It's 68 degrees, and I'm sitting on the patio of a beautiful craftsman home, listening to the trickle of water in the koi pond nearby, with a giant orange cat purr-mewing as he circles me on the rattan sofa.

I'm wearing a tee shirt and jeans and flip flops.

Also, the general consensus seems to be that it's Christmas.

This morning, my 6 person family sent a grand total of 233 emails back and forth, from 3 locations, in 10 different threads, in a little under 3 hours. That's an average of about 13 emails written per person per hour, or one email written per person every 4.5 minutes -- as well as a little over one email read by each person each minute. For three hours.

And actually, I think it was a little easier to follow than our conversations in person.

We all agree it was a mistake not to get together on Christmas.

When we'd exhausted our poor little nubs from typing, I closed my computer and sat for a moment in my big quiet apartment. Mark was at work at his fantastic new job at the Chateau Marmont, and I had to get out to Pasadena to fulfill my housesitting duties. But I have discovered that it is very hard to get up when there is a kitten purring on your lap. And even harder when there are two of them.

So I sat for a while, practicing my independent hand coordination, scratching behind Miss Jones's ears while I petted Bowie's tummy.

Today is the first day in a while that I have not felt overwhelmed.

I've started doing research work for an ambitious feature film project for the aforementioned TV writer. Because of the strike, it's unpaid work at the moment, but it's an exciting project, and an exciting opportunity, and I feel valued and respected.

Mark has just finished his first full-time semester back at school, while holding down his new full-time serving job. He's applied to transfer to UCLA for next fall, and has two complete albums of music ready to be recorded this Spring and Summer.

I've cut my spa massage days from 4 to 2, so that I can spend more time on writing, and I've found my way into acroyoga, a combination of yoga, acrobatics, and Thai massage. I have not one but two friends within 1.5 miles, either of whom I can call at the last minute to go out for unplanned meals or movies.

I know where the black beans and enchilada sauce are at the Mexican grocery, I've fallen in love with Korean concord grapes and Asian pears from Han Kook Supermarket, and just the other day I was ran into someone I knew in a place I hadn't seen them before. (In Chicago, by the time I left, I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't leave the house without running into someone I knew. This is a start.)

I have even learned to say "It's cold today!" when it drops below 60 degrees, and almost mean it.

And I've adopted kittens! Who make me much happier when Mark's not home, and who have a knack for dropping the stinkiest farts I have ever encountered.

Speaking of which...

I scooted the odoriferous cats onto the nearby blankets and got up. I grabbed my keys, my CDs, and walked out to the rental car we have for the week (so we can visit Mark's folks in Orange County, during the holidays). I drove over the big hill that Mark and I biked up for that first party we went to. I assumed, at the time, that it was par for the LA course, but now know that the hill is isolated in the flat basin of Hollywood. I drove myself to the freeway (remembering it's free, but it's not express), and headed to Pasadena.

In a month and a half, I'll have been here a full year. And you know, life is pretty good.

Merry Solstice, everyone!

October 17, 2007

It was refreshingly gray out, and I wore a jacket. Not so much because I needed it, but because I could, and because it's the time of year where one starts wearing jackets, sweaters, socks, layers; when you get to armor yourself after months of just a thin thin barrier between your skin and the hot air, your skin and others' skin on the bus. It's an advantage of having seasons.

But LA has something more like a gentle biannual phase shift. Just a few degrees and some smog-clearing rain. So three blocks from home I unzipped my jacket, and a block after that I took it off.

The dentist's office made me think of a blood donation center, or a shabby DMV branch -- low-slung cement and dingy windows that don't open, designed with the assumption of air conditioning.

I wondered if it might've been wiser to choose a dentist in Beverly Hills, or even just northeast of me in Los Feliz, where the well-off hipsters live.

I waited with my feet up on another chair, deciding that if they were offended, then next time they could be ready for me at my actual appointment time.

The dentist was a big guy with immaculate teeth and breath like my Sudanese friend in Chicago -- sweetly spicy like licorice maybe. Not bad really, but not minty fresh, either.

He overelaborated the importance of gum health, pointing at pictures of horrifyingly blackened tissue. I started to get the feeling it was more or less a sales pitch for the "deep cleaning" he was now recommending. I agreed to it, partly just to get him to put away the pictures, and decided to make sure my massage patter was both less repetitive and more encouraging.

An assistant came by to take my credit card to make the payment before the service. It seemed a little odd, but I figured it probably had to do with the poor immigrant populations around Hollywood.

The dentist tilted the chair back and, without warning, stuck a needle in the gums by my molars.

"Gngh," I grunted with surprise at the sharp pain. Had it hurt this much in the past?

The next jab, midway to the front, was even sharper, and I gripped the purse on my lap with both hands. Before I could take a breath, he jabbed again by my front teeth, and panicky pain seared through my head and down into my chest.

"Stop," I said, and involuntarily grabbed his arm to pull the damn thing out of my mouth. I wanted to slam my elbow into his fat face, but since that seemed impractical, my fury welled out immediately through my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You could've warned me, dude -- I just needed warning," I choked out through alarming unwanted sobs.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he and his assistant watched me cry. "You have such nice teeth, you're not used to this," he said.

His assistant handed me a dixie cup of water while he raised the chair. I stared out the high square window and tried to breathe, choke-choking.

"Get her the gift bag," he quietly ordered the assistant. She must have gestured at the plastic bag sticking out of my purse. "Oh," he said, and I wondered if he would scold her later for being too quick with the gift bag. As if a free toothbrush and floss were deeply placating.

"I'm sorry, I've probably needed to cry all week -- I should've done it before I came here," I said, not sure if that made any sense to a dentist and his assistant. They just watched me. "Could you give me a minute?" I said.

"Sure, sure," he said, but kept watching me.

"I mean without staring at me," I said.

"Oh," he said, and they moved away, out of the semi-enclosed area, like a teeth-pulling cubicle.

I stared fixedly out the window and tried hard to breathe. When that didn't work right away, I tried to reassure myself by thinking about the fact that I was going home for a visit to Chicago in only a week. That seemed to have the opposite effect, so I went back to breathing.

After longer than I'd hoped, I called them back, let the chair be lowered down again. The assistant squeezed my hand nicely, and I tried not to think while he scraped and poked and plucked at my bits of exposed skull.

When it was over, I got up and turned the wrong way to leave, disoriented as if I'd just emerged from a train station in an unfamiliar city. I turned around and found my way out of the low-slung concrete, and escaped into the sunny day. The gray had cleared away already. I reached up and touched my lips, which were neither swollen nor drooling as it felt they might be.

I put on my sunglasses and crossed the street. The huge Mexican grocery store was right there, so I decided to check it out and get something in my stomach to settle me.

The entrance was in the back, through the parking lot that I'll almost certainly never use. I walked through the sliding doors and was greeted by a decent-looking array of produce. Not as well-lit or clean as the Korean grocery, but the avocados were 3 for $1, there was an assortment of cheep beer, the cantaloupes were $0.79 each, and there were frozen bean and cheese burritos for $0.69. I grabbed a few to try, figuring Mark would like them even if I didn't.

My left arm loaded with a cantaloupe, 3 avocados, and 4 burritos, I inspected a red tea kettle for a couple minutes, until I realized I wasn't feeling capable of making qualitative assessments, and put it back down. I looked at the mops, but like every other L.A. market I've visited, they only had the string kind, not the spongy kind to which I'm accustomed.

As I walked around, I noticed I was the only person there who wasn't Mexican, and wondered how much I stuck out. As I dumped my foodstuffs on the conveyor belt, I imagined the woman behind the register saying "Did you see that drooly gringa wandering around like a pollo perdido?"

I put the objects in my purse before they could plastic bag them. She counted out my change in Spanish, but said thank you in English. The pimply teenage bagger grinned at me, not with me, I felt, as I walked away.

On the walk home, my jacket tied around my waist, I looked at the pink houses, orange houses, green houses. I hadn't walked down that block before, but, I realized, I might get to a point where I knew each house by sight. This was a place I would probably come to a hundred times, over the next few years. I tried to imagine what that would mean:

I saw an image of myself as efficient and preoccupied, walking briskly home with a weekly quota of tomatoes and avocados, thinking about complicated issues of work, people, systems of organization, frustrations, and triumphs of which I don't yet know the shapes or names.

I turned a corner and found myself canopied by sycamore trees that leaned gracefully over the street. A breeze drifted over my face and arms. I took a deep breath, and it tasted green and good.

The fan has been on in the new bedroom for a week, and it still smells like polyurethane. I'm trying to be patient.

