Octogenarian Hangover

I didn't win the lottery. I got one number. That's ok. You know you live in SoCal when your desk is by the window, the blinds are shut and you still need to wear sunglasses to see the computer screen.

My Great Aunt Maxine and her one-eyed dog, Banjo. Thanksgiving 2011

My Great Aunt called this morning to tell me she's hungover from her 87th birthday party last night. She lives in a pretty posh assisted living facility where she says that although it's rough thinking you're three years from 90, 87 is pretty much the median age there so she doesn't feel so bad. She says there's a youngster there who's 79. She said there's a lady there who used to own the most ornate boutique dress shop near the capital in Sacramento. She turned 100 recently and as a gift to herself she got a facelift and doesn't look a day over 85. The centenarian also got herself the sleekest red scooter that she uses to buzz up and down the place. My Great Aunt Maxine said that back when she was younger people didn't get cancer from cigarettes until they started putting nicotine in them in the 60's. She then retracted that statement and said that's probably not true. They just croaked and no one knew to blame cigarettes.

She said the birthday party lasted until 11. She wishes I could've been there. The thing is, I was in bed by 9.30.

Lottery!

I can tell it's going to be a really great weekend because I just know I'm going to win the lottery tonight. It's like how you know the sun will rise or the earth is round or Oprah is actually the second coming of Christ. Take that, Rick Santorum.

Speaking of Rick "The Sweater Vest" Santorum, my friend David sent me a FOX news clip of Santorum talking about how he'd repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. My favorite quote in it from him is, "You're not homosexual by the color of your skin." This throws my whole identity into crisis. You can watch it here: 

And now that Michele Bachmann's gone she can go back to her lawfully-wedded duties of being Marcus' beard. 


The other reason I know... I just KNOW it!... that it's going to be a great weekend is because Portlandia's season premiere is tonight. That's right. Hot date with me, my couch and the Independent Film Channel. It's too much sexy.

By the way, if I win the lottery I'm going to pay someone else to write this nonsense.

Things I Learned This Year in L.A.

Budgie at the beach

Almost a year ago I moved down here hardly knowing anyone. I rented an apartment I'd never seen but assumed it was perfect because it allowed Budgie and was across the street from the dog beach.

I've been homesick for Santa Cruz. Of all the places I've lived, I've never been homesick. I was spoiled being able to step right out and surf everyday in a healthy ocean with friends. I don't know if it's my age that's making me more of a recluse now. I've definitely met some fantastic people here but I still spend about 95% of my time alone; forcing myself to stay disciplined with what I want to accomplish. Here are a few things I learned my first year in LA.

• I've swallowed worse things than pride. I let go of having to be right when I've felt wronged or slighted. Not all the time. But when it came down to an important friendship, I owned my shit for once, said sorry and meant it. My opinions aren't my identity. My opinions belong to ego. I don't have to cagematch someone to the death in defense of my opinions (threatened ego). Note to self, send letter to younger self circa 1988 onward about this.

• I can no longer consume dairy past its expiration.  The flora of my gut has probably had enough for one lifetime. 

• Pray on my knees with a fearless, open heart.  It's free therapy. See this post.

• Shut up and meditate. I'm talking about that constant newscrawl chatter and editor in our heads. Check out these free guided meditations from Meditation Oasis you can download on iTunes. Funny, I was telling my friend Melody (who writes a fantastic Yoga blog here) that every time I try to meditate, one of the cats takes a nasty dump in the litterbox. I think it's the Universe's way of honing my sense of focus. Anyway, it's really relaxing to stop looking back or projecting forward and just focus on the only thing that's truly real, which is the moment that's happening now.

• Do not compare myself to anyone or anything. Guess what? I'm turning 40 soon. My tits are racing each other to my knees and sometimes I think I could pack luggage to Europe in the bags under my eyes. Oh well. This is who I am. Also, appreciate other peoples' talents, don't line yours up next to theirs. That's the fastest way to feed insecurity and self-sabotage. What you have to say and offer is unique and perfect simply for the reason that you exist in the first place. I am surrounded by some brilliant people here and I find myself often thinking, "How come I didn't come up with that?" It's because I came up with something else. So just be quiet, have faith and....

• Never, ever, ever, give up on yourself. Other people might but that's about them, not you. Rest when you're weary but be your own best cheerleader. Do not quit. There are people who talk and people who do. Do something. The universe rewards action. I've come to notice that the people who do a lot of talking are mostly making excuses; standing around talking about all these things they're going to do. And that's fine. That's their journey. If you want something, go do it. You're going to meet headwinds and have very dark nights of the soul. That's ok. They make you a badass ninja.

• I don't think people in California are taught to parallel park in driver's ed. I thought it was just a NorCal thing. Nope. From Mendocino all the way down to the Mexican border, parallel parking seems to be impossible for drivers here. But, just about everyone I've met here has been a blessing, a teacher or an angel in disguise.

What are you taking away from 2011? Here's to an awesome 2012 for those who don't go by the Mayan calendar.

Things Done Right. Things Done Wrong.

