Tales from La La Land

This was one of those incredibly vigorous work weeks, which can be both fulfilling and exhausting all at the same time. There’s nothing better than feeling like you’re a part of something big, and that perhaps your small part contributes to the overall success. At the end of each day this week, I definitely felt like my cocktail and bath were both well-deserved.

Sidenote: This is why I did not recap Top Chef. I watched the first half on Wednesday, and finished it last night. All I can say is: Gross. These people are gross. Plastic on a toilet bowl? Really? I’m struggling to pick out whose restaurant I’d actually want to eat at.

Now that it’s Friday afternoon, and the week is wrapping up, I am looking forward to a weekend where Laef and I can spend two days doing whatever we feel like doing. And, if what we feel like doing is nothing, then so be it. Since moving into our new place 3 weeks ago, it doesn’t seem like we’ve had a single day to put up our feet and relax. We’ve spent every weekend since the move getting our place in order. Saturday’s are filled with trips to Target, IKEA, furniture stores, more trips to Target and even more unpacking. Sunday’s seem to be filled with grocery shopping, putting together furniture and doing laundry. Basically, we’ve spent almost a month getting caught up.

I think we’re finally caught up (barely), and this might be the first weekend where we won’t have any pressing house issues. We don’t have any boxes left to unpack, and I think I’ve bought everything there is to buy at Target. There’s nothing on the schedule.

I think I just got a heroin high from typing those words.

Between work and moving, I am exhausted. But, let me tell you about the good news! Our new place has a bathtub! It’s a minor thing, really, but now I’m wondering how I got through long days without the essential 2Bs, 1C (Book, Bath, Cocktail). Upon arrival into the house after work, my routine is such:

1. Drop my shit in the middle of the floor.
2. Run the bath water.
3. Make a cocktail.
4. Make sure the cat is breathing. And fed.
5. Make sure Laef is breathing.
6. Get my book.
7. Disappear for 45 amazing minutes.

Our place also has hardwood floors and one of our new pastimes is throwing The Sanch down the hall on his back (think of yourself doing it in your socks, only it’s a cat.) We also have a balcony, which The Sanch has decided will be his new hang out. It gave me a heart attack at first, but as Laef so gently put it, “Probably he will land on his feet if he falls.” He seems to have mastered it, but the problem is when he sees a bird fly by he gets anxious and contemplates jumping a little too hard for my liking. To which Laef says, “Probably he will land on his feet if he jumps.”

So, anyway, summer is coming to an end. We are one month away from the start of college football and inching closer towards college basketball season. While I do miss Laef when he is traveling, there is a whole new crop of restaurants and shops in Brentwood that are screaming for me to explore.

T-minus one hour until happy hour!

TGIF.

Disclaimer: I haven’t even seen the movie yet. This is not a review. It is my internal debate about whether I’m even going to pay $15 to see this shit in the theater.

Back in the day, Sex in the City was a Sunday evening event that brought my closest friends and I together. Between 1998-2004, the series gave us a great excuse to come together to eat and drink. Well, the girls enjoyed the eating and drinking and the boys were super hopeful that the episode would show boobies.

Sidenote: The other night I was watching a SATC rerun on TNT. As soon as the first scene came on, Laef said: “This sucks. This is the one where they all show their boobies, but it’s TNT so we won’t see them.” He claims that he only knows that because I’ve watched SATC reruns a million times, but I think boys’ brains log that shit, and they can easily reference it when needed. Funny, they can’t easily reference where the vacuum cleaner is stored, but that is a post for a different day.

Anyway, SATC, like many shows was in its peak during Seasons 1, 2 and 3. Then they started stretching for storylines, and things got a little far fetched. So, they wrapped it up, leaving enough open ends to justify a movie. In 2008, with plenty of 30-something women joneseing for their SATC fix (myself included), the movie hit theaters.

