The Conversation Chronicles: Rotten Eggs

mom: so i was talking to some of my girlfriends, honey, and you know how we often talk about our kids.

me: yep. please don’t tell me you’re going to try to set me up with one of their sons.

mom: no, of course not. i know you like to pick your own men. anyway, one of them told me how doctors can freeze your eggs now so you can use them later when you’re ready to have kids.

me: really, mom? has it come to this already?

mom: have you heard about this procedure?

me: yep, i’ve heard. but can you not count me out just yet? i still have some good years left until menopause.

mom: but your eggs are getting older and that’s not good for a baby. you might want to consider this.

me: can we talk about this again in a few years or maybe never again?

mom: think about it.

me: ok.

My New iPhone

i know i’m late to the barbecue with this as the iPhone has been around since 2007, but i only recently joined the ranks of smartphone users. i was overdue for an upgrade of my ancient fliptop and when the guy at Radio Shack told me i could get a coveted iPhone 4S for a third of the price, my jewish pragmatism kicked in and i went for it.

i had been resisting this since forever as i spend enough time in front of my computer and feared the iPhone would become an extra appendage as indispensable to me as my laptop. and guess what? it totally has. i fall asleep with it charging about two feet away from my head. contrast this with my old phone, which i would often forget at home, leave in my purse and charge in the other room.

but this little piece of silicon and plastic with its easy interface, endless apps and very useful Siri made me its slave overnight. the one time i thought i lost it, my heart started pounding in a panic — not only with the fear that it was gone, but also with the dread that i would have to go to the apple store immediately to buy a new one at retail price. the thought of returning to a cheaper phone didn’t even occur to me.

i love this phone and the whys of this are well documented elsewhere and already understood by the zillion iPhone owners who came before me so i won’t bother going into how awesome it is. but it is pretty awesome and i think Siri is the hot shit. also hot and incredibly addictive is the scrabble/words with friends app that has kept me up late at night and distracted during the day in competitive word wars. (find me through facebook or username “millamoon” if you want to battle.)

but, of course, the joy of the iPhone is found in its many splendid photo apps, which make rubes like me who know nothing about photography look like ansel adams. i have been a photo-taking machine since getting this thing and very much appreciate how it’s allowed me to document my comings and goings. this blog, like my facebook page, is really a diary for me to reflect on and the addition of visual souvenirs is very welcome. not surprisingly, my dogs have become a frequent photo subject.







random people on LA’s metro also make for an interesting capture. sunsets, too.



i’ll stop here but expect a barrage of iPhone photos to start peppering this blog. that’s if i can pull myself away from it long enough to write a blog post, which has proven difficult in the past few weeks. dishes have also begun to pile up. but i imagine this iPhone overuse is just a temporary spike as i learn how to become a functional addict. at least i hope it is.

now back to words with friends...

Annual

greetings, 2012! i’m sure you will pass in a flash in the same way other years have provided you don’t end the world in a flash as some have predicted you will. for the record, i don’t think you will. i do think you’ll continue to shake things up as your brethren have in recent years, though i don’t think you’ll be as dramatic and i really hope we can be friends. i’ve always preferred even-numbered years anyway. did i mention how great your hair looks today?

are you as excited as i am about the places we’ll go and things we’ll do together? i’ve got big plans for us, plans that you will surely unravel and replace with your own machinations against the backdrop of mocking laughter, but as our time together is still undefined don’t ruin my reveries yet, ok?

before we look ahead, let’s look back at last year’s resolutions, which i did ok with overall. i certainly did much in the way of “fixing the damn house.” i also tried to “be a better friend” by being more available and hopefully did ok with the people closest to me. i did a piss poor job at “taking writing holidays” but made up for it by taking a few writing classes, which did produce some work. sadly, i am not fully “regular with my meditation practice” so this resolution will again appear on this year’s list.

it is a long list this year, one i started drafting in my offline journal back in november. that list had 12 very detailed resolutions that are too personal to be replicated here, though they appear in sanitized and abbreviated form below. it seems i have a lot of self-improvement to do. no surprises there.

