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House

With three adults and four cats, the house is turning into a total disaster.  It doesn't help that I am a bit of a dumpster diver (thanks, dad!) and throw everything into the back of my truck that might be useful.  Today, I netted 2 benches, but they were purple, so I went with it because they kind of match the blue fence.

I went to town on the yard Friday night with an industrial strength weed wacker and the lawnmower and my lower back (owie).  So the outside looks cool, but the inside......

The inside is getting funky, though.  I have had to tape tinfoil on the edges of the furniture so Bertrand (cat) doesn't scratch what is left of the only furniture I didn't find or inherit (thanks, dad!).  There are giant balls of fur everywhere and the bookcase looks like some insane person reinvented the Dewey Decimal System.  That insane person, is, apparently, me.

I like books.  I have carted some of them around for 25 years (most prized possessions are The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy signed by Douglas Adams and a copy of The Onion signed by Smooth B).  Both of my parents have also written books which makes me feel like a dork because I should have written one by now.  I guess I could schlep my travel logs into one and publish it on Amazon, but only about three people would get the humor and one of them is me.  That doesn't keep me from cracking up at myself, but that might be kind of sad to the outside world.  The Kookaburra story and the Pink Elephant story are total keepers, though.

Today I had to make a presentation in front of the Board of Directors and I promptly left shaking like an earthquake and began to dig through dumpsters in the U District.  I love summer when the students move out and leave their leavings.  Bikes, tools, furniture, the odd pillow (I didn't keep that one) and a plethora of books.  I am reading a biology text book, an anthology of English lit and a CAD drawing book at the same time.  The CAD book is a surefire way to fall asleep at night, which I have a really hard time doing.  I actually showed up for work at 5 p.m. one Sunday thinking it was 5 a.m. on Monday and couldn't figure out where everyone was until about 10 - I don't have a window.

There is a thingey that is supposed to pull the screen door shut next to the door, two broken vacuums and a pile of icky dishes I can't bring myself to touch to put into the dishwasher.  Toothpaste spit and old food make for quite a combo.  There is a pile of cat litter on the floor which the cats have decided is the new litter box.  I would feel badly about this if I hadn't been at a meeting earlier in the week when a woman confessed to getting hammered and peeing on the floor and covering it up with litter.  It is those moments when I truly love humanity.  When you own something that weird, you have conquered it.  It is your bitch.


In September, I am going to NY and Costa Rica with my best friends in the world.  Nothing bad could happen, right?  Does Costa Rica have an extradition treaty with the US?

Pretty

Sometimes I like to think about all the crazy things that happen in HR - the investigations into drugs, sex at work, violence, stalking, theft.  I think about the people I fired and if it was just.  Often it wasn't.  I had one job for 2 years where I fired about 6 people a week, mostly for dumb things like being late too many times or taking too long on a phone call or taking too long to use the bathroom.  

Of course, there are the people I wish I could have fired - the cruel, the bullies, the plant barfers.  And like the people that are always walking around at different events naked, they are never the ones you want to see naked.  Or employed.  

After 18 years of doing this, I like to think I understand people and their motivations, but I have been very very wrong several times, been fooled and driven by misplaced compassion.

There was a woman who was 8 months pregnant and her husband was stationed in Iraq.  She came to me one day crying with her supervisor because she said she was being stalked by another employee.  She recounted how they hadn’t met, but began talking on the phone and emailing each other.  She was lonely and he was showing her attention.  Then he showed her his photo.  Gorgeous dark brown hair, green eyes, a mouth I shouldn’t have thoughts about on a 20 year old kid. 

They arranged to meet for coffee and she never showed.  He began texting her, asking where she was, why didn’t she want to meet him.  She said she knew it was wrong.  She showed me the texts, some were flirty, but not violent or overtly sexual – but she was terrified.  Shaking. 

She showed me another text where he said enough creepy things that I was sure we needed to get rid of this guy, to protect a vulnerable employee and to protect the company.  No way was I going to have a pregnant Iraq vet’s wife hurt or threatened by another employee.

