Awkwardly Social

Woke up late
Drank room temperature day old coffee
Car broke down in the middle of a hugely busy street
Got the estimate for the car repair
Had a heart attack
Got my period

Thanks, God.  I get.  I really do.  Fuck you, too.

UPDATE: God was apparently trying to make me feel better by telling Starbucks to put the Pumpkin Spice Latte on the menu again.  IT WON’T WORK, GOD!  I CAN’T BE BRIBED!

Ok.  I can.  A little.

I thought when I quit smoking my skin would magically return to being soft and wrinkle free.  I also thought that if I quit smoking and drank water I would look like a teenager again.  Not the teenager I used to look like, or any teenager I’ve ever known in real life, but a TV teenager (not an ‘Osborne’ teenager, but a FAKE tv teenager) and I would be poreless and pretty.

I was denying the thing sitting on my face.  I said to myself, "Oh look, a really big freckle."  I have a freckly face when it is exposed to sun, which it hasn’t been for at least 5 years (moisturizer w/sunscreen ladies, you owe it to your face).  And then when I considered the fact that I am A. 30 and B. a victim of several serious sunburns in my active horsey youth, I realized that the aging isn’t ever going to go backwards.  I will not magically wake up wrinkle free one morning.  I will not see the ‘new freckle’ fade.  I am old, and I have the face to prove it.

Someone please make me a cocktail.

I just wanted to check in and say that my writing group is sapping all creativity from my brain.  My writing group is a creativity zombie.  Everytime I come up with an idea now, instead of dutifully running over here and telling you all about it, I quickly turn around and face down the zombie who invariably sucks out my brains and I am once again stuck at level one. right click, down, down, etc. etc. JUMP!

The writing group is meeting weekly now and we have assignments (daily) so I’m pretty sure the well will be dry for a while.  Just thought you should know.  Also, I thought I should bring it up because everytime I do that, 10 ideas hit me.  Maybe the zombies won’t be able to deal with 10 ideas.  One idea?  they munch like crazy.  10 ideas, I’m advancing to the next level.

I’ve been threatening my mom and sister about putting together a Blaich family cookbook, one that encompasses Dad’s side and Mom’s side of the culinary spectrum.  It all started because my mom told me about an old recipe book she found in her mom’s stuff, and one of the entries was for Dandelion Wine, another for soap.  I am so far removed from a culture in which you have to make your own wine (with weeds no less) and your own soap (with lye…which, coincidentally, is an ingredient in Lutefisk, a meal so disgusting, you’ll wish you were dead.) that I thought it would be fun to try out the recipes.  I don’t know if you guys remember, but I am super lazy.  I have done exactly zero of the things it would take to make either of those items and really the only thing that I have done is continue to think about where in the hell one finds a plethora of dandelions, because, come on, my lawn is alternately brown and full of clover, and really, I don’t want to make wine out of weeds that my neighbors dogs pissed and shat on.

Today I was going through my finances and realized that after dinner tomorrow night for a close friend’s birthday (heavy drinking!) I will have exactly $12.00 in the bank (I’m only exagerating a little, I’ll have $12.92) until payday.  Payday was Friday.  So $12.92 for two weeks.  (Ok, I have more than $12.92… but seriously it feels like $12.92.)  The point of this exaggeration is that I decided to see what the cookbooks suggest for times like this.  I have three cookbooks that aren’t vegetarian, and fuck if I’m going to eat vegetarian by choice for two weeks.  So I pulled out the Hendrickson Cookbook, and my Betty Crocker "New Choices" Cookbook (which means it’s lame butter free recipes) and the "New Dieter’s Cookbook."  It became very, very clear that I have a some serious food issues.  Someone please buy me the Mark Bittman book.  God. 

I cracked open the Hendrickson Cookbook (this is Dad’s side) and flipped to Chicken Manyana (which made me giggle, because I’m fairly certain they put the ‘y’ in there to make it clear that this is a "Mexican" recipe.  Ole!  Or as the Norweigan’s say, "Uff da!"  Actually ‘ole’ and ‘uff da’ are very different representations of exclamatory remarks.  I feel like ‘ole’ is like ‘ta da’ or ‘yippee’, whereas ‘uff da’ is like ‘oh boy, here we go,’ or ‘fuck.’ ) Anyway, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia for this recipe my mom used to make called "Chicken Tortilla" which is a casserole that includes not only cream of chicken soup, but also green chiles.  Mexican and Norweigan unite! 

