In Which Real Life Came About & Swallowed Me Whole...

This past month I've celebrated my one-year anniversary, (the steakhouse we went to gave you a free box made of cotton candy. COTTON CANDY. WIN.), grilled a ton of meat for my family's annual Mother's Day grill-a-thon (meat is expensive, yo. And tasty.), had a mini-scare that involved my Dad being put in the hospital (he's fine now, thank God), and yet the thing that may have been the most taxing was babysitting a baby.

We were tag-teaming it, and as we sat in front of the parents, little toddler Lucia was eyeing us up and down with a look of quiet disdain. "Don't worry," said the Mommy. "She's not like those other kids who make a fuss about sleeping. You just give her her bottle and she'll ask to be put to bed."

LIES.

The lying parents lied with the LIES.

Not only did the kid refuse to be put to sleep, she insisted on being carried (apparently I exude some sort of maternal instinct, because she LATCHED on to me), and anytime a bottle came near her she sobbed like we were torturing her and pushed it away.

Finally we reverted into some sort of Mom & Pop cliche with Laura insisting I just put the kid in the cradle and let her cry herself to sleep, and me being a complete marshmallow and begging to give her five more minutes to come to terms with the idea. Finally, sheer exhaustion won out when the baby's eyes were closing even as she was refusing to come near the crib, and she cried about a minute before zonking out.

Kids, man. They don't scare me because I helped raise my gajillion cousins and foster cousins and I know kids, but I'm still constantly surprised when people ask me why I'm in no hurry to have kids of my own when I'm so obviously great with them.

Me: ... have you MET a kid? Have you taken care of one for more than an hour? Do that. Then ask me again.

This is not to say anything against the amazing people who actually HAVE kids, because honestly, I think parenthood is one of the most underrated and rewarding occupations one can have.

Seriously.

But I can't even take care of my fishtank.

Back in the Softball Game

This weekend was interesting, to say the least. It ranged from the quiet (an afternoon flipping between 'Along Came Polly' and 'Underworld: Evolution'), to quietly overwhelming (in a party limo with blaring music and 20 screaming partying women), to just downright evil (opening the new softball season with a double header at 8:30AM on a Sunday in the midst of Daylight Savings time).

The good news? I feel like I finally earned the power hitter spot I was given on my team's line up. Got on base 6 out of 7 times, and got a home run in the middle of that! While my fielding could use some help, and buddy Karin told me my slide was 'embarrassing' (I disagree, I thought my way of stumbling to my butt and then sliding to the plate was quiet ingenious), I still held my own with the bat. It's nice to get that bit of instinct back. I played when I was in junior high, and remember that surge of confidence that went through me each and everytime I stepped up to the plate, because I just KNEW I would hit the ball.

While I'm far from that now, I do feel, bit by bit, some of that sinking into place. The moment taken to just breath, the quiet second I take for myself in which my grip locks into place, and the silent conversation I have with the ball as I have it lob into the plate a split second before I decide to swing. That quiet experience, and the competitive friendly spirit of the game is what I've missed most since I gave it up for an academically oriented education, and I'm glad I'm back in it.

I've got a whole season ahead of me, but I think I started on a good note.

Tonight? An advance screening of 'The Runaways'. I have mixed feelings about it going in, but I'll be curious to see about the exposition of it.

Snow: The Better For Crashing Into

"You're budding into such a wordly adult!" a friend enthusiastically exclaimed to me, on a tail end on my New Years trip to Mammoth. She hugged me like a proud parent.

"Yes," I agreed sagely. "I can ski now! I'm no longer a poor latin kid from the ghetto!"

All of the above is a complete exaggeration. Not the actual conversation, but the content. After all, my 'worldly' expertise comes mostly from books, and a poor kid from the ghetto, I never was. I was never rich, but I was always provided for, thanks to a hard working mother and father. And I may have grown up in the inner city, but I spent most of that time being bussed to private schools or at summer camps or afterschool jobs.

