Awkwardly Social

A few months ago, my friend, writing partner, and all around awesome person, Tara, told me that we were just going to go ahead and make a movie.  We had written 3 versions of a screenplay about the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains and all of them were big budget action movies that while one day we would probably be able to sell, ultimately knew we wanted to do something with the story ourselves.

So we started doing it. We flew ourselves to Arizona, we interviewed people, we scouted locations, Tara finished the script and we formed a company and now we just have to come up with a little bit of a budget shortfall to get our vision on the screen.

There are lots of ways to do this, but the way we decided to do it, so that we could maintain the most independence and stay the leanest, was to put up a project on Indiegogo.  Much like Kickstarter it’s a funding website that helps independent filmmakers reach their goals.

I’m excited about making a movie.  I have been making television and documentaries ever since I left film school and this is my chance to apply all of that experience into a kick ass scary movie.

I hope you’ll check out the our project on the IndieGogo site.  (If you donate there are perks!) Like us on Facebook (now with a link that works?).  Check out our new twitter feed (@_darkmountain_) which is just getting its sea legs.  And spread the word.

I’m doing this because I love telling stories and this is a damn good one.

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.

I almost forced you guys to behold a photo of the swelling of my feet and ankles after a 12 hour day of work where I wasn’t able to get out of the office to go for a walk at lunch like I normally do.  It was spectacularly ugly, so I didn’t take the picture.  Just know, that my hairy legs and swollen ankles are a thing now.  A real thing.

Stress itching! Check.  Heart burn! Check.  Weight gain in mostly my ass!  Check. Baby kicking like crazy and then one day stopping so completely that I was sure once again this pregnancy was doomed! CHECK. (I tried to take a video of him kicking today but he would not cooperate.  He does however seem to respond to Ashlee Simpson and ABBA.  So, there’s that embarrassing fact to mock him with later in life when he’s only listening to whatever version of angst rock there is in the 2020s and calls my love for cheesy pop music lame.)

I got something checked off my life list this weekend, but I’m struggling to find a way to actually care about that life list anymore, so I guess I’ll document it here - Life List #58 I took a cooking class (pasta making to be exact) and realized what I really need is a knife skills class and a new set of knives and to take down my life list and just work on doing things that make me happy.  This is a product of reading The Happiness Project right now.  Some of what she says is really resonating with me, I don’t think being beholden to a set of items on a list that sounded fun or interesting or, let’s be honest, smart, when I wrote them is making me happy.  What makes me happy is yet to be determined but the list feels like a weight around my (albeit very slight) spontaneous side, sort of like I’m required to do these things and if I don’t do them I’ll fail at life.  When in reality, I’ll only fail at life if I don’t be me.  And being me is hard enough without being hard on me for not being the me I think I should be. Does that make sense?

Anyway, the class was held in downtown LA at the LA Brewery artist lofts and it made me realize, this me, the me I’m stuck with, will never live in an artist loft in downtown LA, but that is ok. Because while I think lofts are awesome in theory, they are in downtown where you regularly find human feces right outside your doorstep, which coincidentally is #7 on my Don’t Do List (don’t live somewhere where you regularly find human feces outside your doorstep).

And with that!  Here is the bump. Voila!

As Alexa so eloquently put it, it’s Viable Baby time around here.  Just in time for my husband to casually drop, “Oh, it’s been almost a year since your miscarriage.” (Actually it’s next month, but who’s counting?) You guys, he totally forgot how weirdly superstitious I am and I kind of got a little freaked out.  But I’m over it now.  MOSTLY.

This week has been kind of a weird one.  I’m still not emotionally on great footing, but I’m getting there.  Last night we screened an actual film in our living room.  Seth’s dad had a 16mm film collection so we’re slowing going through them and it’s basically like being at a movie theater without a snack bar (which seriously, I need to get some kind of popcorn maker up in this piece). Last night we screened Rebecca and it was pretty fantastic.  If only I had a house like Manderley.  Except without that awful Mrs. Danvers running things, someone more like Carson would be required.  There were walk-in fireplaces!  Can you imagine?

I also have been plagued on and off with heartburn and the weight gain continues unabated.  I haven’t eaten out for lunch and my dinners have been well planned too, but I cannot seem to kick my Starbucks Venti Soy Green Tea Latte habit.  It’s an expensive habit, but it seems to be a ritual now.  I even tried to get the mix from Mighty Leaf and it’s a pretty close match, but I like my drink in a plastic cup with small ice cubes.  I have a problem.

And here is the bump.  It is getting mighty and Rufus (name of the week!) was kicking mightily during this photo session. He wanted to say hi.

So, the hives returned this week, my feet have started getting a nice swell on during the day, I’m hungry a lot of the time and basically feeling bad about the weight gain.  Pregnancy! Guaranteed to make a girls with body image issues even more crazy! Don’t get me wrong, I am amazed by the ability I have to simultaneously be shocked and pissed off by the rising numbers on the scale and also be so effing glad that this baby is healthy and happily kicking away. And he is active.  We call him Leroy, Elvis, and sometimes Elroy.  None of these will be his actual name, but Leroy is growing on me.

