouse, where he's doing some kind of martial arts without his shirt on? Or pretty much any scene from Roadhouse? And remember back pre-Dirty Dancing and he was in that movie Red Dawn and me and all my friends would yell, "Wolverines!"
I love you, Patrick Swayze. Get well soon.
Posted by laurie at 10:30 AM | Comments (92)
March 06, 2008
Katie & Armando
On an ordinary Tuesday they met for coffee. He stood in line ahead of her waiting for their order and his back was to her, brown and smooth. He was wearing a white tank top and his profile was perfect, tan, weathered by the sun. Katie moved closer to his back and stood close behind him, placing her hands just where his waist began to taper. He was almost six inches taller than her, and she rested her head in the space between his shoulders and inhaled. He smelled male, like sun and warmth, and his shirt smelled faintly like washing powder. He reached for her hands and pulled her arms around his chest. She could not ever remember being so high. This was the drug. The one fix she had been searching for.
The flip side of her addiction was just as strong, the withdrawal. When he wasn’t around her, when her telephone didn’t ring, she began to doubt not only their attraction but the whole of herself. The hours when she wasn’t with him -- and there were so many! -- made her slip into an uneasy depression, anxiety, mistrust, fear. It was a powerful combination of intense anticipation and dread all at once.
"I’m dying," she thought. "I will never hear from him again, and I will wither up and die without ever having been loved."
It was dramatic. The beginning of something new is always heightened and extreme but this was taking place under the guise of her real life -- marriage and a husband and a house. She was unable to control her emotions, and when the days would stretch out without a call from him and with no opportunity to see him, she would feel like she was drowning. Drowning while picking up the dry cleaning. Drowning while driving to the post office. Drowning under the weight of the grocery shopping, the vacuuming, the dusting.
"Oh don’t worry," her husband Ernie would say. "You’ll find a job, you’ll see. Something will come up." And he would turn on the TV and she would pour another glass of wine and wait for the weekend to end, for Monday to come, for Armando to call and ask to see her. Ernie was oblivious. Ernie had always been oblivious, but for the first time Katie wasn't resentful. His disinterest in her life and in their marriage made her secret that much more delicious and awful.
And it was awful, she knew that. It was awful and she could not stop herself.
It became harder and harder not to tell anyone. She would scribble in her notebooks and wish for a confidante, but in the end Katie stayed silent and her days would fluctuate wildly between abject depression and total euphoria. Love had made her bipolar, she told to herself.
Oh God, I'm in love? I'm in love.Telling Armando how she felt seemed out of the question. She didn’t ask him where he went during the long weekends when he didn’t call or make overtures to see her. It was her ultimate test of willpower. There is in all of us a woman who wants to know the truth, and one who is scared that the truth will be too hurtful to live with.
Not knowing was better. For now, anyway.
Yep, that's Katie & Armando, all right ... circa 2001. The cheese is palpable. You can practically taste it.
It was a powerful combination of intense anticipation and dread all at once.
At all the book signing events for Drunk Cat Hair Stuff, there was a big chunk of time devoted to Q & A. (I was terrible at it in the beginning, but I got better as time wore on. Once I got so comfortable that as I was talking animatedly with my hands I knocked over the entire floral topiary thingy on the table. And I once accidentally said a very sweary swear word in front of my grandmother. At an event. Very comfortable indeed!)
Occasionally during Q & A, someone in the audience would ask if I had always planned to write a book and I would answer yes, yes I always knew I wanted to write a book. I just assumed I would be in my fifties when I wrote it and the book would be about Katie and Armando and there would be a scene where they have sex in the movie theater and later something scandalous would happen and probably someone gets naked. Or shipwrecked. Or both!
And even though I was half-joking, I was half serious, too. Years ago I started making up a story in my head about Katie & Armando and from time to time I'd try to write it all down but later I'd re-read my silly paragraphs and all my words seemed sophomoric and dumb. Like I was pretending to write a book. So I stopped. I decided I would revisit it all one day when I was finally good enough.
I'd find other things to focus on (being married was an excellent distraction) and I would tell myself that one day, some time far off in the future, I would have the time and the skill and the energy to write a whole book. Like a lot of folks, I bought into the idea that one day I would have the life I wanted, and when that time came I would then do all the things I dreamed about.
It's so ridiculous now, even to me. But as time passed Katie & Armando became synonymous in my life with "One day.... one day far off in the future, I will be happy. I will know what it's all about. One day I will really be living my life! One day!" It was just one more way of waiting until conditions were right to finally enjoy the moment.
As if conditions are ever right for anything.
In more ways than one knitting has been a metaphor for good changes in my life. After all, we get better at stuff (gardening, knitting, speaking Spanish, writing) from just doing it. Lord knows I sucked at knitting from the get-go. Certainly I'm a better knitter now than I used to be and there is a lot of room for further improvement, but because I liked knitting I just kept at it even when I was bad at it. I learned to let go of trying to be Instantly Great! at it, instead I just wanted to knit a damn scarf -- any scarf -- simply for the sheer pleasure of knitting it, knots and all.
I can joke about Katie & Armando now because I'm not waiting anymore to live my life, most of the time. It's a hard habit to break. But when I do catch myself thinking "I'll do that next year, maybe..." I try to look inside and see if it's laziness or fear or just habit in me trying to postpone my life away. Like knitting, it gets easier the more you do it. I'm discovering it's always best to just begin where you are and trust you get better as you go along.
As far as poor old Katie and Armando go, I don't know if I'll ever write their story. Their tangled little web doesn't have a happy ending no matter how many times I try to spin it, so I think those poor star-crossed lovers may be better off in theory than on paper. They feel like part of the past, and they are cheeseballs. Plus they have some serious plot issues, I'm not going to lie. SERIOUS PLOT ISSUES, YA'LL. But I do know I'm going to finish some story this year, something that's more about where I am than where I was, and I'm not waiting for a mysterious date in the future when I'm finally "qualified" to do it. The time is now. It's the only time we get! And perhaps you improve with practice. My scarves have definitely improved over time ... remember this gem?
Lately I've been looking around at people and wondering what their own personal "Katie & Armando" is. Are they waiting until they lose weight to go on that fantasy vacation? Are they waiting until the kids are grown before they get the new sofa/visit those friends in Australia/take guitar lessons? Are they waiting until they have more money, less work, fewer obligations, a new car, a new haircut, a new boyfriend?
I bet lots of people have a Katie & Armando of their own. How about you? Are you waiting for something? Are you also waiting until one day? What is it you're waiting for? Can I end a sentence with a preposition?
Manny, do you like me? Do you want me? Do you love me? But instead what she said out loud was, "Manny, will you kidnap me? Take me away and keep me forever?"
He laughed and wrapped his thick arms around her and kissed her mouth and neck and ran his tongue along her bottom lip. She leaned into him and inhaled deeply.