I unpacked the boxes, uh-gain, never sure what I was going to find because they've had contents marked on them 3 times now. On some I scribbled over the old markings, on some I just wrote on a different side, and on some I couldn't be bothered to write at all. I think those were the ones I packed after 11pm.

The heat wave was incapacitating -- like February in Chicago, we realized that one simply must not be ambitious about a day's plans, during August in LA. We slogged around sweatily, dreamt of rain, stuck to the leather sofas, and moved the fan from spot to spot, trying to figure out how to create a wind-tunnel in our little railroad-style half of a duplex.

Potential new tenants came in and out, and I tried to be encouraging without sounding like a salesperson, and I spent a lot of time on the phone with our landlord, trying to find out if anyone was thinking about committing. We had a 6 month lease, but wanted to get out a month early, as we anticipated rental possibilities might be drying up by October.

Well, that and we were just done with the place.

It was a sweet little duplex, but the small annoying things about it started to add up to a larger annoying mass: the one tiny closet with broken doors, the mile and a half to the closest real grocery store, guests having to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom, the six (counted 'em, six) barking dogs that lived next door, and so on and so on.

It was great as an escape from the House of Douchebaggery, but it had worn itself out making us feel welcome.

So I glued myself to Craigslist once more, presenting compiled apartment pages to Mark, arranging series of viewings. We plodded through the heat, looking at a lot of mediocre places.

And then we found El Mansione. Hardwood floors, two bedrooms, a private hedge-surrounded patio, our own entrance, huuuuuuge livingroom, huge bathroom, 3 big ole closets and a linen closet. Two and a half times the space of our old place, for less than 1/3 again the price.

I took a million pictures to show Mark, who was at work when I went to see the place. It was in a state of medium disarray, being renovated after the last tennants' 12 year stay. I hesitated to pay for the $60 credit check, not sure I should commit to a place that was $300 more than what we were used to. I was the first person to see it, though, and our leasing agent warned me that it would go fast.

I took the pictures home, and found myself staring at them for unreasonable periods of time. Mark said it looked great, but left the decision to me, since the extra rent money would be my responsibility. I waffled, back and forth, back and forth. But the next day I realized: It's El Mansione!

We signed the lease. And then we walked around our new neighborhood, and found a big beautiful Korean grocery half a mile away, a 7-11 and a Mexian market two blocks away, "Ethical Drugs" pharmacy, sushi restaurants, korean BBQ, thai restaurants, and the Hollywood sign, looming above. In case I forget why I'm here.

And on top of all that, I found out that one of my sister's best friends from college is living less than 3/4 of a mile away! And another friend 1 1/4 miles away! And my bike shop a mile away! And the train a mile away! And almost no hills!

As we walked down the street, giddily eating celebratory chocolate Pocky, I felt something on my face. I stopped in my tracks.

"Did you feel that?" I said to Mark. He was looking up at the sky.

"I did, and I don't see an air conditioner anywhere."

"Rain! That's rain!"

"Yes it is."

"Or, well, drizzle anyway."

"An omen of positive change, I think," Mark said.

"Definitely," I said, reaching for another Pocky.

We found our sublettors, moved out as fast as we could, to accomodate them, and piled our furniture in the middle of our new huge living room, while workers came in and out, still cleaning and painting and refinishing and installing.

And it's been a week and two days, now, and everything is done. I've unpacked and arranged furniture and bought bathmats and we eat breakfast on the patio every morning. This was our 5th move in 9 months. And now I think we're done, for a good long while. Here's home.



View from the bed:

Saturday, June 30, 2007

I gingerly removed my sweaty tank top, cringing as it peeled off of my sticky aloe-covered skin. I stood in front of the fan we bought from a Brit who was moving back to England, selling all her belongings for precise amounts: $3 per chair, $40 for the new twin futon, $0.50 for the dry erase marker, $2 for the white board, $4 for the fan.

I took a deep breath and thought about showering, but instead started sorting through my closet, looking for something that would touch as little burnt skin as possible. I put on my gray miniskirt, which was a little tighter than I'd remembered, and a thin cotton tank top. I scrutinized myself in the mirror, changed the tank top twice, and then a third time, back to the first one.

My coworkers have only seen me in either sweaty biking gear or the black pants and black shirt spa uniform.

I took off the miniskirt and chose a knee length skirt instead. Much easier to sit in. I debated between the more healer/massage-therapist-appropriate flats, and the gray heels with sequin hearts I'd bought for an irresistible $10. (Ross Dress for Less is like TJ Maxx, but even cheaper and even less organized.)

I put the flats in my purse and wore the heels, put on eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, sparkly bobby pins, bling bling dollar store earrings, the whole thing.

I stood in front of the fan again, having broken a slight sweat from all the clothes changing, stuffiness, and probably from my heat-radiating skin.

A horn honked from outside, and I walked (rather well, I thought) in my heels, out the door, out the gate, into her little white car.

"Hey there, fancy!" Annie said.

"Thanks, hi!" I said as I settled into my seat and shut the door. "You look fancy cute too! Nice skirt," I said, admiring her frilly beaded hippie dealie.

"Thanks, yeah, I got it at one of those boutiques on Southport when it went on sale," she said, and I remembered, jarringly, that she had lived in Chicago for a few years. Along with about half of the people I've met out here. I thought about what kind of Chicago she knew, given that she went to those shops on Southport.

"It was one of those things where I was like yeah, that skirt is cute, but it's not worth $120, I don't care which of your friends made it, sorry. But yeah when it went on sale, I was like okay, I'll pay $60 for it."

"Well it's very nice beadwork," I said.

"Thanks, yeah, I wanted to dress up, but I didn't have time to shower, so I just left my hair up," she said.

"Oh, yeah, me neither, oh well."

"So this is my grandma car, sorry about the bottles down there," she said, referring to the Fuji water bottles in the passenger footwell. "You can put the seat back further."

"Oh that's okay, I've got short legs. Thanks so much for the ride, by the way."

"Sure, well we'll see; I'm terrible with directions, really honestly I shouldn't be driving a car, I'm a total mess about navigating. Even with the GPS unit I'm just a disaster, really."

"Well I'm in no hurry. And I have a map and a general idea of where were going," I said.

"Cool, yeah, we'll make it there I think. My dad just got me this thing, which is great, because I really really hate being lost, I mean I just freak out."

Annie drove and found something to apologize for every few minutes, keeping a steady monolog. I started to feel tired.

"Woof, I just got sleepy, sorry," I said, yawning. "I ate two of those big cookies at work, for no good reason. I think the sugar is hitting me."

"Oh, yeah, totally."

"I wish they would stock fruit or something, for snacks."

"Yeah, they used to," she said, "or at least granola bars, but lately it's been all sugar, or occasionally bananas, but by the time you figure out they're for us, and not the clients, they're all brown and mushy -- oh I think that was my turn."

"Turn right in 100 feet," said the GPS unit.

"Oh, no, okay, we're good," she said, taking the expressway exit. Or sorry, the freeway exit. Asking where the expressway is, here, just gets you shrugs and blank looks. It's free, but it's not express.

Annie apologized for her mediocre parallel parking skills, and for the tricky door locks, and we walked up the block until we saw an apartment full of balloons, and decided it must be Janine's.

The apartment was pleasantly populated already, and there was guac and chips and celery and lots of tequila. Annie added half a bottle of Gray Goose, Rose's lime juice, and some gin to the mix. I opted for water, taking pity on my poor skin.

I gave Janine another birthday hug, an outside work hug, and sat down with a couple of coworkers, everyone exclaiming over everyone's outfits.

"It's so nice to see you all in clothes you actually chose, you know?" I said.

"I know, right?" Kristin said, sitting with beautiful posture and a dress whose neckline dove halfway down her torso, beautifully tanned skin glowing from the Hawaii blue and grey floral cotton. I was impressed.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Kara asked, staring at Kristin with me.

"Seriously," I said.

"No, you're beautiful, look at you!" Kristin said to Kara. She was wearing a leather pencil skirt, and a tight white tank top with a drapey neckline that somehow highlighted her freckles, very striking on her Japanese face.

"You're both breathtaking," I said.

Almost the entire massage staff was at the party, and the manicurist, and a couple of the aestheticians. Conversation inevitably turned to bitching about our bosses: the gay couple owners and Bradley, the flamey-but-supposedly-straight spa director.

"Do we really believe he's straight?" I asked.

"No," three people said in chorus.

"I mean I don't know," Kara said, "but I mean, honestly."

"Yeah, I dunno. I kind of think he might just act flamey so he can get away with saying things people don't let straight guys say," I said, interested to see what they thought of the Bradley Personality Theory I've been working on.

"Huh," Kristin said.

"Totally," Kara said, toasting me with her tequila.