In stalking cases, I generally call in the police – so the victim can file a report and the police can decide if they want to arrest the suspect or just scare him or her (yep, there are lots of hers).  I did that in this case, had approval from legal, documented all of my sources – I was just waiting for IT to pull the rest of the emails so I could make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

I had him in the room next to me sitting with his supervisor, terrified.  He wasn’t the guy in the photo, he was a chubby, kind of smelly, unattractive guy.  He admitted he had sent the other photo to her so she would go out with him.  When I read the emails, they were awful – very sexually inappropriate and all generated from her.  He responded, it wasn’t like he wasn’t interested, and he was inappropriate, but nothing compared to her.

When I spoke to him about what on earth had happened, he admitted the flirting and that they had planned to meet, but when he showed up and texted her that he was waiting at the front door, she had taken one look at him and run.  His texts were little more than asking if she was OK and why she hadn’t shown up. 

I was pissed.  I had the cops there, all the pieces ready, and I asked her why she had lied to me.  She said, “he was ugly”.  

Home

Two days ago I was Auntie Jen (eh, anti Jen, where you put da kim chee?).  Body surfing, hiking the Pali, picking mountain apples, mango and lychee, having tree climbing contents with 8 year olds in Kailua, collecting beach glass with old friends at silver stairs, playing with baby monk seals (OK, I didn’t play with them, but I saw one!) – you know, the usual stuff one does when one goes home when home is O’ahu.  Today, I am scooping cat litter and going through emails in Seattle’s famous June Gloom. 

For years, my friends on the mainland have teased me about my determination to say Hawaiian words correctly.  It isn’t Hawieee, it is Hawai’i with a glottal stop.  It isn’t Kaa-vah, it is Ka’a’a’va.  And most importantly, it isn’t carey-o-key, it is Karaoke or “car a oh keh”.   It is usually the worst when I come back to Seattle after localing out and my accent is the strongest.  So today is pretty much make-fun-of-Jen-day.   Which should maybe be a national holiday or something.  Then I could go back to bed, which I need to do because I got about 5 hours of sleep last night and a combined total of 5 hours while I was at home.  The other home.  The warm one.

Sleep dep is nothing new in Jenlandia, but it reached epic levels over the holiday weekend.  Whether it was sand blowing in my eyes during my attempt at napping on Lanikai or various nieces, nephews and calabash cousins refusing to let me go to bed while they were on sugar highs, friends calling from the mainland blissfully unaware they were calling me at 4 a.m. Island Time or just the ever present fear that a large roach would try to crawl into bed with me at my dad’s house plus I couldn’t get to sleep until about 2 a.m. this morning and got up for work at 5:30 – I am officially cracked out. 

I love going to Hawaii and I love it for about four days.  After that, my patience is shot.  I was actually asked to leave the state by the Governor because I was too hyper and it was taking away from the Island Ambience.  That is the official reason anyway.  The real reason is in sealed records somewhere.  Everyone complains about Seattle drivers, but that is probably only because they haven’t driven in Hawaii or they haven’t driven in Hawaii and know where in the hell they are going.  I recall being asked on more than one occasion for directions by tourists, “can you help us?  We are looking for our car/a restaurant/our hotel and it is on a street that starts with a K”.  Oh my, we only have 13 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet and K is pretty prominent, so I believe you are screwed, sir. 