Our cleaning lady took the queen sized bed that was in the guest room and now it seem so big and open and empty… Putting the rug down helped but, seeing the room starting to transform, washing tiny baby clothes and trying to figure out how to fold them, started getting me a little nervous.  This is really happening.  It is… freaking me out.

I recommend having a friend close by who has a baby to walk you through their nursery and tell you what you need.  Basically, it is a short list and I’m working on a post of things people have told me, sites they’ve recommended and what the most common things moms say they needed in those first three months.

So, without further ado, my 23 week bump of doom.

I had to drive up La Cienega between Beverly and 3rd and I’ve been on this street so many times before but not this specific turn from 3rd onto La Cienega, sit in traffic, look at Border’s… Wait a second, Border’s is gone!?  And I know the lesson we all learned from You’ve Got Mail was that big bookstores are evil and killing small businesses but, um, now they’re all gone too and where do you go to just tool around and look at books?  The library has its charms but my local branch certainly isn’t designed to get a person dreaming about what I’m going to read next.  Between the crazies earnestly studying up on their back issues of Survival of the Gunniest, and the teenagers using it as a safe place to hang while they avoid their own homes, it’s just not browsy in there. Maybe it’s just because I know I’m merely borrowing the books, not rescuing them from a life of languishing next to a celebrity attempt at YA, or maybe it’s pure consumerism, but I LOVED big ass book stores.  I *soft voice* began to love them more than libraries.

Sure, libraries hold a special place in my heart.  I spent many summer days trying to check out the smuttiest romance novels without having the mean librarian tell me I was browsing the wrong shelves.  Now I spend a lot of time browsing the YA section hoping people won’t think I’m sort of slow and not exactly reaching for new heights in my literary education.

We have a local, small, cute book store on Larchmont, walking distance from the house, but it’s tiny.  I love it but there was something about being in a giant place filled with books that made my heart pitter pat.

The La Cienega Borders is a Chase bank now, and as I drove by I got a little something in my eye.  I mean, who cries over a lost corporate giant with a bad business model?  Not me, that’s for sure.  *ahem*

I don’t know if it was my trip to Seattle, or going back to work in the building where I got the phone call that my mom had died, or the brutally detailed post-apocalyptic pregnancy dreams, or the horrible feeling I get that my in laws are just… ugh, or just that fact that grieving is never over but I’ve been pretty low over here the past couple of days.

Last night I spent most of the evening in great big sobbing tears, shrieking at Seth like some kind of white trash fish wish.  I think I’m just overwhelmed.  My mom is dead.  My sister lives so very far away.  Even though they live in Beverly Hills which is a 15 minute drive away, I don’t feel close to my in laws. I have fantastic friends, but everyone has their own lives to live, you know?  Going back to work has me in a bigger funk than I expected.  Acknowledging it is maybe all I need?  I hope? I went to the store and bought ice cream.  I’m pretty sure that will help cure some of these problems.

Physically, my back aches are gone except for weird kidney pain in the early morning that I’m going to get checked out at the OB this week.  I have heartburn every night, no matter what I do or do not eat.  I gained a bigger amount of weight than I expected last week, probably because I’m sitting at a desk and eating Chipotle almost every day.

There is good news, the baby is pretty active until he isn’t and just when I’m sure he is never going to kick again and I’m about to call my OB in a panic, he kicks me in the cervix.  It’s pretty much amazing and terrifying.  We also went ahead and did the MaterniT21 blood test at our last perinatology appointment and got the results this week, negative for all the trisomies (T21, T18 and T13) it tests for.  It’s not an FDA approved test, and I sort of felt like the perinatologist was more of a car salesman than a doctor schilling more tests and more procedures than absolutely necessary in a pretty straight forward case like mine.  He was all about the testing up-sell and in the end it was something Seth wanted.  I was fine with getting the test because it’s got zero risks to me, just a quick blood draw, but also dreading results day.  $235 dollars well spent?  For Seth, yes.  For me, not so much.

This has been kind of a pregnancy pity party, I guess. Whoopsies! Anyway, enjoy the puffy post crying jag eyes and 22 week belly.

Why do you put your wallet and phone in your pocket when you’re leaving the house if you’re just going to then spend time digging them back out of your pocket to get into the car?  And again at the restaurant.  And then at the valet.  And then back at the car.

Why do you say you’re ready to go, when you still have to put on your shoes and your shoes take you like 20 times longer than a girl to put on?

Why are you waiting for me to get into the car so you can close my door, when all that time could be spent digging out your stupid wallet and phone from your pocket?

How is it possible that you think you only need 10 minutes to shower and get dressed?  It takes you that long to move from the coffee drinking/paper reading phase into the bathroom.

THIS IS WHY WE ARE ALWAYS LATE.