I ate that shit up. I admit it. I went with my friend Allie. We got cosmos beforehand. We waited in line. There were questions and stories that were still justified in being answered. The Carrie and Big wedding, the exploration of Miranda’s marriage, Charlotte finally having a baby, Samantha living in California doing whatever it is that she does.

But, let’s face it. After 2 hours and 25 minutes, everything is explored. Carrie has her ridiculous New York apartment. Charlotte has all the happiness she could ever want. Miranda saves her marriage, and Samantha does whatever it is that she does.

The End.

Frankly, I don’t want to get Carried away again.

I’ve seen the previews. If someone can explain to me why the fuck Aiden would be in Abu Dhabi, I’m all ears. I know some of my girls are going to get mad at me and tell me to lighten up. This is what SATC is supposed to be: meaningless fun. Don’t ask questions because it’s not meant to make perfect sense. It’s meant to be a fun-filled 2 hours with your girlfriend on a Saturday afternoon.

So, Carrie is struggling to feel free after two years of marriage. And she’s bumps into Aiden. Thus Carrie becomes the girl I want to punch and say, “But, sweetie, we’ve been down this road before. With Big. Not with Big. In love with big. Heartbroken by Big. Left at the alter by Big. Married to Big. Now, after all this, you want me to watch you flirt with disaster in the form of Aiden? Now that you have your gagillion-dollar Manhattan apartment, faithful man and all the shoes you want?

Hell. NAW.

Charlotte and Miranda are struggling to raise kids and keep their sanity. THAT, I can relate to. Well, no I can’t because I don’t have kids. But, I’ve seen people with kids. It seems hard, exhausting, chaotic and, at times, frustrating. This would be a perfect story line if Charlotte didn’t have a billion dollars and several nannies.

The only thing I can decipher about Samantha’s story is that she takes lots of pills to keep herself, um, youthful? Horny? Nimble? All of the above?

I don’t know what happened to me since 1998. When the show was on HBO, the writing was really good. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I LOVED it. I still watch those DVDs. Um, hello, I drank Cosmos with Amy as though we were trotting around NYC and not Eugene.

Now I’d like a little more credit as a 30-something woman. I mean, at least give me some decent writing and some believable story lines. And, please, for the love of NEW YORK, keep the girls in the city that made the show what it was.

But, maybe it’s just time to shelve the girls. It makes me sad to say, but I wanted to watch them prounce around New York. I lived through them and their single lives. I lived through Miranda’s high-paying job. I lived through Carrie’s cute apartment and the fact that she got to type on a Mac all day looking cute and getting paid.

I really don’t want to see what happens when they become more like me. If I want to see a guy glued to his TV eating take out food, I can look across the couch.

Blog-neglect happens to everyone. And this is totally not going to be a post about how I’ve been neglecting the blog.

However, I figured I should put something up to bury that stupid Office Max Blog. You know, the one where I thought I was soooo creative with the headline? Sometimes I think I’m super funny and/or witty only to find out years (and, sometimes days) later that I was, in actuality, a giant tool.

So, anyway, since I last wrote that post, not much has happened. I thought about writing a post chronicling the shower dialogue between Laef and I, but I figured it’d make people super gaggy. But, we can not be the only ones who draw hearts with random hair on the shower wall.

Or can we?

Laef took it to a new level last week,  stringing together many of his fallin’ brethren to draw an entire face with a giant smile (not a good sign for the top of Laef’s head.) Then this morning I got in the shower and noticed that Laef had gone even further. He drew a penis. With balls. And pubes.

All I can tell you is this: When it’s 6:30 a.m., and you are fucking pissed off at your alarm clock and the cat who meows from 6 a.m.-6:30 a.m., NOTHING will make your morning more than seeing a giant penis drawn with hair on the shower wall. I cracked up. I can’t remember the last time I laughed at 6:30 a.m. on a work day.

The pressure is now on me to draw something for Laef’s enjoyment.

I guess I don’t care if you get gaggy or not. At least I didn’t include pictures of the hearts or the “Hi!” or the .