I have a few rituals every time I go home – I walk up to the top of our hill (about 40 minutes straight up), I drive around the island and stop in Haleiwa to visit my cousins, I go over to Kailua and body surf or swim at the beach with my friend Teresa and her son and I go to the far end of Kapiolani Park and walk the boardwalk that is getting even more precarious with time that is propped on the edge of the water by the Gold Coast near Sans Souci beach.  Driving around the island is gorgeous, but always a giant pain in the ass.  This time I had some friends visiting from Seattle and New York, so I was kind of on hyper mainland adrenaline anyway, so when the min van in front of me started going 20 mph in the 35 mph speed zone, I actually passed them on a corner in Hauula which is incredibly dangerous, but I was close to going insane.  I almost got in a fight at the park because cars were just idling waiting for someone to leave so they could park and I had the audacity to try to pull around them because I was actually planning to drive my car somewhere.  A pickup cut me off (so I could wait until the 5 cars ahead of me parked?) and my friend from NY flipped them off.  I told him, “Do NOT flip anyone off here.  I am probably related to them and if I am not, they are going to kick my ass”.  There was undeniable proof of the phenomenon I call the “Hawaiian break check” which is the tendency of people driving on H1 (the Interstate - tee hee!) to randomly slam on their breaks for no apparent reason.  It is endearing.  Not really. 

The other thing is that I generally stay with my family.  They can’t seem to fathom, after 27 years of being a vegetarian, what on earth I am going to eat.  They usually get really obsessed with it and start calling me the week prior asking me if there are special things they should pick up.  When we go to restaurants, my dad always looks over the menu and reads me the things that might be vegetarian.  As much as I appreciate it, I am 41 years old and not a scrawny elfin woman – I believe I can figure out what to eat.  We nearly had a fight over what to get on a pizza when my step brother and his family came over.  After about 30 minutes of going over what toppings to get, I finally screamed, “I don’t fucking care, I will just pull the meat off, but I don’t want to discuss pizza toppings anymore – this isn’t hard!”  They also seem to think that since I work in biotech, I am a computer help desk person.  I actually do employment and immigration law, but am fairly handy technically.  It is usually because they can’t recall where they stashed their photos from their last trip to South Dakota or Ohio. 

Did I mention Ohio?  Not yet?  Really?  Because I looked at the photos from their trip three times.  Every time someone new would come over, they would run the slide show again.  Some of the pictures were nice, but they were generally of places they had eaten or a bridge or something.  Once was fine, but after the third viewing, I kind of wanted to jump off the lanai and take my chances on the rocks below the house. 

I do love going home, though.  The food is amazing – in just one walk up the hill I found mountain apple, mangos, lychee, strawberry guava – all fallen to the ground and some edible – squished and fermenting like a bad batch of spotee.   Three days in a row I had kim chee fried rice and papaya and li hing pineapple for breakfast.  It is a surprisingly yummy combination.  This time, four days wasn’t enough and I didn’t get to have any haupia or long rice.  In the cab home last night, I was answering emails on my phone and I kept expecting the car to start heading right, up the hill, to my house in Honolulu.  Every time I looked up, it was just flat, wet I5. 

There are, however, no roaches at my house in Seattle.  And cats.  Lots and lots of cats.  It is good to be home. 

Libelous and Satirical Fun

So two of the great things about living in the USA are that you can speak the truth without fear of legal retribution.  Social retribution is another matter, but I am willing to deal with that.  Hell, I have been a jackass most of my life, so am somewhat used to this by now.  

This is going to be funny to some and rough to others, but I need to get it out.  Now. I will be 41 in one week and I do not want to carry this shit around any more.  “Demons!  Be gone!”  Did that work?  If anyone shows this to my dad, I will deal with it myself.  If I want to kill someone, I will take care of it (note to law enforcement, I am not planning to kill anyone and do not have the means to do so).

About a year ago, I feel in love with someone I had known for a very long time.  He was charming, funny and had an accent and I will do about anything for an accent.  But he had a medical condition that was previously undisclosed and I wasn’t strong enough to handle it. 

We had a great time, we were silly, I felt like I was a 16 year old.  It was crazy and weird and exotic and chaotic and then he proposed.  This was my first proposal and as I always say in business “never, EVER accept the first offer”.  But I did.  In the parking lot at Bel Square mall.  Eww.  A mall?  In Bellevue? What kind of crack was I on?  But I did.  I made plans to introduce him to my dad, we flew out to Hawaii and he actually asked for my hand in marriage.  My dad cried.  I guess he figured he would never get rid of the mouthy, insolent brunette only child and decided to go for it.  Did I mention he had an accent?