"Yes, querida. I'll kidnap you all for myself."
And that was how it started, then. First as a joke, a wish, a way to say I want to be with you. Be with me. She could not pinpoint exactly when it became real. But that was how she found herself on this day, exactly five months and eight days since they met, putting things in a small black duffel bag. It was more difficult than she'd imagined, selecting only items her husband would never notice missing. How do you know what to keep? How do you take along some of your old life without anyone suspecting?
She dug her toes into the thick wool rug in the living room. She had picked this rug out when they bought the house, Ernie hated it at first but she had promised him it would grow on him. It had been expensive and she'd refused to take it back and they fought over it. It seemed so long ago, that argument. It was before she lost her job, when the money was still coming in and she thought he was overreacting about the stupid living room rug. Did he still hate it? She had no idea.
Ernie. Will he miss me? What the hell am I doing?
Her phone rang.
"Are you ready?" asked Armando. "It's time."
Katie zipped up the duffel bag. It was time to go. She took one last look at the house, her house, each picture on each wall carefully selected and hung up by her own hand, each piece of furniture picked out methodically over the nine years they'd lived here together. Her entire life was neatly summed up in one ranch-style corner lot in the suburbs.
She walked through the door and shut it behind her, knowing she would never see anything in that house again.
It was time.
Posted by laurie at 11:11 AM | Comments (98)
February 27, 2008
The Brick Wall Theory
The picture of the Liquor Bank prompted a slew (slew! a word so underused!) of emails from kind, caring readers who emphatically suggested/declared/empathized with what they see as my binge drinking/addiction to alcohol/insidious disease and they equally emphatically let me know I should immediately join a 12 step program/return to Christ/check into rehab.
I assure you I do have a problem, but the intervention was needed weeks ago and it was with those DAMN CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES from Whole Foods. Finally one day in what can only be described as a flash of illumination in the addict haze I realized I could simply stop buying the truffles thereby avoiding having them inside the house and, by proxy, inside my mouth.
It was a shaky few days and there were definite signs of withdrawal. But then I went on vacation and detoxed on pasta.
- - -
I get a tremendous amount of email like that and I almost always try to ignore it and don't mention it ("what you focus on expands" sayeth Oprah), though I am certain it's partially to blame for my glacially slow progress on fixing my many email problems. Email just seems so judgmental.
The only reason I'm even addressing it this time is because I have been thinking a lot lately about who we are, and how people see us, and how that changes the choices you make ... if you let it. Been thinking about how folks get a picture in their head of a person and when they discover anything that doesn't fit the predetermined picture it just shocks the pants right off them. Been wondering if I would have made the same choices when I was younger if I had cared a just a little less what people would think of me.
The older I get the less invested I am in what anyone else thinks of me, and not coincidentally I get more me everyday.
The Brick Wall Theory
In my college biology class I was bored and underwhelmed and had three hours twice a week to sit in a wooden chair and daydream. That was when I developed a theory about relationships. It became a pretty robust theory and I called it "The Brick Wall." (By the way, I am FULL of theories. My friends have to hear my theories on everything, it is really funny. They sometimes throw things at me.)
So, anyway, at age 19 it seemed to me that men came at a new relationship with a woman as if she were this cute, adorable, perfect little brick wall. But then the guy would discover some flaw and whoops, take out one brick. Or maybe he finds out she is grumpy in the morning. There goes a brick. She's jealous about his ex-girlfriend calling night and day? There goes another brick. Maybe two. And before long, this perfect woman he's met is just another partially exposed pile of bricks and not the delightful picture of completion he expected. She's a big messy pile of bricks and he goes looking for a new, perfect brick wall and the cycle starts all over again.
In the Theory, women come at it a different way -- not better or worse, just different. Women start with one brick: A man. They get a brick each time they find out something new about him (likes animals: add one brick, good kisser: brick, calls the day after the first date: six bricks...) and so on. Before long she is putting together a picture of this man, assembling her brick wall of him out of the things she's uncovering. And here is the key to my teenage mind's theory: when there are big open spaces in the brick wall, the woman will use her willpower and love to fill in the gaps. Sometimes this holds that brick wall together for a long while. But if the gaps are filled in with her personal mortar of love (instead of real bricks from him) the whole thing just collapses. And just like the guy, she finds herself staring at a big pile of bricks.
(Also, it is possible I was deep in my existential literature classes at the time, duly noted.)
I didn't draw a final conclusion from my old Brick Wall Theory. It was just a way of explaining how I thought men and women approached romantic love differently. Gave me something to think about while staring out the window in Biology class.
Now that I am much older and many bricks along, I think my theory was a pretty accurate one in some ways. Sometimes I feel like my life is just one big classroom full of what I fondly call AFGOs. (That stands for Another F***ing Growth Opportunity.) (I am also very classy.) Learning about perception was the class I took in 2007. I woke up, showed up for life, and got a big lesson in bricks. For one thing, nothing exposes you to "input" faster than putting a piece of your life out to the public. And then meeting said public. I wouldn't change it for the world, because it is how I developed my Bricks Don't Float theory.
Bricks Do Not Float
* Also, note to self: develop catchier name for theory
Bricks don't float. When you are flowing down the river of your life and you reach out for bricks, you will slow the flow and get to see a whole lot less of your river in your lifetime. If people are always throwing bricks in your river, and you see those bricks and start gathering them and holding on to them and keeping all those random, mismatched bricks other people throw at you, you will again slow down and maybe even stop and you'll be stuck in the same stagnant pool of water for a really long time.
But bricks happen. People will try to tell you who you are everyday and twice on Sunday. If you just ignore the bricks, let them sink to the bottom, you can keep going with the flow of your life. Keep moving on up, along, forward. Sometimes the bricks hurt and you may pause for a moment, but then you let go of it, drop that brick and just keep going.
Do you also see now why my friends JUST LOVE ALL MY THEORIES? They are all equally cheesified. Remind me to tell you my Bumper Guy theory one day. It is delightful.
Anyway, bricks are your pre-conceived notions of a thing. Bricks are what you bring to the wall. They aren't what the wall brings. Maybe the wall wants to be made of stones. Or clay. Or maybe the damn wall wants to be a boat.
- - -
I used to meet people and learn about them and then unconsciously fill in the places where I didn't know stuff about them. I would bring my own perceptions to their table. For example, after being married for a while I would just assume to know what my ex-husband wanted for dinner or what kind of movies he'd prefer or whatever -- such mundane things -- but I believe this kind of familiarity and assumption prevents people from really seeing each other with fresh eyes. Letting each other grow, change and evolve. It's like that one relative in your family who knew you at age 13 and to him you are still the gangly, messy chatterbox 13-year-old and he can't move past his perception of you even though you are now the CEO of your own corporation.
