Awkwardly Social

Tara and I went to my favorite watering hole to get some ‘work’ done and drink some Bloody Marys.  Mmmmm…. Sunday afternoon is the perfect occasion to celebrate with Bloody Marys.  And the Drawing Room makes a delicious peppery one with plenty o’ vodka.

We drove in to the parking lot, which was full, and the door to the Drawing Room was closed.  The.  Door.  Was.  CLOSED!  You guys don’t know this, but that door is never, ever closed.  Unless, they are closed.  And they are only closed from 2am to 6am.  It was 3pm. 

Me:  It’s SuperBowl Sunday.  Maybe they’re closed.
Tara:  Would that make them close?
Me:  Maybe it’s full.
Tara:  Or it’s a private party.

Cue the door swinging open and two old drunk guys shuffling out to sit on the crates outside the door.

Tara:  It’s totally open.

We were the only two women in the bar, besides the bartender, and quite possibly the only people under the age of 45, besides the bartender.  I was the only one who kept wondering why the SuperBowl wasn’t on in the bar.  Because, did you guys know this?  The SuperBowl wasn’t on yesterday.  This year the SuperBowl is in February.

A really really drunk old guy kept coming over to our table pointing at our drinks and computers and muttering.  He offered to buy us a drink and we said yes.  He then proceeded to sit back down at the bar and not buy us a drink.  Eh.  Later when we were getting our 4th Bloody Mary, someone at the end of the bar bought it for us.  We said thanks to Drunk Old Dude, but he didn’t seem to know what we were talking about.  And I don’t understand drunk talk from anyone over the age of 35 so we were at a loss.

The best thing about drinking on a Sunday afternoon, no hangover on a Monday morning.

I got my car dealt with today.  That was on the New Year’s Resolution list, so, check.  And when I say, um, check what I really  mean is, “HOLY SHIT!  My car better be fucking a brand new car now because holy jesus that was expensive.”  But, as it turns out if you pay for a ‘new’ car they’ll throw in a tire and an oil change for free!  Free oil change for the pretty little lady who is paying too much for this piece of junk in the corner.  At least I think that’s what Tony was saying to Nestor, it could have been more like this, “She looks like she’s going to cry or throw up, give her an oil change, I ain’t cleaning up vomit again today.”

When twenty-two tow trucks descended on our apartment today to look at Allie’s car, and asked us if we had any vodka, I got a little nervous.  Eh.  No one got raped.  Yet.  So that’s good.

So, yeah.  This is what it’s like in our “ubertrendy calif girls” life.  It’s great, isn’t it?  Really, really great.

We had the pleasure of watching the hilarious and uplifting movie, The House of Sad and Fog.  I mean, Sand and Fog.

It is neither hilarious, nor uplifting.  It starts out with JenCo’s big pretty eyes weeping big pretty tears.  And then it gets sadder.  The big bonus, not everyone dies, but everyone tries.  Hey, that rhymes.  They should have used that in the tag line.  [Booming trailer voice dude]:  “In a world, where not everyone dies, everyone tries.  To die.”  Or something.

I’ve read the book, and I give the filmmaker a big pile of credit for making the really unsympathetic characters (all of them, except maybe the mother, in the book) actually sympathetic and sad.  I still think the cop is the least savory, and Ron Eldard, maybe not the best choice for the role (two words, BLIND JUSTICE…), but all in all if you want to kill yourself, this is the movie that will help you put down the pills or the straight razor.  Or, in Allie’s wise, wise words, “Dude, my life is AWESOME.”

When I was a kid I used to wish I could have ice cream for dinner.  Or ice cream as a side dish.  Or ice cream as an appetizer.  When my parents started working more and leaving us to fend for ourselves in the summer time, we would occasionally (read every time ice cream was available) have ice cream for lunch.  My sister would stir up her ice cream until the chocolate syrup and vanilla ice cream would be sort of a thick ice cream soup.  I tried that, but usually was too anxious to wait for the right texture and I would half heartedly stir it around until I couldn’t take the wait any more and eat it so fast my ice cream headaches were more like blasts of blinding pain that had me laying on the Mexican tile floor in agony until they passed and I could stumble back to the kitchen counter and do it all over again.  There was one summer where we discovered how to make ’shakes’.  That was a good summer.  Here’s how you  make shakes.  Ice cream.  Liberal dose of chocolate syrup (only Hershey’s will do) and milk.  Blend.  Drink.  That’s right, we discovered the easiest fucking thing in the world, and we thought we were geniuses.

So between the ice cream, the bean burritos with tabasco chasers, and the Top Ramen, we had a spectacularly healthy diet. Toss in soap operas, re-runs of I Love Lucy, Hogan’s Heroes, M.A.S.H., and The Andy Griffith Show, not only were we eating right, but we were learning about life and how funny war can be, how dangerous it is to tell someone not to do something (LUCY!), that your sister might be your long-lost cousin’s mother (what?) and that The Andy Griffith Show is a really fucking annoying show that has a theme song that makes you want to stab your ears out with dull pencils.  Who can blame us for sitting inside all day?  This was Arizona, 60SPF sunscreen required, in addition to doping yourself up with enough Benadryl to make the world seem all slow motion and sleepy made going outside a death wish.  Sure we read a lot.  I still, to this day, cannot believe my mom would buy us Jude Deveraux novels, and let’s not forget the Jean M. Auel incident wherein mom decided to see what Tavia was really reading and she flipped to a random page in Valley of the Horses and was pummeled with penis and vagina imagery in addition to the cave people signal for let’s do it.  Just typing ‘Valley of the Horses’ makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong.

