Awkwardly Social

I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m having “trouble” getting pregnant.  I mean, I’m not pregnant, but it’s not really that much trouble.  And for some reason I get really irritable when I have to say, “I’m trying to get pregnant.”  Because that makes me feel like a failure.  There is no try, damnit!  Do or do not!  So when my friend told me I should do acupuncture and that she has a really great person, I was like, ok….  Skeptical glasses going on.  I called the acupuncturist a couple of months ago, and we traded phone messages, but I never actually booked an appointment.  So when old Aunt Flo showed up this month, I was like, fine, I’ll do your magic, lady!  I’ll puncture my soul to bring forth good baby mojo. Bring it!

Which is not what I said to the acupuncturist.  She asked why I wanted to try acupuncture, and I told her, begrudgingly, “I’m trying to get pregnant.” I booked my appointment.  Filled out a long questionnaire that had a lot of questions about the color, density and frequency of my stool, my vaginal discharge (oh mercy) and my stress levels.  Anger, check!  Depression, check!  Anxiety, check, check, check!  And fearfulness, check baby, check baby, one two!

When I got to her office, I was sort of bedraggled and tired.  I laid down on the treatment table, told her about my sex life and my mood swings and she told me a few things about diet and my exercise regime (no more Shredding for me!  yay! I still get to jog, though, so not completely off the exercise hook) and she said that from what she saw on my questionnaire and provided my gyno will do a little blood work and a fallopian tube procedure to rule out anything hormonal or mechanical, my stress levels are probably the most detrimental thing to my fertility.  That and the fact that I have an old husband.

Then she told me I had to quit drinking coffee.  Hmmm.  I might have felt all of these emotions at that moment - rage, anxiety, depression, fearfulness.  Coffee and the occasional margarita are my only vices! I am squeaky clean, lady, don’t take away my coffee!  She smiled and said, “I know, it’s very delicious, I drink it myself.  But I have 2 children at home, so I am allowed.”  Bitch.

Then we got to the low acid diet, and the herb and vitamin regime and I was like, enough!  I get it, I get to have no joy in my life, just poke me with the needles already! And she did.  She poked me with what she called the “tiny baby needles.”  And the only one that hurt was the one on the right side of my stomach.  Sort of a pinching from the inside kind of hurt.  It was unpleasant and weird but not terrible.  Then she poked my head, told me to close my eyes, relax and breath.  And she left the room.

I don’t meditate.  I cannot relax when there is hippy dippy music playing.  My feet were freezing.  The sun was peaking in from the window at the top of the room at that annoying brightness level that isn’t too bright but is still bright enough and all I could think about is how I wished I could put something over my face.  I tried to adjust my body position and felt like the needles were ripping my guts out.  It was the opposite of relaxing for me.  But I laid there, counting down from 100 - the only way I know how to quiet my mind and my lady finally came back in.  She smiled and asked me how I felt.  I was like, oh lady, you have no idea what you’re in for with me.  “Not relaxed?”  Dude, so not relaxed.   She said, “Well, it’s a process.  We’ll get there.”  I was like, ok… If you say so.

The rest of the day I felt like a complete bumbling mess.  I dropped my computer bag in the nurses office while getting my blood work.  Like from waist height, just dropped it.  I tripped and threw all of my paperwork down while getting out of the elevator and then dropped my sunglasses and my keys trying to pick it all up.  When I got home, I couldn’t stop jabbering and Seth was like, uh, what happened to you, you’re a manic mess.  And I was like, I have all these herbs and I can’t drink coffee and you need to get your sperm tested!

I am still pretty manic today, but that might be the three green teas I’ve had.   I almost just wrote as a final sentence, I LOVE YOU!  But that would be weird, so, let’s just close this with, hey, yoga meditation people, how do you do it?!

It’s Friday the 13th, I almost stepped on a rat on the way to the City Hall, and as it turns out City Hall and The Courthouse aren’t the same thing!  But, as my muppet friends will tell you, somebody’s getting married!

I’m not a strong swimmer.  I tell people I can’t swim, when really I mean I can’t put my face in the water and swim a regular stroke that makes me look like I know what I’m doing, not like some crazy person flailing around in the water.  When one of my friends e-mailed me and a group of work friends that she wanted to sign up for the Malibu Triathlon in September as a relay team, I told her to sign me up, as long as I didn’t have to do the swimming part.