Things done right today:

• Got up early.
• Managed to make it all the way back from the coffee shop, with a steaming cup-o-joe, on the rad new Santa Cruzer pintail PBR skateboard without a spill or broken neck.

Things done wrong:

Jeffrey on a mellower day

• My Jeffrey cat charges out the door so fast when I get home that he flies off the second story balcony, onto the iron fence below and one more bounce-splat to the sidewalk. 
• I spill my coffee everywhere in a mad sprint down the stairs
• He limps up the stairs with blood pouring from his mouth
• Like any centered adult in crisis, I call my mom (who lives 3000 miles away) crying in a panic. Then I call my cousin Joe, who's working.
• My mom tells me to call 911.
• I tell my mom you can only do that for people (although it was my first thought)
• I wrap Jeffrey in Budgie's blanket and off we go to the emergency vet
• Jeffrey wrangles out of the swaddling during the ride, then shits and pisses all over me and the car.
• Hundreds of dollars in rent money later, the vet tells me that Jeffrey has officially used up his ninth life, should have serious internal damage or have perished.
• Jeffrey just has a big fat lip and lots of soreness. Not even broken teeth. Just a big, swollen, hairless lower lip.
• I'm covered in coffee, diarrhea, and cat piss.

Aslan, based on Jeffrey the Cat

Although we're not going to have anywhere to live this month, Jeffrey's going to live. Tugboat brought Jeffrey home one freezing East Coast winter day ten years ago. I lived in an old farm house back then with an acre. They romped like little kids. He's been an amazing soul and friend. Such a wise old owl. He reminds me of Aslan from Narnia. Maybe blowing the rent money on vet bills was something done right. I got a worry on me like a blue dress stain circa 1995.

I know a lot of people say: it's just a cat. It's just an animal. To that I say, GFY.

If You Get Coal for Christmas - A Yuletide Poem

An Excerpt From

The Confessions of Kimchi Rhinestone: Ladylike Lewd Limericks from The Amerasian Honky-Tonk Angel [Paperback]

if you get coal for christmas

If you get coal for Christmas

Don’t whine like a spoiled bitch

What you have is fossil fuel

And that can make you rich

Although it means God hates you

And your soul is probably rotten

A lump of coal can bring you warmth

When you’ve been locked out and forgotten

 

9 Nov 2011: Please Be Quiet

Reasons to be quiet right now:

•  92% of the words coming out of your mouth (or streaming like CNN newscrawl through your mind) are useless chatter.

• Maybe what's coming out of your mouth (or being thought in that brain going a million miles an hour) has nothing to do with the present moment

• Maybe you haven't really weighed the power of your words or your responsibility for them once they make human contact. Maybe it's snarky, "Liz Taylor is (was) SOOO fat!" Maybe it's malicious, "Your mother's a whore and your father holds the money." Maybe it's character assassination from behind the safety of your internet connector gadget: "Tifani told me Snooki told her that Doc and Sneezi are satanic elephant poachers."

• Maybe you should be quiet because it really is refreshing to tune out your mind and focus on our amazing ability to convert oxygen and watch your thoughts float by like clouds.

I'm only telling you to be quiet because I need to shut up. I need to catch myself when I'm talking shit because that's the Little Me. Not the same as Mini Me. I wonder how many important things I've missed from running my mouth or getting attached to noisy thoughts.


Try to physically feel something good about the person who irks you the most. NOTE: Don't feel them up like you work at the National Restaurant Association-- allegedly. Tell your friends you think they're rad. My friends are rad because they listen to my incessant chin wagging.  My recording goes like this:

Dude! She lied to me! They outsourced my gig to India! That dummy almost hit me in the crosswalk! That guy cut in front of me! Don't small talk me while I'm trying get coffee, I'm busy updating my Facebook status on this shitty FB for Android app. You're an asshole because you did/said _________ to me. I'm a washed up hack at almost-40 with nothing but weight gain and cat litter coupons.

Ugh. Shut the fuck up already. So, I've been making a concentrated effort to not see myself as the star of a one-whiner show. We're all just using our illusion and forgetting about the core of who really are. Yes, I just referenced a Guns-N-Roses album.

Normally this is the place where I would then say something snarky about Axl Rose and how I feel ultimately victimized because he ruined one of my favorite bands that then forced Slash to team with Scott Weiland. But why?

He's done nothing to me and we're all going to end up taking the same dirt bath. Might as well make a choice to enjoy it. Don't worry about tomorrow. For most of us, it's coming whether we like it or not. Deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.

Take two seconds to focus on the carbon dioxide coming out of your lungs. I bet you forget our bodies even do that the whole time we're nursing grudges or thinking about next week's meeting without a clue of what's going on around us now.

So, just be quiet for a few minutes and breathe. It feels really good. The moment you're in is the only reality anyway. I'm going to shut up now and try to find something positive to say about that Android Facebook app.

2 Nov 2011: 13 Years

A couple months ago my mom sent me a journal that belonged to my father. "He was writing a book," she said. "I'm sending it to you." All I could think was, "You've been holding on to this for 13 years?"