Grandma did this to me a few months back. I was washing dishes in her kitchen and she said, "I have never seen one person change so much in my life!" and I said, "Who, Grandma?" Because, you know, this could be some juicy gossip! I wanted to hear who had changed!
And she said, "You! You used to be so messy and now every time you are over here you're washing dishes or scrubbing something. I have never seen anyone change so much and become so particular."
I sighed.
"Grandma, I was thirteen! I had a messy room when I was thirteen years old!" But she was already off in another room.
The truth is, it's hard to look at someone who is close to you, familiar to you, with new eyes every day and let them be .. whoever they want to be on that day. We put expectations on people. We bring our own life experience and social conditioning to their picture. I have done it. Used to do it daily. Without ever examining my thoughts, I just made assumptions about folks. Assumed I could trust someone even though maybe they can't keep secrets. Assumed someone was a peaceful, centered person when inside they were falling apart at the seams. Assumed someone liked green beans, or whatever. It was me projecting my stuff on them.
I think it's normal and everyone does it.
Having said that, it's liberating to let go of it. It's been the strangest sensation for me. I had to start letting go of my expectations for others because I saw how many people had ideas of me that were not just inaccurate, they were downright polar opposite. You could read every word I have ever written and not know with any real clarity what my political leanings are or what my religious beliefs are or what's happening in my personal life. I could be engaged and planning a wedding. I could be in love with a 19-year-old bag boy from Ralph's. I could be eschewing relationships altogether. (Eschewing, another totally underused word!) I could be moving to France. Or North Hollywood. Or calling a pet psychic named Daria.
Can you ever truly know another person?
Because I don't think you can. I think it is impossible to really ever know someone else all the way through, and amen for that. It sure makes life more surprising. The upside is all selfish, of course. Letting go of my need to have people fit my expectations has given me the chance to stop living up to anyone else's picture for me.
I have been learning that even if the assumptions a total stranger makes about me are false, that's okay. It's not my job to always defend myself or set the record straight, or share every detail, or tell all my juicy gossip. I never expected to be someone who lived any part of her life publicly and now I am, a little bit. So I have had my good days and my challenging days, and the good days far outnumber them. If I hadn't been challenged in this way I'm not sure I would have arrived where I am in my own personal life so quickly. You figure out who you are real quicklike if a hundred people are telling you who they think you are. I had no idea I would end up being so grateful for anyone being so off the plot.
Since I want people to let me be whatever I pick on that day, I have to do that for them. That is kind of the way it goes. I am learning to just let go of my assumptions and allow my friends and my family to be who they are. Allow the surprise. Stop being so full of assumptions. Stop assuming I can size folks up based on their footwear (I had an ENTIRE THEORY built on that alone). And it seems the more I focus on myself and my own stuff, the less I even notice other people's issues. It's a relief, actually. It's a nice break from all the judging I used to do.
- - -
So, for the record: no, I am not an alcoholic, I am not joining a 12-step program and you do not need to email me me again to let me know I enjoy the tipple, for I have already received that memo. In triplicate. Also, I live in Los Angeles for chrissakes, joining a 12-step program would help my career! But unless I get back on the truffles, I think I'm doing okay. I'm happy, my life is good, I'm making jokes about all this but truly I am grateful for your concern. I know it comes from a good place.
And I thank you for finally inspiring me to take action on my email issue and change my address and develop a system and all that. Thank you. I'll be doing that all weekend long.
And one last thing: whatever you do, STAY AWAY FROM THE TRUFFLES. They are lethal. I tell you what.
Posted by laurie at 09:10 AM | Comments (203)
February 21, 2008
Last one, promise
Enough blah blah blah Rome/food/wine/popes! We will return to the urgent matters of cats, cat poop, knitting and traffic post haste. However, at the risk of completely evoking yawns, I did get several folks asking the same things so here are the answers. Also, I believe I wish I were still on vacation which is why I am still thinking of airplanes.
- - -
Where do you find such cheap airfares?
I knew I wanted to go somewhere anywhere just not on the freeway on my way to work again, please Lord. Instead of planning a destination ahead of time I just left myself open to going wherever the cheap fares took me.
However, this seat-of-your-pants destination bingo may not work for you. You may want to go to England in June, for example, or have your heart set on Australia for spring break. You may only feel comfortable traveling in a cruise setting or to an all-inclusive beach resort -- and that is perfectly 100% A-OKAY. You have to find a travel style that suits your personality. What works for other people will not always work for you. What works for me might make someone else break out in hives.
To find amazing fares all you need is an internet connection. Most people already know about the biggest internet travel websites like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz. All of these sites are great, and I use them all to check fares from time to time. But the sites I use most often are:
• Kayak.com - The "Buzz" feature of this site is a good way to find lower-cost fares. You can select your departure airport, then use a drop down menu to select a general destination (divided up into chunks of the world, like Europe or North America or Oceania/Australia) and then look for all the cheapest fares to that area of the world by month or by certain dates. Keep in mind that you need to click through on the fares to find the "real" price, Kayak doesn't add in the taxes and fees.
• CheapTickets.com - Hands-down my favorite way to travel surf. This is where I got my $600 ticket to Rome, and this is where I have found 90% of all my best travel fares. Use their Flexible Search tool to find the best deals on tickets. In the search area on the left-hand side of the homepage, look for the small link that says "Flexible Dates."
The expanded search page has tons of great options (for example, you can search for weekend trips in June to wherever...) but I like to use the 30-day search matrix, which is option 3. It works for international fares, too:
You type in your departing city, an arrival city, and then look for flights for a trip of 4-6 days (or however long) in any 30-day period and you get a huge search matrix with all the prices for all travel dates in that time frame. IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU BUY TICKETS! (Orbitz.com also has the exact same flexible search tool, but I noticed they add an extra $3-5 bucks on top of each ticket price. Same search, five dollars more.)
- - - -
How can people afford this?
To me, affording travel is usually a matter of priorities. I drive a thirteen-year-old car with no air conditioning. IN THE VALLEY. Most of my friends and family assumed that once I climbed (slowly, so slowly) (the word "glacial" comes to mind) out of debt I'd be immediately running out and buying a new car. But I saw travel on my horizon and my Jeep works fine for now. I would rather travel a lot (and oh yes, this is only the beginning) than have a car payment and that's where my priorities are.
If you really want something in life, you usually find a way to afford it. And don't let anyone tell you that you're being selfish, or "Ooooh, looky there! World traveler! blah blah blah fancypants!" People don't live your life, YOU live your life. Travel is one of the greatest life experiences ever. When you are sick and dying, I doubt you'll say, "I wish I spent more time in traffic or standing in line at Rite-Aid..." so let people say what they're going to say and you just go on with your bad-ass, world travelin' self.
I'm just tired of living to please other people or making choices so others won't feel bad, or judgy, or whatever. Life is short. My life is short. I want it to be really good and full of pasta.
