No I’m Not Talking About Gum

I love to read.  In our apartment, books outnumber everything in it.  I buy them and read them and save them to read again (and again and again).  Even if I think it’s awful I will keep the book, just in case I decide to re-read it in the future and find that it’s amazing – as I did with some Ernest Hemingway.

The exception is Ayn Rand.  I tossed Atlas Shrugged out with all of the murder mysteries that do not need to be re-read.  I will never feel the need to read any of her novels again, no matter how awesome anyone says they may be.  If you can skip fifty pages at a time (and not just once, but multiple times!) and still understand exactly what’s going on, the author has done something wrong.

Last year I got it in my mind to read 100 books.  Seemed easy enough, with as much as I read.  I completed it, but it was hard work.  2 books a week for an entire year.  No time to enjoy anything or let it marinate in your mind before picking up another book on the list.  This year so far I’ve read, maybe, 3 books.

Right now I’m re-reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (awesome and I wish I could write like her.  It’s beautiful and poignant and just all around amazing).  Is it just me, or is it rare that a woman author writes something that isn’t considered “chick lit”?

I read a couple of these books last year and; they were quick reads that helped speed my towards my goal.  At the end of them I would feel one of two things: 1) a fleeting feeling of being let down by the reality of my life; and 2) how is this character likeable?

Like all fairy tales, chick lit ends with Happily Ever After.  Everything fits perfectly.  All the time.  The guy you’re seeing wants to commit immediately; the boyfriend proposes on a whim because he just knows the heroine is The One; the husband helps change the baby and makes dinner and clean the house and the fights they have only make their love stronger.  No, I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen in real life.  But it doesn’t happen to everybody.  At least not on that time line.

It took my boyfriend over a year to tell me he loved me.  Same thing with a friend of mine who is now married to that man.  It took conversations and fights to make it work – to keep it working.  Things aren’t always perfect.  But they are good and when I finish these books I look at my life and think Why can’t it be like that? Why doesn’t the dream job that pays awesome just fall into my lap? I critique my life and hold it against a fictional character.  A fucking made up person.

And then I finish the book and put it down and realize that this is someone else’s  imagination.  Of course that’s the reason that everything ends perfectly.  I take a step back and remember that my life is pretty fucking awesome, no matter who it’s measured against.  And I swear I’ll never read another chick lit book again.

Until I hit the library and find something else that catches my attention.  Because, truth be told, I like the fairy tale too.  I like the idea that some things just drop out of the ether to make your life complete.  Perfect.  Even if I know real life is a bit messier.

Which brings me to the second thing I hate about this genre: the unlikeable heroines.  They’re whiny and bitchy and they don’t think about what they’re doing.  The worst of them is from Confessions of a Shopaholic.  Are you kidding me with this Becky character?  Her job is giving financial advice and she doesn’t even know how credit cards work (telling her roommate that she did pay them all off.  Months ago.  And hasn’t made a payment since).

Of course she never hits rock bottom.  There’s always some saving grace – credit extension from the bank, rich boyfriend, a job just when she needs it – that keeps her afloat.  But never once does she stand up for herself and do something about her situation.  She wants something to happen but she doesn’t want to work for it.

At the risk of sounding old: This is what the girls are reading these days?  These are the women that young girls grow up idolizing?  Everything works itself out, girls.  Just as long as you’re pretty and keep a great attitude.

So reading Zadie Smith is a relief.  A relief to read a woman author write something that can be considered literature rather than chick lit.  I’m on a hunt now to find women author’s that write something a little more realistic.  Something that makes me think and laugh and cry.  Something that doesn’t make me feel badly about the life I lead, which is pretty damn good.

It’s Not All Bad

After freaking out for the greater part of Friday I took a step back and realized that part of the reason that I’m so opposed to all these (hypothetical) moves is because this one has been so hard.  Hard to find a job; hard to make friends; hard to adjust to living in such close quarters; hard to adjust to the sprawled-outedness of Southern California.  The whole thing has just been hard.  All the things we planned to do often take a back seat to the non-friends we have made.  So, after talking, we decided that we really do need to get out and just do something.