"Were you there when he told me I was 'stinky?' And had me raise my arms so he could spritz me?"

"Oh my god, I was totally there," Kristin said.

"What??" Kara said.

"God how demoralizing and insulting!" Kristin said.

"Yeah, and it was like my second day there. I was trying to go with the flow, you know? I think he just wanted to make me feel small. Whatever," I said. "But did you hear what he said that one time about shaving one leg?"

"Shaving a leg?" Mara, the manicurist, said.

"Doing what??" Kristin stared at me.

"Yeah, ok, he was just like," and I screwed up my face and voice into my best Bradley purse: "He was like 'Sometimes, when I get really lonely, I shave one of my legs, so it feels like I'm sleeping with someone else.'"

Kristin collapsed onto the rug with an "Oh my god" or three.

"You're kidding," Kara said, her mouth open.

"When I write my massage-spa TV pilot, that's gonna be a headliner," I said.

We discussed the camera in the break room, and the backasswards scheduling policies, and the celebs we'd worked on and what they were like, and the crap pay, and generally talked some good old-fashioned shit.

I watched everyone get a little tipsy, sticking to my water with a twist of lime, changing how I sat every few minutes when some part of my burn started complaining too much.

"You okay? You look fidgety," Annie said.

"Oh, I burned at the beach on Friday," I said. "I put on sunscreen literally every 45 minutes, but I was out for like 4 hours, and it was only 15 SPF, so..."

"Yeah, this Southern California sun'll get ya every time," Jack, another therapist (and that elusive character, The LA Native) said.

"Yeah, you could totally get away with that in Chicago, it's crazy," Annie said.

A cake was brought out, and we sang happy birthday -- I changed keys half way through -- and the party started prepping for an adventure to the nearby clubs and bars with dance floors. Annie and I agreed it was a good time to take off, since we both had to work in the morning, so we started making goodbye rounds.

I tried to hide my cringe when Jack squeezed my scorched back in a surprising friendly embrace (he'd said once, at work, that he's not a hugger), and I wished Janine some awesome birthday dancing. Everyone hugged me, some more tightly, more comfortably than others, but the intentions were uniformly sweet.

Annie seemed to have been caught in an apologizing loop (for not being able to go to the club, for not bringing food in addition to booze, for apologizing...), so I called to her from the door and waved, giving her an excuse to break off her sorrys.

I walked in my ridiculous heels back to the car with her, and we wound our way through the Los Angeles freeways toward Echo Park, hitting a wicked patch of traffic (at 11pm!), and making a few wrong turns before she deposited me safely at my door.

I thanked her again, said I'd see her in the morning, and went inside. It was still warm out -- the first time it's been warm past sundown, since I've been here. I wondered what made the difference, why the dry air was suddenly retaining heat.

Mark wasn't home from his closing shift yet, so I lay down in my fancy outfit, waiting for him to arrive so I could show it off.

I wasn't really tired. I thought about what my outfit might've told my coworkers about me -- the pink and gray tiger-stripe tank top, the velvet gray skirt with slits on the sides. Kind of 90's, a little out of style maybe, but very coordinated. I decided I looked good.

From the way people had acted, I gathered they were all mostly unfamiliar with each other's dress styles. I got the feeling they hadn't socialized outside of work together, before.

And I lay on my bed, thinking about how easy the party had been, how I hadn't even been tempted to use any social lubricant, had easily stuck to water. The spot on my back where Jack had gripped with his fingers still felt a little raw, and was radiating a little heat. But hey, at least it was meant to be warm. I don't mind a little overshooting, now and then.

I've been missing my massage school peeps, and my little massage spa family from the dive spa in Chicago. I'd wondered if that kind of bond existed at this place, and I just wasn't seeing it, hadn't been let in, yet. But I don't think it did exist. I think the dry air just suddenly decided to retain some heat.

We've got posters up, boxes unpacked and broken down for storage, and we've had not one but two barbecues in our little back yard. Summer seems to be heading toward full tilt, I'm getting good at this spa job, and my quads and calves have grown to make my (ever-more-familiar) hilly commute a little easier.

And I'm even working on writing a feature film (on spec), under the guidance of Daniel, the TV writer I liked so much. We videochat and we IM and I read and watch a ton of movies and it's a big step.

Life is settling into feeling like a life. And I know which way is north.

"I kind of miss winter," Mark said to me this morning while we sat in our sunny, high-ceilinged white living room, on the white leather sofa, finishing breakfast.

"What? Already?" I said. The words 'I miss' have started creeping into our conversations, here and there. But winter?

"Well, if not winter, the winter aesthetic, you know?" he said, spearing another bite of fresh pineapple. "Like the wood paneling and the brick. That 70's insulated feel."

"Yeah. I don't miss that, yet," I said, arranging watermelon and plum on my fork. "I miss the lake, though."

The Lake. The Lake The Lake! A quick bike ride and you're on the little span of sand at Fullerton, people-watching, sun bathing, water sipping, pale people, fat people, tan people, thin people, a blur of color, walking, jogging, biking by, 40 feet away.

Mark took off for work, and I sat thinking about water and sun.

We're 16 miles from the beach, here, and the beach here is The Ocean. It's big and wide and salty. And there's this thing called beach tar. You walk the two or three hundred feet of sand to the water, and when you leave you have mysterious black tar on the bottoms of your feetsies, sticky salt on your skin and in your hair.

And woe to you if you don't wear sunscreen! This is no Northern Sun! This sun is Southern California skin-scorching serious!

Not that I've made it to the beach yet this summer -- there's no train to the coast, just an interminable bus.

Aw, it's not so bad. Sour grapes. I hauled myself up from our white sofa, made myself presentable, and biked the half block to the Mexican market. I picked out a banana and an apple and a peach and went to the counter, where I also plucked up a locally made coconut pastry of some kind.

"Hey, beautiful lady," our friend the owner said, as he rang up my purchases. I'd put on makeup and a fancy necklace. I've started doing that again, lately, the makeup thing. Now that I'm not so distracted by just getting from A to B, figuring out which way is up, I have energy for light blue eyeshadow.

I smiled at him, said thank you, bought my fruit, and hopped on my bike for the park. I rode around the path encircling the reservoir, and found a lovely spot on a slope in the shade of a big old palm tree, where I sat reading quite happily for two and a half hours.

And tomorrow I learn how to golf with my new friend Danny, and the next day I go for a hike in Griffith Park (where the Hollywood sign is) with my new friend Amy, and next week I go to the beach with my new friend Hanna. There are a lot of new friends around. Maybe someday I'll get to take a few of them to The Point.

A month since the last post! Impossible! Now time is speeding up, instead of slowing down. I guess it all balances out, in the end.

April 16, 2007

We've settled into our new home, one half of a little house behind a house (and have started referring to any failed first endeavor as "a 1357 1/2," the number for the House of Jerks). We rented a U-Haul and moved our stuff in one big load, and then made a loop through Glendale and Burbank (suburbs of suburbs) to pick up a Craigslist sectional sofa and $40 refrigerator.

Why did we need a refrigerator?, you Midwesterners and East Coasters may ask. Good question! But there's no good answer. In LA, landlords often do not supply refrigerators or stoves. We were lucky to get a stove, but for a fridge, we were on our own. Apparently people cart their appliances around from apartment to apartment out here. I've been told that the rights are heavily on the side of the renter, in LA, so maybe this is the Landlord's Revenge.

We stopped first to pick up the beige sectional sofa and chair, for $100, from a lady in Burbank. I'd called about it that morning, leaning on our new kitchen counter (not a roommate in sight to scrutinize my actions), where my computer was picking up a wireless signal.

"Hello," an unenthused male voice answered.

"Hi, I'm calling about the sofa for sale on Craigslist?" I tried to be chipper.

"Hold on," he said, and then I heard him shouting gruffly, "Someone about that sofa you're giving away for a hundred bucks." I grinned. A woman with a raspy voice but a pleasant demeanor came to the phone, seemed excited to have a call about it, gave me the address, and said we could have a matching chair, for free, if we wanted it.

When we arrived at their little bungalow, a For Sale sign nestled in with flowers, a miniature fence along a stone path to the door, she answered the door in pink and beige grandma finery.

Her son, a behemoth of a man with geek glasses and a polo tee shirt, carried most of the thing out to the U-Haul for us.

"Oh, gosh, that's okay, we can --" I started to object, and then just stopped when I saw him toss a third of the sofa on his shoulder like it was made of styrofoam.

I chatted up Grandma, about having just moved here, about California, about moving in general. She explained they were moving to Arizona, and were getting rid of as much as they could. I asked about a couple of pretty wood tables, but she said no, we're keeping those.

