A Longboard and a Kiss, and there he was...

I heard that you settled down. You found a girl and you're married now. I heard that your dreams came true! Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you....

Old friend, why are you so shy! Ain't like you to hold back, or to hide from the light! I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited, but I couldn't stay away. I couldn't fight it! I had hoped you'd see my face, and that you'd be reminded, that for me it isn't over....

Never mind. I'll find someone like you. I wish nothing but the best for you, too.
Don't forget me! I beg!

I remember you said, "Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes, it hurts instead."

You know how the time flies? Only yesterday was the time of our lives! We were born and raised in a summer haze, bound by the surprise of our glory days.

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited, but i couldn't stay away. I couldn't fight it.... I had hoped you'd see my face, and that you'd be reminded that for me, it isn't over. 

Oh, never mind. I'll find someone... like you. I wish nothing but the best for you...two. 

Don't forget me. 

I beg.

I remember you said "Sometimes it lasts in love, but, sometimes it hurts instead."

Nothing compares... no worries, or care. Regrets, and mistakes; they're memories made.

...Who would've known how bittersweet this would taste...?

Never mind. I'll find someone... like you. I wish nothing but the best for you. 

Don't forget me, I beg!

I remember you said, "Sometimes it lasts and loves, but sometimes it hurts instead."

Sometimes it lasts in love... 

...but sometimes it hurts instead. 

Yeah.

To Play For Keeps or Dreams

Dedicated to P.B. Thank you for the education and the inspiration. 

The imagination is a convenient mechanism for amusement. I use my imagination all the time. For instance, I imagine myself living the life of a nefarious criminal, like a bank robber or a pirate queen. Its called Escapism and I do this when life gets me down, when there's nothing good on TV, or whenever I take the time to mentally prepare for the circumstance of being stranded on a desert island without a young Jeff Goldblum. Escapism is how psychologists explain Dreams.

I can assure you, I'm not a Crazy person, and I can guarantee you that everyone participates in this activity at one time or another. **Note: I did not write Psychopath. The Crazy I'm reffering to here is the cut-loose, uber-adventurous, slightly alcoholic Crazy that we all wanted to hang out with in college, but couldn't count on to show up.**

It would be awesome to be Crazy. To really let loose and do whatever, whenever, with no consideration for the consequences, and no care in the world for what anyone thinks of you. Crazy is impulsive and extreme. Crazy is wild and unihibited. But Crazy does not come with a retirement plan.

Crazy is a dream. A dream like being a famous actress is a dream. Attainable, but to make such a dream a reality takes a serious gamble. You have to put your trust in the hands of fate. Or marry someone rich. You have to have a certain abandon. You have to have a f%$k ton of faith in your talent and your rightness at being in the right place at the right time. You have to be ok with having nothing.

I went after The Dream. I had the rich guys and the nothingness. I abandoned reality. At one time, I actually tried out being The Crazy Face in the crowd. The I got a toothache. Crazy doesn't come with dental either.

So, since I've been there and done that, I'm back to square one with a stack of stories under my bum and the awareness of one adamant truth: I am a total wuss.

A wuss with a champagne taste, but no longer amused with her beer budget. More importantly though, I know now that I want stability. Maybe not stability in the form of a white picket fence and a minivan, but definitely a nice fluffy cushion.

And so I've adapted. My dream has changed. My real dream. The one of the MLK variety. I want comfort and security, and I want the independence that comes from earning it for yourself. I want to be able to afford generosity, and spontaneous travel, and aging. I want a job that satisfies me. Something stimulating, interesting. And well-paid. (To much to ask? What can I say?! I'm dreaming here!)

Life may be a game of chance, but I'm not in the mood to gamble. This round is for keeps.

Hunting Season

It would seem that everyone is getting married these days. It's the age, I suppose. People are pairing off so they can start monograming towels and buying supper sets on discount. Really, marriage is  a Magical Mystery, a Wonder of the Universe. But from where I'm sitting, marriage is a Mind-Rattle. It baffles me how two individuals are able to come together from such warped, bi-polar mindsets and figure out that being together beats living the alternative.

The other day, I heard tell of a young lady who bought her wedding dress a full two months before her boyfriend proposed. She just KNEW he was going to ask her and so one day she thought to herself, "I'll go out and spend a few grand on a white princess dress because I just KNOW its going to come of use later this wedding season." And then she went off skipping through a field of posies and talked to her animal friends. Seriously though, he proposed yesterday and they're Very Excited.

