Awkwardly Social

I’m on hiatus at the moment.  I like saying that.  “I’m on hiatus!”  It adds a positive twist to my current unemployment situation.  And since my 2nd episode aired last Sunday, and we’re waiting to hear if we get a second season, it is actually true.  We TV people are so fancy with our hiatuses (hiati?) and our 2nd seasons and our episodes on TV.  In fact, today I actually had a “lunch meeting” with a real producer and pitched ideas to him and he acted like I wasn’t a total moron.  It felt like a real thing even if it was Seth’s best friend and I am just the girlfriend who was there to act like a reality tv expert.  Maybe one day, I’ll get paid again to have story meetings.  (Hire me! I promise I’m very fun and talented and you won’t ever be bored in a room with me.  I can hula hoop!)

I’m trying to get some other writing done, but of course, I have an interim gig lined up already and my first week off has slipped away, and by this time next week I’ll be swamped.  These are good things.  Yay!  But I’m not getting any closer to finishing that great American screenplay/documentary/novel/short story that I was supposed to be working on. C’est la vie!

Nothing much else has happened other than that time on Cinco de Mayo when I was supposed to meet some friends at a bar, saw that it was crowded, couldn’t find parking, went to a different bar, found parking and then started to accuse Seth of having rotten kids, started crying when Seth assumed that I meant he was a rotten dad, and fell asleep worried I was not only going to have to find a job but also a new place to live because he was going to leave me and Lula would probably prefer to stay with him now that she’s picked a favorite and the favorite is him.

Needless to say, I don’t think Seth is a rotten dad, I do think his kids are sometimes rotten (I also admit that being a kid myself, I am sometimes rotten and I don’t blame my parents… much…), and he didn’t make me move out, and we are still very much in love, but I haven’t heard from my friends I was supposed to meet so I guess they hate me.  Phew and boo!

My other concern of the moment is that I am interviewing for jobs, something I haven’t had to do in a while, and I worry about my google results and how people will find this page if they’re really looking and what they’ll think when they do.  I’ve tried to make it less findable, and for the most part it is.  There are some dead ends that if cross-referenced a savvy person could navigate through.  But I’m fine with that.  I’ve made my bed.  And here I am, as we speak, in my pajamas, laying in it.

I ate ice cream for dinner.   Someone get me a wheel chair, I’m getting too fat for these pants.

Oh god, this is not ending well.   I need to put this baby to bed.

Saturday

After a meeting with the home owner to go over some issues still pending at our house, we needed to eat Mexican food.  Our house is located in a space/time vacuum so it was 3 hours later that we were able to emerge from the clutches of our living space and venture into Hollywood for an early dinner at Lucy’s El Adobe.  I had a margarita with dinner, my first cocktail since The Great Dry-out Experiment of 2008, and immediately began to try get us back to our house for some adult entertainment.  Thankfully, The Great Dry-out Experiment of 2008 is still going on for Mr. F, so we were able to continue our mission of going to Target to buy important things like garbage cans and bath mats.  While in the shower curtain aisle, agonizing over a waffle curtain vs. a striped curtain, I threw up my hands and said, “I am drunk.  And you are not.  Neither of these curtains make sense to me.  Can you please pick?”  To which Hipster #1 from Central Casting smirked at and sashayed away.  At some point, I contemplated aloud whether or not my legs would fit through the baby leg holes in the shopping cart and was gently led toward an aisle full of sparkling things.  Thankfully after an hour and a half of hellish shopping, my drunk wore off and I was able to correctly determine that Mr. F had done the right thing by discouraging me from trying.

Upon our arrival at home, now stone cold sober, I stared at the dish rack I had purchased 8 months ago for my little 201 apartment and started to get a little emotional.  There are many reasons to get emotional but in that long list of reasons, “Dish rack reminding you of a story your boyfriend told you about a girl he drove up the coast with right before you got together with him,” is not included.  So I sucked it up and let it go.  The dish rack holds no emotional power over me!  I never thought I would admit to someone I was sleeping with that a dish rack was making me cry.

Sunday 

I made up the bed in the guest room and stretched out on it to see what kind of view my house guests would wake up to.  There’s a 100  year old tree out the window and if you lay just right, you can see its branches laddering up its trunk.   We were supposed to go look at dining room tables but me stretched out on a freshly made bed was too much of a distraction for Mr. F, and, well, time got away from us.  I engineered it perfectly, truth be told, looking for dining room tables was not on my list of things I felt I could handle, laying innocently on a freshly made guest bed, however, was.