So we went to the Getty Museum, which we’ve been wanting to do ever since Wes moved down here.

Waiting for the tram

It turned out to be a beautiful day in LA and we got there just in time to hear the architecture tour and the garden tour.  Both of which were beautiful and guided by this lovely lady:

The definition of docent

The outside architecture and gardens were so beautiful

New and Old

These lovely flowers were held up with rebar and were a brilliant pink. 

From here LA doesn't look so bad

Last view of the Getty

Oh, yeah, there were some paintings and sculptures on the inside, but Wes and I were both much more interested in the outdoors.  We were hoping to have more time in the garden, but as it was we didn’t get out of there until close to 8:00.  It would have been nice to walk through the garden a little slower and appreciate some of what it had to offer:

Waterfall

Landscape

It’s such a beautiful place that I can definitely see us going back there (perhaps with my parents and my dad’s fancy camera!) just to spend more time.  However, on Saturday we had plans to attend a bonfire. Which is one of the perks of living here.

a huge fire

The novelty of being able to walk across the street and have a fire still hasn’t worn off, even though we hardly ever get out there.  We still have at least 8 months and I know they’re going to go so fast – just like the last eight months have.  Half the stuff we want to do will probably be skipped for other things, but I’m hoping that we can fit in as many as possible.  As much as I’m ready to leave, I want to make sure that I don’t leave here with regrets of Not Doing More (like I have from San Francisco – luckily tickets from here to there are cheap enough that I have a chance to rectify that).

I just have to keep my attitude positive and remember that this – Orange County – isn’t forever.

But this is

And it’s nice to have someone by my side who looks just as silly in photos as I do.

Wishing for Giraffes

Every so often Wes and I rehash a point of contention that’s not likely to go away or change any time soon.  His job is of the not stable variety.  Not stable in that we don’t know if he’ll have a job next week; not stable in that we don’t know what city we’ll be in next year.  Any day (today, next week, December) he could be transferred to any of a dozen cities where his company does business.

Understandably, I’m not super excited about this.  Especially after this first move, which was about one hundred times more difficult than I had ever imagined.  Job hunting, friend making, all of it has been difficult.  So the thought of starting over not just once, but probably multiple times, makes me nervous and sad and mad and ubelievably frustrated.  Why can’t it just be easy? I think about a million times throughout the day.

Sometimes in my very maddest (and saddest) of days I tell Wes that I won’t follow him everywhere.  I say that I’ll make one last move to get to Somewhere That’s Not Southern California and That Hopefully is Near Friends and (some) Family.  And he counters with various arguments about how we might not have to deal with moving to [insert awful city here].  That perhaps we’ll get lucky and it will never be an issue – yay!

And I?  Well, I have a hard time believing that.  So my frustrations mount and in my mind there’s scenario after scenario, and they are mostly not pretty.

Yesterday was one of those “conversations” and I have been in a funk ever since, like I am after every one of these.  And I swear that I won’t think about it and I won’t broach the topic because it’s all hypothetical and I am working myself up over something that hasn’t happend and could possibly not happen.  But then, of course, I just obsess over it.  Everything I think about or do relates, some how, to the situation.

Today, for once, that might be a good thing.  I searched through Slate archives for a specific article from David Plotz about Evan Almighty that I’d read a couple of years ago.  I copied some quotes from the article but lost the moleskine they were in.  I’ve never seen the movie, but this article (review?) was great in so many ways and the quotes I copied were relevant to so many things.  But this one especially got to me today: “Any moron will believe when an omnipotent divine being appears in the back seat of his car and starts sending him pairs of lions and giraffes. The lesson of the Bible is that faith is hard, and unrewarding, and painful. Faith is belief when there are no giraffes.”

There are no giraffes around and I’m having a hard time seeing the silver lining in all of these clouds.  I want someone – someone who knows - to tell me that it will be okay.  That everything will work itself out and we’ll live happily ever after.  It won’t happen.

Shit is going to suck for a while.  But after that it’s going to get better.  From here on out: faith without the giraffes.

