Awkwardly Social

Much to their dismay, they were driving up a steep pass on a two lane highway, following a large U-Haul. It was snowing. The roads were slippery. There was fog. The U-Haul driver grew up in Arizona, where the only snow she had to deal with was the fake kind you spray on Christmas trees. The worst was yet to come for them. The driver of the U-Haul had earlier that week left the parking brake on while driving. Making the brakes a wee bit sketchy, at least in her mind. Once she reached the summit, they breathed a sigh of relief, only have that sigh turn into one of disgust as she drove 14 MPH down the other side of the mountain.

I’m not sure where to begin.

First of all, let me get this out of the way.

Dear La Grande, Orgeon tourism board,

“La Grande Loves Company” is your slogan? You realize that “Misery Loves Company” isn’t the best phrase to rip off, right? I mean, I get it. But I don’t ‘get it’. Maybe tourists on average are a little dumber than me, but seriously, the first thing I thought was, “Wow, La Grande must be a miserable place to visit.”

Love,
Tamara

Have you ever seen those big 18 wheelers that carry cars on their trailer? I’m sure you have, they drive all over carrying cars to dealerships across the U.S. Now, have you ever seen an action movie? You know, where they do kind of crazy stunts where someone drives off of or onto one of those tractor trailers? I’m sure you have, it’s a pretty common staple of the Michael Bay school of Directing Action Movies (oh, that would be an awesome school!). Finally, do you think that if another semi-truck slammed into the back of one of those tractor trailers completely devasting the its cab and making the car that was in the further most back postion of the trailer disappear in a mile of rubble, that the driver survived? I don’t know. All I know is, it looked like I had been transported back into LA and was on the highway set they built for The Matrix: Retarded and was seeing the tail end of a very complicated stunt. All the elements were there, except for the fact that it was Utah, on the 1-15, and I’m pretty sure the only cameras rolling were the news cameras.

Here’s a helpful tip, screaming “SHUT UP!” at Owen when he won’t stop meowing, won’t, in fact, make him shut up. Neither does turning up the radio louder, but it does make you feel better.

No truck stop hot dogs were consumed.

My inner Teamster might be a little dead now. I’m not sure if the need to drive across country in a vehicle that has a mind of its own will ever strike me again as being a ‘good time’.

Driving into Seattle via the I-90 is highly recommended by me. You have to see it. Amazingly beautiful country.

I’m so glad I got to help my mom move to her new home. I complained a little (a lot). I freaked out when I had to drive over two mountain ranges in the span of two hours. I wanted to stick Owen in the back of the U-Haul. I smoked too many cigarettes, possibly to punish Owen for not shutting up. I listened to a really good book on tape. I told my sister the directions she gave me must be totally wrong, then had to call her back when I got myself really lost. I got to see my adorable nieces again (the second time in 2 months). I really had a great time. I hope my mom is happy in Seattle.

Unfortunately for her, moving her mother across the country only served to show her how far away her family really is and how nice it would be to have someone right around the corner to make her dinner and loan her books. But her life is somewhere else. So she takes an early flight back to Lalaland and decides that the holidays will have to be enough.

I had a hard time getting up this morning to pack, I hate packing. I knew I didn’t need that long to throw a couple of pairs of jeans and t-shirts in my pully suitcase. Sitting in a U-Haul for 3 days with two angry cats doesn’t require very fancy attire. But then there’s the added trouble of packing something appropriate for work because I’m flying back to LA on Monday morning. Unless we get in early and then I might consider flying stand-by Sunday evening, which I’ve never done, and really hate sitting in the middle, so I don’t know if I’ll actually do that or not. I also always bring my computer, my iPod, two books for me to read, 2 books to return to my sister. This trip I have additionally packed, my digital camera and its charger, 5 audio books, my iTrip, my iPod charger, my phone charger, tennis shoes (Louie made fun of me last night, he thinks I don’t own a pair of closed toed shoes because I always wear flip-flops, even in winter), allergy medication that my bro-in-law gave me, one remaining happy pill, Advil, vitamins, my new contoured eye mask and 3 Netflix DVDs, not to mention the stuff I feel I need once I get to the airport, like gum, water, and a trashy magazine. Plus I’ll need to stop and get cash because I’m getting Bloody Maried up on that flight. Woo. Basically, travelling with myself is like travelling with a two year old, minus the diapers, although I did pack a shitload of tampons because… of course this trip falls right on my period.