Meanwhile, back in reality, hundreds of thousands of guys are off trolling bars and clubs looking for the next "shorty" they'll refer to later as "junk" after they "banged that broad." (Phrases in quotations are excerpts from a fascinating conversation I heard at the gym recently.) One of my guy friends actually told me that although he was in a relationship with the girl he plans to marry,  he was living 4 hours away from her, and spending his weekends at local bars meeting... new friends. I asked him why he wasn't spending quality time with the future Mrs. and he said, "Why would I do that?!"

Umm.... ?

There lies the twist. That poor girl is off somewhere just knowing she and this guy will go off and live happily ever after, but has no promise from him, has no guarantee that this will happen, and feels like a total slut every time she hooks up with someone else in the meantime.  She has probably been obsessing about this since her first Disney movie, and that ante was upped when she learned about Bridal Registries. She wants it to happen yesterday, and he's hoping it won't happen 'til juuuuuust before his Mr. Jolly turns to jelly.

And yet, people are still getting married while they're young enough to have children.... This is why babies are called Miracles.

Great Legs Look Good With Everything

There's no sexy way to tell people you live with your parents. Just try and sugarcoat it. Tell people its all the rage in Europe or just mask the truth by saying you have "Roommates," but ultimately, they know. People can tell. That poor soul who lives rent free, pays the ultimate price in pride, and can be spotted from across the room. Their clothes are clean, pressed, and never missing any buttons. Their faces are also clean, pressed, and perfectly spit-scrubbed. Their phones will ring every 20 minutes and they'll have to go off and make a call to their "Roommate" some time around 11pm never mind what their lips may be in the middle of. And their bellies... their bellies will be BURSTING.

Yes, living with your parents is the number one cause of obesity in America today. If any parent birthed a child in the '80's, their cupboards are sure to be stocked with all of the saltiest chips, the high fructose corn syrup gummy snacks and only cereals with cartoon characters on them. There will also be cakes, cookies, pies, and ice cream. Your parents ate healthy when you were a kid, you were sure of it! But these days, as they stew in retirement and buy bigger and bigger pants, they eat whatever they want. And, if you're unlucky enough to leave independence to "save money and stay with them, for just a little while," you too will be find yourself stuffing your face at all hours of the day, waistline be damned!

I was foolish enough to think that moving in with my parents for a few months would be some kind of Fat Camp. My mother is the woman who does leg lifts while watching TV no matter who else is in the room with her. If she feels like an innocent bystander also needs to tone the butt muscles, she will not shy in encouraging them to join her. "Your friends too, sweetie! Look, here's how its done. And 1- and 2- and 3...." Mom's remedy for ANY illness is to drink water and take a walk. This goes for broken limbs or uncontrollable vomiting as well. Far too optimistically, I was sure that hers would be the fridge with all the best healthy stuff I could never afford and lengthy amounts of time spent in front of the BoobTube would not be tolerated.

You can imagine my surprise the first time I stepped on the scale a mere month into living with this woman who still wears clothes from 1978. Apparently, my jeans were not tight on me because they shrunk from finally being washed. No longer doing any of the food shopping, I was blindly eating whatever was in the pantry trusting that my health was still her number 1 concern. Sure, I'm a grown woman who can monitor what goes in to my mouth and when, but,

"What shall we have for dinner?

-Meh, I'm fine with cereal.

-Cereal it is then!"

"Here honey, try these Belgian truffles I picked up. They'll just melt in your mouth!"

"Ooooh, the boy scouts are selling a chocolate lovers box. Chocolate caramel crunch in bulk??! I'll take two!"

As for exercise, who sat with me during the House marathon on the Bravo channel? And continuous, miraculous home improvements on HGTV? Dear old Dad. By my side for hours, like we were invalids, plaid blankets included. We now speak in code for all operations concerning the remote control. One grunt for volume. Two grunts to switch to HBO.

Something has to be done. No one is going to have to forklift me out of this house!

Food for the Ages

My family is huge. My immediate family alone consists of 2 parents, 5 kids and 3 step-kids. By-product of the 10 of us consists of 3 in-laws and 2 nephews and 2 more on the way.  We are a modern family, fused together by divorces, marriages, and a similar skin type, and we are Many. Because we are so many, we are rarely all in the same place at once. And, when we are together, my siblings and I resort to pre-teen behaviors and mentalities after about 5 minutes of pretending to be grown-ups. 