RestauRANT

Today is Wes’ birthday (Happy Birthday), and there is nothing more boring than a Monday birthday.  Unless you happen to have to wake up at 2:00 am the following day to make a flight.  Which Wes does.  So this birthday day is going to be relaxed.  Instead, we celebrated this weekend with a game of golf on Sunday morning, followed by an afternoon by the (newly reopened!) pool and then rounded out with a lovely dinner.

Well, it was supposed to be lovely anyway.

We’d been wanting to try Silvera’s steakhouse for a while now.  It had a nice atmosphere when we ventured in there for drinks one evening and we were hoping that it wouldn’t be as expensive as Ruth’s Chris, where we usually go for delicious steaks.

It started out nicely.  Our appetizer was delicious and our waiter was friendly, if a little forgetful.  But once our meals came (filet mignon for me, ribeye for Wes), it started quickly going down hill.  Both of our steaks were over cooked and we had to send them back with another waiter.  Who didn’t tell our own waiter – or anyone, it seemed like – what had happened.  So to our waiter, it looked like we had finished our steaks in a matter of moments and left the sides alone.  “Would you like these wrapped up?”  he asked us, and when we informed him that our steaks were overdone he was genuinely surprised.  Which genuinely surprised me.  I worked in a restaurant for nearly four years and communication was a huge part of anything.  How embarrassing to come back to your own table and not know what’s going on.

The second pass at the steaks wasn’t much better and I ended up leaving 3/4 of mine untouched.  It was flavorless and still overdone, though better than the first one.

On top of that we had two drunk beach guys sitting behind us.  One of whom was one unemployment because he paid so much in taxes last year that he felt he deserved it.  By the end of our meal we both wanted to punch this guy in the face.  Apparently he doesn’t realize that unemployment isn’t there so that you can use it; it’s there if you have to use it.  And if he’s still finding a way to eat at an over-priced Steakhouse, he doesn’t need the money.

I imagine that having a nice restaurant in Huntington Beach would be difficult.  No matter how upscale you make it, you’re always going to get guys like that coming in at all hours and ruining the ambience for the rest of us.

It’s Raining Babies

Lately I have been inundated with babies.  Wes’ coworker was the first, with a boy last August.  After that Wes’ sister’s baby in October.  This March a friend from Palo Alto had his first child and today our neighbors brought their daughters home from the hospital.

Babies, they are everywhere.  And they are all so adorable.  I want to hold them and love them and cuddle them.

But, I also want to give them back.  Not just when they cry or they poop themselves, but when my arms get tired or my attention moves to something else.

Yes, I love little babies (hello – I love mini things, how could I not love a little baby?), but I’m not even close to being ready for them.

Growing up is something that freaks me out and, more often than not, I have to stop myself from saying (to myself) “I’m to young for…” insert whatever adult activity you can think of.  Sure there are plenty of reasons why I’m not ready to have kids, but being too young to think about that point of my life is not one of them.

When people ask if Wes when we’re getting married my first reaction is to say, “Oh, woah, easy.  We’re way too young for that.”  When, in actuality, we’re not all.  It’s just that I still picture myself as early 20s (as in 22) instead of late 20s (dear god, I’m going to be 30 in 3 years).  Marriage?  Babies? I think to myself.  I can barely get myself out of bed most mornings and I still need someone to make my lunch so can get those oh so crucial extra 10 minutes of sleep.  You can see how I might think that I’m still early 20s.

On the plus side, it seems like there are babies everywhere I plan to travel in the next 8 months.  Babies to cuddle and swoon over.  Most of all, babies to buy adorably cute baby shoes for.  Someday I’ll come to terms with my age and settle down and think about kids. But for right now I’m happy with my life of bad crime drama (today alone: Law & Order: SVU, Charmed, Bones and now Law & Order), glasses of wine in the middle of the afternoon, spiral mac for dinner and sleeping late (not to mention through the night) on the weekend.

Someday, possibly, kids.  For right now, though, I’m enjoying being young and free.

Masking Tape Makes the World Go Round

I have been nerding out on design blogs lately. More than celebrity gossip and food I have been pouring over the Scoop and etsy and mightygoods and falling in love with all of the delicious things they have. 

