Awkwardly Social

There is rich and there is RICH and lately I’ve been thinking about what I would do with the spare piles of money I had if I were RICH.  You know, after I cured cancer and AIDS, and solved world hunger. (Honestly, if you are RICH and aren’t a philanthropist, what the fuck is wrong with you?)

1. Hire a cook.  I don’t need a full staff hanging around my house making me feel awkward, but I do think having someone cook me healthy lunches and dinners 6 days a week would be so amazing.  We have actually looked into getting a personal chef a few days a week because we work so much and it is kind of affordable.  I mean, WE can’t afford it, but someone who made just a little more than us could.  We spend so much money eating out, that it would almost be the same price.

2.  Fly 1st Class.  This is kind of a given, right?  I mean, I try to upgrade to 1st every chance I get, and usually I can’t justify the cost, but I’ve done it enough that I’m pretty sad when I have to sit in coach.  (Poor me, crying into my bags of money.) Now, maybe if I were RICH, I would rather fly private, but I’ve never flown private and my plane jitters would probably keep me from doing it because I feel like those little jets are always the reason RICH people die.

3. Vacation Home.  If I’m flying 1st Class all over the place I might as well have an awesome vacation home to fly to, right?  Seth wants a house in Taos, and I want a place in Cannon Beach/Arch Cape or Big Sur.  Fuck it, if I’m RICH I’ll have a place in all three.

4. All of the babies.  I have 8 frozen embryos.  I want to hatch them all if I’m RICH.  I mean, I wouldn’t even have to carry them myself.  I could surrogate a couple, just so I won’t be having babies until I’m 45.

5.  Buy out Disneyland for a day.  ’nuff said.

What would you do if you were RICH? (After curing cancer and AIDS and solving the World Hunger crisis, of course.)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m reading The Happiness Project right now, and as I get further along it’s making me think about the who I always expected I would turn into and the reality of who that person is actually going to be.  It’s depression inducing to try to force yourself to be a person you aren’t really equipped to be and it’s liberating to realize that you don’t have to be that person.

I expected myself to be a cultured, educated, world traveler with a rapier wit and long list of languages spoken and friends that out numbered my fingers and toes.  But the reality is, while I’m educated and I’ve been exposed to the world and its cultures in a small way, my world travels are as limited as my ability to budget and save money to go to new places. My list of languages is firmly stuck at English with enough Spanish to sit mutely at a table full of Hispanic maids who are talking about me, but unable to respond to their jabs.  My wit isn’t so much rapier as kind of a dirty sense of humor with a heavy dose of self deprecation and sarcasm.  I have not many friends, but the friends I have I adore. And all of these things, I kind of like about myself.  Yes, I certainly would like to get my Spanish to a comfortable conversational level, but until I start working in an industry that doesn’t require 12 hour days and unpredictable hiatuses, I’m stuck self teaching and if there’s one thing I know about myself, is I’m not so good at self teaching.  Sure, I would love to go back to law school, and one day I might, but I like what I’m doing right now enough to not pursue law school, yet.

The thing is, there are things I can strive for, but will they make me happy? I don’t know.  I’m not sure yet how this next phase will go, but I do like the way this book is sort of helping me chip away at what is important for my own happiness.

For those of you unfamiliar with the infertility parlance, let me introduce you to the 2ww, or in normal English, the two week wait.

I am 5dp5dt, five days past a five day transfer. I take a pregnancy test at the doctor’s office on the 30th. I would much rather never know if I am pregnant or not, just ignorantly go along with my life and nine months from now look down at my body and say either, well, that worked, or it didn’t.  Instead of waiting anxiously for my notoriously delayed results from the lab on a Sunday morning, ready either to get to drinking and sexing or to start my next 2ww while we hope and pray this time we’ll at least see a heartbeat.  It’s a mugs game. And I want no part in it.  I’d rather know today, or not at all.  Since that isn’t a possibility, I have been doing some ‘therapy,’ which has included watching a lot of Parenthood on Netflix streaming.  Believe me, I understand what may or may not be the irony or the premonition of doing this.  There was nothing else streaming that I was interested in.  It has nothing to do with me wanting to be a parent.  Or DOES IT?