I think I’ll save making it until the weather cools just a touch, but here it is for your dining pleasure.

Chicken Tortilla

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (fryer)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 onion (it says grated, but how do you grate an onion, do you use a cheese grater? I’m confused)
1/2 pound grated cheddar cheese (I do, however, know how to grate cheese.  You buy the bag that says, "grated")
1 dozen corn tortillas
1 cup milk
1 can green chiles, diced (heh.  Here it says, ‘not hot’, but I say, if you want to, go for the hot!)

Wrap chicken in foil and bake 1 hour at 400 degrees.  (or just buy a pre-cooked fryer from the deli section.  Jesus, no wonder I’m so poor.) Bone chicken, leaving in large pieces (I’m assuming they mean take the meat off the bones, not, ‘put your penis in the chicken’).  Cut tortillas into quarters.  Mix soup, milk, onion, and chiles.  Butter a large casserole dish (yeah, take that "New Choices cookbook!") fill with repeating layers of tortillas, chicken, and soup mix.  Finish with soup layer on top.  Store in refrigerator over night.  Bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes.  Cover with grated cheese and bake until cheese is melted.

My mouth is watering right now.  Enjoy!

Cross posted at Apartment Makeover.

It just occured to me that "Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman," is a kind of anti-feminist statement.  Then I thought, "Wait, is it anti-feminist to say men are stinkier than women?"  Which is exactly when Louie told me to smell his armpit and I did it.

I can’t believe Saturday was only 4 days ago, it seems like a decade.

I was a little nervous about it. I don’t know about the rest of you ladies, but when I have to be introduced to a new group of women, I get a little crazed. Women are tough. Especially when the one person you do know in the group is a friend, but not someone you’ve had a lot of one on one time with. Groups of women never have one set of rules that you follow, you sort of have to get in, get comfortable and figure out who is in charge. There’s never one kind of girl in charge. Sometimes you can be surprised that the quiet, sweet girl is the one leading the pack with kind words for everyone. Sometimes its the bitchy one who determines the tack of the ship. It’s rarely me leading the troops is all I’m saying. I’m happy to be the one in the back ground talking too loudly about crotch rot and hand jobs.

Sam was kind enough to invite me into her book club. I have never been in a book club because after I read something usually I have about 15 to 20 words to say about the book and I’m on to the next. I thought I’d try it though, because as much as I love my film school friends and Louie’s “Hollywood” friends, I thought I needed to expand the number of people who know that I am gross and will mention inappropriate touching in polite conversation. So when she said this group of ladies likes to talk about trips to the gyno, birthing babies, and they read books, I was so totally sold.

Everything was going OK until the “Million Dollar Question” came up and pretty much everyone looked at me like a total whore when I said if someone offered me a million dollars to sleep with them I would totally do it. I guess that technically does make me a ‘total whore’ but I feel like my student loans and my credit card debt are something Louie isn’t really required to take on, and if I can earn a little extra cash… Yeah. They didn’t buy it either. They were horrified. Everyone but Sam, that is. Sam was like, “I would seriously consider it.” I think she was just saying that to be nice.

I don’t know, a million dollars is a lot of money.

Last night we were in a Malibu mini-mansion. There was an infinity pool. Warhols (plural). An elevator. I think I might have somehow been given someone else’s life, accidentally.

In the “May contain ______” category, I was eating some salmon salad that I made and I took a bite into a PIECE OF GLASS. Ever since that moment (because I swallowed some) I’ve been waiting for the perforated intestine, or burst appendix, or the like.

Louie and I went to dinner at Gladstone’s last night and I was the girl who didn’t like her meal. Apparently, as Cats mentioned later while we were sitting by the pool, I am very often that girl. Which I didn’t really know until that very moment. I guess I’m a picky eater? (My whole family is shaking their head and rolling their eyes saying, “Um, no fat sphaghetti?”) Here’s the thing though, why shouldn’t I be picky, what is more empowering than knowing exactly what you like and the limits of what you’ll put in your body. This whole argument is (of course) blown because Cats and I shared a half cooked sausage at the party later and I didn’t care. I’m not only picky, I’m picky and undescerning. I’m an oxymoron.

I will say, going to a party and having people tell me they’re sick of seeing the last post up here (waller). and then complaining about how I don’t write enough is flattering, but then it gets to be too much pressure and I consider saying fuck it. Because honestly hearing me blab about my future perforated intestine and semi-gauche bragging about where I was last night make me kind of sick of myself, so I’m sure you’re getting sick of it too.

Hopefully I’ll get my period soon. I always have something to talk about then.

(I’ve been watching too much Last Comic Standing on Fox Reality [Did you know that’s a channel? It is!] because this post reads like a bad comedian’s scribblings on a napkin before they go on stage. I’m telling you I better have something awesome happen to me soon.)

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have friends who happen to have pretty fabulous lives, lives that involve suites at the Chateau Marmont.  Since it seems I can’t really do anything to make these friends stop liking me, I get to go places like top floor suites at the Chateau Marmont.  If you’re not from LA, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about.  It’s the place where Belushi died, Lohan lives here now, if you watch Entourage there’s a scene with the Director of Queen’s Blvd. shot in the very suite we were lounging about in.  It’s a big deal.

The main reason I didn’t flake last night (because I was desperately trying to figure out reasons why I shouldn’t be at the Chateau on a Tuesday, drinking) was because of Joan Didion.  I just finished reading "The Year of Magical Thinking" (which if you want to be sad for a few days, read that) and Didion’s life with her husband and their writer friends made me think that is the life I should be living.  A writerly life.

Here’s what happened-
Four people are standing around.  One of them is me, one of them is Waller, the two others are people I really should self-censor a bit around.
Waller:  I’ve been reading your blog lately.
Me:  Oh really?  You didn’t used to, because I talked about my period.
Waller:  Yeah, Cats gave me the updates.
Me:  About my period?
(The two others get either uncomfortable or interested, I couldn’t read them)
Waller: No… It was because I didn’t really ‘get’ blogs before.  Now with Perez Hilton and Defamer, I get it.
Me:  So, my period talk doesn’t bother you then?
Waller:  No… it’s just that now I understand how blogs work, with the backwards reading and before I didn’t really get it.
Me:  So it never had anything to do with me being on my period, you just hated blogs?
Waller:  Who’s thirsty?

You maybe can see why I’m surprised these people are still my friends.  It was a fun time, there were writers and photographers and directors of development and trend spotters and me.   You wear the clothes for the job you want, not the job you have, right?*

Other topics of discussion:
Mucus plugs
Brad’s dating life (only hot chicks for Brad)
Cars in pools (one of Cats friends had a car crash into their pool, I felt the need to mock them… don’t ask)
The girl Vincent Chase had sex with on Entourage last week (if she was or wasn’t cute)
Quintana Roo (dead?  or not dead?)
Dominick Dunne, other Dunne’s (dead or not dead?  Related or not related to John Dunne?)
Lindsay Lohan (worth our time, or not?)

On our way home we ran into Jason Schwartzman in what Mels believes might have been a foiled rape plot, but the rest of us think was just a guy walking his dog.  Mels suffers from an overactive crime imagination because she grew up in the suburbs of the former murder capital of the U.S.

*I totally stole that from one of Ali’s comedian friends.

Yesterday I starred in a little play called, "80’s Mom," because I hadn’t done laundry and I had to wear something from the very, way back of the closet. 

I guess a normal person would be a little embarassed to wear the shirt I wore yesterday, but I think you all know I’m not normal.

Amazingly, today I was able to wear something fresh out of the laundry and I’m not fairing much better.

I think it’s time for a shopping montage.

I don’t know how to tell you this.  It wasn’t a dream.  It really happened.

I’m not one for volunteering during "performances" but somehow (maybe because my friends are assholes*) I always get volunteered, and then I’m the dork in the chicken suit dancing for the lady getting cut in half.

Last night I had to lay in a bed with Miranda July while she spooned me.  I was told to keep my eyes closed but they kept flying open. I was sure at any moment the whole audience would be laughing at me because I couldn’t hear the whispered directions that the stage manager was stage whispering too quietly at me.

When I was allowed to return to my seat having missed the group reading of the cue cards, Cats told me I looked really skinny up there. 

I know she was lying but it made me feel better.  Because when you go to a Miranda July show, the audience is 95% hipsters and 5% people who think hipsters should eat more beef.  Guess which per cent I’m in.  In addition to that, Miranda July weighs about what my left leg weighs.  So… being spooned by a very skinny person is kind of awkward.  Especially when you know 96 people are watching you.  I will say however, for an audience full of hipsters, they were very non-judgemental.

*Cats is not an asshole.