Like this.  Who knew that masking tape could be so fantastic?  I sure didn’t.  But add some colors and funky designs and sign me up!  I want a roll of each.  I’ll decorate birthday gifts with them.  I’ll decorate anything I can with them.  With these rolls of tape my creative side, currently dormant, would awaken make everything brighter!  More decorative!  Happier! 

(I’m almost certain of it. )

Like my organizational skills, my prowess for decorations is, well, non-existent.  There have always been a thousand and one reasons why I can’t have all the beautiful things I want: cost, space size, storage, etc., etc., etc.  I hope one day to have a space where I can try out some daring designs.  Or to have the space to store all that masking tape to make beautifully gift-wrapped presents. 

I guess until then gift recipents will have to deal with whatever scraps I can find lying around in which to wrap presents.  And scotch tape will have to do for now.

Nostalgia and Wine

Last Friday night I stayed up after Wes went to bed to gear up for Saturday work (boooo).  And, as I’ve been known to do, I finished the bottle of wine that we had opened for dinner and popped in Milk.

You see, I was kind of in a funk – since when am I not? – and wanted to do something.  Anything.  But Wes had had a not great day and had to be to work at 6:30 the following morning so he just wasn’t up for anything, let alone something.   And that’s how I found myself, at around midnight, scouring Facebook and sending “friends” messages and then finding people who either haven’t been my friend in years or never were my friend to begin with…and friend requesting them.

When I woke up the next morning I immediately regretted it because what the hell do I need to be “friends” with the mother of a guy I used to date?  How does that make my life richer?  Answer: it doesn’t.  I was just feeling nostalgic for Santa Barbara and for the life I thought was pretty awesome and full but which turned out to be just shit.

I also friend requested the friend who sent me the breakup box and said we shouldn’t speak again.  Ever.   Nostalgia, wine and absolute lonesomeness do not mix well with social networking sites.  Lesson learned.

I was hoping that it would all end there, but everyone I friend requested that night accepted.  The mother even sent me a note to see how I was doing.  But the friend who broke up with me?  I’m not sure what to do with that one.  I’m sure she just as confused with my request as I am by her acceptance, but now I’m at a loss for what to do?

Of course I’ve looked at her profile and have seen what her life looks like now (who wouldn’t).  But do I send a note – and what would it say?  Sorry I got drunk and requested you be my “friend”?  Just act like we didn’t have a massive implosion as friends and just say It looks like you’re doing well?  Part of me does want to reach out, if only to prove that I’m all grown up and I didn’t need her to rescue me.  To prove to her that I found a life for me by myself.  But that’s selfish – and childish.  The other part of me just remembers that, near the end, shit fucking sucked in our friendship (why else would we have stopped being friends?).

Looking through her pictures I would remember certain things (like that time she said she didn’t like how I was changing because I started hugging people) and it brought me right back to Santa Barbara when I hated myself and my life; when I thought that I had made my good friends only to realize that they weren’t so great after all.

Mountains Majesty

Good Advice

Backpacking is tough.  Don’t get me wrong, I expected it to be tough, what with carrying a 50-60 pound pack and hiking your way to 2,500 feet, then down to 1,500 feet before stopping for the night, but the reality is always so much more real than what you expect.

A long and winding road

But fun.  In a completely awful way.  When we finally finished the six-mile hike to camp, after four-and-a-half hours, I felt awesome.  I did it!  My first backpacking camping trip and I did it without complaining (too much).

“Slow and steady wins the race,” I kept telling Wes every time my pace slipped a little.  I wasn’t in any hurry to get to the campsite – well, I mean, a little hurry, I didn’t want to get there and have all the spots taken.  When we finally arrived we got one of the last, but it worked out because it was far away from the small children and close to the creek.  Also, far away from the trees (plural!) that fell in the middle of the night and missed those kids’ tents by mere inches.