• make healthy choices: this is really the biggie where all roads begin and end. it touches everything — from food, friends, men, work and leisure time. i’ve come to understand that doing the right thing is often the hardest thing to do, but that should never be a reason not to do it. so from now on, i will do what is right even when i don’t want to, which is nearly always.

• speaking of health: turning 35 was far worse than turning 30 in terms of that whole Aging Rapidly thing. i have to get a grip on this and plan to in the form of another meatless february (and maybe longer if i can muster the resolve), juicing regularly, meditating daily instead of only weekly, exercising three times a week, going to bed early, flossing every night and drinking the blood of virgins to attain immortality.

• debt reduction: this one will be tough but the plan is to cut my debt in half by year’s end. (but if the world does end in 2012, i’ll be so pissed i didn’t take that money to a tropical island instead.) my tax refund and work bonuses should help me with this goal as long as building the deck doesn’t run wildly away from the budget, and i’m sure it won’t. (hahahahaha!)

• publish or perish: i had been kicking myself the last few weeks of 2011 for not getting a single thing published all year and i refuse to be in the same boat when a meteor hits the earth this december. i simply must see my name in the bright lights of the internet (beyond this blog), and i plan to by being diligent about writing and submitting, while casting aside my deep, dark, paralyzing fear of rejection.

• don’t sweat the small stuff: i’m pretty good with this already, though i still find myself clinging to a few pet peeves that drive me absolutely bonkers. a few that kept coming up in 2011, particularly with the home remodel, involved being given unsolicited advice and being babied. these obviously speak to a larger control issue that resists people trying to take care of me for fear that it makes me seem incompetent. it’s lame and i need to get over it. i also need to get better at asking for help instead of isolating myself when i’m facing challenges.

i sense that this year will center largely on work and health for me more than anything else. i’m not sure why and i’m not thrilled about it as i’d rather put the focus on love and travel. i’m sure there will be a little of those sprinkled in as well, but not as the main event. i’m simply too focused on my other goals. now if you’ll excuse me, i need to get to work.

One-Hit Wonders: December 2011

...search terms inexplicably pulling up my blog...

• cheerleader with dirty stain
• funny quotations on journalism
• person buried in concrete
• millatimes fake tits
• childish gambino red hoodie
• odds and ends life improvements
• college beer bellies
• one time at band camp
• pour out a little liquor

Year in Review

cue the world’s smallest violin for the typical lamentations that come with the ending of another year. despite having very few reasons to complain, i always seem to arrive here feeling like a pile of crap. the year has flown over me like a rocket in space, just like every other year does, yet i still find myself disturbed by the passage of time and how it refuses to stop for me.

because as much as i do each year, there are so many other things i don’t do, things that tug at me like needy children clamoring for attention. it’s the dusty goals, the broken resolutions, the should haves. my hope chest is full of them.

of course i have a very good excuse this year in the form of THE HOUSE, which occupied most of my life and will continue to do so through the first quarter of next year as the deck (finally) gets built. naturally, the house has been my greatest source of happiness and pride this year — in addition to a fair amount of debt and misery.

it’s been an intense 113-day labor to get here, but i love my beautiful new baby and plan to enjoy her for many more years to come. she has taught me so much already, mostly about carpentry, but also about the empowerment that comes from tossing aside your fears and doing what needs to be done. she’s the crown jewel of my year.

another great highlight this year has been my FRIENDS, both new and old. when i reviewed my posts from 2011, what struck me was how much i talked about “socializing.” most of my friends i’ve known between five and 20 years, though this year i met a bunch of new people whom i’m sure will turn into old friends in no time. i hope this trend continues.

one source of these new friends has been HAIKU WEDNESDAYS, a facebook group i started earlier this year on a whim and have grown to love. lots of quality people have joined the group and have put their inspiring creativity on display. the energy there is warm and funny and has made wednesday my favorite day of the week.