- - - -
What On Earth Do I Pack?
I know there are folks out there who could care less about how they look on vacation, and I am not one of them. There's a thrill in being able to mix in, blend into the crowd of some foreign place. I think it's because you can sit back, observe someone else's city and wonder what life is like, wonder if you could live there ... it's part of a fantasy. Not everyone travels this way but for me part of the thrill of blending in is being able to soak in the new culture. Rather than trying to establish your identity and all that, you're just morphing for a few days, letting the you-ness melt out and letting the new city melt in. It's a great feeling, especially when you love a city. You become a temporary resident!
Enough of that, though. What everyone wants to know about are THE SHOES!!!
The issues that divide us as people are not religion or politics or money. The dividing issue is FOOTWEAR, pure and simple. hee. Everyone wants to know if they'll get laughed at for their tennis shoes.
Once a few years ago I was sitting in an airport waiting to get on a plane to Zurich. I listened as two women who were from Somewhere USA bickered about their shoes. I think they were sisters. Anyway, one woman was irritated that her sister had chosen to wear her Nikes because that made them stand out as tourists. The other lady was pissed off, because she said, and I quote, "These are my damn shoes and I'm wearing them. I don't know why I have to go changing my shoes for a bunch of strangers."
They both had a point, I guess.
Anyway, bring comfortable shoes that you like. Everyone that I saw was wearing high-end jeans with boots or Euro-tennies (I saw more silver D&G tennis shoes on this trip than I have seen in the entirety of the Beverly Center.) And yes, you can bring your jeans. Euro-jeans are different, and might I add the guys wear them tighter? Butt-huggingly tighter? I am not objecting is all I am saying here.
No one wears sweats anywhere but America as far as I have been able to discern. In my desire to be helpy and also stalkery, I took pictures of random representative Rome fashion. The look everywhere was something like this:
Yes, I take pictures of people's clothes. Is that weird?
And this look was everywhere, little miniskirts or short tunics over opaque tights and knee boots... oh yeah, and lots of fur coats:
That is one chic mommy.
So aside from the fur, of course it's basically the same stuff you see in L.A. during the winter (except thank God no pajamas, what is this trend in Los Angeles with people wearing their pajamas to Starbucks? Really now.) (Carson Kressley would JUST DIE.)
I do recommend you bring two pairs of shoes. You walk more than you ever dreamed possible while on vacation and you will want to switch it up in the shoe department. I brought some black suede boots that are so comfy & cute (no link anywhere, they were discontinued, I think) and I also brought my Naot boots which I love. I have weird shoe tastes.
More Roman fashion:
My Grandma used to have some like this, only they were not Dolce & Gabbana like these and they did not cost a car payment.
I couldn't hear their conversation, but I think it was, "I like sitting here enjoying the sun on my gorgeous self. And you?" Other guy: "Yes, I love being an Italian guy. I can wear my jeans tight and wear this fur hoodie and it only makes me MORE masculine." Other guy: "Amen, brother."
- - -
Other stuff ...
• I like to travel in the off-season when it's cheaper and less crowded. This also means it can be COLD! A basic black or dark-colored wool pea coat will take you everywhere. Puffy coats were also in this year (especially ones trimmed in fur) and real fur was EVERYWHERE. I wish I would have taken another coat with me because all my pictures have me in one outfit but my suitcase wouldn't have closed. Ah well.
• I tried to do the carry-on only thing but after about five minutes of packing I sighed, got out the suitcase and it was fine. I am not a light packer. I'll deal with it. I am certain I will one day be reincarnated as a sherpa.
• Oh, and I was wary but it worked -- the dual currency hairdryer from Brookstone (along with one of those cheapy two-prong outlet converters from Target) worked awesome! (Sadly, bangs are way high maintenance.) (Also, the hotel had a hairdryer but ... it had issues. It looked like I could see actual flames inside it. NO WAY JOSE.)
• My over-size spy sunglasses were $14.99 at Target. While Drew was out here in January we were in the car and the sun came out and we were sans shades so they were an impulse buy that I love. I have to have my dark big sunglasses on vacation! They hide my eyes and let me people watch in peace.
• Moolah
Call your credit card provider and your bank (for your ATM card) to alert them that you will be traveling and where you'll be. If not, they could block your transactions for suspicious activity. I changed a little money into Euros before going, and used plastic for everything else because my exchange rate was better that way. If you are on the dollar, be prepared that the exchange rate is just dismal. I just made the decision to go with it and not cry too much, but dear economy: please improve. Love, laurie.
- - - - -
Finally: Yes, you can.
I suspect I am not the only gal out there who wants to go off and see the world. I can't be the only human on the planet who has found herself without a current travel partner. Or perhaps there are plenty of folks to travel with -- I have several friends I could have easily sweet-talked into this trip -- but your schedules don't sync up or you have different travel styles or maybe you just want to try something new all by yourself. You're itching to go somewhere, anywhere, and you're wondering like I did... can I really do this alone?
Yes! Yes yes yes you can!
Listen, I'm a big baby. I get lonely, I get scared, I am prone to being maudlin, I'm not superhuman. I have an overactive imagination and a tendency to be um, a little thin-skinned. I get upset when some stranger leaves a mean comment for chrissakes. So if I can do this, anyone can do it. Seriously, anyone. You may not start in some foreign country, but maybe you always wanted to see Denver in the snow or Miami in the heat of summer. Or Banff... I really want to see Banff one day.
The very best things about traveling alone are that you get to move fully at your own pace and it's easy to meet people if you get lonely. You're on no one's timetable but your own, maybe for the first time ever! I spent one entire day in Rome just people-watching, walking around and having good meals. I did not take a tour, learn anything useful or apply myself to history and context on that day. It was probably one of my favorite days in my entire life.
And don't worry, I won't be blabbering on about it forever. Surely next week it will be the normal cat hair, poop and knitting. But it was nice to walk outside my life for a while. It was really really nice.
I hope your trip is lovely, too. Wherever you may decide to go!
Posted by laurie at 02:54 PM | Comments (150)
February 20, 2008
Yes, I went to Rome and now they are all out of wine.
Parking is an art form.
So yes, I went to the place where people do as the Romans do... because they are Romans. To be honest I wasn't planning on going there but I didn't really pick Rome as my destination, it kind of picked me. I was looking for really cheap airfare to somewhere, anywhere Not Business Professional and there it was, a really shamefully inexpensive roundtrip ticket to Rome ... $600 (!!!). After I bought the ticket and made my hotel reservation, which took something like a grand total of thirty-four seconds, I thought about what I had just done and gasped a little.
Then I started researching my trip, you know ... after I bought it. And it seems like every guidebook and travel forum tells you that you arrive in Rome and get immediately pickpocketed and ripped off and scammed and oh yeah, there's graffiti everywhere and people are rude. In fact, if you do enough lunchtime or late-night web surfing to get information about Rome you may even begin to think you have made a mistake and you are flying off alone to a traffic-congested pickpocket paradise with nothing more than expensive tourist trap rip-offs and crime and congestion.