We finally dragged ourselves away from each other long enough to pretend to look for the perfect dining room table.  The one store I looked up, has closed.  For good.  Feeling all weekendy and happy and in love I steered us across the street for some gelato at Pallazo Gelato.  No on Prop 8 buskers were lined on the streets hooting and hollering and we both agreed that Prop 8 should be no-ed so that people could marry whomever they chose, especially if that included their dog.

Mr. F is a slow walker.  He can out-slow-walk any person in the history of slow-walking people.  I was eating my Moroccan Vanilla Lemon Gelato and trying to keep pace with him when he started laughing.  “How slow, exactly was I just walking?”  And I replied, “I wasn’t going to say anything until you noticed, but you were walking so slowly I thought we might make it to the light sometime next year.”  The light was 10 steps away.  Then I showed him how slowly he was walking.  And the old lady at the other corner harumphed and walked away in a mood, thinking I was imitating her.  It was all I could do not to shout after her, “No, lady!  You don’t understand, it’s my slow ass boyfriend!”

Laying in bed, ignoring everything pending and looming in the house, we had a long, honest conversation about babies and our relationship and how we’re going to do things.  It was the best talk we’ve had in our relationship of amazingly good talks.

As we relished in the afterglow of sex instead of dinner, we stared up at the ceiling and watched a disgusting bug make its way around directly over our bed.  “Is there any way I can get you to just imagine its not there and fall asleep, or am I going to have to kill it,” Mr. F asked.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I answered and covered my head with the covers hoping the creepy crawler wouldn’t lose its footing and drop on my face into my nose and suffocate me.   “That’s my girl.”

I had a function on Friday night. An open bar function. It was the first time I’ve gone out and socialized with people I sort of barely know without having a couple of drinks in me. I would have been terrified about it, but I knew that if I couldn’t do this, I really do have problem and maybe I shouldn’t drink anymore.

As I sucked on my club soda, a woman came to talk to me, holding a margarita, salt lining the rim of her glass, green liquid chilling on ice cubes. “That looks delicious,” I said to her. Trying not to let the rising panic in my voice show through, trying not to lick my lips. She sat it down on a ledge and said, “Oh, it’s just a regular old margarita.” And I sighed a deep breath of relief, she could have said anything, but she said the perfect thing. It was just a regular old margarita. I’ve had hundreds (thousands?) of margaritas. And I can fetishize it as much as I want, but it’s just tequila and lime juice and rock salt, not a magic elixir.

The night ended earlier than it would have if I had to sit around deciding if I was sober enough to drive home (note to self and everyone, if you have to think about it, you aren’t) and instead said my dry good-byes without any embarrassingly too tight hugs or sloppy cheek kisses. I called Mr. F on my way home, “Baby, I don’t know the last time I left a party sober. I kind of forgot how easy it was.” He wisely told me to hang up the phone, that talking on the cell while driving was illegal too.

I have one week left of enforced non-drinking, and this morning as we sat at Dusty’s having breakfast, knowing I had to work on my script in a few short hours, I wished I could have a nice crisp glass of rosé. But instead I chugged glass of water after glass of water. It felt so straight.

The most concerning thing about this process has been people’s reaction to me. Most are shocked I’ve gone this long without a drink, some straight up don’t get why anyone would want to stop, but the most disconcerting are the people that pulled me aside and told me they’re glad I’m doing it - that they were worried I was getting out of hand. I’m not going to lie, that stings more than a little. When I told Mr. F that I was stopping, he thought it was because of him. He’s on a drinking hiatus until they can determine if the cause of his elevated liver panel is actually the drinking, not the other thing. He held my hand and reminded me of a drunken conversation we had one night, thick in cigarette withdrawl, Valium not working, I told him that if I had to stop drinking I’d kill myself.

Turns out, I was being melodramatic. I don’t feel suicidal in the slightest. My skin doesn’t feel like dust. I no longer have to run down the night in my head and struggle through the fog of the events that unfolded making sure I didn’t say or do something irrepairably embarrassing.

I’m still struggling with sober writing, but it’s not quite as scary. It’s just a little harder. I have to push everything else out and just be still with myself, which is what the alcohol helped do. Unfortunately there’s only a fine line between being still with yourself and over lubrication and suddenly you’re no longer sitting at your computer, you’re drunk dialing inappropriately (redundant!) and having weird conversations with random neighbors that you find sitting on your back stoop smoking weed and talking about their kids they no longer have custody of and you realize you just don’t know how you got there, you’re a writer, not a white trash slut with questionable relationships.