"You're taking the pillows, I assume?" I asked about the nice new throw pillows that had been on the sofa.

"Yeah, we're keeping those," she said.

Her son came back for another round of hefting, and Mark helped him this time. Not because the chair was too heavy for him, but because the weight of expectation upon his gender outweighed the furniture by a landslide.

"Oh, you know what, you take them," Grandma said to me, smiling, and patting me on the back.

"Really?" I said, smiling, "Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah, you take them. I'm glad you got the sofa," she said conspiratorially, handing me the pillows.

The last pieces of furniture were stowed in the U-Haul, and Mark and I thanked Grandma and her son profusely.

"Oh, I'm so glad you got the sofa," she said again. We liked her, too.

"Me too!" I effused.

We hopped in the truck, and continued our loop, this time for the fridge.

It turned out to be pretty ugly, even for a refrigerator, but hey, it worked and was $40, so we loaded it, with the guy's help, on its side, on the back of the truck. It was heavy. I was not sure how this was going to work out on the other end, without help or a dolly.

But burn that bridge when we come to it, I thought, and hopped back in the truck, navigating the cul-de-sacs like a pro, winding our way back to our new home.

Mark was tired and starting to fade, by the time we got there. But we had to unload the truck and return it, so we got to it. We got the fridge out of the truck and onto the street, without too much ado. But this was not going to be easy.

"I dunno, Mark, I don't think we can carry this thing." I said.

"Sure we can; I carried tons of fridges at Burnside," the apartment complex he used to work at.

Mark then tried to heave the heavy side up from the ground, and got it up a couple feet, but clearly was not walking anywhere with it.

"Put it down put it down!" I said, seeing him strain.

He put it down.

"You okay?" I asked.

"...Yeah," he grumbled. I was pretty sure he must've pulled something, even if he didn't know it yet, or didn't want to know it yet.

"Okay... This is an older fridge than you've probably moved," I pondered.

"I forgot, we had a dolly at work," he said.

"I think we're just going to have to do a sort of tip and walk thing. Kinda slowly spin it, you know?"

We started in on it: tipping it up, spinning it around, putting it down. It was slow and annoying.

"We're going to tear up the grass," Mark said when we neared the lawn. I got some cardboard and tried to make a path. The cardboard kept slipping out of the way, or hitting our feet while we tried to spin the Monster Fridge.

"This is ridiculous!" Mark lost his cool. I had no rebuttal. It was ridiculous.

But suddenly, from nowhere it seemed, 3 men appeared, a father and his two sons, the father explaining in broken English and the universal language of refrigerator-hoisting gesture that they could help us.

The five of us tipped and lifted the thing up, up, up the little set of stairs, into the house, into the kitchen, in no time.

"Thank you!" Mark and I said.

"That was amazing!" I said.

"No problem," Dad said. "We leve across the street, juss over there. An my seester leves nes'door," he said.

"Oh, nice! Yeah, I think I met her this morning," I said. She'd stopped to introduce herself. Dad offered to help with the sofa, too, but we said no no, we could get it.

"I'm strong!" I said, striking a silly flexing pose. They laughed.

"Okay, you let us know, you need more help," he said. His teenage sons stood shifting from foot to foot.

"Thank you so much," I said, shaking hands with each of them. They filed out, saying goodbye.

"That was awesome!" Mark said. "I think this neighborhood is, like, all families."

We loaded the sofa into the house, easy by comparison, and collapsed onto it, tired but happy. Our new house was so airy and cute and Ours.

That night, we made dinner and watched an episode of "Battlestar Gallactica" on my computer. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and felt odd for a moment.

I turned to Mark.

"Hey! Look at me! Look at me going from the living room to the kitchen to get water -- with No One Watching Me!!" I said, realizing the wonder of having our own place, a douchebag-free-zone, of being unwatched.

"Yay!" Mark said from the sofa, and held out his arms for a hug. I walked over with my water, set it down on our collapsable little table, and curled up in his arms.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(one month in -- no posters yet:)

Thursday, April 12, 2007

There's a windstorm today, and it blows around the tall tall palm trees that line my street so that they bounce and bob and all their poofy leaf tops get a lot less poofy.



The power has been out most of the day, so I sit at the library charging up my battery so that we'll have something to do when we get home to the top of our hill, with no light to read by.

When people ask me how long I've been here, I keep thinking it's been at least 3 months -- I was actually saying it'd been three months, until Mark corrected me.

I paused, disoriented, when I realized I was a full month off.

But anyway it feels like 3 months.

We're moving again, just a mile away, this time. Our roommate situation has proven untenable. I spent a couple hours writing out the story of the general douchebaggery of it all, trying to find a way to talk about it that was descriptive instead of angry. But it got deleted accidentally. The idea of fleshing it out again is as untenable as the roommates, so I will consider it rendered by accident to the footnote it should be.

We are glad to be leaving.

As a closing cap, here are some pictures from what is, admittedly, a very charming little nook of Echo Park:

It's four am. My eyes sting a little, I guess from the water I splashed on my face and the fact that I'm not asleep.

I've been sick for two weeks, now, and I've been told it's not uncommon to be sick for a full month, upon arrival in LA. Something about the air quality. And also it's spring, and even in the land of eternal sunshine, I'm told it's still in vogue to get sick in the spring.

I had dinner last night with three actors, a french horn PhD candidate, and an old friend from high school and college (just visiting). It was a girls' night out, in celebration of Lindy getting a lead in a feature film. We talked about racism in The Biz, segregation, tsunamis, earthquakes, how to lose weight in time for filming, the fundamental insecurity of personality and land in LA, how women get lonely, here, lacking female friends, some of them not knowing how to have friends because they're too busy looking for connections.

My veggie sushi roll came, but I saw no soy sauce. I waited a bit, to see if maybe someone was going to bring it, but no one came.

"Is it gauche to ask for soy sauce, here?" I asked Lindy, only half-joking.

"Gauche!" she laughed. "Here it is, Maddy," she said, passing me a little ceramic pitcher I hadn't seen.

I tried to cough into my cloth napkin, to blow my nose quietly, between pieces of sushi (a dollar a bite), following the conversation of these actors, so smart, so educated, so beautiful, so visibly self-conscious, as they talked about jaw-lines and type-casting.

I am certainly lonely.

March 10th-11th, 2007

I heaved my bike up on my shoulder and trotted down the stairs to the Metro Red Line. I felt serious and official (and secretly a bit silly) with my matching red and black bike shoes, gloves, and pannier, and I could tell by the expressions of the other Metro riders that I must've looked it, too.

The train came soon, and I found an easy spot to sit with my ride. I tried to keep it's dirty greasy bits from touching my nice dress pants while the train rocked from side to side. We rumbled from stop to stop, and soon I was at Union Station, where I switched to the Gold Line for Pasadena. I'd done this trip before, with Mark.

I bungeed my bike to a railing on the gold line train and sat down across from a middle-aged guy in a breezy black and blue shiny button-down tee-shirt. It looked like the right kind of thing to wear in California.

I watched the scenery go by for a while, feeling not quite nervous about my meeting, but maybe just anticipatory.

"You goin' camping or something?" the guy asked me, indicating the large pannier on my bike.

"Yeah, actually, I am." Most of the people who talk to you on the train in Chicago are crazy at best, belligerent at worst. But he seemed all right.

"Nice weather for riding today, huh?" he said.

"Yeah, definitely -- I only rode from Echo Park to the red line, but it was lovely," I said.

We sat in silence as the train started uphill a bit, and I looked out the window, trying to absorb the landscape and let it start feeling familiar. A bit of nervousness crept into my chest. This was my only real TV writing contact, my best shot at getting connected where I need to be connected.

"So how do you like Echo Park?" the guy asked me.

"I like it a lot," I said, glad to have a distraction. "It's a pretty interesting place. It's getting gentrified, but it's still very diverse; it's got a lot of character. And it's a little cheaper than most places around here, seems like," I said.

"Yep, yep," he nodded languidly, somehow comfortably reclined on the uncomfortable seats, long arms resting along the back of the bench. "I live in Pasadena, and it's just ridiculous. It's $1600 for a 1-bedroom, you know? I have to share my place with a roommate. We trade off between the bedroom and the living room," he laughed.

"Yeah, I'm sharing a room in a 4-bedroom house with my boyfriend for the same price that got us a 1-bedroom of our own in Chicago. Like right in the middle of Chicago, close to everything."

"Mmmm hm." There was an easy pause while we both looked out the windows. "So where you going camping?" he asked.

"Well, actually, I don't know. I have a meeting in Pasadena, and then I'm meeting up with my brother. He's in town for a few days for work, in Arcadia, and his group is gonna put my bike in their truck and take me with them wherever. They do desert restoration work."