And gelato. Thank God for that.
But all those naysayers were wrong! I LOVED Rome. And I am throwing away my Rick Steves guidebook because he scared the beejesuz out of me (here is a direct quote from his book, "beware of thieving gangs of children..." and "Rome is rife with con artists, thieves and rip-offs, conceal all your valuables") but dude... there were women walking the streets in full-length mink coats carrying handbags that far exceed my monthly rent payment:
Adorable in-love couple sitting on the Spanish Steps, and that is a full-length fur. And she was rocking at least four carats on her left hand....
The scariest part was all my pre-worrying ahead of time, especially since I couldn't tell anyone I was scared since I was being Brave And All. Saving face you know. But once I was there I felt completely fine, it's way safer than anywhere in Los Angeles. Just like anywhere, don't sit your big purse out on the table and walk away, but I saw nary a thieving gang of children. And yes it was loud and busy and it was also vibrant and exciting and unbelievably beautiful. I guess I have lived in Los Angeles for so long (and worked in downtown, alas) that traffic and grime and graffiti and panhandlers just round out the scenery. There's this crazy juxtaposition of ancient things (built in 27 AD!) (built 100 years after Christ died!) with brand new Ducati motorbikes parked out front, or plazas with amazing Bernini-sculpted fountains surrounded by girls in leather jackets and spike-heel knee boots. There's the Pantheon ... and the McDonald's directly outside it. I couldn't believe that you could just walk around and right next to a busy city street ... OH MY GOD IT's THE FORUM.
It was delicious. I mean I LOVED Rome.
Cities and towns and even whole countries have a vibe to them, and whenever I land somewhere new I always try to tune into it, feel it out. I can definitely see why some folks prefer one destination over another -- there are people who really only feel centered near the water, or near mountains, or those who prefer New York to anywhere else, or Key West -- and isn't that the point of traveling anyway? You see new things and develop new preferences and learn about the world and yourself. Don't you travel to see, learn, smell, taste, taste again, taste some more, and expand your life?
I let the waiter order for me. He scored points with this pasta, molto deliciosa!
Rome was definitely an expansion for me. I can barely fit in any of my pants. The city was pulsing like a heart, loud like Los Angeles, older than anything I have ever seen or imagined, holy, tacky, beautiful, tasty.
AND EVERYONE THERE IS GORGEOUS. The men are gorgeous, the women are gorgeous, the people sweeping the streets are gorgeous, the guys taking out the trash at the hotel are gorgeous.
I imagine the guy on the phone is saying, "Where are you? I am on the Spanish Steps. I'm wearing... oh nevermind, you will see me... I am fabulous as usual..."
A few weeks before my trip to Rome, I told a girlfriend about it and she immediately asked if I had read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, "Eat, Pray, Love
It had nothing to do with me traveling there, I just couldn't resist a $600 airfare. I never had a burning desire to visit Italy (I don't know why, I was clearly crazy. Italy is delicious. But I had wanted to go to Croatia at the time ... where the cheapest flight I found had me shelling out a cool two grand. Bleh.) But if you mention Rome to fellow Oprah fans, it's the first thing they ask. "Are you going there on the beginning of your own Eat, Pray, Love experience?" my friend asked.
"Um, well... that wasn't my plan," I told her. "But leave it to me to only fulfill the EAT portion of the itinerary."
And eat I did:
Spaghetti with bacon and romano cheese.
Penne with vodka cream sauce.
Amazing fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with creamy ricotta cheese and herbs.
Believe it or not, in between meals I even had time to see Vatican City and attend a blessing by the Pope which was for me a highlight that ... well, I guess can only be described as a religious experience! Even better than a liquor store that delivers.
Also: hello, easy hand-knit beret in Lion Brand Wool Ease chunky heathered grey! El papa le piace.
At first I was painfully shy about asking people to take my picture but after the first few times it ended up being great because I'd try to pick people that were also tourists, usually couples, and I'd ask the woman half of the couple to take my picture and then afterward I'd offer to use their camera to get a picture of them both together for their own memories (that was something I learned all those years vacationing with Le Ex-Hubby, you get very few pics of you together on vacation) and it ended up everyone was happy and I liked it a lot. In some incredibly dorky way, I felt like I was part of someone else's good vacation memories, too. And it was easier especially if I heard a tourist couple speaking Spanish or French or English, so I knew I could communicate. My Italian turns out to be limited to "Wine, please" which surprisingly worked very well for me in restaurants but is not so descriptive in picture-taking. (Almost everyone in Rome that I met spoke perfect fluent English, it is incredibly tourist-friendly. More so than just about any foreign city I have visited. I did know how to order things in Italian and how to say please and thank you, but for the most part they speak to everyone who does not appear to be instantly Italian in English.)
Traveling alone was scary, awesome, exhilarating, exhausting, relaxing, and most of all made me feel like I could conquer the world. I didn't think I could really do this, travel all by myself to a strange place and navigate it all by myself ... but I did. It had its lonely moments and it's surprising moments and most of all it was just my little tiny adventure that I always secretly wanted to do.
There's always the self-portrait, too!
I still cannot believe I did that!
Posted by laurie at 06:32 AM | Comments (196)
February 19, 2008
Ramble on (and now's the time, the time is now)
One summer, my dad and mom took me and my brother Guy on a trip to California to visit my grandparents. I was seven years old, and we flew from Texas to Los Angeles on the biggest plane I'd ever seen, and when we arrived I saw palm trees and brown air and blue sky. I saw more cars and people and buildings on that trip than I had seen in the collective seven years I had spent on earth.
We went to a Dodgers game and we went to the now-nonexistent Marineland and swam with the sharks, and my brother and I fussed because we hated each other and often tried to kill one another under cover of darkness. We behaved ourselves long enough for a trip to Universal Studios and more time at the beach and I fell in love with all of it, the whole city. My favorite part of that whole summer was when we went to Chinatown and ate dinner at a restaurant called Hop Louie's. I remember sitting around a table seated snugly between my dad and my grandpa, my two favorite human beings on the earth. They ordered things I had never even heard of: paper-wrapped chicken and something sweet and spicy with cashews in it. Crunchy noodles and a mustard that wasn't like French's yellow, it made your whole nose clear out and your eyes burn.
I remember drinking tea from those small rounded cups and warming my hands around the little tealights. During dinner I watched everyone in the restaurant and tried to commit to memory what the waitress looked like, how the food smelled and tasted, it was all so foreign and I loved it. During that dinner I turned to my dad and I said, "Daddy, I'm going to live here one day. I'm going to move to Los Angeles and be like these people and eat here all the time."
And my dad looked me right in the eye and said, "Ok, then. You can be anything you want to be."
That was the whole conversation. I opened the fortune cookie and read it for knowledge, but I didn't eat it ... instead I ate the almond cookies and they were amazing, I'd never had almond cookies before. I thought Los Angeles was the most exciting, glamorous, dangerous, interesting place EVER and I wanted to live there more than anything else in the world.
When I was twenty-two years old I moved west. The first year was complete culture shock and I threatened to pack up and go home every twelve minutes. Eventually, the city grew on me and I grew into it and I loved it. I love it here. I still can't think of a single place I'd rather be most of the time, except Paris. Or maybe Santa Barbara. This city makes me crazy and makes me happy and I love its weird quirks and bad traffic and amazing diversity. I even love the brown air.
Later I got married, of course. The person I married had traveled a lot before he met me and even lived abroad for a while. I had never been off the continent unless you count driving out to Galveston Island as "being off the continent" which I kind of think doesn't count. I had desperately wanted to travel my whole life but never had the money or the know-how or the confidence to just go somewhere on my own. Hooking up with a man who was a travel veteran was such a bonus, and shortly after we were married we started planning our first ever trip together to Europe. That vacation took us to Belgium and France and we got there on a budget airline called "CityBird" (which I think went out of business shortly thereafter) and our rockstar low-cost trip to Europe involved sitting on the tarmac for six hours and layovers in various places such as Armpit, and Other Armpit, and by the time we arrived I was so exhausted and hungry and grumpy that I just wanted alcohol poured down my mouth followed by some french fries. We rented a car and couldn't find anyplace to park and drove around Brussels that first night in circles until we gave up, parked on a sidewalk like the other cars, and hauled luggage across a vast dark city to our creaky, ancient hotel. I was not loving the traveling much at that point.
But after being there for a few hours (and drinking and eating and sleeping) I woke up before dawn and went into the tiny bathroom of our tiny hotel room and I opened the window to see what was out there. The window looked out across the red-tiled rooftops of Belgium and I thought it was the most magical, perfect thing I had ever seen in my life. And I was hooked. We drove to France and stayed in Paris and I was more in love with travel than anything before or since. And we were good travel partners. We traveled a lot together over the years that followed and saw a lot of amazing things and a lot of the world.
In this way I have been really blessed. I've been to places I never even knew existed (Karlovy Vary ... I'm looking at you) and travel has been at the top of the list of best things in my life.
During my divorce, I remember one night hanging out with Jennifer and crying, because it was all soon to be over and finalized and so I said it out loud, this one awful thing that kept popping up in my mind, disturbing any uneasy peace I'd come to with the dissolution -- I had lost my travel partner. I'd lost the one person I saw the world with. And I was so in debt at the time and facing huge legal bills and I saw no way possible to ever go anywhere more glamorous than Van Nuys. Or maybe Burbank.
That was when we decided, possibly after wine, that we were going somewhere, anywhere, but dammit we were going to travel! And we did. Two years ago we went to Paris on a girls' trip. Paris is easily one of my favorite places and I've been there enough times to feel like I know it fairly well, and she had never been and the flight was crazy cheap and it seemed like a good idea. Then some other friends joined us and before we knew it, we were in the City Of Love & Riots. Enough time has finally passed since we got on a big plane and headed off to Paris to be able to speak of that vacation fondly. I can assure you there were good times and laughs on that vacation, but all parties involved will agree that it was hands-down the Most EVERYTHING GO WRONG VACATION any of us girls have ever had. OH MY GOD.
(Ah, yes. You're saying to yourself, "But I thought you had a great time! What...?" Well, we did have a great time ... in retrospect. I do think sometimes the most memorable vacations are the ones that go really off-kilter. And knowing that one day we'd look back on it all and laugh, I only focused on the highlights of that trip which included me bludgeoning a guy in a street with my umbrella. If you think about it, that is not really the sort of Best Happiest Moments you hope for on vacation.)
So when we got back from Paris we promised to never speak of it again. Much. Then time passed and we four girls started laughing about Our Crazyass Trip To France. When I was writing my book I realized that trip was pivotal for me, because travel is good for the soul and makes you get outside your life and see the world new again and consider the unusual. Even if it is Crazyass Psycho Croissant Riot Travel.
And after my book tour, traveling by myself (which once seemed scary and crazy and impossible) no longer felt so terrifying. In Seattle I finally did something I had been scared of my whole life: eating dinner in a very nice restaurant by myself. I did it, I brought a book, and it was in fact quite nice. No one pointed, a few folks looked twice at me, but I had a great meal and excellent wine and left feeling quite satisfied with myself. Not so scary after all.
That's when the idea of traveling by myself -- not just for work but for a real vacation -- started to take root in my head and I would think about it every time I sat waiting for a plane or checking in to a hotel, and later when I got home and got back to the daily grind I would think of it (dream of it) daily. I needed a vacation, a real vacation. Two years is a long time to go without relaxing, and it's been a nose-to-the-grindstone two years. At night I would sit on the bus and look out the window and hope for 2008 to arrive so I would have vacation days again, time to spend on myself. I'd think to myself, "Why work so hard and not take time off to enjoy the world?"
Imagine being able to stay wherever I want, eat whatever I want, linger in a museum as long as I want with no one else to consider but me, no one else's tastes and itinerary to accomodate.... was that selfish to even consider? Maybe. But oh, it sounded decadent and pleasurable to me. Maybe selfish is a woefully misunderstood concept.
Late last year I was staring at a calendar and realized I was coming up on a whole year of not smoking. I calculated how much money I had saved in one year from not buying cigarettes. I re-calculated because COULD THAT BE TRUE? And I felt very much like I SHOULD BUY MYSELF SOMETHING PRETTY WITH THAT BONUS MONEY. Because not smoking isn't really fun, ya'll, though it has saved me some money. And what is the point of doing hard things such as no smoking, no fun if you aren't patting yourself on the back? Buying yourself a little treat? REALLY NOW.
And I clicked and surfed and looked and found it, one single perfect ticket and I bought it without any forethought, without any planning, without any consultation or pro/con lists or anything at all but impulse and that same old desire, to see something new, smell something new, taste something new. Someplace I had never gone before with no memories of my past to follow me, someplace with ridiculously cheap airfare, someplace with wine. And I left last week and I just got back and it was everything I imagined and more.
The wine was great. The men were gorgeous. The pasta was amazing. Maybe that's why they say all roads lead there.
Posted by laurie at 12:23 PM | Comments (232)
February 12, 2008
Congrats to the lucky winner of a stack of crazy helpy books!
Clearly, we ought to do more of these free-book-giving-away things around here, that was fun! Maybe we'll have an all-chicken-soup day giveaway soon or something (it is the cold and flu season you know!) or maybe there is a whole line of astrology and mojo-juju books in the catalog that I don't know about. I love HCI for many reasons, but one of the top three is because the books are both helpful and funny. PDI, indeed! Thanks to HCI for the books and thanks to everyone who posted (and I'm not kidding about doing this again, certainly there are even more profoundly funny book titles I have yet to meet.)