I almost had to fly to Orlando last night. Don’t ask. I wouldn’t have had time to go to THAT PLACE anyway. And… with a hurricane just passing over the Sunshine State, I think my Bloody Mary/Dramamine cocktail wouldn’t have… shall we say, knocked me out sufficiently.

My mama is moving to Seattle this week. I am driving the U-Haul. When I volunteered, she was surprised that I possess the skill to drive such a large vehicle. I assured her that driving a U-Haul (albeit packed by her and me) was going to be far easier than driving an unbalanced/overstuffed grip truck of death through the narrow alleys and parking challenged side streets of Los Angeles. She forgets that I have a Teamster living inside of me, dying to get out and rule the open road with my CB and trusty crystal meth snorting sidekick. I think I’ll eat a truck-stop hotdog. That should horrify my mother sufficiently. I’m bringing my digital camera. You have been warned.

Slowly, but surely, I will have no more connection to Arizona than a passing story about growing up there in the 80’s and 90’s. I’ll drive my kids by my childhood home and they’ll be embarrassed when I get out and knock on the door, asking the owners to let me look around. I’ll point out how I used to ride my bike up the hill over the (now gone) cattle-guards to the cemetery. I’ll show them where I would cut off the main road with my horse and ride to the airport, dodging the ATVs and broken beer bottles. I’ll make them eat at my favorite restaurant, and they’ll wonder how I ever survived in such a shit-hole town with only a public library (housed in a double-wide trailer) and no decent radio stations. They won’t get it. Just like I didn’t ‘get’ my mom’s childhood home, until much, much later, when we drove by and she pointed out where her house used to sit before it burned down, and where she brought the cows in from pasture to be milked. I look at my mom sometimes and wonder how she survived living on a dairy farm with two brothers and no television reception, and a phone that had a shared line. You can never go home. You can try to hold a little piece of it inside of you, but it’s never enough. Some day I won’t remember how my sister and I walked on stilts in the backyard, pretending it was a lava field. I won’t remember that when we first moved into the house there was a huge cottonwood tree that had been knocked down and was laying, roots exposed in the back yard that still had the furrows from the farmer who grew alfalfa there, how I would spend hours digging through the dirt in the roots, uncovering shards of pottery from who knows what tribe. I won’t remember that my dad taught me to drive a stick shift in our back yard on the old yellow Volvo station wagon, and taught me to parallel park with his brand new Nissan Maxima. I won’t remember how one night I came home from a party with a kitten that I named MOS and mom my had to pull him out from beneath the front seat of my 1984 midnight blue Mustang because I’m pretty sure I was too drunk to figure out where the little thing had gone. Then there are the times I’ve already forgotten, but hell if I’m going to open those diaries - The agony of living in a small town where none of the boys liked me because I was too smart, or too flat chested, or had bad hair, or that bitch Kristi Schaefer didn’t like me, or whatever the drama of the day was. Thinking about that makes me almost glad you can never go home. Almost.

I was going to try and recap Louie’s Birthday BBQ, but honestly, I don’t really know where to begin, or end. Mixing my friends (Louie’s new friends) with Louie’s Hollywood friends, and work friends, and college friends, and highschool friends and parents and siblings together, made for some strangeness. Me announcing I was pregnant for no reason other than to get a laugh as I took a swig from Tony’s flask, made for some awkwardness with Louie’s mom, but not in the way you’d expect. The “I’m pregnant” joke has to be put back on the shelf and left to gather dust, I’d guess… for at least the next ten years. Then running into Jesse at the Farmer’s Market as a tipsy Allie successfully kept herself from yelling out “JONAH!” and wondering if Jesse actually knew who we were or was just being polite. Finally we were driving home (me driving, Allie trying not to barf as I changed gears) and parking, and putting on sweatpants and watching television in our freezing living room.

I really, really, really hate it when the weekends end. Grey’s Anatomy feels like Little House on the Prairie used to. I remember hoping that Laura wouldn’t go running down the hill, that the theme music wouldn’t play, and the credits would just stay away because that meant bedtime. And that the weekend was over. Now I get really panicky when Ellen starts VO’ing and the music starts montaging and the credits start rolling. Because, it means bedtime, and that the weekend is over.

Am I too old for a gerbil? I go in these phases where I really want a pet. Louie and Allie are allergic to cats and aside from shelling out $20,000 for a genetically modified non-allergenic kitten, I think both of them don’t really like cats. So, that would be a waste of 20,000 perfectly good dollars. There’s also those hairless cats, but, um, how do I say this nicely? They’re fucking ugly.