She e-mailed back that night saying there were no team spots available anymore, but if we still wanted to do it we could sign up individually through the Team CAF website.  The Challenged Athletes Foundation is an amazing non-profit organization that helps athletes without limbs, with physical disabilities and other injuries get the equipment and artificial limbs they need to return to the sports and activities they love. I signed up and hoped no one would donate so I wouldn’t have to swim in the scary ice cold Pacific in mid-September.

On Saturday night we got a phone call from Seth’s mom.  His dad fell and was taken to the hospital with a broken hip.  He had surgery on Monday morning and by Tuesday we were all sure something was going on.  Either he had completely given up and was prepared to stay in his hospital bed until the inevitable end or… we didn’t know what.  They took him for an MRI and discovered he had a stroke.  They aren’t sure when.  They know it wasn’t during the surgery, they suspect it’s what caused his fall, but it could have been the night after the surgery.  They know that it was minor and that part of his frontal lobe was affected, but that his recovery should be full.  No motor skills were affected, no language or cognitive areas were affected, he just feels really sad.  I would too if I was stuck in a hospital being told part of my brain was dead.

I signed up to do the triathlon, and agreed to raise $500 for the CAF foundation so I could participate in the race.  I can’t really swim, I haven’t been running lately, and my fear of biking in Los Angeles has me taking leisurely bike rides on quiet Sunday afternoons, but that hasn’t stopped me from being a complete moron and signing up for the triathlon.  Thank god my friend is doing this as well, because if I drown in the ocean all by myself I’ll be really pissed off.  But most of all, I know that if I don’t keep being active, if I don’t continue to use this meat machine I’ve been given by a higher power or a magic man with a beard or a chance firing of proteins coming together, I’ll be really pissed off someday laying in a hospital bed wondering why I never got off my ass and learned to do a stupid breast stroke.

You can donate to my efforts if you see fit by visiting my donor page - click here.  Or if you can only afford to cheer me on with your moral support I’d like that too.  If you live in the Los Angeles area and want to come see me on the day of the race, (September 12th, 2010) if for no other reason than to see my ass in padded bike shorts and a wet suit which is bound to be comedic, I would absolutely adore that.  I’ll keep you posted on my efforts.

It’s so easy to look at a tv show and give notes.  People make livings doing that.  They get to sit there and say what could be done better.  And then we, the people doing the behind the scenes part, have to make it better.  It can be really hard to do that, because sometimes you’re not sure if what they want is actually making it better.  But also it can be really great to have someone who’s not completely entrenched with the material just sit back from their safe distance and say, “Don’t need.  Lose this scene.”  “Story not tracking until Act 3.” or, “Not enough sexy, let’s add some fun into act 2.”

I was thinking about how I would hate to sit through a notes session on my own life.  How there would be complete sections that someone would say, “Lose, doesn’t move story ahead.”  Or, “Why is this scene here?  Repetitive.”  Or, “This is your A story?  Why is it being introduced at the end of Act 2?”

If I look at my life like a 4 Act, 22 minute 30 second episode of reality TV, I would have a lot of story notes myself.   My story is tracking right, it’s just not tracking quickly enough.  I am trying to get pregnant right as I’m also trying to get my career into full swing.  That gives great potential for conflict, but I actually have to live this life, not watch it on TV.  I spend a lot of time looking at story outlines on neatly typed 3×5 cards on huge corkboards, and I’m starting to realize I might have fucked up my act breaks.  That I’m pushing too much story into Act 3.  That Act 4 is always the shortest act and that Act 3 needs to bring the tension to a head then have some fun with it.  That the way I’ve designed my story it’s all leading up to this great Act 2 act break, and if everything goes as planned in the field, Act 3 will have great drama and conflict with a really awesome Act 4 resolution.  The thing is, I have no idea how to get there to that act break.  I cannot control when I get pregnant, or get a job.  Not to mention once I get to Act 3, I have no idea how to balance work, family, creative life, social life and still have time to ride bikes with Seth on a Sunday afternoon.