So, using high-tech mathematical randomization ("Pick a number between one and 280...") and drawn completely at random, the winner is lucky Jan who posted in the morning and in a SHOCKING twist of circumstances, not only have I already alerted her BUT I have already taken the box to the post office. (!!!) It even includes chocolate, because you know ... VD and all. I am kind of scaring myself with the amount of on-top-of-things going on around here today. Usually I am seventeen weeks behind on everything. Congratulations, Jan!
But I am not really that on top of things. The only one around here really on top of anything is The Great Sobakowa:
She is not letting anyone on the toy. Do you think they have a book about PDI cats?
Posted by laurie at 08:09 AM | Comments (68)
February 11, 2008
The early warning signs of VD
It starts with red, puffy heart-shaped protrusions in supermarkets and drugstores. It spreads and covers everything in pustules of pink, even the Sunday newspaper is filled with signs of its oncoming pink chocalateyness.
Yes, Valentine's Day is coming.
Now I do not so much mind this holiday, if it can be called a "holiday." While I personally prefer my holidays to come with government-mandated vacation days (love you, O Day of Presidents!) I don't really mind a day devoted to chocolate, especially if that chocolate will all be half-price at Rite-Aid come Friday morning. But I do know that for the drunk, or feline-encrusted, or recently dumped
However, there is more than one kind of helpyness for VD. You can try the pink champagne for your sorrows, you can medicate with Reese's peanut butter cups individually wrapped in pink and silver, or you can reach for a nice, warming cup of self-help book such as "I love you ... but I'm not in love with you.
Of course, there's Life After Divorce
But as for me, I think I'll face the pinkness and loveyness with my favorite star lady, Astrologer Phyllis and her newest book "Astrology's Secrets to Hot Romance.
Self-help is a weird, wacky world. I love it. Do you think the rest of the world reads as much self-help as we Americans do? I hope so. In fact, I am thinking my next book should be "Who moved my cheese sandwich that accompanies my Chicken Soup which gives me The Secret to seven laws of highly successful worldwide drankin'?"
Ok, maybe I need to work on the title a little. But I think I am on to something.
ALSO! You could be the proud owner of this full set of strangely compelling books! Yes, it's true, VD isn't just coming, I myself am spreading it via the internet! Everyone who comments today while comments remain open (it's all vaguely mysterious, note to self, find The Secret To Internet) will be entered into a completely random drawing to win all these books, and the winner will be announced tomorrow. So be careful, if you do not want this much self-help, so not hit the send key! And I will sign a copy of my cat-hair book and add it in to the pile. Heck, if I have enough chocolate, I may sign all these books .... I'll sign anything. Hand me the phone book, I'll sign it.
Good luck! May the most in need of self-help win!
Posted by laurie at 07:38 AM | Comments (281)
February 08, 2008
Since I have already embarrassed myself by showing my nostalgic side...
You know how sometimes out of the blue you just have this burning desire to see an old movie that you aren't sure why you need to see it, or what made you think of it, and you aren't going to share this need with anyone which is why we have Blockbuster in the first place, right? For weird spur-of-the-moment movie urges?
So one day this week I had a hankering to see an old movie from ... you know... 1992. Anyway, I walked into Blockbuster and looked all around and around and around and around (desperation began to set in) and it was nowhere to be found. I knew it had to be there, surely I was just overlooking it. (This is when a strange little spur-of-the-moment hankering for an old favorite becomes a burning desire and a quest of its own and I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE RIGHTNOW.)
Finally I realized I had to just do it, I had to walk up and ask the gal at the counter if they carry the DVD of my delightful movie choice.
Me: Um, hi. I kind of was wondering if you could look up a movie for me? But it's ... um. Kind of embarrassing?
Girl: [Looking at me sideways as you can imagine] What title are you looking for?
Me: (whispers title)
Girl: Huh? I didn't hear you.
Me: (sigh) (I give up) It's called "The Bodyguard."
Girl: heh. he. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
(pause)
Girl: Actually, I really loved that movie.
Me: Me too! I think! I can't remember but I think I loved it, and anyway I can't seem to find it on the shelf...
So she looked and we were both scandalized and outraged when we discovered that particular Blockbuster store no longer carried the classic Whitney Houston/ Kevin Costner masterpiece.
The next day I looked for it on iTunes (no luck) and I tried to get it using the Unbox downloads on Amazon.com (no siree) and yet still I could not bring myself to actually cross the Fourth Dimension Of Dorkiness and purchase the DVD of the movie so I began doing the unthinkable and calling random Blockbuster Video stores across the Valley to find one who had a copy of the movie. The movie "The Bodyguard."
And even though I was laughed at twice and shamed once because the tragically hip teenager on the phone had no idea that movie ever existed, I finally found both humiliation and success at the store in Tarzana. Ah, there is nothing finer than a quest that ends victorious in both cheesy movie fun and popcorn.
More YouTube for those of you too young, wise or highbrow to have succumbed to the fantasy ....
Have a great weekend. I will always love you. You and my bodyguard.
Posted by laurie at 07:44 AM | Comments (42)
February 06, 2008
That ain't workin' ... that's the way you do it.
I am so happy that Al Gore, my future boyfriend, invented the internets so that other people could invent the YouTube so that I can waste time drowning in nostalgia and watching long-lost music video favorites from the eighties.
When I was a teenager, MTV was The Greatest Invention Ever. For one thing, when you live way off on the bayou or wherever you do not so much know what the fashion trends or music trends are on the very cutting edge and when I was a teenager these things were really, urgently important. So we would all pile over to Suzanne Robichaux's house after school because they had one of those ginormous SETI-like satellite dishes and we would watch MTV and carefully memorize the hairstyles, clothes and dance moves of the videos we adored.
One of my favorite music videos was by John Waite, and I would swoon every time it came on. I didn't swoon because he was a My Guy (My Guy was that delicious Nick Rhodes who was certain to marry me one day! especially if I wore my eyeliner just like he did!) (you can see why my father was not so much a fan of me watching The MTV every afternoon at Suzanne's house), but anyway, the main reason I adored that John Waite video was because it spoke to everything I wanted ... yet I'd had no idea it even existed. The blonde girl in the music video had the exact hair clothes and makeup and most importantly the house I dreamed about. In the video they have this big open loft with no walls, and everything was bubble-gum colored and there was a cat and a piano and there was something about it that spoke to me, something that made me think one day I wanted to live that exact kind of life. It was more of a feeling, I guess, of big-cities and amazing apartments and I really loved that video.