The hike itself was beautiful and I wish there was more time to stop and admire everything around us, but there was a rather large and heavy pack on my back and all I wanted to do was power through and make it to camp and then play Banangrams (um, the most awesome Scrabble-like game ever) or dominoes or cards.  I wanted to set up camp and relax and enjoy the great outdoors.

The top of one of the many beautiful man-made waterfalls

But the thing about backpacking is, there is a lot of stuff you have to do before you relax.  Like find firewood and purify the water.  On top of setting up the tent and sleeping gear and finding warmer clothes because holy heck it gets chilly rather fast when you’re not struggling up a 45-degree incline.

The couple that we went with was not so well versed in the ways of backpacking – so little that I looked like a master at it compared to them.  And, I’m not going to lie, it made me feel a little superior.  I’m not (too) proud of it, but I did.

And because Wes and I had to do that much more to make things work, I had to learn a lot of things that I never knew about camping.  Like how to set up a tent and purify water and dig holes to dump dirty water and build a fire.  Am I an expert?  Not by a long shot, but I can hold my own.

The Universe’s Way of Telling Me I’m Too Old to Care About My Birthday

I love birthdays. I love them a lot – especially mine. I start counting down the days months before the actual date. I’m known for this – so much so that my last boss actually made me a calendar that counts down the months to my birthday. My thinking is: if you don’t make your birthday special no one else will.

For instance, I won’t go to great lengths for another person’s birthday unless they act like they want something to happen. I respect very much the I-don’t-care-about-my-birthday-stance. It’s not worth my effort getting worked up about something you could care less about.

But my birthday, well, I love it. I love that the day is all about me. I love the surprises. I love the random beautiful cards more than the gifts (though I do love those as well). I love the phone calls and e-mails and facebook and gchat shout outs. I love being remembered.

Wes has been great about making all of my birthdays with him memorable. Even last year was awesome, though it wasn’t a lot of planning since we were some place we had to be. But diving off of Catalina? Well, there are worse things that could happen on one’s birthday.

This year, though, Wes might be out of town on the actual day. Which means I might be friendless and alone on my birthday. And for someone who loves loves loves her birthday, this is depressing indeed. He’s checking the schedule and perhaps there will be a possibility of switching with someone so that he doesn’t have to go. But this all leaves me wondering if maybe 27 isn’t too old to be getting excited about one’s birthday?

(trying to get) Serious about Chores

When it comes to being organized, I have delusions of grandeur.  I like to think that I’m with it when it comes to putting things away in their correct place.  And I like to believe that I hate hate hate clutter.  Though these are both sort of true, they’re not completely true.  I want to be organized.  And I do hate clutter, but not enough to be totally organized.

I walk into The Container Story (much like Liz Lemon – forgive me, I’m about a month behind on 30 Rock) and love all the options to be organized, but I never get around to making it happen in my life.  Partly because our apartment is approximately the size of a shoe box, with countertops so small they’re practically nonexistant, but also partly because it’s a lot of work, not to mention the money that goes into it.

I recently found this website and just yesterday found this picture that makes me green with envy.  Now, I’m sure that these things don’t find their way into her purse in that order, but just the fact that she was able to put it all out there in order impresses me.  It inspired me to clean out my bag, which sometimes resembles a kid’s playroom: lots of odds and ends that I don’t know how ended up in there.  My head phones are all wrapped up in themselves and though I usually have 2-3 lip glosses on my person at any time, I also have one hell of a time finding them.  And don’t even get me started on my phone!  I keep it in my back pocket because iPhones are frail and I think one drop of my purse on the ground will ruin it, and even though I sort of hate it, I do not want to waste the money that I did spend on it.  But then in dressing rooms I’ll drop it in my purse so it doesn’t fall out of my pocket and 20 minutes later I’m scrambling around searching for it, wondering if I’ve left it in the dressing room at The Gap.  Wes just loves when that happens.

Some day, when my living conditions and pocketbook allow for more intense organization I know I’ll get organized.  My house will look like the Berenstein Bears did after they did some serious cleaning (I love those books so much and am so sad that I got rid of them as soon as I “outgrew” them).  In the mean time, baby steps.  Perhaps just putting my clothes away each night is good enough for now.