He wanted to move into our own place so we could start our own memories.  Fair.  I get that.  However, it was not my kind of place.  I like a house with a history and some places you can’t walk or you will fall in to the basement and maybe a slight smell of mold.  I grew up in this kind of house and it just feels like home.  This is why my own house is a little fucked up and you should be wary going down the steps.  But I love its quirky weirdness, I love its imperfections, much in the way I don’t have any respect for people that have bad habits.  Like heroin addiction. 

So we leased a (no shit) $5000 a month townhouse overlooking lake union.  My mortgage is $1500 and my income at the time was $5,250. It was nice, if you are into new money.  As the old saying goes, new money or old money, it is still money.  But I like shabby chic.  This was all stainless steel crap. 3 story windows and 4 bathrooms.  Look, I am not the kind of girl to hire a maid, but four fucking bathrooms?  Really, who needs to pee that much?

After we moved in, things went south, fast.  He was unable to work, feel into a depression and started behaving really strangely.  No, you can’t go to breakfast with your friends!  No, you have to come home right after work. One night I got home to find a butcher’s knife and razor blades floating in our bath tub.  He showed me the marks the next day.  I had lunch with an old friend who told me “horizontal = therapy, vertical = morgue”.  He also threatened me to the point where I said I would call the police if he came one step closer. 

I left that night to sleep on my own sofa.  At my house.  He came home hours later and demanded I come home.  According to sources, on nights he didn’t return, he came to my house to sleep there.  Should I get a new sofa? 

Now I am not a pussy, I do not do what I am told.  I DO NOT cave in to men, but I was scared.  A few nights later, he didn’t come home.  He claimed to have slept with two of my friends.  At my house. 

Now, this starts getting good.

Christmas Eve, 2011, I got several texts and phone calls from my friends.  “are you OK?  And I am just thinking”, and I am just thinking “did I drink and facebook post or something?”  He dumped me.  On Facebook.  On Christmas Eve.  While I was in the next room.  Warm fuzzy photos of us together, sad songs – am I dating a 16 year old?

Is this a bad episode of Glee?  I packed my clothes, my cats and my toiletries and slept on the basement floor of my house.  MY house.  I was still on the hook for rent and fuck knows what else.  All Christmas weekend I moved what I could carry.  I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day moving what I could in my truck.  Merry fucking Christmas.

I had a friend move in while I was done (you do the math – Lease, $5000, mortgage $1500, income $5200) so had to couch surf in my own house for a week while we found her another place to live and had to move all of her shit because she had not planned for this eventuality).  Luckily, a very dear friend helped me move her to a house with 87 stairs so I could sleep in my bed and not the ground. 

Fast forward – he moves in with a Russian cupcake hooker while I am still paying half the rent.  He then moves out with an 18 year old (so my sources tell me) and demands I get my shit out of there within 3 days.  Tomorrow is the final walk through (learned that today).  So one more encounter with the ex, luckily one of my dear friends cut the engagement ring off my finger which will stay off.  For a very long time.  

Let the Games Begin!

I love walking/running around Greenlake – it always makes me feel better.  Not because of the exercise, but because there is always someone out there worse off than you.  After the long dreary winter, we have all gotten a little pallid and paunchy – some more than others and I am afraid I am in the “more than others” category. 

Today was a gorgeous spring day, like yesterday, and I was outside to soak it up.  After I got home from work both Saturday and Sunday.  At noon.  Poor me, I have a job I love and sometimes they make me work extra, I know I sound like a wuss, but couldn’t they have made me work extra in January?  Oh wait.  They did. 

Saturday was epic.  I had contractors at the house, a yard to mow, a meeting to attend, clothes to wash and then a charity event.  It was going to be non stop running no matter what.  Then I checked my Blackberry.  Shit.

DO NOT check your work email on the weekends, it can only lead to very bad things. 