as for WORK, it’s been a mixed bag this year. it was definitely not the best year for freelance work as a magazine i had been working on folded. other clients also vanished. thankfully, i have a few prospects lined up for next year, including a new magazine and book assignment, that will be fruitful if all goes well. here’s to hoping that it goes well.

the day jobby has also been fairly stable all year, though it provided a small fiasco this month as i entertained an offer for a new job in a different department within my company. there were several mitigating factors surrounding this, most of them financial. but ultimately, the planets realigned and i decided to stay put as i really dig my boss and have made a happy home in my own department.

as for my WRITING, cue the violin because this is where i want to beat myself up, not only for not updating this blog as often as i had hoped to, but for not getting one single thing published this year. i did try a few times but was demoralized by the rejection like a total, insecure lame ass. i’m going to work on this next year.

LOVE has also been a losing game for me this year. after a short-lived relationship during the summer, i find myself entering another new year on my own. it’s a lonely place to be at 35, but i’d rather be here than in any of the (many) wrong relationships i’ve been in before.

if anything, i’ve grown increasingly less desperate and more picky over the years, understanding that things will work or they won’t. and if they won’t, i don’t need to waste time with silly dramas or childish game-playing, which always indicates a poor match.

of course, i would be a liar to say i wasn’t still hoping for my happy ending and i’m sure i’ll keep trying because i am a romantic at heart. i only hope i make smarter choices and get it right the next time. but if i don’t i know i’ll be ok either way.

The Home-Improvement Chronicles: After Photos

remember this piece of shit? that pink monstrosity that sat on a hill looking ugly? yeah, that was my old house. thankfully, it’s nothing like my new house.



another angle of the turd: these before photos are shocking to me. it’s as though they speak to some former era of my house’s life when it was living in the wrong skin — before the sex change operation that brought it to its rightful state. nothing about the before makes any sense for the house, whereas everything about the after does. the remodel wasn’t so much an overhaul as a correction.



drumroll, please: there’s my beauty! ain’t she the prettiest girl at the hillside fair? like a butterscotch and chocolate dream with a cherry on top — a very expensive, diamond-encrusted cherry that took 113 days, countless amounts of dollars and buckets of tears to produce. but she was worth every painstaking effort.



side view: obviously, the deck has yet to be built and landscaping has yet to be addressed, but the rest of her is totally done — and her angles are stunning. that top and center ribbon of brown trim were meant to elongate the house and make it look larger than its 1,000 square feet and i think it worked.



front door: i love my new front door and the hardware and the windows and pretty much everything else about the house. (sorry, i promised myself i wouldn’t make this post a big masturbatory session, but i can’t seem to help it.) the door is solid mahogany from not sure where (contractor handled that one), hardware is Baldwin and windows are Milgard.





inside view looking out: one cool thing about that door is that it makes the main room of my house essentially have some sort of window on every wall. the result is an astounding amount of natural sunlight.



opposite walls with other windows: i’ll admit that sometimes it’s too much natural light for me and i find myself needing to put on sunglasses inside the house during the day, especially if i’m washing dishes. of course this is better than the perpetual darkness of many of my former ground-floor apartments that faced alleys.



east facade: that window on the right is the only place where that top ribbon didn’t perfectly sit over the top of the window, so we devised a “cheat” to compensate. the stucco of the ground floor was painted the same color as the doors and trim to make it seem uniform, as though the house were sitting on a big rock. the stucco color is slightly lighter than the house trim, which is more gunmetal gray than chocolate brown when viewed up close.





up close: colors came out like a delicious Neapolitan ice cream and change their saturation daily depending on the position of the sun. that main cream color can look quite yellow in bright sunlight and almost white in overcast skies. that brown/gray is also shifty, with only the cranberry red staying pretty solid.





an hour from sunset: looks fairly yellowish, right? also note that the house is actually painted two different colors on either side of that main center ribbon, with the lower half slightly darker than the top half. it’s an imperceptible but subtle contrast that helps your eye as it moves down the house. or not. i might be making that part up.