Then I thought writing a post about marathon training, and how I am on the home stretch in a sense. However, I don’t want to jinx it. I have one long run left – 19 miles this weekend – and can then begin to taper a bit. Next weekend, my long run will be 8 miles, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but: 8 miles at this stage is a cakewalk*.  The marathon is 2 weeks from Sunday. UNREAL. Can’t wait. There’s not much more to blog about the training – it’s kind of shitty, and if not for the help of some great friends (Angie, Erin), it would have been a lot worse. It’s draining physically and mentally, but I know the payoff is going to be WELL worth it. So, I am very excited for race day.

Other than that, there’s not much to tell. Laef is completely dialed into the Cardinals baseball season, so I just sit back and watch him swear at the TV or look doey-eyed at Albert Pujols every time is up to bat. I am completely dialed into the Real Housewives of New York City so Laef sits back and yells obscenities to me while pretending not to watch (he actually asked me yesterday if Jill and Bettheny were friends yet).

TGIF!

*Please don’t let me eat shit or get hurt on this run because I called it easy. Please.

I do a lot of things to block out the fact that I’ve become everything I thought I wouldn’t in terms of my professional life. Never in my life did I think I’d be a person who sat behind a desk from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. While I don’t miss the Sunday afternoon hours of working in college athletics, I do miss the roaming around I did for most of my work day.

Let’s be honest, I miss the bullshitting with people while standing at football practice pretending to work. I miss the free grub in the Autzen Stadium press box on a frigid Saturday morning after a long night of drinking (nothing says Saturday morning college football like Hole In The Wall). I miss wandering all over the Cas Center looking for Jonathan Stewart because he’s found the best hiding place to avoid interviews. It annoyed the crap out of me at the time, but now I realize that I was constantly in motion. Rarely was I behind my desk.

That was over 3 years ago. Now I sit behind a desk. The good news: I have my weekends completely free. I don’t stand in freezing rain pretending to care about whether or not Nate Costa took reps with the first team. The bad news: Fuck. I sit. A lot.

Office jobs are funny. It’s all of the stereotypical stuff one might think. Our color printer broke the other day and it was like a 6.0 Earthquake had struck. I am not trying to be disrespectful in light of the recent quakes – I am telling you that people lose their shit when office supplies go haywire.

Pandemonium, I tell you.

So, there’s the stress of: “You stapled this wrong”, “The printer is broken”, “How do you scan this?” (Yes, important people really are that stupid), “WHY CAN’T YOU DO 17 THINGS AT ONCE?”

And then there’s the joy of your Office Max order arriving.

I swear to God I get so excited when my new Post-Its arrive.

It’s disgusting. And I hate myself  for loving ballpoint pens so much.

I don’t really have anything good to say. But, I figured I should write something since it’s been a while.

Topic No.1 – Oregon vs. Washington State
OK, props to Oregon for making a comeback in the second half. I wasn’t expecting that after what I witnessed during the first half. However, Erine Kent scurries off the court and into the tunnel with two minutes left and his team trailing by a mere five points??!! Which begs the question…did EK have to poo at such a critical moment? Or pee? Or what? I look forward to reading about where exactly he went.

Topic No. 2 – Movies.
I was trying to come up with five movies that I’d take with me if I was going to a deserted island tomorrow. Please note that these five could change next week when I’m in a different mood.

1. True Romance
2. Good Will Hunting
3. Thelma and Louise
4. Secretary
5. Garden State

Topic No. 3 – Girl Scout Cookies
I watched a news report the other day that detailed which Girl Scout cookies have the most fat and are the worst for you. In case you are wondering they are thin mints and samoas. Which are the two kinds that Laef and I ordered from the daughter of one of his coworkers. That’s just the way life works, I guess. It’s like LA traffic — whichever way you’re driving is always the way that someone’s murdered out SUV blew a tire in the fast lane.

That’s really all I got for now. Boring, I know. Just wanted to say hi.

And, don’t you worry. There’s a blog about the Lush Patrol on its way.