Truth be told, the line isn’t actually that fine.

Last night we had to grab a cab to make it the last 4 blocks to the parking structure. I was a vodka tonic, a glass of champagne and a martini and a half in, empty stomach, wearing a pair of high heels that weren’t made for walking. I was a handful to say the least and Mr. F couldn’t take it. Then I started one of my awful messy conversations about shit I don’t talk about when I’m sober, mostly because I bury that stuff pretty deeply but partly because it doesn’t really affect me when I’m not shit faced.

And this morning things came crashing in and, deep breath, I’ve made a decision to stop drinking. Maybe not for good. You know, one day at a time, all that bullshit. Fake it, ’til you make it. Slogan, slogan. Fuck A.A., I don’t believe in God.

I hate being so dramatic, but today was one of those days I can’t write about here. I wish I could write about everything that happened. Everything we all went through and are going to be going through for the rest of our lives. It’s just that I can’t. So instead I’ll tell you that if you ever thought that good thoughts and the power of positive thinking could change the world like I have in the past week, you were wrong. I was wrong. But the funny thing about it is, here I am still hoping that if I keep thinking positively things will somehow get better.

Today starts a new period in my life. To mark a new life phase normally I would have a drink and celebrate it, no matter how awful the new period looked. But now that I’m in this new period, drinking is off the table.

I’m sober.

And this is the part of the television movie where the audience gets a good feeling, a hopeful feeling, that maybe things are going to be alright for this girl, now that she finally got her shit together. But here I am, the heroine of this particularly awful and obvious and telegraphed television movie, thinking if there was anything I could do to stay the fun drunk, I’d do it. There is. And I can’t.

And I’d love to tell you why, and if you know me in real life, just ask, I’ll tell you. I just can’t here. It’s not appropriate. I will tell you it has nothing to do with anything that happened to me directly.

So, don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do? I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to become really familiar with Pellegrino and all of its friends.

We were supposed to drive my car to the airport, long term park, hop on a shuttle and catch our red-eye. The only problem was my tire started making a weird noise. A noise that one can’t ignore when one is about to drive on three freeways at break-neck speed, because in Los Angeles, if your tire blows out on the freeway, you are fucked 10 ways to Monday, and not in the good way. It wasn’t that big of a deal, because Allie had her car. I don’t like starting a trip on a note like that, though. My superstition makes me believe if my tire is flat, it’s a sign that the Universe doesn’t want me to get on a surely doomed flight that will go down in flames just after the plane rips in half and I go flying into the ether, arms and legs flailing unattractively on my way to certain death. But, as you probably guessed, I’m not dead.

As soon as we got through the most annoying security line ever (note to security lady - we’ll make sure we have our boarding pass out, for sure, no really, we will! Oh, wait, you wanted our boarding? pass? What?) we hustled to the bar so I could drown my Valium in some vodka. It’s some new thing in bars in airports and (apparently) Michigan to ask if you want a double for $3.00 more. Just so you know, HELL YES, should always be your answer. Hell motherfucking yes if you’re in Los Angeles. The Michigonians don’t like it when you ‘cuss.’ Unfortunately for me, the double vodka tonic and Valium did not work. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to kill myself. I almost started to wish the plane would go down in a fiery fire ball that was on fire because I was tired, but I held back. The universe has been getting my signals crossed lately and I didn’t know if it would get the sarcasm. The cabin was dark and I saw the silhouette of a flight attendant slowly making her way down the aisle. I grabbed her in desperation. “Lady, I need a vodka tonic. Like now. Is that possible?” She kind of wasn’t a flight attendant… oops.

When we landed in Michigan (Detroit Rock City!) I was operating on about an hour of fitful sleep that involved me drooling into my hand while my sweater covered my face. It wasn’t pretty. I walked into baggage claim and he was sitting there waiting. He hugged me and told me I looked so pretty.  I think he was delirious because I looked like a piece of road kill.  I wanted to crawl onto the top of the carousel, you know the carpeted part, and lay down for a minute. I was advised that was a bad idea.

It took us 7 hours to make a 4 and a half hour drive. But we got to see this charming, little town, Fenton, Michigan has some serious good vibes. Also strong cocktails. (The mother of the bride told me it was the armpit of Michigan after I told her I wanted to live there. What can I say, I love armpits!)

There are a lot of barns in Michigan. I liked the look of this broken down one just past The Jerky Stop. (The ‘2nd largest Jerky Outlet in Michigan’… They’re so painfully honest in Michigan.)

