Doh!

I finally have a moment to breathe. If the following tell you anything about how this week or last week has gone, I hope it conveys how hectic things have been!

• I bring my gym stuff to work almost every day but haven’t been able to go


• I got a steaming cup of hot green tea and ran straight into a wall while talking with two co-workers, sloshing the tea all over my right hand


• I get a stellar parking spot on the third floor of the garage versus the usual seventh floor because I arrive so early


• I have been in nearly four hours’ worth of meetings today to go over a proposal and have to sit there and fight the urge to scream while people mull over whether they prefer to use “They’re” or “They are” and so forth.


• Yesterday I had five cups of coffee. This time last year I was drinking one a day.
  

I have a job. I have a job. I have a job.

P.S. I also have a roommate—found her in 24 hours! Classic Jo.

Is it Friday yet?

Things are a bit crazy here. This past weekend was the calm before the storm. Quiet dinners of roasted chicken and red snapper and homemade lasagna—we eat well at the Brentwood Chateau! But now the rain is coming down in a steady stream. Not an Arizona monsoon rain but a steady drip-drop all across Los Angeles. There’s something I love about the rain, but I must say: I am done! It’s been too much these last few weeks. Sunshine, where are you?

Now work is nuts once again (job security!) and my roommate is moving out (oh well), so things are a bit mucky. C’est la vie.

Not much time to write anything else but wanted to share a poem.

Perfection Wasted
And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few,
those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed in
the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

~John Updike

A friendship come full circle

“Hey, Babe!” my boyfriend greets me at the curb at LAX. “So…who did you meet this time?”

As soon as I decided I was moving to Los Angeles, it was as though something inside of me became magnetic. People were pulled towards me in seemingly coincidental ways. Contacts popped up in my email inbox. Friends and friends of friends decided they were moving to Los Angeles, too. My phone rang of job interviews.

The magnetic pull seemed to intensify at airports. Strangers smiled at me outside of the gate. Each and every flight would bring about a new contact, job opportunity or friend. I met investment bankers from the Marina, ditsy sorority girls from Manhattan Beach; newly relocated twenty-somethings; writers and inventors. It got to the point that I’d sit down on a flight and smile, almost smug-like, just waiting to see who I’d meet next. Effortless.

“So...any new friends?” my boyfriend probed.

“Yup.” I threw down two business cards on the leather seat of his Mustang. “A psychologist and an Australian guy who is moving to the states in a few months.”

It was this eerie, effortless manner in which people came into my life during that next year that led me to believe; it was the graceful way plans folded together, especially those last few months; with every business card collected, I knew. I was meant to move to Los Angeles.

* * * * * *
It’s a fall day in 2006 and I’m on a Southwest flight sitting on an LAX runway. It’s late and the night is ink-black outside the oval air plane windows. I’m sitting in the aisle and to the right of me, at the window, a girl about my age. She has long brown hair and freckles the color of the desert.

She appears terrified.

It isn’t until about 10 minutes after takeoff, when the plane is bouncing giddily in the air that she turns to me, hands gripping the arm rest.

“I don’t think the plane should be moving like this,” she says. Her voice shakes. “This isn’t right.”

I smile. “I’m sure it’s just fine.”

But I speak too soon. The plane suddenly jolts and shudders in the night air, somewhere far over southern California. She grabs my arm.

And that’s how I met Emily. A girl my age who was doing long distance with her boyfriend between Los Angeles and Arizona. She went to ASU, like me. And, like me, she was moving to Los Angles that next summer and did not want to move in with her boyfriend. And she needed a roommate. Like me.

Bingo.

* * * * * * * * *
I never did move in with Emily. We met for happy hour a few times in Arizona but our moving timelines shifted and I ended up in Los Angeles before her.

When she finally arrived in Los Angeles, we were dedicated to emailing each other updates. Our emails were lengthy and detailed. We tried several times to get together for dinner but it just never worked out with our hectic schedules.

When she asked how I was doing one fall day, via email, and I mentioned casually that my boyfriend and I had broken up, her kindness and sincerity caught me off guard.

Are you okay? That is crazy. I'd like to talk about this in person, but I've got to imagine that living in the same state was a huge change that came with a lot of wake-up calls…

I shook my head, thinking, “I just met this girl on a plane.” And it’s in this beautiful, random way when a stranger reaches out that you know that this life isn’t truly about coincidence and chance.

* * * * * * * * * *

Fast forward a year and a half and I’m at LAX waiting to board my flight to Phoenix. Emily and I have lost touch and haven’t spoken in at least a year. I’m on the phone with my Dad when I see a girl about 25 feet from me flip her long brown hair. She’s on her cell phone as well and from time to time her eyes dart in my direction.

“Dad, you’re never going to believe this,” I said. “But I think I’m staring at a girl that I met on a flight more than three years ago.”

Just then my phone beeps at me. A text message.

Are you at LAX right now? It’s Emily.

I hang up with my Dad a few minutes later and text her back. I see you!

We laugh at the pure absurdity of it all, when we see each other. We are like best of friends, only we’re still strangers. After all, we’ve only seen each other two or three times. We sit by each other on the plane and she buys me a glass of wine. She wants to know what I am doing, who I am dating, how work is going. I admire her engagement ring and she tells me that her fiancé, who is in the Air Force, is waiting to find out where he is stationed next. They’ll have to move in August.