But none of that takes away from the very exciting reality that I can ski now! Sort of. I can stand up wearing skis, and I can more or less inch my way down a bunny slope with my arms spread out in front of me for balance.

That counts, doesn't it?

My first trip to Mammoth wasn't without mishaps, but I can't imagine a better way to begin a new year. And quite honestly, it's quite a mirror for my life until now. A heck of a lot of unbalance, the occasional plunge into a white, powdery cloud of snow or the unrelenting smack against a fence (I had literally almost impaled myself, at one point), or the free falling jerk out of my skiis, with a finale of literally flipping over my head before landing on my knees laughing, and finally, the feeling of nervous accomplishment when, just for a moment, I was actually SKIING.

Triumphant moments coupled together with the occasional skids, setbacks and bruises, but always the help of a caring friend or loved one to help pull me back up or record the moment for posterity.

The weekend was not without it's quiet adventures. There was a point where I was walking a mile along a gravel highway in nothing but socks, looking for a car that had been parked further away than anyone wanted. But even as I trudged along the icy road, feet freezing, with a car key in my hand, I had within me a satisfaction that came from the accomplishment of FINALLY doing that thing I always meant to do.

I'm by no means good at skiing. But dammit, I did it. And that's a small success, if there ever was one.

What more can you ask from a New Year?

SQUIRREL!!! The Perils of ADD

Liberty Park, originally uploaded by Mistiec_Flores.

I went to my doctor yesterday, for a routine visit to discuss my Adderall prescription. He caught me sitting in the office in the dark, because I had been sitting in my chair for about ten minutes, enough to trick the motion sensors into believing there was no one in the room. I hadn't bothered to turn them on again, however, because I was playing quite happily on my Nintendo DS.

Yes, Adderall, that ADHD drug that actually really does help with focus but is badly abused as a weight loss suppressant and candy of the Hollywood Elite.

I tend to avoid taking it unless I absolutely have to, which means once or twice at work and almost never on weekends, unless there is a musical or play or something that will be particularly brutal to sit through (Dinners are generally harder than most, because my utter twitchiness will have me reaching for the salt or a straw or anything to 'play' with, which results more often than not in people snatching things out of my hand and ordering me not to play with my food).

I didn't take it all weekend (which resulted in monumental withdrawal headaches), and was commended on it by Laura.

"Honestly," I told her. "I just forgot."

She grinned. "SQUIRREL!"

Yes, Squirrel.

I think I must have done too good of a job at rationing myself, however. My doctor took a look at the last time he wrote a prescription and found himself perplexed that it had been that long.

"Hmm," he said, scribbling away at his pad, and then glanced up suspiciously. "Are you getting this prescription from anyone else?"

"No!" I answered, but he remained suspicious, wary that I had been cheating on him with another prescription writer. I shuffled in my seat, and finally slumped my shoulders. "Sometimes I just forget to take them," I mumbled.

He absorbed that. "Ah. That makes sense." And back to writing he went, satisfied.

'Squirrel!' I thought to myself, and sighed, thinking I should be wearing a metaphorical 'cone of shame'.

Don't you hate when you can most identify with an animated dog who is routinely distracted by a furry animal?

Don't know what I'm talking about? Watch this clip from UP:

Welcome to the '30s!

It's not all that different from the '20s. Then again, I've only been 30 for about four days, so I don't have that much basis for comparison.

There are always goals, but this is the first time that I feel infinitely closer to actually accomplishing. The maturity is hitting me, albeit slowly, but really, how can you really ever truly mature when you get such a gleeful delight over things like a 'ROCKBAND' cake?

I sincerely take that as license to occassionately embrace the Peter Pan in me.

In Which I Want To Go To There (But I'd Like To Not Die)

Thanks to Jeremy Wade (extreme angler and Biologist) and Animal Planet's show 'River Monsters', I've gained a new appreciation for freshwater fishies of the deep. I've always had a fascination with fishing, even as a child, when my understanding of it was to stand over a pier, throw a line into the brackwish water and then peer over the end of it, wondering why nothing ever came up.