After about 6 hours of barns and Jerky Outlets I started to hate Michigan. I mean, what the fuck? It’s all green. ALL OF IT. There is just green, tree, green, lake, barn, green, green, Jerky Outlet, TREE. We turned down our final highway on the way to the remote wedding (where I was pretty sure we were being set up for some kind of Big Chill meets The Descent situation) and I said out loud to no one in particular, “I gotta be honest, I am so FUCKING OVER MICHIGAN.” It got a good laugh.

But then we got to the hotel and I looked out from our gigantic deck across a quaint little field and saw a lake shimmering in the distance and got back under Michigan.

Last week, Mr. F and I had an impromptu Senior Ditch Day. (It’s funny that we called it that because, um, I don’t know if I’ve told the internet yet, but Mr. F is 20 years my senior… What? He gets discounts! Hahaha, just kidding.) We had breakfast at the Pacific Dining Car, drinks on the roof of The Standard downtown, I got a pedicure at a fancy spa, more drinks, and we ate some sushi, and to top it all off we walked along the canals in Venice. I had never been down there and it was tres romantic.

I have a thing about ducks. You know when they tip over, ass in the air head down, fishing, I think it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around adorable. Every year around Easter at the feed store in my home town they would have ducklings and chicks, and once in a while we could convince our mother to let us bring them home. We would fill the bathtub and let them swim. Before they get their quack they peep just like little chicks and then their voices change right around when they’re getting their adult feathers and it’s like having tiny awkward teenagers swimming and shitting in your bathtub.

So we were strolling along the canals, peeping into people’s windows, wondering if they were as happy as we were when I saw a mama duck and her eight ducklings. I clutched Mr. F’s arm, woozy from the booze and feeling all loved up, “Oh my fuck. Ducklings? Kill me now. My goddamned ovaries just exploded.” He wrapped his arms around me, “You want ducklings, kid?” “Yeah, I do.” “We’ll get you some ducklings, baby.”

Wait, let me back up… On our second date, back in May, we went on a long hike in Will Rogers’ State Park. I spent a large part of that hike telling him how I didn’t think I wanted kids. How kids are awful. How they kind of ruin your life. How I’ve gotten this far without fucking up another human being, I might as well keep my record perfect. I turned to him at one point and said, “Well, you know, you’ve got kids.” He answered, “No, I have adults.” (They are just close enough in age to me to maybe creep some of you out.) Oh, how this lady doth protest too much…

Last night, he scooped me up after a shit day for both of us and we went to Edendale Grill. It’s got a pretty patio with twinkling little lights, and a kick ass margarita. I had 3. Or was it 4? When he finally managed to convince me it was time to go, I stood up and pressed into him. I have no idea how it came up. I mean, I can’t imagine I would have just blurted it out, but I must have said something because he said, “You want a baby?”

Um…

Yeah…

Hi, don’t let me have any tequila EVER. AGAIN.

So I threw my arms around his neck and said the most romantic thing I’ve ever said *cough* “Maybe, but you’re so old.” And I said it loud. And there were a lot of people around. And he started laughing so hard that I thought we might collapse into a heap right there in front of all the hipsters.

We got to the car and he did that thing. You know that thing that guys do that I have no idea where they learned to do it, but they touch your face and it feels like you’re being adored? That thing. He kissed me and I told him I was sorry I was so drunk and that he was kind of lucky because tequila used to make me get into bar fights and I was rambling and he just looked at me and said, “Kid, if you want a baby, we’ll make it happen.”

And I curled up into my seat and sighed, “Those fucking goddamned ducklings.”

I will not say how much vodka was consumed last night, mostly because I lost track. Dear young people of the world, I have a lesson for you… DRINK GOOD VODKA. I woke up still drunk at 3am, drank some water, and aside from finding myself standing naked in front of my wide open window at 7am, I have no other ill effects. Ketel One. Learn it, live it, drink it.

So, because I was hammered and a little high I started drunk texting. I cannot lie, there was a booty call sent out to two different dudes. That would have been awkward if both responded, right? Thankfully one is not even in the state at the moment, and the other dude just straight up denied me.

A little back story, he’s the 26 year old who I made out with and whose world I kind of rocked last weekend. That sounds kind of braggy. But to be honest, if you’re a girl and you know a few tricks and a little super filthy dirty talk, you’re probably light years ahead of the rest of the pack. You mostly just have to pay attention. Be present in your make out. Be the make out you want to feel in the private parts (I think Gandhi said that).