“I am scared,” she confides. “It’s probably going to be in some small shit town, and what am I going to do for work?”

We make plans to do dinner next week. She wants to know about my book club; I tell her of course she is always invited. We exchange pilates stories - the pain! She wants to move to Brentwood if they don’t have to leave LA.

When the plane lands, a small part of my heart is just a bit sad, knowing that she might be leaving Los Angeles in a few months when we’ve only just reconnected. The selfish part of me wants to keep her.

We’re in touch a few days later.

“Em, where did Jeff get stationed?”

“Biloxi, Mississippi,” she says. “I am freaking out.”

“We’ll talk about it at dinner next week,” I reply. “It isn’t forever.”

I go online that afternoon to buy her a Mississippi guide book. I can’t find a book right away (It’s Mississippi for God’s sake) but keep looking. This is her next great adventure in life: three years in a small town with her new husband.

She was there for my adventure.

Now it’s my turn to return the favor.

Indoor picnic

After a weekend away, or a weekend with a guest in town, I go into homebody mode. My desire for a wild late night slows to a simmer and instead I turn to laundry, cleaning, bill paying and just getting things done. I want clean sheets and squeaky floors. I want watered plants, lit candles. My pile of junk mail disappeared, old food thrown away.

Part of this slowing down involves food (of course). I associate food with comfort, good memories, love, warmth. It's been a bit chilly here in Los Angeles and the raining on and off makes me want to stay in and cook all day and read. I don't have the time to cook all day but tonight I am making a veggie lasagna with homemade marinara sauce. I'll put on my glasses and sweats and dive into 100 Years of Solitude.

During the week, when I have even less time, I've been making picnic plates. Gouda and Granny Smith apples sliced super thin; dry salami; perhaps a clementine. Infatuation and I will stand in the kitchen and work our way through salty parmesan and asiago. This past week we even devoured an entire stalk of celery. Gone, every last crunchy bite. Something about a good glass of red wine and a European-style picnic plate, even if eaten standing in my teeny galley kitchen, makes for a perfect ending to a stressful work day.

The above photo is a picnic plate from a wine trip up north last summer.

Somewhere in LA, in the rain.

It’s Friday. That’s a good thing no matter where you work but for me, it’s especially wonderful. Today it is raining and our building doorman greeted us with doors held open and mats put firmly in place to ward off muddy boot prints. Breakfast is catered in and I can see the building across the street from me, the way it appears caked with moisture, the water running down its brown exterior like a delicious chocolate sauce.

On rainy days I tend to work harder. No spring fever for me, no dreams of sundresses and bare toes. I cozy up with the hazelnut coffee or green tea and actually focus.

Last night was my last Dine LA dinner, at Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City. My dates were my “work spouses,” my two closest friends at work. One of them, Bear, is tall and chubby and gay and happy. He delivers good news with a smile. I can’t imagine him angry, or—if he was angry—he’d shout at you with a big grin on his face. Liz is the other. Probably the most independent girlfriend I have. She is so happy with herself and her life and doesn’t feel the need to be attached-at-the-hip with her boyfriend. She is so incredibly level-headed and driven. She is pencil thin and “LA cool” – flip flops and designer jeans and long, loose sweaters.

Dinner was amazing. Ford’s is now on my fave list of LA restaurants. Yum.

And then the rain started to come down harder, after dinner. I slept through the night. I don’t recall tossing and turning or dreaming. It was a night that I sunk deep into my bed, limbs still, mind peaceful.

And now, here I am.

Happy Friday.

Planning the escape

I sat in an hour long meeting yesterday and I found myself day dreaming. It wasn’t that the discussion wasn’t interesting. It was, actually. The meeting was about a very complex, challenging project. But, nevertheless, I was daydreaming. My eyes grew heavy despite my two cups of hazelnut coffee and I somehow got a case of the Yawns. My head was tilted—as if pulled by string, puppet-like in nature—towards the window and my eyes scanned the Santa Monica mountains. It was a gorgeous, unusually clear day.

My VP’s voice droned on and became a white noise to my imagination.

We then moved to an office next door and continued our discussion, only this time standing. This made it harder for me to drift off as I had to concentrate on standing upright and looking like I was interested. I found a mini fridge to lean against and I plopped my butt right down. The support of the fridge helped but not enough. At some point, my back started to hurt and I stopped gazing so much at the mountains and thought about new jeans I wanted to buy. I thought about weekend plans. I thought about tomato soup and the beach and lovely naps on a Sunday afternoon. I thought about red wine.

I thought, Screw this.

I dream for things beyond the corporate world and quite frankly, I don’t give a poop about my industry. We may be in an economic slump, but I’m on a motivational high. A motivational high and long-term day dream to be my own boss and to zone out the Equation, the fizz of the white noise of BS.

So while I occasionally open up a blank word doc at work to write and lay structure to my thoughts, perhaps I’ll be writing less and researching more. Maybe I’ll be working my way through less beach reads at home and more business strategy books.

Because there won’t always be a mini fridge to hold up my fat ass when I get bored at work.

This image gets me through the day

When things get rough at work, all I gotta do is look at the above and I lose it. "What really brought down the plane into the Hudson..."