Since then, my odd obsession with fishing and animals that swim hasn't waned, even if I've never quite caught up in experience. My snorkeling experience has been limited to the muddy waters of Cabo San Lucas, and as for fishing? I wouldn't know where to start. But I've come a long way to appreciating these creatures, and it manifests itself the most when I work with my fish tank. It's just a twenty gallon bitty little thing, fresh water and easy to maintain, with some tetras, some guppies, three frogs and two underwater catfish that grow bigger every day, but even within this little community, there has been massacres and adventures. I've mourned the loss of Tubby, the injured little Molly who fought his way back to health after an attack of another male molly, losing a fin and disorienting himself so much he swam upside down and in circles. I nearly cried when I lost my first frogs Max & Mona, bitty little aquatic dwarfs who died of old age after nearly three years of sitting on their lily pads and poking through gravel for their morsels of food. I marveled when a half inch ghost shrimp grew into a nearly three inch large monster with claws, who took over the tank and nearly singlehandedly annihalted a school of neon tetras (yeah, mister fish expert at the fish store, apparently shrimp ARE aggressive in high temperatures. FYI).

The new show 'River Monsters' on Animal Planet has done little to wane my curiosity with the animals of the aquatic. And it's also made me completely terrified and fascinated with the Amazon. I've learned so many different things from this show, but none more than the absolute fact that anyone who wants to swim in the Amazon river is crazy. Did you know that there are fishes there that can bore bullet size holes in you and eat you from the inside out? Or that some catfish can grow up to ten feet and have been known to attack and kill humans? Or that piranha's have consumed children in seconds? Or that bullsharks can adapt to freshwater and are now popping up in rivers all over the world?

Or how about this fun fact? There's apparently a case in the Amazon where a fish has actually been attracted by a urine streem and swam UP the uretha of a peeing man and BURIED itself in his penis. Oh yeah. Don't pee in the lake, boys.

Who in their right mind wants to know this? And still wants to go fish these things? Let's face it, host Jeremy Wade is CRAZY. But he's the fascinating kind of crazy - the kind of biologist who will venture to the ends of the earth to do battle with a 200 pound fish with only a fishing line between them, to emerge the exhausted winner, who does not kill his prize, but instead admires it, notes it, and with a display of sportmanship to his beastly shrewd battle losers, allows them to rest before setting them back free. It's this moment that I admire the most. It's for this reason that this latest article about the controversy involving a fisherman who caught and killed a record size Hammerhead Shark (pregnant with about 50 babies) saddens me. To want to battle against this magnificant animals and emerge the winner is within our competitive spirit. But to become so overwhelmed with excitement over the prize to bring such a specimen and kill it for pure sport? What's the point in that?

It reminds me of the moment not long ago where I came face to face with a falcon in my yard. My emotions were fueled by excitement and reverance.

I did not immediately think, "Oh my goodness. What a beautiful creature! Let me kill it!"

I'm just saying.

Time Zone Dyslexia - A Foreign Affair

I have genuine faith in God.

I believe he ever so subtly inserts little mishaps in my life to keep me from getting too cocky about... well anything.

Because it does seem that every time I get over confident and ... comfortable in some aspect of my life, I tend to trip over my feet, dunk headfirst into a murky pond of my own clumsiness, and come up sputtering, humbled and let's be honest, a little amused.

Because after a lifetime of clumsiness and near-miss catastrophes, there really is only one thing you can do after the initial paranoia has faded and the nausea has receded, and that's laugh.

Take for example, my Monday. Things were going fairly well for me. Well, except for Sunday night when I, in a fit of good will and craving, finished frying up some tostadas for some shrimp ceviche I had made and was ready to dish out to my family. The chef's jacket I faithfully wear (even though I have by no means earned it) had been stripped a few minutes before, and so my arms were bare.

Naturally this was about the time my tongs slipped in the sizzling hot oil and I splattered burning drops all over my arm and on my chin, panicking my mother and making me look like a plastic surgery with the bandage over my chin and arms.

