I thought that the matricide episode was some sort of a Mother’s Day special.  But then some awfully violent treatment of Lois came up again tonight during reruns.  And it got me thinking that despite Family Guy’s frequently extreme misogyny, my delight with the show continues to increase.  This got me wondering: what would this show be like without the hatred of women?

And then I thought, what’s the word for hatred of men?  I looked it up: it’s “misandry”.  Why don’t we know it? Perhaps because women aren’t that hateful towards men? Or if we are, we haven’t had the power in the last few centuries to exercise it?

I suppose that rather than longing for an increase in the familiarity of the word “misandry” in our culture, I should hope for a decrease in the prevalence of misogyny.  Meanwhile, I can’t get enough of little Stewie.  Damn men.    

I’m so proud of my 13 year old gorgeous, brilliant, confident and generous niece.  She just donated most of her hair to Locks of Love.  Something I would have been incapable of at her age.

Her new haircut looks beautiful.  

I had so much fun today!! Coaches lied. They promised us a 20 mile work out and we only went 19.77.

I’m so proud of my walking partner K. We both had personal records — walked farther than we ever had before. Coach offered me the use of his Garmin GPS tracker again and our average pace (stopping the clock for each potty break) was 15:10 minute miles. We actually sped up as we went along - which was the goal.

Unfortunately, I needed to make 3 (or was it 4?) potty stops. Once, an entire team of bikers all dressed alike beat us to the 76 station Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve just come in from a really beautiful wedding.  One of those rare ones that hits all the marks in a good way.  As a special bonus, the setting was comfortably populated with this little fellow and several of his family & friends. 

I’ve noticed that whenever I’m watching a show or movie lately, I wonder about the characters’ financial situations.  I wonder how much they earn each year, how much credit card debt they have, how much is in their retirement accounts, how they invest, how involved they are in making their investment choices.  I wonder if they thought about how they’d fund a college education for their child before they conceived.  I wonder if they have a 30 year mortgage and if they fell into one of those variable interest rate loans.  I wonder if they had help from a parent with a down payment.  I wonder if they have trust funds or inheritances. 

Take Gilmore Girls, for example.  One of my very favorite shows. (No spoilers please, I’m still working my way through old seasons on DVD.)  I wonder: just how rich are the parents? I mean, Emily Gilmore bought Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I fled work at 5:30pm (crazy!), walked 3 blocks to the coast and down the beach a few more blocks to meet Andy at Shutters for a ridiculously expensive happy hour. After a leisurely sipped lemon drop and a pineapple martini (for me), a Stella and a Becks (for him), and an unimpressive cheese plate (for both of us), we strolled back up the beach to our car.  I snapped this shot with my not-so-fab-iPhone-cam.  We were standing on one of the pedestrian bridges over PCH.  Here’s hoping there will be more evenings like that one.      

 ”Those are nice, huh? . . . They’re not real; so they’ll last forever.”  
– Lars in LARS AND THE REAL GIRL

I’ve reached precisely this point in watching this movie for the first time.  It’s the part when one of the townswomen (who has agreed to pretend that Lars’ life-sized doll is a real person) has given the faux girlfriend a big bouquet of artificial flowers.  Up until this point, it’s been somewhat of a mystery (to me and to the characters around Lars in the movie) as to why he seems to be under the delusion that the doll is a real woman.  But as soon as he says, “They’re not real; so they’ll last forever,” it makes perfect sense.  When I heard this line, I pressed pause.  And then I wept.  

This is what’s been bringing about my reoccurring melancholy for years now: everything is fleeting.  Fleeting.  And there’s so much sweetness that’s passing right before my eyes.  There’s a constant powerlessness.  A constant letting go.  And it hurts.

My niece verbalized the feeling best when she was 4.  The day I showed up for my biannual visit with her family - our family, she started the ritual of asking, “How many more days will you be here?”  
“9 more days.”  
And the next day she remembered to ask,  “How many more days will you be here?”  
“8 more days.”  
Later, “How many more days will you be here?”  
“7 more days.”  
Finally, on the last day, she said, “I wish this were the first day again.”  
“Oh, me too.  Me too.”    

It’s too sweet.  It goes by too quickly.  There’s no pressing pause.  

She’s 13 now.  She doesn’t remember that particular visit.  But I tell her the story.

The feeling is the same each time I see my parents.  It’s the same each time Andy leaves for work in the morning.  It’s the same whenever I have random mundane thoughts about the passage of time - like noticing the heat marks that are impossible to remove from the tea kettle.  I remember the day I chose that kettle.  It seemed like it would be new forever.  It’s the same when I listen to Lily breathing loudly in her sleep.