So last night as I ate my Ben and Jerry’s for dinner, I thought about how those tiny containers of ice cream would have seemed like a waste of time back in the day.  How ice cream for dinner was forbidden but ice cream for lunch - NO ONE WOULD EVER KNOW!  How there will never again be a time where my sister and I can sit on the beige rug with a makeshift tent keeping the light coming through our ridiculously large windows from hitting the television screen while listening for the DING! of the microwave.  How I miss those lazy summer days learning reading naughty novels about time travelling knights, and rebellious princesses.  How my sister and I would put on the Flashdance soundtrack and do the dances in our pajamas at 2pm.  How we thought that we would have that house forever and that maybe one day our parents would install blinds.  How cool growing up was supposed to be, especially because we would get to have CABLE.

And how that last week of summer vacation always came too soon but knowing that next year, next year would be even better, and never realizing that one year, there wouldn’t be a next year and summer vacation would be a weekend trip to a beach house an hour away without romance novels, black and white re-runs and my sister.

When I was doing my laundry (truth be told I only did half of it, it was too overwhelming to do everything) folding my pretty, pretty underpants, I couldn’t help but eaves drop on this guy who was a little too young to claim the hippie hair as his own invention and a little too old to be telling bad jokes about the tsunami.

First of all, long haired laundry guy, squid are not exoskeletal.  Second of all, you aren’t funny.  Thirdly, while you don’t need to cut your long icky hair, you might consider trimming it.  Split ends are never, ever sexy.  And finally, stop glaring at me for using the folding table directly across from MY dryers.  I know you wanted to hog three folding tables, but seriously, that’s just selfish.

Also, related to staring - category: me staring.  When the woman with five, count ‘em five children, all under the age of 6, walked in to Planned Parenthood, we all looked around and wondered, is she late for an appointment.  Like five years late?  A 5 year old, a set of 3 year old twins, and a set of 1 year old twins, ALL BOYS.  And all perfectly behaved.  Three year old twin #1 bit one year old twin #2 on the foot, five year old single gently removed the foot from his mouth and continued watching Power Rangers or Pokemon or whatever the hell it was.  Mom calmly looked at our pale and shocked faces, and said, "It’s about time to go on the patch."  Heh.

Him: Can you set the alarm?
Me: 5am is only 2 hours away.
[Sounds of Tamara struggling to push the tiny button to 5AM then checking it obsessively because one can never tell if it’s really set especially under the influence of tequila, Korean beer and Taco Bell.]
Me: It’s set.
Him: Wait. Turn it off.
Me: But you won’t wake up and then you’ll be late and get fired.
Him: I took tomorrow off.
Me: Then why did you make me set it?
Him: I wanted it to be a surprise.

Aww…

Crazy great birthday party at Soop Sok Karaoke. Private room. Tequila shots. Korean beer. Special guest stars. (Mrs. Shitpants, Tony, etc.) Me singing off key but masking it by always dragging someone up on stage with me to sing a duet.

Hearing P and Waller sing Lose Yourself at the end of the night almost made me cry. From the sheer joy of it.

Tara sang three duets with me. Or was it four?

Some people didn’t sing.

I had to remember to give other people the mic so that people wouldn’t leave from the sheer boredom of hearing me sing Eye of the Tiger over and over.

Thanks for the party. I have a lovely life.

A couple of people came over to ’surprise’ me with cake. The most apparent side effect of turning 29 is that your friends are all growing up too. Which is nice.

Jen and her boyfriend bought a house. An awesome house with a kick-ass back deck and a seriously grown-up kitchen. Can we say ’stainless steel’?

Gabe asked his girlfriend to marry him and she said yes! She has cats, he’s allergic, it’s love.

And the biggest news of all was when my neighbor turned down a drink and I looked at her glowing face and her husband’s glowing face and blurted out, “You’re pregnant!” And she giggled and said, “Yep, it’s twins.” So amazing. Hilarious that a girl just turns down one drink and I automatically assume pregnancy, but that’s the way it goes.

It was a great little party. Happy birthday to me.

This is it. The last year I can claim to be in my twenties. And I think that might be a good thing.

I’ve done a lot in my twenties. I have accomplished a great deal. Made a lot of friends, and lost a few. But I’m wondering what haven’t I done in my twenties that people are ’supposed to do’. Any suggestions?

Rising up, back on the street, took my time, took my chances.

That song brings a smile to my face every time. I used to listen to it on my way to set. Like a crazy person.

My grandpa died a year ago. (That was an awkward transition, eh?) When Grandpa would get mad at my sister and me for fighting or being too loud he would say, “HEEEEEY!” I do that all the time when a dog is barking too loud or a kid is about to touch a hot stove. Towards the end of his life my grandpa would tell one story over and over about how he would take Tavia rollerskating. I asked him why he didn’t take me, and he would look at me in all seriousness and say, “You weren’t much of a skater. But Tavia, she really took to it.” Heh. Love you, Grandpa.

As Allie and I giggled our way through the overwrought dialogue and ‘indie’ cinematography, we decided that both our lives would be better served by people more capable of handling them. People who don’t leave nacho cheese dip bowls in the living room surrounded by Glamour magazine and J.Crew catalogues, empty bags of Scoops and the inability to open mail. Our lives would rock without us living them. Which now that I think about it sounds like some kind of screwed up suicide pact. Which it wasn’t. It was purely a self-loathing giggle fest.

Then Waller came over with Sisters. And when we couldn’t stop singing the scary theme music (which sounds like cats in heat getting run over by a car when we do our rendition), I realized, sometimes you need a bad Brian De Palma movie about murderous Siamese twins to make you realize no one could live your life quite like you do.