So Monday comes around and I'm in pain and my arm is throbbing (with what I will later learn are first and second degree burns) and I'm at work and I develop what I've come to term 'Time Zone Dyslexia'. Meaning, I switched time zones in my head for an extremely important meeting that it was my job to set up. Which I thought I had done admirably and in record time.

I had no idea I had actually switched time zones and instead of a meeting happening three hours behind us, it was actually three hours AHEAD.

Luckily, this was caught a week before the actual meeting, by the other assistant.

But MAN - what kind of moron switches timezones for New York and Los Angeles?

Me, apparently.

I understand London and LA, maybe, but to massively eff up a video conference from LA-NY?!

I blame Time Zone Dyslexia.

And God and his sense of humor.

You know he thought this was friggin' hilarious.

Well, maybe not the burns. Maybe he just thought I needed more character.

Like a burn mark in the form of a perfect circle right in the center of my chin.

Why not, right?

Just Another Manic Monday....

Tomorrow will be the first day I go to work for two weeks - is it weird that it's a relief? I like to pretend I'm a free spirit but the truth is, I need a little routine. And I can't really depend on myself for discipline.

The thing that gets me up in the morning isn't the drive to start a new day, but the knowledge that if I don't, my poor chihuahua will pee on the floor.

Which I really think she does just to piss me off.

This year, however, I've decided that I need to actually be an adult, whatever that means. I mean I have no idea what the actual definition of that is, but I imagine there are steps that need to be taken. I won't bore you with those specific goals, because there's goals everyone has: Fitness, security, debt control.

You know what? Forget that. My goal? Not to have these SAME fricken' goals next year. Because there's nothing lamer than to look back a year and realize you had the exact same goals and are exactly where you started.

So apparently my driving force is fear.

I can handle that.

Anything is better than sleeping in an extra twenty minutes and stepping into a wet spot on your carpet.

Blech.

It's Snowing In LA! Oh wait... that's just ash...

"What's burning?" you ask. Oh, that's just Los Angeles.

Seriously.

You walk outside, and the smell of burning overrides your senses. You smell the smoke, clogging up your nostrils and making you pop an extra Zyrtex. You see it darkening the sky like a really bad smog day and creating crazy colors at sunset as the pollution bumps off the ozone. You see it in the flecks of ash that mock you cruelly like faux snowflakes as you open your car door.

It would be ironic if it weren't so terribly crazy and sad.

The air pollution was enough of a concern for me and my allergies to call off the weekly hike at Runyon. I suppose that was fine for me. I consider Runyon my weekly exercise in discovering how horribly out of shape I am, as I walk around the trail and discover sweaty demi-Gods racing up the hill next to their pooches, wrinkled frowns of concentration on their faces as they hold their weights or water bottles and careen past me for the second or third time. And they do it in their sweatshirts. SWEATSHIRTS. In 90 degree weather! What is WRONG with them?

Then again, nothing should surprise me anymore.

I'm living in a land of limitless scope: where ash takes the place of snow, where a dirt road in a hill less than a mile away from Hollywood Boulevard is considered a nature trail and roughing it, and where I look out of the window of my building at work one evening and discover the magnificant sight of red car lights blinking up and down Santa Monica Boulecard as the shouts of thousands of protestors making their way down the street float up to my ears on the twenty-sixth floor, campaigning for civil rights.

It turns into the kind of week where you forget what it was like to be normal.

And then you wonder why you would ever want to waste time trying to be normal, and concentrate instead of worrying about whether or not a hawk is going to sneak into your backyard to eat your chihuahua.

This may fall into the realm of too much information...

But you know those little things that happen to you that would make a great sitcom moment? I have those a lot.

Like yesterday, when I was happily sitting in the bathroom, taking care of business, casually turned my head and OW. A twinge in neck. From not doing anything. Other than... you know... sitting on my porcelain throne.

Can that be any more lame?

This ranks up there with the time I jumped off the roof, fractured an ankle, and then sprained the other one hopping down the stairs on one leg to get to the hospital.

Lame.