The only thing that counteracts this ache is when I remind myself of Plato’s Parable of the Cave.  But that’s for another post.  

About a week or so before the U.S. entered Iraq in 2003, I heard a radio interview between a journalist and an actor in Baghdad.  He was rehearsing for a play that was scheduled to open sometime in late March. The journalist asked something to the effect of, “Aren’t you wasting your time?”  The actor indicated that no, the endeavor to perform the show was not a waste of time.  They intended to put the play on as scheduled.  He talked about the craft of acting, the magic of the theater.  He sounded so strong and committed.    

I wonder if he’s still alive?  What has happened to him and his fellow actors in the five years since then? 

Yesterday when I was walking from Palisades Park to Amalfi Drive to Sunset Blvd., to San Vincente Blvd., I passed by hundreds, if not thousands, of amazingly beautiful flowers.  I wondered if my “Women for Women sister” in D.R. Congo ever gets to see flowers.  I thought about how people here can garden without worrying about getting shot at.  

I can’t imagine having to walk 17 miles without my medically researched shoes and scientifically formulated sports drinks and Gu packs and table salt.  Add to that the fact that I got to do the walk in complete safety, utterly positive that no one with machetes was after me or anyone I know.  

I was so safe that I could take time to enjoy the seeing the colors of the flowers.  And not only were the flowers there — thriving because we have the luxury to grow them and the extra water to feed them — but my mind was free from fear and comfortable enough to appreciate them.  

I just don’t know what to do with all of this good fortune.  It makes me cry sometimes.   

17 miles

It was a good walk, today.

Drew blood; yay!  My walking partners totally saved me from having a complete wipe out.  

What is a scratch could have been a lot worse.  

Oh, and I think I’m losing one of my middle toenails.

Spirit of the marathon. 

Stay tuned. 

Saturday we were treated to a really nice dinner at The Lobster. 

I spent Sunday at my favorite place on earth:  The L.A. Times Festival of Books.  Somehow, in a crowd of, how many thousands of people (?), we ran into our friends.  I knew they were going to be there . . . but it’s always a surprise when you find each other unexpectedly.  

And today, I woke up one minute before the alarm went off (5:59am) and am now prepping for our 17 mile training day.  No time to blog, I have to start spreading “Body Glide” and Vaseline all over my feet.  The combo totally prevented blisters last week.  Insha’Allah.  

Oh, did I mention the high is 87 here today?  . . . . If you think of me any time before 12:30pm PST, imagine sodium and ice cubes.  It’s worth a try right? 

Some day, I will be able to say that I raised (at least) $2400 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Until that day arrives, I won’t stop trying to find new ways to meet the goal.  

I’m sharing this with you now, not to ask for money, but because those of you reading this have been along side me in my thoughts during this endeavor. 

Check out my latest strategy.  Feel free to pass the link on to anyone you think might just NEED a hip baby shirt, or two or three.  

It was supposed to be 15 miles, but I miscalculated while improvising the route. Oh well.

Today was the first (and hopefully) only day that I chose to do a long walk without the team. We were all supposed to meet in a new location - Palos Verdes - at 7:15am for a hilly 15 mile work out. After waking up at 4:15am yesterday for our fundraising yard sale, and then finding out that there are no bathrooms on the Palos Verdes route, I decided that sleeping in and walking a route with the guarantee of plumbing would be a prudent move.  It’s all well and romantic to imagine a young runner peeing in the bushes, but I’m walker. It takes me nearly 4 hours to do 15 miles. I can’t stay hydrated for 4 hours without at least one potty break. So I decided to go it alone.

I’m used to seeing Venice Beach at 8am. It’s an entirely different place at 2pm on a Sunday. Visually amazing, but all together annoying while trying to maintain a pace. I cheated and went on the bike path for a bit, but felt a little worried about upsetting the cyclists. That time of weekend day, the bike path is as congested as the 405. I am glad I risked it for a short time though, because I encountered the graffiti park. This is a picture I found on the web taken of a day far less beautiful than today - but I wanted to show you how cool it is:

Over all, my time was 4 hours, 4 minutes, 45 seconds. I knew I’d lost a lot of time dodging strollers, puppies and kids too young to be on scooters in such a crowded place, not to mention waiting for the bathroom at the beach more than once. So when I saw my overall time, I figured I had probably miscalculated the distance. Sure enough upon plugging my route into the gmaps pedometer, I saw that I had only gone 14.64 miles.  