I had gotten a request from our attorney that I knew would likely mean I would be rewriting the carefully prepared document I had spent the past two months writing and past six months researching in time for a morning committee call.  Yep, Sunday morning conference call.  I cried, I swore, I was able to get the document he needed from a colleague and do a best rewrite in a few hours while the contractors were here and mowed the lawn and did laundry in between iterations.  It led to some awkward moments – me telling the contractors I was going to have to take a shower while they were there (it just seemed like a really bad porno), me coming out of the shower in a towel to answer a call from the attorney and throwing around sentences like “409A valuation” and “salary compression compounded with increased market activity in the informatics sector” while dripping wet with soap left on my face and a half unshaved leg as they pretended I wasn’t really there and tried to look away in shame.  This was only a few minutes after they witnessed me throwing the weed-wacker across the yard and telling it to fuck itself.  They got really big tips. 

I was in a rush because I needed to get dressed for an annual charity event I attend with one of my oldest friends.  (Names WILL be changed to protect the uninnocent.)   I made it just in time for my meeting and showed up at a classic Seattle hangout dressed for a cocktail party.  Everyone else was in biker gear or goth cloth.  I took off my suit jacket to show off my tattoos so they didn’t flip me any shit and I kept flexing my pasty white arm (yeah!  You scared now!).  I hit three hipsters on fixies on my way off the Hill to make it back to pick up my reliable non sexual male life partner, Max, for the event. 

We arrived a little early and decided to class up Fremont by taking a walk down the Burke in dinner wear.  Then we entered the Hall of Darkness.  Or Fremont Studios or whatever.  The point is, the floor is uneven concrete and everyone at this event wears 8 inch heels, so we were all walking around trying not to fall onto the auction items or each other. 

I like to give a chunk of cash to charity because I think it is the right thing to do, and as a non profit veteran of 11 years, I know it funds the programs and salaries to support the key missions of the organizations I support.  Last night it was the Progressive Animal Welfare Society.  It holds a special place in my heart, because my mentor and manager at the City of Lynnwood, Robin Hall, SPHR, was on their board for years.  She died two years ago of cancer and the ache of losing her advice, friendship, wisdom and counsel - many years after I had moved on - is still there.  Plus, she convinced the Police Chief it was OK if I wore glitter on Fridays. 

So I bid on, and won, the cat topiary.  OK, you don’t “win” a topiary – you bid on it and hope you are more outlandish than the next person.  I won.  A cat topiary.  Which I have named Robin.  I have to water her every day.  Interestingly, the only living plant I have in my house is one given to me by my colleague Tracy at the City – it is still alive after 12 years, despite the fact that I am a vegetarian and it should be afraid of me.  Anyway, I now have to water the cat every day.  Hee.

The benefit was awesome – kitten kissing booth (with real kittens!), photo booth, live auction, silent auction and free wine.  Again, as a non profit veteran, the mantra is “get ‘em drunk and make ‘em cry”.  They succeeded.    As designated driver, I abstained even though my host had bid on a sommelier for the table for the evening and “won”.  I think I vaguely remember this from last year.  I think I bought Max.  I am not sure.  Or a beaver costume.  Whatever.  It is for charity. 

Let’s just say that a good time was had by everyone but me.  I cried, but since I couldn’t get drunk as the DD, I had to just sit there and be annoyed with everyone else.  Someone kept yelling “penis”, someone else was stealing votives and everyone else was sneaking the free wine into non portable containers.  I have always preferred hosting luncheons.  No one gets tossed and steals the Girl Scout cookies.  And no one dare yell “penis”. 

After efficiently (and bitchily, I will admit) taking care of the final details, I drove home to try and sleep before getting up at 6 a.m. to prepare for the committee call and finalize the documents.  My CEO thinks I am kind of a spaz (and he is kind of right, which is why I put it in my performance review and he initialed it, unedited), but I wanted everything to be perfect.  So I could not sleep.  I think I took 12 hits of Benadryl.  I hallucinated, but didn’t sleep. 