When I was a kid we had gerbils and mice and hamsters and fish and cats and dogs and ducks and chickens and rabbits and never parakeets… Oh, and a horse. So, I’ve been around animals all my life. Always had them. Scooter and Owen live with my mom now. I miss them. I don’t miss cleaning out their catbox, scooping up their vomit, or getting awakened at 4am by cold noses and insistent meows and the sound of ripping paper, but I do miss having a cat on my lap while I read, or watch TV.

Mostly though, I think I want something to take care of. Something to feed and hold and be loved by. Oh. mygod. I sound exactly like a woman on a mission to have a baby so that something will love me unconditionally. Eeeeee. Ish. yeesh.

But, really, do you think I’m too hold to have a pet mouse? I used to love watching Bitty (my gerbil, who bit me like a motherfucker) crawl around in his Habittrail tunnels, burrow through his cedar shavings, and nibble on his alfalfa pellets. I guess I just wanted to be him. My class trip to Biosphere was like a dream come true. I wanted to live in there! Walking around my glass cage, living on the land, being watched by 13 year-olds whose only really question would, “What happens when they get their period?” since everything inside had to be made by them and re-used. Really, what would happen for those special times of the month? I don’t remember the tour guides answer. I’m sure we all were either giggling or repulsed.

If there is ever a time when the government asks for volunteers to colonize another planet, I would sign up so freaking fast. Especially if we got to live in a Biosphere, and I could bring my pet mouse.

Tuesday night we were over at the ladies house watching TV, eating creme brulee and talking about chick-lit (which neither of them had ever heard of or read…weird, I know, and they aren’t shut-ins these girls, just not interested in books with pink covers) when on Extras there was a scene in which Ricky Gervais starts complaining about the way a guy is eating soup. Slurp-tastically.

“Oh, I totally know how he feels. In fact, I want to punch something right now just thinking about it,” I groan.

B looks at me, her eyes light up, “Me TOO! Sometimes, in the morning when S is eating her cereal, it’s all I can do not to crawl out of my skin.”

“That’s the worst!”

Louie and S stare at us like we’re kookoobananas, shaking their heads.

“He’ll just chew and chew, and I can hear it!”

“She sometimes clinks her spoon on her teeth!”

We both shudder. Louie and S really want to change the subject.

“It’s so awesome that you know what I’m talking about!”

“I know! It’s like we can totally share our disease, without being judged. Louie thinks I’m crazy.”

“S thinks I’m crazy!”

Louie and S in unison, “YOU ARE CRAZY!”

We continue commiserating for a good 5 minutes before we are steered back to Extras, B and I glowing about our shared psychosis, S and Louie concerned about the fact that it might actually be a Syndrome (capital S) and they are living with the Diseased (capital D).

Boy oh boy, am I stubborn. Especially when it comes to pop culture. I get e-mails, and phone messages and gentle prodings at dinner parties, and all out “God I can’t believe you’re not watching it!” when I hang out with my friends, and still turn up my nose and say, “I tried, just didn’t see what’s so good about it.” Then, I’ll get blindsided by the goodness of whatever it is they’re pitching to me and I’ll fall madly in love with it, feeling stupid that I didn’t get in on it in the first place. Fucking Veronica Mars!

The hilarious thing about the pilot episode is the repeated use of her full name. “Veronicaaaa Marsssss.” I think everyone who talks to her says her first and last name. The teacher, the biker dude, the new friend, the former friend, the Sheriff. It’s awesome. So, I like the show.

My sister is convinced that if I watched Rome I would like it. Because of all the sex. And I’m sure other stuff too, but the reason she gave me was the sex. I don’t know if I should just give in now and watch it, or wait 2 years and put it in my Netflix cue. I think I’ll wait. Stubborn as the day is long.

I had a weird dream fortelling the tiny earthquake this weekend.  The directions to my family’s rendevous point were written in Fine Point Sharpie on crumbly Saltine crackers.  That’s all I remember other than instructing everyone to stay in bed during the earthquake.  Because the bed is the safest place?  I think that dream says something about me.  Something that would require me to discuss my love for office supplies, saltine crackers and my bed.  Since you know about my love for the bed already, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.  (I eat saltine crackers in my bed, and let me tell you, those crumbs will stay there forever.)