north facade: the lines also came out nicely here. i love this view and i love that door that used to be a window (and here i go again). thankfully, Milgard makes a paint line to complement the trim of their windows so we got an exact match of the cranberry for the door, which originally came from a salvage yard.





praise for my contractor: not only did he frame out the openings to the attic and crawlspace to match the house perfectly, he painted the pipes behind the chicken wire black so they wouldn’t be seen. it’s the little things.



window upskirt: sometimes the house looks like it’s made out of plastic to me. not in a cheap way, but in that barbie dream house way where everything looks too pretty and perfect. sometimes it amazes me that this is really my house where i actually live. i regularly walk around touching the exterior, almost pinching it to see if it’s real. so far, so good.





someone is too cute: i think the dogs are also happy with how things have turned out, probably because they sense that i am happy and no longer an irritable stressball.



stairs at north facade: these stairs lead to the east facade, which consists of the ground floor and basement. as i’m still deckless, they are my route to reach the washer and dryer.



decklessness: it’s nowhere near godliness. i’ve had to remind myself (and various friends) on more than one occasion that it’s still not there so don’t open that sliding door and try to step out because the fall will injure you. in other news, check out how the new planter further elongates the house!



my cheerleaders: mom and dad were beyond happy — and supportive, loving, encouraging and every other positive adjective you can think of — throughout the remodel. i am very lucky to have these two as my parents, and i made sure to tell them this during the thanksgiving dinner that was hosted at my house this year.



thankful: i sure am.

A Day at the Dog Beach

One-Hit Wonders: November 2011

...search terms inexplicably pulling up my blog...

• a guy falling out of a tree
• buildings look like corn
• dress as shaun of the dead
• groped at audition
• pentacle orgy
• yard dog chainsaw in action
• rottweiler with black markings on paws
• cracked redwood deck salvage
• stalin no brosef of mine

Stuff and Things

the past few weeks have been stressful and a half for a multitude of reasons that i won’t get into right now. of course the house is the biggest stressor and no, it’s not done yet. quit asking me. i also thought it would be done by now given that construction has lasted well over 100 days, but no cigar or finished house. currently the deck is holding things up with its design, which has become tricky for other reasons that i won’t get into right now.

so yes, i’m grumpy and i don’t want to talk about. go me! in other news, life has been keeping me busy with many other things, some of them equally grumpy-making and others delightfully stress-relieving. the good stuff includes:

i bought a bike: more importantly, i’ve actually been using it. this was inspired by my many friends who attended LA’s CicLAvia this year. so i went to Walmart (don’t judge me, i’m broke) and bought the cutest cruiser in the world. then came the interesting part: riding it. it’s no exaggeration to say i hadn’t been on a bike in 25 years, but apparently riding a bike is just like they say it is. after a few shaky starts, i was off. several weeks later, i own a bike rack and ride (semi) regularly at the rose bowl and along the LA river.


7-speed schwinn beach point cruiser

i went on a trip: half business and half pleasure, starting in washington, DC, for a work conference and ending in baltimore, maryland, with my dad’s side of the family for a weekend of overeating and drinking vodka. the best part of the trip was the snow, which came early this year and landed on top of some stunning fall foliage. that doubled my pleasure and fun, though i admit to getting restless at the end of the trip to get home and see what i missed with the house.


confetti with frosting

i went to a concert: my obsession with Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover) cannot seem to be satiated. i saw him live for the second time this year and have been playing his new album on endless loop since it came out. i think i may need rehab.


my Childish Gambino hoodie

i got a new roommate: this new roommate looks a lot like an old roommate i once had. in fact, they are the same person: my buddy Dan whom i lived with briefly in San Francisco. so far it’s proved to be a perfect pairing, as Dan moved in at the start of november, gave me a check, spent two nights in his new room, and then left for a 6-week work project in San Francisco. no complaints here, and there won’t be when he returns either because he’s a super cool guy and we get along famously.

beyond that, i really hope the rest of the year brings me stress-free days and plentiful sleep. and maybe a big bottle of vodka.

The Home-Improvement Chronicles: Odds and Ends

trash pit: Operation: Home Remodel produced an epic amount of trash, much of which sat in my front yard. this is where i need to thank my endlessly patient neighbors, who never once complained about the trash, the noise or the eyesore that was my house for months. instead, i was offered praise, encouragement and even a few thumbs-up when they drove down the hill. so thank you, neighbors, for making me feel like the luckiest girl on the block.





the other dump: we filled up two of these, not only with trash from the remodel, but with most of the contents of my garage, which i finally sifted through after 3.5 years of procrastination. out went the notebooks from grad school, the broken furniture, scraps of wood and boxes of used CDs that were repeatedly rejected by Amoeba’s buyback department. and when it was done, i emerged from my garage feeling victorious (while also wheezing and covered in dust). then i took a painkiller and went to bed.



10 minutes after i washed them: the inside of my house was also covered in dust and i mean wall-to-wall coverage on every surface. the constant banging also dislodged several existing nails, which took the paint with them, requiring a ton of patchwork and the repainting of a few walls. and let’s not forget the dirty footprints on the dark floors and the always-raised toilet seat.



interior work: replacing all the windows meant replacing the interior trim, so there was plenty of commotion inside the house as well as out. no room was safe, including my bedroom, and no place remained untouched, including my bed. with no haven to retire to, i considered sleeping in my car.



a room without a view: living without my view had a profound effect on my mental health. i’ve always thought that my view added minutes to my life, but now i know that it does, because living without it sent my crankiness and irritability off the charts.



dark like my soul: the worst of it was when i heard someone walking around the property at 4am and couldn’t see out the windows. with my heart racing and body contorted, i managed to peek through one of the tears in the plastic to spot a van with headlights on and engine running parked out front. seems the crew broke the glass on the electric meter and a serviceman had been called to fix it. of course i only found this out the next morning after my almost heart attack.



even the dogs missed it: when the plastic finally did come off and i could see out each window and door, a familiar feeling washed over me, one i didn’t even realize had been missing until it made its return: i felt at home again.



the surprises: no home remodel is complete without them. perhaps my least favorite was the missing plank and partially dug out concrete that made up the foundation underneath my bedroom. that was almost as good as finding a bunch of tile in the crawlspace.



even more awesome: the fact that a power source had been buried in concrete right next to a gas line.



original framing: did i mention my house was built in 1924?



the four-legged inspectors: as i’ve noted, i received a lot of inquiries on how my dogs have handled the remodel (with very people asking how i’ve handled it). to answer that question, they have been pretty fairly indifferent about everything, especially as time has passed. (meanwhile, i still jump like i’m hearing a gunshot each time the nail gun goes off.)



my gremlin: the only trouble came when the planter had to be tarred. seems the same someone who got sprayed in the face by a skunk had to step in the tar and matt the hair on her paw shut. i’m ashamed to admit it took me two days to notice the constant licking and chewing she had been subjecting her paw to, but with a little olive oil and soapy water, her paw and curiosity were as good as new.



by the way: this is my new front door. it’s made of solid mahogany that was stained with an ebony and dark walnut blend.



the side door: i decided to turn a window in the second bedroom into a door to connect the house with the “yard,” which is essentially a slab of concrete on the north end of the house (one day, it will be grass!). i found the side door at Pasadena Architectural Salvage for super cheap, and my contractor spent a week lovingly restoring it in my garage.



the contractor: this is the super magic man with a plan, hammer and nail gun, the one and only Platon Markarian. i would give you his number, but you might call him and he’s still working on my house, so i’ll hang on to it for now. good luck getting him, though, when i do give it to you — my neighbors have already booked him for the next year after seeing the quality work he’s done for me. this guy doesn’t believe in shortcuts. he’s simply awesome.



then came the paint: after photos to come in the next post.