Then on Sunday, after an awkward parting where-in I was baked and told him to go home, he left me a sad voice mail message. And because of the drama surrounding making out with a 26 year old who is dating a 20 year old in my building, I didn’t call him back. I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the week and thought nothing more about it. Until yesterday when I got a call from my friends R and T telling me he’s moving back to Minnesota. SUNDAY. Which, I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with me. Unless I was the girl who put that final nail in the coffin. What can I do? I just wanted to do it with him, not have like a relationship. Where he called me. To talk.

Enter drunk Tamara.

I figured I should at least give him a little send-off before he left, something to remember California by. Besides drunk Tamara really thought she needed to get laid. (Oh, silly drunk Tamara, that is how girls get pregnant or herpes.) So I texted him. And he seemed to be considering it.

And… then.

[pffff. tap tap tap. check one. check one. Is this thing on?]

I must have passed out and missed his call. Right?

I was talking to a friend the other day about how I have come to realize that being 30 is actually pretty awesome.  I’m having the best time.  It’s weird and sometimes awkward and I’m doing some inappropriate things with inappropriate people, making me just verging on this side of being a whore, but 30 has been bringing the fun, and I have been accepting it.

I know it’s totally boring to read about how things are good and I can’t give any details.

But, well, things are good.  And I have another secret.  It involves slightly not so legal things and going to bed (but not sleeping) at 3am (yes, again with the late night.  What’s up Los Angeles?  You can’t get a damned decent night’s sleep?  No wonder you’re always cutting me off and swerving in and out of lanes.  You are sleep defuckingprived) and kind of getting my face kissed off.  There is a point when stubble is too stubbly and you should probably stop kissing the person you’re kissing, but um, I didn’t.  Hi!  I have a red face this morning.  For more than one reason!

I wonder if I’m going to remember what this was about when I look back at it in 3 to 5 years, you know, just after I get out of prison for having so much goddamned fun.

I’m just happy that above title sentence actually makes sense!

Kristin and I are drunk and surfing the internet. It’s a wild party. There’s someone with a British accent on the televsion. Canada is a foreign country! Did you even know that? Their money is different. I paid for something in all coins today and I wasn’t carry bags of pennies. Nope, just handed over a couple of loonies and toonies, and embarassingly enough counted them out on the counter like I was some kind of seven year old. Two, Four, and that is a Oner so that makes Six, oops no FIVE, Six and look here are two quaaarrrters. If I hadn’t told them I was an American I’m sure they would have assumed I was some kind of high functioning retarded person. Oh wait, um, yeah I guess they probably assumed that anyway. I love Canadians! Except that guy at the bar who tried to make fun of Americans at the bar and I told him that it was a real problem, our recession. And I gave him my serious face, “It’s really tough there, things are bad.” and in my sad face and morose eyes he saw a vision of America that looked not unlike Soviet Russia in the 70s. Oh, I’m good!

Nolan was making fun of my skinny arms today. He said, “And you have little guns.” And I made the “pew pew pew” sound that the tie-fighters make in Star Wars and he thought that was possibly the funniest thing he heard since baked beans. Or, whatever. He thought it was funny, is all. I’m not trying to make it a bigger deal than it was, but dude, I am big in the Candian under 3 market. Give me a big money for a book deal, I’ll sell in the high ones That’s single digits baby!

Ooh, and I managed to bring it back to the numbers. It’s like a drunk blogging miracle.

The bartender. Oh, the bartender. On the one hand, it’s their job to treat you like the prettiest girl at the bar. But on the other hand.

I just sat here for a second thinking what could possibly be on the other hand. Still stumped.

I will say this, there’s nothing sexier than a man who knows about wine. Actually, there are a lot of things sexier I’m sure, but after dating a man who can’t tell the difference between a glass of grape juice and a half-way decent cab, it was refreshing to have someone drink a glass of wine with us and know what he was talking about. He had soft hands.

I always have the best time at that wine bar. We met Matt, a man who was eager to talk about our respective racks and what we should be doing with them in order to snare a man. Or, I think that’s what was going on, I was too busy making googly eyes at the bartender. He might be reading right now. I gave him the web address. That’s another embarrassing drunk girl thing to do, “HERE’S MY WEBSITE LET ME SHOW YOU IT.” At about that point my $5.00 ring flew off my hand and onto the floor. I spent a few seconds with my ass on the stool and my head down by my feet. I’m flexible when I’m drunk. Single men take note!

I have no clever closing for this, but I wonder what a drunk girl is to do at the end of her night when it’s clear she’s not going home with the bartender. Should she give him her number? Or just awkwardly hug him and stumble out of the bar? I think you can guess which I did.