"Nice, nice. That's nice that you're close with your brother."

"Yeah, definitely," I said, and we talked easily about family, and the way siblings can support one another, and his kids, and California's easy living. It was the third time that someone had mentioned the ridiculous rent prices in the same conversation with how easy it is to live here.

I shook his hand when we got to my stop. "It was nice to meet you," I said, "I hope I run into you again."

By the time I had gathered my stuff together, he'd already started chatting with an older couple that had sat down in my spot.

I disembarked and unrolled my pant leg, smoothed my hair, and looked at my cell phone. I was a few minutes early, so I sat on a bench and let the sun do it's thing. I felt calm and confident. Pretty easy; yes.

I looked around the platform and spotted a man and a woman that looked like they might be my contacts. I walked my bike over by them.

"Are you Daniel?" I said when the man met my eyes.

"Yes!" he said, very friendly, big smile.

"Ah, great! I'm Maddy," I said, shaking his hand.

"Hi Maddy, and this is Lara," he said, introducing me to the pretty blond woman he'd told me he was bringing, whose picture I'd found on IMDB, another writer on the show he executive produces. "Did you bike here?" he asked.

"No, no, I just biked to the train, and took the train here."

"Wait, so... you took the bike on the train?" Lara asked, obviously not ever having had a reason to consider how this might work.

"Yeah, I biked to the red line, in Echo Park, put the bike on the train, and then took that to the gold line, where I also put my bike on the train."

"Wow, so you went to Union Station!" Daniel said.

"Yeah," I said, not sure why that was noteworthy.

"Impressive," Lara said.

"I mean it's not hard," I said, laughing a little.

"Well even so," Daniel said.

I told them how I'd gotten rid of my car in Chicago, a couple years ago, and how I was a somewhat rabid environmentalist, and how LA was proving quite bikeable, so far. We agreed on Thai food, and walked a block or two to a very cute little place on a corner.

"I'm just going to lock up," I said. "I'll meet you inside."

I struggled with my sticky lock for an irritating minute, and then made my way inside, lugging my pannier with me. I stashed it to the side, and took the chair next to Lara, across from Daniel, but tried to pull it out to the side a bit, so I could face both of them.

"So, welcome to LA!" Daniel said. He looked to be in his early 40's, graying a bit, just a bit of a belly, over-sized sweater and jeans. Very approachable, unlike the screenwriter I'd met with, who'd had the little diamond earing and an unnerving gaze and the just-so-perfectly-toussled hair and the designer jeans with a hole in one knee. "How long have you been here?" he asked.

"About 3 weeks, now. Three and a half."

"So tell me everything, I know nothing," he said.

"Like, my work experience, or writing, or?"

"Yeah, yeah, all of it," he said unassumingly.

So I described my relationship with writing as having been cemented at the end of high school, how all the heavy duty math and science I'd done had given me a very precise, logical sense of structure and plot, how I'd studied playwriting in college, and how I'd finally landed on TV writing as the form that made most sense for my dialog-centric, character-centric writing.

He listened well, and then Lara piped in: "I actually Googled you, and I saw you had a play produced."

"Oh! Nice! That's cool that that came up. I should Google myself!" I said. I actually had, but it seemed more charming to let it be her sneaky discovery. So I talked about what a great experience that had been, how fascinating it had been to see what happened when people actually memorized what I'd written, how much I'd learned from the actors about my characters.

And Daniel then started talking about what it was like to write for TV -- the frustrations and rewards of writing in a group, the juggling of network execs and time constraints, hiring practices.

I took out my notebook early on, jotting down notes and occasionally taking bites of the pad kee mao I'd ordered.

"I'm going to write this down, too," Lara said, taking out her notebook.

"What? You don't need to write this down," he said, a little embarassed, a little flattered, genuinely letting her know he thought of her as a pro.

"No, no, it's good stuff to remember," she said. Her IMDB entry had made it seem like she was definitely a TV professional, but still in the early stages, perhaps. I liked that she didn't have too much ego to admit she still could learn from someone experienced as Daniel.

They talked about being pigeonholed into a particular type of writing, and how that could be frustrating.

"Yeah, I handed my agent a spec script for My Name is Earl, and he was like 'Well what the hell am I supposed to do with this??' because he thinks of me as a procedural writer," Lara said.

"Procedural writing is a sort of format you use for mysteries, or crime shows," Daniel explained. I nodded.

"Yeah, like you have to have your hangers at the first scene box, and your twists at the second scene box," she said.

"Sorry, what's a scene box?" I asked.

"Ohhhh, Maddy," she said, laughing and reaching out to pat my shoulder. "So much to learn," she said, looking at Daniel, half friendly, half condescending.

"Well I figured I'd ask," I said, annoyed but not thrown. No point in feeling stupid for not knowing the jargon.

"It's the end of an act, before a commercial, and in procedural writing, you have to hit certain plot elements, and..." and I realized as she was talking that she had actually said "scene breaks," not "box," but the conversation had changed course, and I didn't get to clarify that of course I knew what a scene break was.

Daniel talked some more about how he'd managed to get out of his pigeonhole a bit, and about getting into writing by getting a writers' assistant gig, about learning how to balance your ambition to write with needing to take a back-back-back seat, in that job. About the boys' club aspect of the business, how it might be good to approach women writers for help, he thought. About spec scripts, and how he chooses staff, and personality versus talent, and the social aspects. When he had wound down, I turned to Lara, who, aside from her explanation of scene boxes, had been mostly quiet.

"Is there anything you would add, anything that you feel you had a different experience with?" I asked her.

"Well, I think Daniel's creating a bit of a rosy picture," she said. "I mean, I spent six years as an assistant. It can be really hard to break in. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of asking people to do you favors, and doing favors for them, so they get you meetings."

She continued to tell me in vague terms about the difficulties.

"So when you ask people for favors, what do you offer in return?" I asked.

"Well, I was an assistant for a pretty big director for a while, so I would offer to get them meetings with him..."

"So, for someone like me, with no connections, I mean..."

"Well, you can offer to read scripts, or any of the things that you would normally do as favors for people, you know?"

I frowned, just not sure what that would be, in a town where I don't know my way around, have no sense of direction, have very few friends, have no car, and have no income.

"But I mean, Daniel is an incredible connection," she said, seeing that I was feeling a bit confused.

And Daniel jumped in, saying he would get in touch with this person and that person on my behalf, see if he could get me some meetings with other people who could help me out. Lara "wow"ed at some of the names he mentioned he would try to get me in touch with, and I realized that yes indeed, this was a great, great contact.

When the check came, Daniel graciously paid for both of us, and then walked me to the nearest bookstore to help me find a book on showrunning they'd both agreed was useful. He asked an employee where the TV section was, scanned the books with me, and then asked for directions on my behalf, for the bus to Arcadia, over my weak protestations that it was okay, I could ask.

He was clearly someone who likes to be helpful.

We parted ways with a friendly handshake.

"I'll talk to you soon," he said, with a reassuring smile.

"Thank you sooo much for your help already, this has been incredibly informative," I said, and boy did I mean it.

I hopped on my bike and headed for the bus stop.

When it arrived, I loaded my bike onto the front rack. I found a seat, and was soon joined by a guy about my age, as the bus quickly filled to capacity.

"I hate this bus," he said to me.

"Oh yeah?" I said, on guard a bit. He seemed angry, and angry is something to avoid when confined on a crowded bus.

"Yeah, it's always crowded like this. Always."

"Ah, yeah, it does seem like buses in LA are pretty crowded, generally," I said.

"Mm hm," he nodded. "They do it on purpose, cuz they want people to take the train. They want you to be forced to take the train."

"Huh," I said, unconvinced.

"I done some research," he said, turning to give me a brief knowing look. "Just because I'm curious like that, and there used to be all sorts of trains and electric trolley and stuff, but they tore them all down, the oil and the rubber companies. They just tore them down," he said. It was a story I'd heard before -- just an hour before, actually, from Daniel, as we'd walked to the restaurant.

"Yeah, used to be one of the best train systems around, right?" I said.

"Yup," he said. And he told me about how he'd grown up in LA, and how he'd seen it get more and more crowded, more and more people, all fighting to use the same buses, with not enough train lines to make up for it. "Too many damn people," he said. "I hate it. I wanna get out of here, and I'm going to, as soon as I finish my degree. I got a friend in Atlanta that said he can get me a real nice job, not quite what I studied, but it's a good job. But anyway I'm on my way right now to meet up with my brother and go to a book signing for 'The Secret.'"