I like the story, the characters are mostly believable, and the necklaces, oh you guys, the NECKLACES! I must have each and everyone of them.  But my research has come up short.  Its seems Zoe Chicco has done a couple of pieces for them, but the others I cannot find.  My internet searching abilities have come up dry.  So, here’s where you gaze upon the necklaces from Parenthood, and call your dear friends in the wardrobe department at Parenthood and get their sources and report back to me.  What’s that?  You aren’t friends with anyone in the wardrobe department at Parenthood?  Well, now is the perfect time to strike up that relationship, isn’t it.  Do it for me!  Do it for all of our pretty but bare necks who are calling out for pretty dainty gold necklaces. Laura Goldsmith, costume designer for season 1, CALL ME!

So, without further ado, I present you with several screen grabs from Season 1 and Season 2.
This is Haddie, played by Sarah Ramos, she is the oldest (and only) daughter of Peter Krause and Monica Potter. She is maybe my favorite character. MAYBE. And this is not her “signature necklace” but I love it. I love it so much. It’s so simple, but SO IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.

This is her signature necklace. It is probably something I wouldn’t wear, but it was the one necklace I found that I had a screen grab for that I found online. It goes for a cool $352 at Zoe Chicco.

This is Gabby, played by Minka Kelly, she is Peter Krause and Monica Potter’s autistic (Asperger’s) son’s behavioral therapist. (Believable in this roll? Um, I don’t know, but she sure is pretty!) And I love this necklace.

Oh, and this one too!

Then there is Kristina, played by Monica Potter, I think she comes in a close second to Lauren Graham in the best necklace department.  Here are a few of my favorites.

This first one looks suspiciously like the one Haddie is wearing in the first photo, which is believable, because if my mom had an awesome necklace like this I would have worn it, too. (Haddie is Kristina’s daughter. KEEP UP!)

This is Christina’s “Date Night” look, which is Season 2, and a little over the top, but I think with a simple black tank and a soft leather jacket these layered silver necklaces would look boss.

Yet another disk suspended from a chain. Why do I love this look so much? Why won’t my internet searches provide me with links. I’ve got money to spend here lady!

My least favorite character is Julia, played by Erika Christensen, maybe because I see the most of myself in her. Her necklaces are also not my favorites on the show, they seem a little too corporate, or something.  Which fits her character! So kudos, once again costume department.

Here is my favorite of her looks.  I love two necklaces together, one long, one not, but I don’t seem to have any necklaces in my jewelry box that would work this way.

This one is also really pretty, so simple.

And finally there is this one, it also appears to be two necklaces worn together. I mean, seriously, they could do an episode on the untangling of necklaces in the Braverman women’s jewelry boxes. They have so many!

This is Sarah, played by Lauren Graham, she is the fuck up sister and the one I find most endearing (I just love me some Lauren Graham), yet also wonder the most about her parenting skills. This necklace is seen in a couple of scenes, and I love that it has two charms on it.

Here it is again, but this time the other charm is in front.

This is my favorite of her necklaces. It has three charms on it. If you tell me you hate it, you are no longer my friend.

This big chunky butterfly cutout necklace is also a favorite. It think this would be hard for me to pull off, but I am willing to try if someone would just find me the damned link!

Here are random disk necklaces, that might be the same one, but they all sort of look different, so… I say this necklace, if someone would find it for me, would be a perfect necklace, because it would always look slightly different. Try searching “hammered gold disk necklace” and you will shoot yourself, just like I almost did.

Oh, here is one more! Are you sick of this yet?

Craig T. Nelson (Papa Braverman) is!

In fact, it has driven him to drink!

Or maybe it’s because Mama Braverman is always asking him to untangle her necklaces…

So, go forth and find me some necklaces! Or, the phone number for the Parenthood wardrobe department. I MUST know their sources.

UPDATE: Eee! Pinterest saves the day! (Well, at least part of it.) Lauren Graham and Erika Christensen are pictured here on Maya Brenner Design’s website! So, at least two of the pretty necklaces are tracked down.  And yes, that did make my day.

I woke up in the morning, and put on my paternal grandmother’s cherry sundress (something old), my sister’s blue cocktail ring (something borrowed and blue), a handmade flower in my hair (something new) and we drove to the Beverly Hills Courthouse.  Said, “I do!” And what a year it’s been.

This morning, we woke up, drove to Beverly Hills and talked to our doctor about IVF.  Happy Anniversary, baby, I’m giving you a bunch of medical bills as my traditional one year anniversary of paper.  I hope you like it!