I don’t regret my act 1, and even though my act 2 took a story detour for a while, I’m really loving this second half of it.  I just don’t know how it’s going to work.  I don’t see a lot of people in my business, at my pay level, being able to do the things I’m going to want to do.  Which means, I’m going to have to sacrifice something, and I hope I manage to figure out what to sacrifice before it’s too late, because from what I’m seeing, the way it’s designed is that people with kids don’t have both parents working 10-12 hour work days.  And I sure as hell am not giving up my 10 hour work day.  I actually like what I do.  I like being there.   And, yes, everyone seems to think that will change once I have a baby, that I’ll want to be home more, but what if it doesn’t?  What if I still like 10 hour work days?  Will my children be ADHD monsters who date hitters (or worse, actors…) because mom liked work better than them, and dad is dead because mom married someone 21 years older than her? Or fuck, what if I can’t even have kids?

These are things I guess I should have thought about while I was dorking around in Film School.  It’s so embarrassing now to think about how much time I dorked around there.  Or god, how much time I was obsessed with getting shit faced drunk in crap bars in crap parts of Los Angeles with crap boys.  But these are the things I can’t change.  This is the story line that’s being shot.  I’m just going to have to make it work in the cutting room.  I hope there won’t be too many notes, and I hope they mostly say, “More sexy,” or, “Up the fun here.”  Those are my favorite ones to get.  And they’re ones I know how to address.

When we were looking for a place to live, we looked at a lot of places, we went through a couple realtors, and we were probably a huge pain in the ass.  (snort, probably…)  The final weeks of our search brought us to the Hancock park area in the duplex region.  The prettiest place had the awkward appeal of having the owners living right above us.  I was not keen on having the social anxiety of a landlord above me at all times, judging me.  So, even though we loved the actual place, and the price, we kept looking.  The next duplex we saw was smaller and not as awesome and not conveniently located to Campanile (my favorite restaurant in Los Angeles next to the Polo Lounge, but I’m not about to move to Beverly Hills), and I started to realize the owner operated duplex was going to be the best place we would see.  So we called our realtor and she told us that the owners were in the final stages of negotiations with another family.

Let me pause just a second to tell you how not to raise your children.  Don’t tell them that the only acceptable grade is an A.  Don’t tell them that a B might as well be a failing grade.  You will have children that grow up crazy.  Like me.  Who believe they must always win, no matter what the game is.  Even if the game is beating a perfectly nice family out of a fine duplex wherein the owners live upstairs.

So, I flipped out while Seth was calmly talking to our (completely batshit crazy, but totally driven) realtor.  I’m not exactly proud of this, but working in an industry that doesn’t exactly frown on flip outs (in fact it tends to reward them…) I might have yelled some things.  Loudly.  Like, “What the fuck is she doing?  This is fucking ridiculous! She royally FUCKED us!”  It was very “Tamara of 2002.”  Anywhoo…  Like I said, not proud, but I was now in some kind of insane competition mode with someone I had never met and saw my future laid out in weekends of aimless apartment hunting all over Los Angeles and I just couldn’t take it.  Our realtor hung up and I started to cry.  Seth told me that our realtor said we should just go over there and talk to the owners.  I was in no mood to sweet talk, but Seth, being smart and realty savvy, said we were going.

So we went.  And we had a delightful conversation with our soon to be landlords.  They basically told us they wanted us and that the place was ours if our realtor didn’t fuck up the next three steps.  Which at this point, in my mind, was questionable.  But she did it!  And we moved in!  And I still cannot believe how much closet space we have, how our garage isn’t falling down, and that Seth is still dragging around motorcycle parts for his vintage Ducati that he never rides.

The day we moved in, our lovely landlady came down and told us that their 20-ish year old son had just moved home and that we shouldn’t be surprised if we saw him lurking around the back yard being weird.  She didn’t say that last part, but when she introduced him to me, and I formed my initial impression of him, it was that he was a weird lurker.  I guess because he has bad posture?  Or because he was wearing gym shorts?

Anyway, cut to last week, I was walking out our back door when I heard a shril girlish squeal and a series of thumps and giggles that could only be described as “Girl Descending a Staircase on Her Ass.”  And a pack of Marlboro reds came tumbling into our part of the yard.  I picked up the cigarettes and as I called out, “Dude, are you ok?”  I heard him asking the same thing, “Are you ok?”  And I looked up and saw a 19-ish year old girl on her ass half way down the stairs, looking freshly fucked and very embarassed.  She giggled and pulled her skirt down as she stood up.  I handed the cigarettes to our landlord’s son and said, “Everyone survive that?”  The son said “yeah”, and lumbered down the stairs as I scurried to my car to avoid any other discussion of what I had just seen.

The upstairs is identical to to the downstairs, so I know those bedrooms are really close together, and I cannot imagine being a 20 year old dude bringing a girlfriend home to fuck while my parents watched TV next door.  But I do love how awkward this all is.  It makes me so uncomfortable, which makes me so happy, because, I am nothing if not inspired by awkwardly social situations.

If you watched the Obvious Big Awards Show all the way through to the credits you saw my name. Good for you, kids who watch through to the credits, good for you.  This is the first time I’ve worked on that show while also working in a big office with a lot of people who watch that show and watch the credits to see if they know anyone else who worked on the show.  So I got some text messages and then puzzled looks in the office.  “How exactly did you have time to do that?”  I exactly don’t sleep more than 3 hours a night and weekends are not my own.  That’s how.  So glad it’s over.

Also, I didn’t watch the show.  Not one frame.  Except for the frames I slaved over.  I saw those frames a lot, but the frames that were broadcast in between those frames, I didn’t see.  That’s a first for me.  Lately I’ve been acting too cool for school, like, I’ll wear colored tights, knee high boots, my hair in pig tails, vintage jean jackets, Ray Bans and an attitude that says don’t fuck with me, and it’s carried over into my television watching.  Basically, I’m sort of acting like a hipster.  It’s a total chore and I’m very bored with it.  Sometimes it’s no fun to hate everything.  Anyway, if a show is in prime time, I don’t watch it.  I make exceptions only for Grey’s Anatomy and baseball.  I don’t even know what I’m talking about right now! That’s how hipster I am!  Ironic!

So between moving, going to Vegas with my mom and sister, and working two jobs one of which I recently tried to compare to Shakespeare (I couldn’t actually figure out the comparison, I just muttered something about sisters and a plot to dethrone the king, and everyone thought I was on drugs, that’s how tired I am), I’ve hardly seen Seth, much less had time to get myself knocked up.  So, no baby, which is a shame because I have a lot of eye rolling to do about the joy of motherhood that’s going to have to wait another month, at least.  I have no idea how this whole getting pregnant thing actually works.  I know in theory you’re supposed to have a lot of sex and it’s supposed to be at a certain time of the month, but now that I’m actually trying to get pregnant I feel like that’s very vague.

Ok, back to Shakespeare.

I don’t want to be that annoying girl that’s all, my therapist says…  and in therapy I learned… So, at the risk of only writing about my therapist this, my therapist that, I am writing this.

I had just finished up therapy this afternoon, after some weeping and kleenex shredding, my therapist said, “I hope I didn’t ruin wherever it is you’re going right now.”  And I said, “Oh it’s ok, I have a hair appointment, so I’ll just talk to my other therapist about what you made me talk about today, and she’ll be nice and wash my hair and not make me talk about hard stuff and I definitely won’t cry in her chair.”  He laughed.

So, at my other therapy appointment, for my hair, I was talking about how things were kind of awkward with Seth’s son last time he was here, and that he’s coming into town again, and maybe things were awkward because of the whole Seth and me talking about having a family of our own and I would imagine some kids wouldn’t handle that well.  And I love my hair stylist because she looked at me and smiled, and said, “Oh wow, you’re thinking about having kids?”  And it was probably the most non-judgemental amazing response I’ve ever gotten from someone about my reproductive future.  There was no “Really?  Why the fuck would you do that?” eye-brow of disapproval, there was no “Oh god, not another chick who wants to procreate” smirk of superiority, there was no “You’re going to ruin your life!” nose flare, and there was certainly no “Are you sure you want to do something so hard” head tilt,  just a sweet smile and a happy congratulations for me and my idea of making a family with the person I love most in the world.  And it felt amazing.  I didn’t realize how much that was missing.  And now I know exactly how to respond to anyone else who ever gives news about having children or career or both or neither, just smile and be happy for the person who’s giving you the news.  That’s all they want, and it may be the first time anyone has ever done just that for them.

I didn’t realize there would be homework.  No one told me that.