"Oh, nice! I've heard about that book," I said. Molly had told me about it, and she was finding it helpful. It seemed to be about positive thinking and achieving your ambitions.

"Yeah, some Christians are saying it's bad, that it's not good for Christians, but I like to think for myself, I like to look at things myself, and then I can decide for myself you know? I can see if something is good or if it's not, well then I won't get involved with it."

"Yeah, you have to trust your own sensibilities," I said.

"Right, right, exactly."

And we chatted some more, and he told me when we were about to get to my stop, and as I was getting up he said "Well you are a very fine young woman, you are real fine," he said. I smiled and thanked him, got off the bus, grabbed my bike, and made my way to the botanical garden to the environmental fair. I walked through dense greenery peppered with peacocks that wandered among the trees, calling to one another with screaming squawks.

Peering ahead at a group of white canopies, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Before I could turn, I was attacked by an airborn young man who looked even hairier and darker than usual.

"Yay!!" I said, hugging him tight. He downright giggled, hugging me tight back.

Paul showed me to where his coworkers were sprawled, relaxing in the shade. They were all very well-sunned, sipping from their Camelpaks, their cheeks decorated with face paint from the fair.

Introductions were made, and I forgot their names immediately, but they seemed like nice kids. They put my bike and bag in their truck, and tucked me into the backseat of the very full bus-like SUV they used to get around. We hit the road with the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want on the stereo, and I thought about how I'd loved that song when I was 19, too. I still think it's a great song, but I wondered whether there was something especially relevant about it at that almost fully adult age.

We drove most of the way to the ocean, and made it to the campground after dark. Paul's crew went about setting up camp and making dinner like a well-oiled machine, illustrating clearly that they'd been working together like this for months. Several of them went for quick runs before dinner. There was no booze, no smoking, no weed, and their food was all vegetarian. I was impressed.

Paul and I set up a tent, even though it was only supposed to get down to 60 degrees that night, and he usually just sleeps on a tarp.

He set his alarm for 6:15am, enough time to snooze once, get up, break down the tent, pack up, eat, and be ready to go by 7am, when we were all supposed to go play at the beach for a few hours before they had to go back to the fair.

We chatted and giggled in our sleeping bags for a while. I'd had a cold for the last few days, but I'd been too distracted to notice it much, that day. But as I lay in the tent without pillows to prop my head up, as my head filled to solid with snot, I started to notice. I breathed through my mouth, tried to shove my fleece into more of a pillow, and found myself feeling more and more sick.

We fell silent, and I could hear from his breathing that Paul was asleep. I thought about "scene boxes," and was irritated that I hadn't had a chance to clear up that I know what a damn scene break is. The embarrassing misunderstanding stirred anxiety in my congested chest, and I coughed rawly in the cold night air.

I wiggled around in my sleeping bag, trying to get it to stay put while I flipped over onto my stomach. I took a few deep breaths, and started doing a relaxation exercise I'd learned years ago.

I imagined my body as a series of knots, and started at my feet, visualizing the knots unraveling in my arches, my ankles, my calves, my knees, my thighs, my hips.... And as usual, before I got up to my head I was asleep.

****

Some unclear amount of time later, I started to wake up, my bladder complaining about all the water I'd had with dinner. I struggled to stay asleep for a while, but soon had to brave the cold night to visit the bathroom.

By the time I got back, I was fully awake, my throat sore and irritated. I lay in my sleeping bag, staring sleeplessly at the gray nylon tent. Paul flipped over and smooshed me into the side of the tent. I gave him a feeble elbow, but when he didn't stir, I just pushed him till he slid in his nylon sleeping bag. It must be a family trait, I thought, remembering similar experiences in beds with my sisters.

I sighed, wondering what time it was. I thought again about fucking scene boxes, and Lara patting my goddamn shoulder.

The alarm on Paul's phone went off! Hallelujiah! Saved by the bell.

He groaned and fumbled around to find the off button while his phone made manic barking sounds.

"What the hell, Paul?" I said cheerfully.

He giggled. "I know, but it works," he said.

We packed up our sleeping bags and broke down the tent in the dark.

"Why isn't anyone else up?" I said.

"Bums," Paul said. "Oh, actually, you know what," he stopped stuffing the rolled up rain fly into its bag for a moment. "I bet it's daylight savings. My phone is probably an hour behind."

"Oh, is that tonight?" I said.

"Yeah."

"Oh well," I said. We finished packing up. "Wanna go for a walk while we wait for them to get up?"

"Sure," he said, and we tossed the tent and bags by the truck and took off down the road. "Well this isn't very scenic," he said, commenting on the brightly lit bathrooms.

"Oooo! Look!" I said, in an Australian accent, stopping suddenly and crouching. "A wild recreational vehicle!" I pointed at the fat RV near us.

Paul laughed heartily, much more heartily than the stupid joke had rightly deserved, but we were both glad to be with family.

We bantered in the same sleepy slap-happy tone our dad always used on the way to school in the morning, our giggles getting more and more raucous the more idiotic our jokes were.

After a while we turned back toward camp. Paul took his phone out to check the time.

"What the hell?" he said, stopping.

I turned to look at him. "What?" I said.

"One-thirty??" he said.

"What? How can that be?"

"My phone's been kind of broken," he said.

"I'm sorry, kind of broken?" I said. He giggled. "But I mean, that's the sun rising over there, isn't it?" I pointed to the light coming over the mountains, in the distance.

"I think that might just be LA," he said.

We stopped and asked someone who was awake with a fire (a bad sign) what time it was. 2:30, she said, or 1:30, depending on daylight savings. We thanked her and continued back toward camp.

"Dagnabbit," I said. "I was already awake -- I was so glad it was morning; I totally couldn't sleep."

"I knew it looked dark!" Paul said.

"Aw, man, we already broke down the tent," I said.

"Ugh."

"Well, I guess we could just use the tarp, right?"

"Yeah, that's what I usually do. And I think we've already passed the dewiest part of the night," he said.

So when we got back to the camp, we set out the tarp and took our sleeping bags back out. We snuggled in, laughing at our stupidity, and then pulled the hoods down over our faces. The little hike had burned some energy out of me, and I fell asleep without too much difficulty. I woke occasionally to adjust my hood, or to scoot back onto my sleeping pad, away from the cold ground, but mostly I slept.

When the alarm went off again in the morning, it was light out. I poked my head out of my sleeping bag, and found that I was covered in frozen dew. So much for a low of 60 degrees. Paul emerged from his bag and shook his head like a wet dog.

"Dewiest part of the night my ass!" I squeaked in a harsh rasp, my throat raw and phlegmy.

"What??" he said, laughing at me.

"Dewiest part of the night my ass!" I said again, throwing bits of ice at him from my bag.

"Hahahahahahaha!" he laughed loud.

We packed up once again, had breakfast with his crew, and made our way to the beach.

It was sunny and warm, and we laid our bags out to dry. He got out one of his many frisbees, and we played catch for a couple hours, sometimes with crewmates, but mostly just us. He showed me how to throw backhands and inside-outs, performed his favorite trick throws for me, and generally displayed the boundless energy of a healthy 19 year old.

The sun and exercise pumped me full of endorphins, and my cold became irrelevant as I ran around after the white disk, still wearing my dress pants, rolled up above my knees.

Around 11:00, we loaded into their vehicles again and drove back through town. I thought about how good my bed would feel, and hot tea, and a change of clothes. They dropped me at my house on their way to the fair, and a few of them came in to use the bathroom. I hugged my brother, knowing he'd be back the next weekend, on break, and thanked his friends for having me as their guest. I could see them hesitate, waiting to see if I was going to hug them, too. But I just smiled, too exhausted, and let them leave.

And I took a hot shower and drank some tea and got under my blankets, nice and warm and dry, and I slept and slept, and didn't wake up until just before Mark got home from work at 4:30pm.

"Hey, baby, how're you feeling?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I'm okay," I croaked feebly, sitting up to hug him, and I laughed because even though my throat stung, my head was filled with glue, my joints ached, and I couldn't breathe through my nose, everything felt just fine.

[a couple more pics to be uploaded when my internet gets its panties untwisted]

February 24-25, 2007

I looked in the mirror while I waited for the shower to warm up. My nose and cheekbones were darker, and when I peered closer I saw tiny little freckles. I used to just brown, when my skin was a little younger.

I'd worn 30 spf sunscreen every day since my arrival, but even in winter, the sun in LA is not to be bested.

Steam started creeping around the fish-patterned shower curtain, so I got in gingerly and fiddled with the knob for a while before committing to getting fully under the stream.