Most of that was without an iPod.  Whenever my thoughts got impatient about how long it was taking, I just repeated to myself, “Be present.  Be present.”  I learned that it’s much easier to think about what’s right in front of you than to build up anxiety about how much longer there is to go.  

Huge lesson of the day: GO EARLIER.  I became completely allergic to the crowds.  I think that’s how I cheated myself out of the last .40 of a mile.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the tourists walking along the beach view park.

All in all, a good day, though.  

Swords were the big seller yesterday.  It’s genetic: put any Boy Child between the ages of 4 and 8 within a 6 foot proximity to a plastic sword and the two will become inextricably joined.  

That was the highlight of my yard sale experience, seeing little swashbucklers making their way back to the family vehicles brandishing their happy finds.  Thank goodness one of my donators had brought a whole bin of swords.  Plastic, of course.   

Not that I’m ever going to have a yard sale ever again, for as long as I draw oxygen into my lungs, you are my witness: never again. However, if I were going to advise someone on the mechanics of such a thing as How to Have a Yard Sale, I would say, load up on the swords. Read the rest of this entry »

On days like today, when I’m sitting in my office working away, merrily unstapling pages and paperclipping other pages and typing numbers into the calculator and looking at spreadsheets, and then all of a sudden, a Grateful Dead song comes up on the iPod shuffle blaring some tune like “Bird Song” through each of the little speakers on my desk, I think to myself, “Is this what I thought being a grown up would be like?”

And I wonder . . . When I was out there on the staduim floors twirling, show after show, watching my skirt wave out around my 18 year old body, did I have any idea that 38 would look like this? That I would have relocated to California and made a life on my own here? That I would have waited more than a decade to meet the man of my life? That I’d be employed in the TV & Film industry? That even inside my own office, I’d feel a little guilty for stopping to write a journal entry?

I didn’t have a clue. I wonder what the next 20 years will bring. If in 1988 I couldn’t even fathom such ideas as an iPod or the internet . . . and iChat was Totally Jetsons, man, then what’s 2028 going to look like? What toys, what jobs, what endeavors, what relationships?  Jerry will still jam on whatever gizmo delivers the music, though, that’s for sure.  

20 years goes by so quickly. Too fast. Too fast.  “Perhaps it was all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.” 

Thirty-thirty-thirty six hours to go-oh-oh.
I wanna be sedated.

I have a strong dislike for event coordination. I’m not even hosting this yard sale, I’m just one of the sellers. Still, I cannot wait until it’s over.

Lily’s kind of getting into having extra smells around the house.

There is a bright side: for the first time ever, something I’ve written has appeared in the L.A. Times! Does it still count if I had to pay to get it there? Here’s a sample:

Meanwhile, I’m learning a lot about myself. Like, I’m not ready to give up the “With Love, Elvis” collector’s plate I bought back in 1995 at Graceland. Nor am I ready to give up the Waterford paperweight my first love’s parents gave me for high school graduation. I thought I could let them go. I went so far to see what such items are fetching at ebay. And yet, I just couldn’t bring myself to put these things into the bags on the living room floor.

During the process of gathering items for the sale, I received several wonderful household decorations, games & toys from my dear friend, E. I’m planning on sending her a thank you note for all of the great sellables.

Just tonight, though, as I opened all of the storage boxes in my closet, I realized that I also need to thank E again for all the gifts she’s given me over the years that I just cannot part with, not even while spring cleaning for charity. These are things I would never even dream of giving away - a gorgeous beaded jewelry case she gave me for my birthday one year, the engraved silver lipstick mirror she gave me when I was in her wedding, the Fairy God Mother wand she gave me when she invited me to become her first born’s god mother, the antique shoemaker’s mould she gave me back in college, the feather boa she adorned her guests with at a wonderful birthday dinner party. It all stays! Wow - What an incredibly thoughtful friend. I feel so lucky.

As I searched among all of my very favorite treasures, I encountered the voodoo doll my dad gave me from one of his trips to New Orleans way back when. It’s made almost entirely of branches and sticks. Fantastic! Mom’s birthday gifts of music boxes are kept safe in bubble wrap. Someday I’ll have enough square footage to let them encounter air and light. In the meantime, they’re kept with the other things I wouldn’t dream of letting go. Like my first cell phone.

Hello! It’s 1996 calling!