The good thing is, I’ve already been diagnosed with having some issues with control, and a bit of a perfectionism complex, so those two things mean I’m kicking ass on my therapy homework.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, much like my entire education career, I’m half assing it and procrastinating until the last minute and then taking a nap mere hours before my homework is due and then pounding it out 2 hours before class, flipping out because I can’t believe I once again waited until the last minute, turning it in knowing I totally failed.  And still getting an A.  Because no one fails therapy!  Yet!

I feel like that’s going to be what we talk about next week.

Fun!

I joined a gym.

It’s in Boys Town, so the men are beautiful, unavailable, and thankfully not looking at me.  (Except in cases of cattiness… Which I’m sure I’ll deserve.)  And the women, surprisingly, are a lot like me.  I wasn’t even scared to sign up.  I just walked in, plunked down my $10.00 initiation fee and told the dude I wanted to start that day.  It’s been 10 years since I’ve had a gym membership, and right now I’m pretty much sticking to the treadmill, but I was suckered into three personal training sessions (hold me…).

Seth started working again and in our business, late nights are a given.  He’s not crazy about me running alone at night.  I gently reminded him that I was running alone at night for almost 10 years before he came along, but there was talk of pepper spray, code words, taser certification, a whistle, and getting a pit bull (that last part was me, I’m still angling for another dog even though right now I kind of want to kill Lula).  I’m not one to let fear keep me from going out by myself and I refuse to behave as though because I’m a woman I’m a natural born victim, but something happened, and it has given me pause.  Saying the words ‘I’m going to the memorial of the girl who was murdered’ as how you spent your weekend, changes how you feel a little about being a woman of the world and someone who can take care of herself.  So, I’m taking a little time off being a tough guy and working out in the safety of a gym.

But that’s not even the half of it.  I’ve been having some issues.

I’ll get into that at some point, but I’ll leave it at this, I’m getting help with the writing block and the drinking.  I thought going to the gym for a half hour a day was hard.  Turns out, it was nothing compared to the next big bunch of Saturdays.

One morning we both were putting on our shoes and assembling last bits of detritus to shove in our respective shoulder bags before we double locked and double checked and double-you-tee-effed our way out the door and Seth said something like, “Look at us, two little worker bees, on our way to work.” And I said, “Two stupid douchebags, ‘living the dream.’”

I sometimes wish I could be one of the thousands of people I see on my way to work, the people who live in LA and don’t seem to have to make a living while they’re here.  They can afford to sit at Intellegentsia and sip fancy coffee with their designer ‘rescue’ mutts, and their unwashed expensive haircuts.  While I drive my dented Civic in one direction and my boyfriend drives his tank in the other, I wonder what I’m going to forget to do that day and how many late fees it will accrue.

One night, after a long lonely stretch waiting for Seth to come home, I’d gone for my run, I’d done my stupid pilates tape, I’d walked the dog, and I’d refused to turn on the TV (watching TV alone now is just depressing to me, way too many memories of Louie in one room doing whatever it was he was doing, and me in another mindlessly watching crap television I’d Tivo’d for no reason except to avoid having Louie in the same room with me) when he finally walked in the door I wanted to punch him.  I told him I was sick of being the first one home.  I AM sick of it.  It’s been 6 weeks.  I miss my stay at home husband.  I know that makes me selfish.  I enjoy the benefits of him working, but I would take a smaller house, I’d take the bus to work, I’d give up Sunday brunch at Dusty’s if I had 10 more waking hours a week with him.  But when you’re in this business that we’re in, you have a lot of time for solitary reflection while your life partner gets the first cut done, or finishes the first draft, or hands in the notes addressed version, or sits with producers, or is on location, or is whatever it is they’re doing that you hope isn’t, in fact, just ‘doing’ someone else, so I’m sitting here trying to reflect.  And all that’s coming up is some kind of lame analogy to me being a vampire when it comes to self reflection these days - the mirror is empty.  Which is fucking sad.  I need to get my reflection mojo back.

So here I sit.  I ate dinner alone.  I walked Lula alone.  I tap tap tap the keys alone.  Hoping he’ll get home soon, knowing I’ll be deep in a xanax inspired alternate reality when he finally slides into bed next to me and pulls my body close to his.  And the alarm will ring and I’ll have to hop out of bed and watch as he takes over my pillow and rests for another couple of minutes.  It’s not exactly Ladyhawke, but then again, it’s kind of close.

*I think it’s hilarious to make references to movies that Seth actually worked on.  When I was 9…