I thought that loft they lived in really existed, and that was how artistic people lived and also ... I wanted it. It gave me so much excitement about what the future might hold for me, where I might end up one day when I was grown and could drive and just be myself (ah, teenage angst!). So when I think about that video I just have this nostalgia for it. The eighties were such a hopeful time in so many ways (God I am really sitting here waxing maudlin about the eighties? Have I forgotten my hair?) but it was kind of dreamy and goofy and people were trying all kinds of crazy new things and it was a really great time to be a teenager.
Anyway, thanks Al Gore. Thanks for the enabling:
Posted by laurie at 06:58 AM | Comments (90)
February 04, 2008
Super-bowl of lunch, breakfast and cats. A normal Monday.
1) It is a super bowl of cooking.
My crockpot made me a meal again, this time a big warm bowl of pot roast. Before putting the roast into the crockpot, I made a paste of crushed garlic and black pepper and rubbed it all on the whole roast, then browned that hunk of meat in a deep pot. When the roast was well browned on all sides, I put it in the crock pot. But I wasn't done on the stove just yet -- I used one bottle of beer to de-glaze the pan (pick any beer but a stout, I once did this with Guinness and it got bitter over the long cooking time) and also, notice I just used the fancypants word "deglaze."
That just means you heat the beer (or beef broth or water or onion soup or whatever you want) in the pan you used to brown the meat, and you scrape all the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Then dump the liquid into the crockpot and let it cook all night. This is a very low-sodium recipe as I make it, so you may want to use beef broth instead of beer (or bouillon, both of which have salt in them) or some folks use Lipton's onion soup as the liquid. I like the beer, it tenderizes the meat and adds a deep, rich yummy texture to the gravy.
I made some mashed potatoes and now I have lunch and dinner ready for me:
Love the crock pot.
2) Friends and toast, no better combination.
Yesterday I had breakfast with Faith and Allison at Dinah's in Culver City. If you get a chance to go there for breakfast, you should take that chance ... I ate everything but the plate. It was so much fun just to chitchat and hang out, I haven't done that in a while and I needed it! And Allison brought along her first pair of hand-knit socks, she's done with one sock and nearly done with the other. They look great! She showed me how to do the magic loop, too. I'm not saying socks are next on my to-do list, but her hand-knit socks just look amazing (and not nearly as hard to make as I thought!)
3) They loved their old toy to death. Literally.
You can find this cat toy on wal-mart.com. I bought mine at Target but don't see it on their website. It's a very big hit here at Chez Cat Scratcher.
Posted by laurie at 11:13 AM | Comments (71)
January 30, 2008
The official and likely incomplete rules to my family's version of "Thirty-One"
First of all, the website Wikipedia has an entire entry on the card game Thirty-One if you desire to become the world's premiere authority on this card game. But we just play for fun and quarters.
This is how my family plays the card game Thirty-One:
Each person starts with three quarters (and once you lose all three quarters, which happened to me multiple times this weekend, you play on your "honor" and if you lose that... well. You are probably me.)
Dealer shuffles, using a standard 52-card deck with jokers removed. In my family we have enough jokers already!
Deal three cards to each player, place the deck in the middle of the table and turn one card up. (Here is a tip: If you are playing this game while wine is involved, be sure to have a little item -- we use a toy monkey -- to hand to the dealer along with the card deck. This way you always know who's turn it is to deal, even when Cabernet comes to town.)
So, dealer gives each player three cards, sets the deck on the table, turns one card face up in what will become the discard pile. The first player to go can choose the card that was turned up or draw from the deck. At all times you have three cards (you must discard one card after each draw.)
The object of the game is to get to 31, or to have a high enough hand that you knock on the table and hope the other players have less in card value than you do.
Winning Strategy Numero Uno: Getting 31
Each ACE card counts as 11 points. All face cards (king, queen and jack) count as 10 points. All other cards are their numerical value (a two is two points, a five is five points.) ALL CARDS IN YOUR HAND MUST BE THE SAME SUIT TO COUNT. You want to get an ace and two face cards or an ace, a ten and a face card to make 31. If you draw 31 at any time during the game, you automatically show your cards and win on the spot.
*** When a hand of cards is won by drawing 31, each of the other players puts one of their quarters in the pot.
Winning Strategy Numero Dos: Getting more points than the other folks and knocking
To win in this way, you hope to collect enough high cards in the same suit faster than anyone else and knock when you think you have more in your hand than at least one of your opponents.
For example, let's say I have an ace of hearts, a ten of hearts and a two of spades. Then the next card I draw is an eight of hearts (discard the loathsome two of spades.) That leaves me with 29 points in my hand, so the next time it's my turn... instead of picking up a card from the draw pile, I knock. Each of the other players gets one last chance to draw before we show our cards (you see why this is risky -- what if one of the other players has two great cards and draws an ace or something? Risky! Fun!)
Then you all show your hands. If you get beaten numerically by the other players, you have to put in two quarters! But if at least one player is a bigger loser than you are, that person puts in their quarter.
I once had a five of spades, a four of spades and a six of hearts. Therefore, when my dad knocked (THANKS A LOT DAD) I had a rockin' nine points. It was so so sad ... for me.
- - -
Each hand of cards goes really fast, which I like because the games don't drag out. I LOVE this game! It is so much fun, and winner takes all the quarters! You keep playing hands until it's down to just two players, and whoever wins gets the moolah and all the HONOR!
Posted by laurie at 08:51 AM | Comments (58)
January 29, 2008
No, no, NO!
This was the cute little gymnasium where the Pinewood Derby was held this year:
Inside that cute little gym and outside in the parking lot, I found all these ...uh... gems:
DAMN!
That's a lot of "no" in a little place! heh.
Posted by laurie at 08:20 AM | Comments (63)
January 28, 2008
I went all the way to Florida to hug my family and apparently spread capitalism
So last week as soon as I got the all-clear "You are no longer Typhoid Mary of Contagion" from my doctor, I went back to work... for a day. Then I got on a plane on Friday to fly to Florida to see my family and win all their quarters playing cards. (On their last visit to California, they taught me to play a card game called Thirty-One, and a gambling addiction was born.) (Thanks, parents!)
Last Tuesday as I was leaving the doctor's office, I called my folks to give them the heads up in case they wanted me to reschedule.
"The doctor says I'll be un-contagious by the time I get on the plane," I said, "but to be on the safe side I can always re-schedule my flight..."
"No, no way," said my mom. "Besides, I hear people with bronchial issues are really bad at cards."
"Hey!! Don't I get a HANDICAP or something?"
"No way Jose!" and so the trip was on, and I was prepared with my bag of quarters, appropriately labeled:
This was the first time I have lost every hand of Thirty-One the whole night, I blame it entirely on cough syrup. This was also the first time I have ever gone anywhere with just a carry-on bag and no checked luggage. Yes, that's right. I decided I was traveling LIGHT! Of course, I was only going to Flori