I don’t have any other sordid tales from my bedroom to tell you.   I’m a tease.

My Friday night was spent drinking White Zin in bed watching Alias, calling Louie every five minutes to tell him it’s good again.  He doesn’t agree, but then, he wasn’t drinking White Zin, so… maybe that’s the missing ingredient.

Went to a Fort Drastic wedding on Saturday.  They didn’t live blog the event, which I think is a huge misstep on someone’s part, but whatever.  I didn’t get nearly drunk enough, which is a huge misstep on my part, but I had no hangover so… someone’s growing up!

Here’s one sordid tale.  I like it when I crawl back into bed after smoking and Louie wakes up and bear hugs me, smothering me in kisses whilst half asleep.  It’s exciting and nice all at the same time.

So I watched two female centric movies, two female centric tv shows and ate two salads yesterday. I felt very girly. I cruised out of the office at 11am went to a restaurant called M Cafe recommended by Eating LA and sat in the hot sun and ate a delicious Tuna Tataki salad, then cruised over to the movie theater and watched In Her Shoes, which was delightful.

After that was over the day started to go downhill. Los Feliz Blvd was traffic hell, and I got home to find 3 Netflix sitting on my doorstep. Normally a wealth of Netflix would make me excited, but for some reason the little red envelopes made me feel weighed down by the responsibility of my choices. I had Disc One of Veronica Mars, Maria Full of Grace and The Snake Pit. Veronica Mars seemed like it was going to be too much work, I wanted to wait to watch Maria Full of Grace with Louie because we had seen the first half before the Academy screener crapped out, so The Snake Pit was all I had left. I put it in my queue on a whim because it had Olivia DeHavilland in it and it was about a crazy lady. What I failed to do was read a little more about it, but its Netflix rating was 4 stars, so what could be wrong with that. (Um…There are plenty of shitty movies on Netflix with 4 stars. Mystic River anyone?) Anyway, I popped it in. You know how One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an indictment of shock treatments and mental institutions in general? Well… This movie is about that. But done in 1948. In an attempt to teach people that psychotherapy is a revolution and will change the way we see crazy people. Whew. It’s pretty incredible how shockingly misguided the film is. Women, apparently, are going crazy because they are too attached to their fathers and when their fathers die while they are young, it makes it impossible for them to ever love anyone. Actually, you kind of have to laugh. The lead character had not a bad life at all, pretty normal, yet she went crazy and therapy cured her. Sort of a prediction of what has come in modern psychotherapy. Normal childhood+dead dad=feelings of guilt that will carry on into your adult life and ultimately destroy all of your relationships. Now that I think about it, it’s actually kind of a great movie. A horrible but great movie. That I don’t recommend.

Then I went for a 4 mile run, which almost killed me. I don’t know why I do it. But when I start my run, I’m all, “Let’s just do 2 and a half, and go from there.” Then when mile 2 comes, I’m bound and determined to keep going to 3. When 3 comes, I’m all, “It’s just 4 more laps, don’t be a pussy.” Which is when my shin splints are all, “Who you calling a pussy? This shit hurts.” But I do it anyway. Lap 14 I’m on a Britney Spears song when I really want to be on a Survivor song, but whatever, my iPod is confused. When I finally stumble through lap 16 my brain is all, “See! That wasn’t hard. We did it!” And my right leg is all, “We did it. No. I did it.” The left leg sort of blanks out and just mutters. And then I’m pretty sure that I have become the Olivia DeHavilland character as my body is talking to itself and I’m left out in the cold thinking I should have just stayed in bed and listened to Rilo Kiley.

Have a good weekend, kids. I will be drinking profusely. Hopefully that will give me a damned story to tell.

I am going to catch a matinee of In Her Shoes today, which is so awesome. Matinee! on a weekday! That hasn’t happened since grad school. Back when I would go to Disneyland on a Tuesday, hang out in the park then watch three movies paying only for one and cleverly sneaking into the others. One time I sat in downtown Disney, had two margaritas, realized I was drunk and unable to drive back to LA so I had to go to another movie. I chose Resident Evil (I was drunk, don’t judge me) and I got really freaked out riding the tram back to the parking lot. I was absolutely sure a zombie was going to jump out of the bushes and try to eat my brains. Since I am still here typing, I guess you know that it didn’t go down like that. Those were the days. Disneyland and movies. I gotta get me a job like that.

Have a good day atoning for your sins, Jewish readers. And tomorrow, you get to go back to Gommorah.