I was sitting in a comfortable chair in my dream, I heard someone come into the room and I turned and there was my mom.  She was standing there.  My mom.

My voice was filled with tears, “Mom? Are you really here?”

She walked over to where I was sitting and I stood up and tried to walk towards her.

“No.  But I wish I could be.”

We hugged and I woke up.  I wasn’t sad at first, you know how you feel after you’ve first woken and the dream isn’t fading yet.  I got to see my mom.  She came to me in a dream.  Then reality starts crushing in and you begin to analyze everything.  You remember you don’t believe in heaven.  You remember that your mom will never walk into a room where you’re sitting in a comfortable chair.

I got up and went to my crushingly early ultrasound appointment where I was told that I should do an IUI that day.  So we did.  And all day I wondered if my mom coming to me in my dream meant that she knew it would fail or that she knew it would succeed.  And all day long I told myself that she wasn’t actually doing anything, that my little human brain was creating every frame of her.  My tiny little brain was reaching out across the ether of its own creation.

I went to work and in the middle of the day I went for a walk.  The first song that came on my iPod was from the movie Once.  The iPod I hadn’t updated in a few days, that was playing my acupuncture playlist.  “Are you really here, or am I dreaming.”

–

It’s been a two weeks since I wrote that and my mom has been in my dreams twice since then.  First it was a nightmare, I don’t have any firm grasp on what the content of that dream was because as nightmares go I try to forget them.  A week ago, it was a dream about setting my sister and her friend up in their dorm rooms.  My mom was there too, she was also going to be at school and was so glad she quit her job to go back to get her PhD. She said, “If I don’t do it now, when will I do it?” Then it started raining inside in my dream and she was gone, and we were just there dealing with getting my sister into the right room.

–

I took a pregnancy test tonight and it was negative. It would have been nice to have this all wrapped up in a neat little bow, “Are you really here?” But life does not follow the typical three act structure.  We do not always get satisfying endings and there isn’t always a good bit of dialogue to close out the story and leave the audience wondering why their life isn’t perfect like that.

I’m still here.  My life is pretty fantastic overall.  And besides, I’m way too tough to let this set back hurt me.  Bring it on, motherfuckers.

I don’t have a lot that I can talk about right now.  Partly because once you start working in TV, you get really paranoid.  It’s basically a law that you stop trusting people once you start having your name appear on the small screen.  I would venture to guess it’s the same for people whose names appear on the big screen, but I haven’t had my name up there so I can only give anecdotal evidence to that fact.  Trust no one is pretty much everyone’s motto here in LA.  It’s a little sad, but whatever.  I don’t trust you people, so what do I care?

Last week I had a pitch at real live network (the network that I think is responsible for creating the format…) for a reality show that I produced with Seth and a partner.  It went pretty swimmingly, but now we wait and refine our pitch and hope that other networks will also want to see our little docu-soap.

I also had my 4th IUI.  It was kind of bizarre to be sitting in the waiting room with the show I’m currently working on playing on the television.  No joke, that happened.

Then I managed to pick a big fight with Seth about his son being in town soon.  I guess my stress about the situation is a very sharing kind of stress in that I want everyone to know how stressed I am, and hope that they’ll be just as stressed as I am.  It didn’t get unusually ugly, but it did involve tears.  Me once again claiming I’m the outsider and I don’t want to be on the inside.  Wah…  Girl who cried wolf usual bullshit.  For those of you who are in the process of falling in love with people who have children from a previous relationship, I feel for you.  Especially if they are young.  I am lucky in that they aren’t young, so they don’t have to live with us.  THANK GOD.

I’ve been working so late I haven’t been watching many baseball games.  Last year at around this time I was getting home around 7, so I could turn on a West Coast game and let it calm my anxiety.   This year at around 7pm every night I’m struggling to get a cut finished so I can get out the door by 9.  New year, new show, new anxieties.

So on Friday, I looked at the schedule and realized the Yankees were in town, and since I love the Yankees, I made it my mission to get tickets for Saturday or Sunday.  Since Sabathia was pitching yesterday, that was the game I really wanted to see, and a few hours later, tickets were purchased and plans were made.  After I working on Saturday, we hit the road to Angels Stadium.

I am a firm believer that once you sit field level, you never really want to go back.

We got there early enough to see the Yankees in batting practice.