Finally get up at 5 a.m. and go in to work, rewrite everything.  By 9:30 a.m., everyone has changed their minds and we are back to the original document.  By 9:45, it is changed again and we are on our third revision, then we just declared a universal “fuck it” and let it roll.  Let’s just say that the call went well and I will be living at work between now and the Board meeting.  Send caffeine.  And maybe some sailors. 

After the call, I tried to sleep, but THE SUN was OUT, so I hoofed it down to Greenlake for a walk around the lake.  I lost my iPod to my EE (Evil Ex) but still have my fake mpg thingey.  It was gorgeous!  And everyone was as winterlogged as me (except for the 4 year old girl in a princess dress and razor scooter – I think that is taking the princess thing a little too far, man).

When I got home, I found I was sunburned.  Which is fucked up because I am from Hawaii and we are born with SPF 30.  Oh well, I cracked a new book and took it out on my hula hoop for an hour. 

(Boss, this means I won’t be at work for weeks due to my impending hip and knee rehabilitation). 

Welcome to Seattle, summer!  

Tater Tart

What is unfunnier than a writer writing about not being able to write?  A writer using the excuse of being unable to write anything good by figuring out what to make for her annual Easter Party!!!!

No offense to my good friends at work, but I almost jumped out the window at the sheer glee of dying in a bloody heap outside of the CFO’s office and right in front of the Thai Truck last week as I was forced to sing the Sex Pistol’s version of “God Save the Queen” in a fake English accent.  In all fairness, I did chose the song, but it was only because I was afraid if I didn’t pull something out of my ass quickly, we would have to do a tribute to The Monkeys (RIP, Davey).  One of my colleagues had returned from London with an absolute addiction to tea sandwiches.  No one knows why this is, but I think he was accosted by a bunch of hooligans in Pimlico and forced to ride the Green Line (Go Green!  Go District!) eating tea sandwiches dressed as Posh Spice.  

He called me one day and said, “Jen, I don’t know why, but I fucking love tea sandwiches.  I can’t stop eating them.  I have to have tea sandwiches ALL THE TIME”.  It was like dealing with an old school opium addict.  So we did what any good colleagues would do and we threw him a tea sandwich party.  We mainlined that cucumber sandwich right into his veins.  As he slumped onto the floor, drooling slightly out of his mouth, he said, “thank you.  I fucking love cucumber sandwiches” and died. 

I probably could have survived this, even though he is a very old and dear friend, but it turned into a “proper English tea” with frilly table cloths and games.  So I did the best I could and called my band, “Jenny Rotten and the Science Pistols”.  I really would have preferred to sing the Toy Dolls, but since no one knew the Pistols, they sure as hell weren’t going to be able to do a decent rendition of “Spiders in the Dressing Room” or “Dougy Giro”.

Remember that movie from the 1970’s, I think it was a drug scare film, where the kids smoked PCP and tried to run through the glass window of an office tower and it broke and they died?  I tried that, but we are only on the first floor and I was only on Earl Grey, so I just got a bump on my head and tried again.

Since I am a quitter and unable to even kill myself properly, I just wrote an Anti Corruption policy and promised to do better at my next party.

Easter.  Glorious Easter.  A true gift, a magical wonderland, a place of bunnies and rainbows and chocolate and chickens and Spring and flowers and bunnies (I am really into the bunnies – do not mess with the bunnies) and experiments in food.

I have been a vegetarian for 26 years (you are welcome, Morrissey and I think it was totally dickish for you to convince me to become veg and then not rescue me from high school – do you know how awful that place was?) and all of my friends have food allergies or only eat things from within 50 feet or that have been blessed by Durga – so throwing a party is always a challenge.  