But I love my family. I really do. We're interesting and different. A house full of characters with enough stories and drama to give Days of Our Lives some real competition. We don't see each other enough and when we do, there hardly seems to be enough time.

This week, by the miracle we shall call Spring Break, two of my brothers are visiting Richmond at the same time. Naturally, this warranted a trip to the batting cage where hitting balls with sticks for an hour inspired them to make a steak dinner. They went out and bought the biggest, fattiest steaks they could find. Then, they smothered the slabs of meat in beer, butter and salt and threw them on the outdoor grill even though it was raining. I'm told they braved hypothermia because cooking outdoors is the only respectable way for Real Men to cook and electric indoor grills can go F themselves. 

They also made steamed asparagus with shredded parmesan and mashed sweet potatoes. Granted, they cooked the asparagus in the microwave and the potatoes came in powder form, but hey, they boiled water and didn't burn anything. I was impressed. 

By the time we sat down to eat, the pre-teens had been running rampant for over 30 minutes, which means both of them had farted, one was already full from stuffing his face with Cheez-Its while dinner was cooking, and the kitchen looked like a cyclone had ripped through it. Further evidence of retro-growth: My oldest brother had to take a picture of his Great Culinary Accomplishment and post it on facebook before he could sit down, and my youngest brother ate a giant fork-full of gristle in exchange for the picture so he could photoshop it before it was tagged. 

Observing my brothers at the table is like watching grizzly bears protect their young, or hyenas eat roadkill. They sit, hunched over their plates so that their mouths are only inches from their food. Their elbows extend as far out as possible, for balance I presume, so that they can simultaneously shovel food into their mouths and guard their plates from a stray fork wandering in from enemy territory. I remember once reaching for a dinner roll, blinking on my way there, and grabbing air as my hand reached an empty plate. Thinking I may have hallucinated, I looked up to see my second youngest brother swallow a baseball sized dinner roll, my baseball sized dinner roll, in its entirety in less than half a second. 

The steak was delicious though, cooked to perfection, and its always entertaining to listen to my brothers lament and laugh about their current realities, even with food in their mouths. Dinner only lasted about ten minutes, which, in case you were wondering, is how long it takes two grown men to eat 3lbs of steak, a bushel of asparagus and six servings of potatoes. I managed to get a few bites myself, but of course, I blinked. 

... and they were gone.   

How I Discovered the Bomb and Decided to Move to the Mountains and Make My Own Booze

Photo by Eda Aksoy

LA and I broke up and I've moved to Richmond.

Richmond was an accident, of course, but if you must know, it just wasn't working with Los Angeles. You could say we parted ways because of artistic differences. That we were heading in different directions. But in reality, I was miserable. It takes two to make a relationship really work, and LA just wasn't giving me the commitment I needed. We fell into a routine and I'm not going to lie to you, it involved a lot of TV and whooooole lotta chocolate. We really stopped going out too. And when we did it was forced and uncreative. That part is kind of my fault. Admittedly, I was working long hours and when I came home I just didn't have the energy to really do anything. But c'mon! Someone has to pay for that lifestyle!

I did try to make it work. Really. I did. I was

exercising, staying in shape, making more time to spend quality time. But, I just didn't feel like I was getting as much as I was giving. When an enticing offer came from some place else.... I took it. I'm not proud. I know what some of you must be thinking. But you just can't keep beating a dying horse! That's animal cruelty and I'm against it.

Call it quitting. Call it cowardly even. I call it evolution. I had reached a point where I realized that there was no rat race. No one cared if I stayed or went. And I don't mean that in a depressive, suicidal kind of way. I mean that everyone is so wrapped up in their own life, in their own game, that I wasn't "winning" by hanging on by the skin of my teeth. The only one who was losing was me.

So, I left. I planned an amazing road trip, clubbed my unsuspecting friend over the head and dragged him with me, and had a great week on the road.

And how did I end up in Richmond? Well, I ask myself that everyday.

Sometimes I miss LA. Especially when people look at me funny for wearing stilettos to Target. Or when I'm waiting outside some place, car running, expecting a valet who never shows up. I think this is normal in any separation, though. It takes time.

I'm in this place now, and that's what matters. I'm starting over, again, which is also very exciting. I'm figuring some stuff out. Getting my feet back on the ground. Planning my next move. Trying not to go crazy or get fat.

Stay tuned.