And to have a random celebrity sighting.  Why was Snoop there?  No clue but it makes me really love living in LA.  You just never know when a rapper will just show up on the field.

I liked the stadium, and the rally monkey is kind of hilarious if a little annoying.  I would definitely go back to another game.  The Yankees are back in September….

I started writing on the web seven years ago, today.  Holy shit.  A lot has happened since then. And yet, tonight at a wine bar in Los Feliz, I ran into a bartender I had a crush on three years ago.  Right around the time I met my husband, I was going to a now closed wine bar, and getting granted after hours privileges and text messaging sommeliers.  So much has changed, but it’s comforting to walk into a new place and see an old face.  It’s sort of like running into someone who you thought was dead when you run into someone from a different time in your life.  You’re happy to see them, but you’ve moved on and become a new person without them in your life, they don’t really fit anymore, but they feel so comfortable.  Ah, memories.

I’ve been trying to think of my favorite posts, but as I was looking through my archives, I realized there are so many that I like, (seven years is a lot of archives), but my favorite post remains this one - about being a bored kid in a small town who liked a boy but got dumped.

But I like this one when I turned 30, too.

I like the story of how I met the love of my life.

I should tell you the story of how I got married.  (I never wrote about my wedding day?  WTF?)

When I cruise through the archives I still see stuff that I really love to re-read.  It feels special to have this sometimes coded, sometimes vague, sometimes ridiculously exaggerated record.  Thanks for sharing the good and the bad with me, I seriously can’t believe that seven years ago, on a beach in Mexico I told my friend Tara that I was going to start a blog.  And yet, here I am.

Here’s to another seven years!

I have no recollection of what I did last year, because I didn’t write about it.  The only way I can remember anything now, is if I write about it and look it up the next year.  This is what happens when you’re in your mid-thirties, isn’t it?

On Saturday, we did our first IUI.  It was slightly weird.  The doctor, while my legs were in stirrups, my vag speculumed open, and my husbands sperm was being cathetered into my uterus, was talking about movies.  How he doesn’t like sad movies, like Blue Valentine.  I kind of wanted to changed the subject but instead I blurted out, “Well then, definitely don’t watch Rabbit Hole!  Dead baby movie!”  Which I immediately thought was a bad move on my part.  Like I jinxed it?  Anyway, everything went really quickly and we were back home in no time.  I pretended I needed to be on bed rest until I dragged myself out of bed and to the Farmer’s Market where I had to see humans.  Well, one human. Long time readers will remember Allie (she’s the best!), she’s still alive, she’s still awesome.

Today, I had a giant piece of red velvet cake at lunch that everyone pretended to share.

Tonight we went to Hatfield’s, had a four course prix fixe dinner (so good!), had a little spat with Seth, because apparently on my birthday I can be a little unreasonable. Through sickness and health, idiocy and unreasonableness, ’til death do we part, AMEN.

I also learned today that I am no longer in the demographic of the network I’m working for.  Which kind of cracks me up.  Poor 18-34 year olds, they’ll have to watch stuff made by an old ass 35 year old.  Who doesn’t understand their silly trends and wacky fashions.

Here’s to all of you!  And here’s to me!

I decided for my birthday I’d have people over to the house, but since I’m currently working on a wedding planning show, and I have weddings on the brain, I thought it would be nice to also celebrate my wedding that happened in September without much ado.  And then I realized we never had a housewarming party, so I thought I’d throw that in too.

I’m still trying to draft the awkwardly social e-mail that tells everyone to come to my house to sing karaoke, eat red velvet cake and drink sangria, and don’t judge me for not being able to plan a party.  Because I’m kind of scared no one will show up.  Or is it that I’m scared that they will show up?  I’m not sure yet.

I’ll have had my first round of IUI, so I won’t be drinking my own sangria (sad face) but I will be eating that red velvet cake.  And turning 35.   I guess what I’m saying is, I’ll be feeling fragile.  And not drunk.  And there’s that issue of the toad.  People haven’t really seen the toad.  I mean, I will be wearing clothes that sort of disguise the toad, but the toad is still there.  I love the toad, but will everyone else.

Also, I don’t understand how a karaoke machine works.  I’m guessing there is some sort of magic that makes the song appear on the tv?  Also, I need to learn how to make cake pops before then.  And also, take a class in decorating for a wedding/house warming/birthday party.

I’ll just be over here having a nervous breakdown party.  Care to join me?