I washed the salt off of my face that had accumulated while we walked to the Chinese New Year parade, about 2 1/2 miles each way. The route I'd planned through Elysian Park had proved unfindable, but after clambering up a couple steep, crumbly hills, we'd finally given up on hiking paths, and wound our way around Dodger Stadium on main roads.

China Town seemed to be made up, primarily, of little import shops, rather than restaurants, like in Chicago or New York. I resisted buying lovely blue cherry-blossomed ceramic bowls that I knew I didn't need while I had my roommates' bowls to use, and while I had no income, and while I didn't especially want to carry them back with me. And I prefer to buy used, anyway.

I thought about the bowls while I shampooed my hair, and comforted myself with the idea that I could go back and buy them, later. Abstract delayed-gratification retail therapy. Not as satisfying as you might think.

I got out of the shower and dried off as quickly as I could -- the charming little house has no heat -- and at night, it drops into the 50's. I put on the one semi-dressy outfit I'd packed, put on some make-up for the first time in maybe a month, put my hair up, and decided I was presentable to the public.

"You ready to go, the girl?" Mark asked.

"Yeah, just about," I said, putting on my one pair of dressier shoes. "Do these go?"

"Uhhh, I think you have too much bare skin showing on your feet. It's not balanced," Mark said.

"Um, okay, well, it's these or Tevas," I said, irritated that Mark didn't automatically know that I was just looking for approval.

"Well, I mean, they're fine, I don't think anyone will be staring at your feet anyway," he said to comfort me. Also not as satisfying as you might think.

"Do I look alright?" I tried greater directness.

"Yeah, you look fine," he said, distractedly.

Sigh. He must be uncomfortable too, I thought. It was Tom's birthday party, after all, Tom being Mark's only friend out here.

"Okay, let's go, then," I said. We suited up with helmets and bright jackets and blinking lights, and rolled down down down our hill and along the minimally-hilled path we'd charted for ourselves using Google Maps Pedometer.

We found the house without too much ado, locked our bikes to a railing, took off our helmets, did a hair check, and headed in.

"Girl's sporting the pimp look now, huh?" Mark said as I was about to open the front door.

"Huh? Oh," I said, and bent over to unroll my pant leg.

We walked in and were half-greeted by some very loud frat-guy types who were sitting at the kitchen table. They gave us directions to a bedroom to drop off our stuff, and then Mark ran out with Tom to pick up some party supplies. I tried not to trail after Tom's girlfriend, Katherine, like a lost puppy, but the house was still mostly empty, brightly lit, and sober.

She and I liberally poured ourselves some of the vodka I'd brought, and added a bunch of Rose's lime juice to make it drinkable. The apartment was enormous, with a huge porch big enough for a ping-pong table, a café table, 4 chairs, and a bunch of empty space. The living room had a television set as big as a twin bed, which was displaying Empire Records on mute. A couple people were standing around making conversation about the movie, but I'd never seen it. I drank some more vodka.

People started trickling in, Tom and Mark came back with a fancy multi-colored disco light contraption, and I refilled my drink.

I went out to the porch, wandered slowly around, looking at the ping-pong table, the lattice work overhead, the view, and listening to the conversations around me.

"Aw, man, then the producer decided he wanted to reshoot the whole damn thing, at like five o'clock," an actor-looking, very industry-standard attractive guy standing near me said to his friend. They were standing at right angles to one another, invitingly.

"You're kidding," his less clean-cut, more California-looking friend said. I positioned myself in front of them, looking out at the hills, at a large, well-lit building perched atop one, in the distance.

"Yeah, my shoulder was killing," the first guy said. Their conversation lulled to quiet for a moment. I turned my body toward them a bit.

"Do you know what that lit up building up there in the hills is?" I asked them, gesturing at it with my drink.

"Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the Griffith Park observatory. You mean that one?" the clean-cut one said, and took a step closer.

"Yeah, with all the white lights," I said.

"Yeah, that's the observatory. It's pretty cool."

"Ah, okay, I hiked up near that the other day, but I didn't go in. You've been?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's really nice. They spent a bunch of cash to redo it, recently."

"Cool. I'm Maddy, by the way," I said, sticking my hand out.

"Hey Maddy, I'm Mike," he said, and shook my hand.

"I'm Dan," his friend said.

"Hey, Dan, I'm Maddy," I said, shaking his hand, too. "So where are you guys from?"

"Wisconsin," Mike said.

"Michigan, but I've been out here for 8 years," Dan said.

"Midwesterners! I'm from Chicago. What do you guys do?" I said.

"I do IT stuff for production companies," Dan said.

"And I'm a camera man and a writer," Mike said.

Dan was standing a foot further from me, and seemed a little shy. Normally that might have motivated me to talk him up, get him more comfortable, but, well Mike was a writer.

"Oh cool!" I said. "I'm a writer, too."

"Well, I mean, I haven't sold anything yet, just sending scripts out, so I guess I can't really call myself a writer yet."

"Well, do you write?" I asked

"Yeah, yeah, but--"

"Then you're a writer!" I encouraged.

He explained that he had a writing partner, and a bunch of contacts that were interested in his stuff, that he'd submitted a script that wasn't quite what someone had wanted, but they'd asked him to write something else because they liked his style. I tried to balance curiosity, a desire to network, friendliness, and my vodka, with decent success, I thought.

"How do you recommend getting started and connected out here," I asked him.

"Just meet people, you know, like you're doing right now, at parties like this," he said. I nodded.

Right then another guy came out onto the porch and turned to Mike, his back partly to me, separating me from the two guys.

"Have you seen Jared around, man?" I heard him say.

Mike started to reply, and I used the opportunity to slip off of the porch. I wanted to network, but I didn't feel comfortable asking for some sort of connection when I had none to offer. But then how was I going to get anywhere? As I wandered through the party, I berated myself a little for not being slightly more forward, and later overcompensated with a woman I was talking to, asking her if I could give her some of my massage therapy business cards, to give to her friends.

"Oh, uh, um--" she stumbled. Damn.

"Or I mean if you don't have any use for them," I started to backpedal.

"No, I could take like half a dozen, sure, yeah," she said.

"Cool, right on," I said, counting them out and handing them over. I made a mental note to talk to her at least once more, about something else, that evening. I really did like her, and I didn't want her to feel used or... uncomfortable, or... like she didn't like me anymore, said my vodka.

I wandered around again, looking for Mark, the only person there with any real sense of context for me. He was pretty drunk, too.

"Hey baby!" he said, and put an arm around me. I tuned out and let myself just be his arm candy for a little while, while he talked energetically with some musicians.

The night continued like that -- in spurts of social effort and retreats to under Mark's arm, with more vodka, with some great music from Tom's 12 hour iTunes playlist, and then some dancing, and some more retreating, and then more dancing again.

At around 2:00, we agreed we were sated, and that we should start sobering up for the ride home. But at 2:15, Tom pulled me back out to the dance floor, and I danced out the last of my anxiety, every lingering jumpy twitchy ansty feeling coming out easy in 4/4 time.

And by the time I got back to Mark, he was working on another beer.

"I thought we were sobering up," I said.

"I thought we were leaving," he said.

"We are, we are, I just was dancing a little bit. I thought we were going to hang out until we were a little less drunk."

Mark looked exhausted by the idea of continuing the line of logic.

"Okay, okay, let's go," I said.

"Okay," he said, and put the half-drunk beer down.

We gathered our stuff and gave Tom and Katherine hugs.

"Hey, uh, he's kinda swaying there, Maddy," Tom said, tilting his chin at Mark.

"Yeah, I know. We're going to walk for a while."

"Good, good," he said.

We said goodbye to anyone whom we happened to pass, on our way to the door, helmets and jackets on, fully bike-geeked out.

We unlocked our bikes and I glanced over at Mark. He was swayingly attempting to mount his ride.

"Hey, baby, can we just walk for a bit?" I asked. "I think I'm a little too drunk to ride, right now."

"Okay," he said, refocusing his energy toward walking with his bike.

We walked down the street in the chilly night air, my shoes click-clacking on the sidewalk, and I didn't much mind the cold, or my uncomfortable shoes, or much of anything.

"That was a great scene," I said.

"Yeah, totally. That was awesome."

"It seemed like everyone there was from the Midwest. I met this girl who I actually might've gone to acquatics camp with, in Evanston."

"Really."

"Yeah, we both looked familiar to each other," I said, and thought vaguely about "both" vs. "each."

"I could really go for some tacos right now," Mark said.

"Yeah, good idea. We can stop if we see somewhere open."

"Can we bike now?"

I looked at Mark's only moderately improved gait, and then looked down the long, steep hill in front of us.

"Can we get to the bottom of this hill, first?"

"Yeah, okay," he said grumpily.