It arrived a few days later. I cracked open the cover and saw that distinct, perfect script. My dad's handwriting was almost like geometric calligraphy. I think I inherited my pen obsession from him. He always used a fountain pen with jars of ink. I was fascinated by them when I was a kid. I would sneak into his den, jam the nibs into the jars and get ink everywhere. You don't see pens like that much anymore.  Where do you even buy jars of ink? My pens have to be 0.7 with gel ink or else I can't think.

My father's handwriting was so distinct that when I started learning to read I realized the tags on Christmas presents that read "To: Michelle, From: Santa" weren't from Santa at all. I called bullshit on my dad when I was five. "This is your handwriting. There is no Santa." "You're right," he said, and winter went on like it always does. My older brother cried. I could've cared less. You still got stuff and didn't have to go to school. Win-win. When I explained to the kids in my class that it's their parents' handwriting on their gifts from "Santa," some of them started to cry. My teacher sent me home with a note asking my parents to please help me refrain from ruining Christmas for the other kids. I didn't need to give the note to my parents. I jammed it in a crevasse of my white wicker dresser drawer. I got the message. Even at five, I was never into being a middle man.

My father's penmanship

Mine. I think it skips a generation.

I haven't read his book. I've kinda scanned it but mostly slam it shut and shove it into the back of my desk drawer. Kind of like the way I jammed the note from my teacher into my dresser.

Today is 13 years since my father passed away at some place just an hour up the 405. All alone in the middle of the night in a city where no one knew his name but the coroner, at 53. That's fifteen years older than I am now. Hopefully our paths, just like our penmanship, will look a little different.

26 Oct 2011: Going, Going.... Gray

I started noticing it right after Aimee died. I was twenty-three. A couple gray hairs buried in the back of my head. Wiry anomalies in a bone-straight mane. Rice farmer hair, I called it. Not enough of them to come close to calling it salt and pepper.

Fast forward fifteen years. Tonight I leaned closer into the mirror when I was washing my face before bed. Upon close inspection, my skin looks like a cartographer's dream: crow's feet crevasses that flow into a grid of criss-crossed lines across my mug. Apparently, a lot of grinning... and, a lot of grimacing. And way more gray sprouting up around my hairline like suburban sprawl. It's not an anomaly anymore. It's soon to be salt and pepper. I've dated a couple women who dyed their hair (and probably still do but how would I know? I've never been a let's-be-friends-after-a-fall-out type). That's another post. Anyway, each of them said, "If I didn't dye my hair, I'd be completely salt and pepper." Like it's a bad thing. Is it? I'm aging. Am I accepting it too easily?

Budgie is six and has turned almost completely gray around her muzzle. She and I are similar in age if you think of her in dog years. We're both sitting around going gray. Yep. That's about it.

24 Oct 2011: For Each of You

For Each of You

Be who you are and will be
learn to cherish
that boisterous Black Angel that drives you
up one day and down another
protecting the place where your power rises
running like hot blood
from the same source
as your pain.

When you are hungry
learn to eat
whatever sustains you
until morning
but do not be misled by details
simply because you live them.

Do not let your head deny
your hands
any memory of what passes through them
nor your eyes
nor your heart
everything can be useful
except what is wasteful
(you will need
to remember this when you are accused of destruction.)

Even when they are dangerous
examine the heart of those machines you hate
before you discard them
and never mourn the lack of their power
lest you be condemned
to relive them.

If you do not learn to hate
you will never be lonely
enough
to love easily
nor will you always be brave
although it does not grow any easier.

Do not pretend to convenient beliefs
even when they are righteous
you will never be able to defend your city
while shouting.

Remember our sun
is not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest.

Respect whatever pain you bring back
from your dreaming
but do not look for new gods
in the sea
nor in any part of a rainbow.

Each time you love
love as deeply
as if it were
forever
only nothing is
eternal.

Speak proudly to your children
where ever you may find them
tell them
you are the offspring of slaves
and your mother was
a princess
in darkness.

- Audre Lorde, From a Land Where Other People Live

Oct 20, 2011: Rejection & Rapture Taste Like This

Rejection tastes like burnt hair smells. But, if you can overcome the fear, it's not quite as painful as an epidural.

Woops! My bad!

Rapture tastes like the jubilee of Jiminy Cricket. The other kind of rapture (the one that was rescheduled by Harold Camping to tomorrow) probably tastes like sand and burned barbecued chicken drumsticks.

My friend, Nicole, and I had a brief IM conversation today. I pinged her to say goodbye in case one of us gets left behind tomorrow, or our luggage gets lost in hell or we take the wrong train, etc. I mean, that's pretty much a definition of hell.

Maybe hell is where you're on a tarmac in Phoenix in August for eight hours, fantasizing about take-off with a screaming kid kicking the back of your un-reclined seat. I digress. Nicole said she's eating Chinese food for dinner. An interesting choice for a last meal before flowing down the River Styx. I think I'll spend tonight renewing my subscription to Cat Fancy and eating my emotions with a combination of sodium and carbs. My hope for you is less rejection, and more rapture. The Jiminy Cricket kind.