The gluten free folks are the hardest- last year I did mac and cheese, but it got too dry.  I am still going to keep the long rice salad (bean thread – no gluten!), but have decided instead of mac and cheese, to develop something I have been thinking about for a long time.  Tater tot pie with no meat, no dairy and no gluten.  I am pretty sure it is going to have to involve Cajunized tots with a vegan gumbo (where do you get file around here?) that you can scoop out.  Of course it will taste much better if it is warm enough for everyone to dress like sluts so we can play hockey bunny in the street and start our egg hunt.  

Oh!  And this year?  Team activity- Peep Dioramas depicting famous hair bands (or no hair bands).

Tart-tastic.  It better be.  

Confessional

Forgive me blogger, for I have sinned.  It has been four months since my last post.  I have a really good excuse – work is eating my brain.  It already had holes in it from the 1980s, so it probably wasn’t that hard to get in there and sop up the last bits with a nice slice of Cibatta. 

I love to travel and this whole thing started because I kept going on these amazing adventures and wanted to tell my friends about the beautiful, grotesque, absurd and holy things I saw.  I still can’t believe the juxtaposition of the sacred and profane, the innocent and the wicked, and the terrible beauty of hope in a hopeless time and place.  Which brings me to Westfield Mall in Culver City, California.

After the epic travels of the past two years (India!  Australia!  Indonesia! Hawaii – which doesn’t count because I grew up there), the only trips I have taken recently are to our LA office.  I am a pretty aggressive driver, but the idea of driving in California freaks me out (because I think that is where Tina learned to drive and she makes me look like an elderly woman in an ’79 Buick that can’t see over the dashboard), so my world is limited to my depressing hotel, the lab and whatever I can find to do at Westfield Mall, which is in walking distance to both my work and hotel.

I am not much of a mall rat.  If I have to get something, I run in, grab it and go before the overstimulation of people and things vying for my attention sends me into a seizure.  For this reason, I can never enter a Costco and no one will ever get a Christmas present from me again.  But when I go to California, there just isn’t much to do rather than analyze the offerings at the local Target.

When I had employees in California before, they were in Orange County and the woman I reported to had a French Pedicure which I thought was weird because you toenails would have to be long enough to have two colors on them and that seems a bit gross.  Plus everyone had frosted blonde hair and wore pastels, so I felt like a complete outsider with my “I used to be a goth and can’t stop wearing black” attempt at corporate wear and chipped toenail polish.  Culver City is different, though.  People seem more normal there and by normal I mean there is actually some diversity in the place.  Meaning it isn’t like the Real Housewives of whatever.

This post doesn’t even make sense to me, so don’t worry if you are confused – I just needed to get back into the habit of writing.  After making some big lifestyle changes, I figured it was time to get back on the horse.  Get the rat through the snake.  Lasso the broncho.  Prime the engine.  Write.

I have gone out dancing the last two weekends (rocked it tonight, Lara!) and it feels so good just to lose yourself in the music and dance.  Especially to trance – it is a truly spiritual experience to dance through your exhaustion and come out the other side in a meditative state.  Until someone has to put on breaks or dub step and ruin my vibe, but whatever.  I did notice a new trend the past two weeks, however.  It seems that people have stopped wearing pants.  I mean that everyone (under 30, female and skinny) seems to be dancing in their underwear and GoGo boots.  I don’t recall this trend from the rave days.  We were all in hoodies and ratty jeans and sweaty Sketchers.  Now it is all sparkle pony hot pants and Elton John’s shoes.  Maybe it was always like that, but now I am sober so I actually notice.  I don’t know.   

Today was a good day – the garden is thriving, I caught up with some old friends and met some very interesting new people.  Tomorrow I am going to have to brave Target to start getting ready for Easter.  I know it is still a month away, but Hop, Bock, Chirp, Meow XII (my annual Easter party) is the crowing jewel of the spring party season.  Hockey Bunny will certainly be making a comeback as will Linda’s secret quiche recipe.  And it is the only day of the year I get to hop around in bunny ears eating chocolate and tossing a small, fuzzy stuffed bunny to Tina with a lacrosse stick while shouting “car!” as we play in the street. 

Now I will say my Hail Marys and sleep - all is forgiven.