The streets were almost entirely empty, and the sidewalks were wide, so we got on our bikes and pedaled down the sidewalk until we got to a taco place that was brightly lit and full of other drunk people. They didn't have anything vegetarian listed, but they more or less seemed to understand that we didn't want meat on our tacos and burrito. (Mark isn't vegetarian, but he stopped eating non-organic meat & dairy after seeing The Corporation.)

I could feel people looking at our bright jackets and our helmets as we chowed down, and I felt both uncomfortable and proud.

The next day I was hung over, and paranoid that I'd made a fool of myself; that I'd given the wrong impression by getting so drunk; that as a massage therapist, a healer, I was supposed to be a model of health; that I'd overstepped social bounds and been too much, too crazy with my dancing, too forward, too blah blah blah.

I tried try to tell myself that I only worried because I know these people have no context for me, and that it was a party, that I had certainly been fine, and probably even charming. But nonetheless, the next couple days were uncomfortable and even mildly depressive. I called my parents, signed on to my instant messaging program, and tried to tug my Chicago self out to LA.

Molly: how's the left side?

Me: oh mollers
so happy to see you
the left side is feelin pretty weird right now

Molly: uh oh

Me: im like wiat a minute wait a minute who am i???

Molly: ah

Me: there is just no one here to define me except mark, which is huge, but my god
and the weather is all unreal

Molly: i've been toying with the idea that rooting yourself has something more to do with defining yourself by activities and interests than people originally
the people will follow

Me: ...yeah, that makes sense
i was having trouble doing activities today

Molly: probably cuz you've been Action Maddy

Me: yeah... but i also felt like i didnt know what i was supposed to do
and i've been wearing the same jeans for a month

Molly: with your free time?

Me: yeah

Molly: did you try the usually maddy grabbers?
like writing, scrap booking your trip, yoga, making healthy food

And she started to list the things she knows make me feel better, and just the fact that she knew the list by heart made me feel better. So I went to my closet and changed into the tee shirt we'd made together, a few days before I'd left. One of the few articles of clothings I'd packed with me. And I snuggled under Mark's arm, and tried to let Molly and Mark hold on to who I am, for a couple hours.

February 16, 2007

I scoured our laminated fold-out map, the LA bike map pdf, and google maps, comparing back and forth, trying to choose our route carefully.

Mark glanced at it, said "Let's just take Rampart to 8th and take it all the way west," and seemed satisfied.

I took another five minutes or so to decide that, yeah, okay, that was probably fine. But I came up with a couple alternate routes, before Mark finally badgered me into puting on my helmet and shoes and reattaching the pedals to our bikes (they have to be taken off to ship them with Amtrak).

We rolled our bikes out the front door of our charming little house on a hill, carried them down the few steps, and then learned that we were going to go through brake pads a lot faster here, as we squeezed the brakes all the way down, down, down the windy road, down from our hill.

Sunset Boulevard, which we live right off of, has a bike lane, so it was a gentle start.

We pedaled with no drama, up and down the little bits of hill, in the sunshine. We looked for Rampart, and looked and looked, and finally I yelled to Mark "Hey! Can we stop a minute?"

"What?" he asked, irritated.

"Well I think we might've passed it."

"I don't think so," he said, in the same tone he'd used to badger me into putting on my shoes and helmet.

"Well let me just take a sec to look," I said, pulling out the map and trying to get myself oriented. I could feel which way the water was, but I so badly wanted that to be east. I told myself No, the water is west, Maddy; West. That means that, over there, that's North." But as soon as I was done telling myself that, my sub-brain flipped right back to Water=East.

"Okay," I said to Mark, "look, we passed it by quite a bit. It's back here," I pointed. "And we're here," I pointed again.

"Oh, I see. Yeah, okay, it's only on one side of the street," he said, calming down now that I was delaying us to save us time.

So we turned around, and we found it pretty easily. It was a steep climb, but doable, and when we got to the top, WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! all the way down!

Adrenalin, lactic acid, and endorphins, oh my!

We rerouted to get across the expressway, and found our way without drama to 8th Street. 8th Street then dead-ended at a neighborhood that was rich enough, apparently, to block off street access to riff-raff like us. A rent-a-cop car drove by while I stood looking at my map, next to the hedge-and-gate barrier. He lingered while we decided which way to go, clearly having nothing better to do.

We cut north a bit, to a bigger through-street, and then split off at La Brea, Mark going to check in with work, me continuing on to the Apple store, to see if they could do anything for my poor departed lappy.

They could not, so I resigned myself to shelling out the money for a new one, and I met Mark at a nearby Trader Joe's he'd found while waiting for me to be done. We bought familiar items and packed them into my pannier, along with my dead computer.

And we biked back, easily rolling along the wide lanes of Los Angeles (even with my heavy bag), no honking, no one threatening to side-swipe us, over the hills and far away, biking in California with no aching in my heart*. (*credit to Led Zeppelin) What a nice surprise. A 16- or 17-mile round trip with no drama.

The hill up to our house was the hardest part, but we managed to bike up the whole way without stopping to rest. We got home feeling exhilarated and triumphant, and sat down to make some serious sandwiches.

February 14, 2007

We finally arrived in Los Angeles 12 hours after our scheduled arrival. The train had to turn around and go back to Tucson because of a freight derailment, further along, and we'd been put on a bus to LA, around the time that the train had intended to arrive.

"I HATE Amtrak!" the woman sitting in front of us spat in regular intervals. "What if I was gettin' married? What if I was the bride for a $30,000 wedding?" she invected to no one in particular.

I thanked my lucky stars that such a wedding wasn't happening, and that I was not her groom.

"I HATE AMTRAK!" she yelled.

Mark rolled his eyes at me.

"I mean, if you're in a hurry, you don't take the train," I said to Mark, sotto voce. He nodded. We watched the desert hills roll by, covered in windmills and peppered with a few houses and the occasional gas station.

The sun was descending by the time we got to the outskirts of LA, the stretching suburbs of suburbs of suburbs. The light shone through a layer of orange air that stirred a little anxiety in my chest. Smog.

Ten minutes from the station a skyscraper came into view with its lights turned on to create a heart, for Valentines' Day.

"That's the Metro building," said the LA native sitting behind us, his sausage-smelling breath wafting up with his words. A few people scrambled to the windows to try to take pictures.

The bus driver fumbled around the Amtrak station, not sure where to let us out. The natives finally sorted him out, and we disembarked into the cool night air. We went to the baggage claim and picked up our bikes and my massage table, where they'd been waiting for 12 days.

"You owe us a lot of money for these things," the shipping employee told me, leafing through a shipment log.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"You gotta hand over a lot of cash before I can give these to you," he said. "They been here for like two weeks!"

"Oh, you mean $2 per item per day, right?"

"Oh," he said. "Well if you're not gonna argue with me, then I'm not gonna charge you." He closed the shipment log.

"Really?" I said, confused.

"Yeah, don't worry about it," he said cheerfully.

"Uh, wow, okay, thanks!" I said, probably sounding more disoriented than grateful. "He's not charging us," I said to Mark.

"That's awesome!"

"Yeah don't worry about it," the employee said again, enjoying himself.

Mark and I hauled the stuff outside and waited for Tom to come pick us up in his pick-up truck.

Mark went in search of water to refill the Nalgene, while I used my pocket knife to make salsa with the last of our tomatoes, some soy sauce, cilantro, a packet of onion condiment, and wasabi for spice. It was surprisingly tasty.

We took a picture of MooBoo, our travel mascot, against the heart of the Metro building. I wished my computer hadn't given up the ghost, the previous night. It would be nice to watch an episode of Boston Legal while we waited. But eventually Tom arrived, and all our stuff fit in the truck, and he drove us to our new home without incident.

It was a lot higher up the hill than GoogleEarth had said.

And by the way,

Wow, Hills.

In a daze, we dragged our belongings inside and met our old skateboarder dude roommates. They offered us peanut butter and jelly, helped carry a few things, and introduced us to the 13 year old Chocolate Lab that lives here part time.

Tom used the bathroom and then ran back to finish his Valentines' Day date with his girlfriend.

"See you soon, darlin," he said, kissing me on the cheek. "Later, buddy," he said to Mark, giving him a good looking hug.

Mark and I sat, dazed, for a little while, talking with our new roommates about the train and bus snafus, the grand journey-ness of it all, just trying to make sense. But after not too long we gave up on sense and opted for sleep on the double mattress left behind by the last occupant.

We laid out a sheet across the bed, and used our sleeping bags as blankets. Mike, one of the roommates, had lent us a couple pillows, which felt like pure luxury. It'd been a full month since we'd slept on a real bed.

And boy did we sleep.