Okay. So I found a couple other things that I have to show you before I call it a night. Among my junk priceless valuables, I still have my 1950’s Barbie and her date, Ken as Elvis. Of course, these things are not still in the original packaging. Instantaneous gratification is my life force. I had to break the seal on these babies the day they swiped my card at Graceland. (Yeah, I do a lot of shopping at Gracland. So?)

Anyway - flash back to the days and nights when I would go entire weekends and the only human interaction I had was with the movie theater parking garage attendant and the pizza hut delivery man. Back then, I had a vision of building a collage showcase for my Elvis and Barbie.

Elvis would stand on this:

And Barbie would stand on this:

You can tell how lonely a woman is by how often she refills her hot glue gun.

Phew, those days are over. Past my bed time. Oh- and guess what? There’s a man in my bed! Thank goodness, the best thing about memory lane is coming back to the present. Amen.

Andy took me to Sisley yesterday for a late lunch.
We just sat and talked and read and dined.
Afternoons like that pass way too quickly.

Was stuck in traffic on PCH for a while today.

I had to laugh at myself when I got impatient.

I walked to work today.  I didn’t have a photographer on hand to capture my feet, no.  But those are my feet.  Snapped on another, not so long ago, day. 

The distance to work from my apartment - door to door - down the exact streets I traveled is 2.895 miles.  I know this because I plotted the course here.  Such a cool site!  

Knowing the distance, I approximated that it would take me about 45 minutes.  I set my timer when I left home.  It was a lovely morning for a walk.  

I passed by a school playground at recess and saw lots of short people with high pitched voices tossing balls around and running in circles.  

I passed by the Unitarian church where we had the memorial for our friend, Jim, years ago.  

I passed by a senior citizens’ home where a man in a wheelchair and a wide brimmed sun hat gave me a giant smile and an enthusiastic, “Good morning.”  

I passed another man with long white hair dressed in orange robes and flip flops.  He stopped to tell a gardener something and shook his finger in the gardener’s face.  I don’t know what he was saying because the gardener’s lawnmower made too much noise.  The gardener didn’t frown behind Orange Robe’s back, so perhaps there wasn’t a conflict after all.     

I passed two tiny dogs chasing each other - tangling their leashes.  

I passed a man wearing a tractiony metal brace - a screw crown looking sort of thing - around his head walking with a cane outside of the hospital.  He looked strong all the way to the first street sign, where he grabbed on and rested.

I passed a really nice looking funeral home where I wondered if I think about death more than I think about sex.  I got to see the DHL driver bring two boxes to the funeral director’s office.  Mail order Formaldehyde?

I passed an old priest walking east to my west.  He had a king sized half eaten Hershey’s chocolate bar in his hand and was about ready to take another bite when I smiled at him.  

I passed the beyond-natty dread haired homeless man who is always on the corner of Wilshire and Lincoln.  He had a companion with him today whose delusional cardboard sign misspelled either “faggots” or “fascists”; I passed before I could read the whole note.  

I passed by the cupcake shoppe.  

By the time I got work, my timer said 44:28.  Go figure.  I would have had a decent pace if it weren’t for all the dastardly stop lights!  

All I could think when it came time to stop moving my feet was, I want to keep going - I’ve just gotten started.  

I’m obsessed with tracking my pace. Saturday morning was our team practice race. A 10K. We wore chip timers. My pace was 14:07 minutes per mile. Not bad for a novice power walker. The thing that excites me about it is that hopefully someday I can get my pace down into the 13 minute range. Sustainable for 26.2 miles? Probably not with potty breaks - but time will tell.

Today was our 13 mile walk. I know I was a lot slower. I think it’s waking up before sunrise two days in a row that got to me.

Yesterday I went to A16 to check out the Garmin gadgets. Luckily, they were sold out; so I have more time to contemplate the purchase. I think I’ll eventually splurge on one. They’re just too much fun, and too damn helpful.

I’m tired. Can you tell I don’t feel like writing? I just said to Andy, “I don’t have my blog voice.”

Sort of dreading the coming days and weeks when I’ll be treking all around Los Angeles to pick up OPJ (Other People’s Junk) for the purposes trying to sell it at our Team in Training yard sale. I still have nearly $600 to raise to make my fund raising minimum and somehow I don’t think peddling all the used copies of once ill-purchased “Lady Hawk” DVDs I can find is going to cut it. Hmm.

Could it be time to nag my relatives for more donations? Perhaps. Sigh.

I’ll be more witty in my next post.

Oh, I almost forgot: