Holidays Chapter 2: "Are you going to take your bag out of your hood?"

So, after girly, girly night (which, in case you missed it because it was back-dated, is here), it was holiday gauntlet running through the rest of LA. All of which was fantastically fun.

This is not where it gets interesting ...
The day started with brunch with Shimmy at our most favorite bad for you diner in Long Beach. The place where they double stuff potatoes for breakfast and, after serving you a plate of food big enough for three people, then slap down an order of French Toast with cream cheese stuffed inside to top it off. The coffee there is terrible, but it's worth it. We are full ... well ... overfull when we leave.



This is not where it gets interesting ...
Next stop, Shadalan's for an annual card reading. She has a lovely new place that looks out over the ocean. Very peaceful. And also, very insightful.

This is not where it gets interesting ...
Then, Santa Monica for the most reasonably priced fantastic Italian meal I've had in months. Dinner is with Darren and Brooke and they are possibly the single most charming couple you will ever meet. And then Joe and Helen showed up for dessert. And I was a happy girl.

This is where it got interesting ...
And then I drove to Topenga Canyon. Listen, I'm absolutely getting the bad drunk driving habit out of my system in 2008. No more scenes where shamus and RJ have to yell at me in a parking garage to get me to give them my keys. No more DUIs. And certainly no more of this driving to Topenga Canyon after getting loaded up on my arch nemisis red wine. But I drove to Topenga Canyon to see J-Flo and K-Flo and Justin nonetheless. And when I got there, I got confused about where to park, so I ended up parking almost two blocks away. But J-Flo is waiting outside for me because he'd already fielded a couple of my lost and drunken phone calls that night. So he sees me park two blocks away and rolls his eyes and starts to walk toward me to retrieve me. And while he is doing that, he is treated to this scene:

I have become confused about which buttons on my car remote pop the hood of my car versus the trunk of my car. And I am repeatedly popping the hood of my car, and then looking at the hood. And then looking a the trunk. And then shutting the hood. And then repeating the process. And when J-Flo gets down to the car, he is already snotting and laughing. And I look at him, lost, and say, "I can't figure out how to open my trunk. I think I'm going to have to put the back seats down and drag my bags out from the back seat."

And somewhere between snorting out beer and sitting down on the ground because he is laughing so hard, J-Flo says, "Why don't you just put the KEY into the trunk?"

DUH.

After looking at him blankly for a moment, I suddenly realize that I am a drunken idiot. And open my trunk. Like a moron. I haven't lived this one down yet. I doubt that I will any time soon.

J-Flo and K-Flo are a great team with their son, Ju-Flo. It's amazing to watch. I had the most amazing time falling asleep on their couch while drinking wine and eating Cheetohs. I love them. I wish we lived closer. Though, I still get physically ill when I think about how much food J-Flo was able to put down at IHOP the next morning. That's not even right, ya'll. I want to be a part of their team! Just not a part of their IHOP eating team.




Finally, the last stop is Charles and Luci's. As if IHOP weren't enough, when I get to Charles and Luci's, I find that we are having MEAT for lunch. MEAT on the grill. And wine. Let me tell you how I stuffed it down. Not pretty. I may have gained 10 pounds in the weekend alone. And then there were video games and pictures and all kinds of fun things.




LA gauntlet was spectacular. It was like a real Christmas but with sunshine. And then, I headed to PA and things got REALLY crazy ...

 

Holidays - Chapter 1: "Not a Single Cookie Was Decorated": Holidays are Always Best When They Start in LA

And so, the first run on the holiday gauntlet was to LA. I suppose, though, for the record that it all depends on how you define "holiday gauntlet" since the argument could be made that the holiday gauntlet had started over Thanksgiving in San Francisco, or the weekend after in Austin. Both of those events included binge drinking and eye-rolling moments, so who knows.

The first thing that is supposed to happen during LA Holiday is a cookie decorating party at Shimmy's. The idea being that we would make casseroles (put that holiday weight on early, please), drink cocktails and decorate cookies while enjoying girl holiday time.

The problem, however, is in the order that we did things. Rather than decorate cookies while cooking and drinking, we proceeded to have two to three cocktails a piece before cookies were ever mentioned. Wanna know something? At the end of the night not a single cookie had even been touched.



We ate FOUR kinds of casserole.



We had many, many cocktails. KALM wore this:



LaurieG got a fart fan for Christmas, took an unusually hot picture with it and then later REALLY needed it:



And then, various things happened. We both opened gifts and went through items from each other's closets that we were getting rid of. It was like our own personal garage sale. Here are a couple of pictures of happy gift girls:




Then, Shadee told a story about how she had gone to Trader Joe's and gotten distracted by a cute boy and then proceeded to trip on her own heel and nearly fall over while almost taking down an entire wine display with her. She was very animated. And these are our real lives.



Then, we danced. We danced like hookers even though we did not look like hookers because we were all wearing pajamas. Here are some pictures.




Then, we decided to try to watch "Two Girls, One Cup." If you're not familiar, this is a HORRID, NASTY porn video that's circulating the internet. It's painful. I mean, in fairness, we'd been watching YouTube clips for a while, and somebody brought up "Two Girls, One Cup" and we were all like "let's check it out!" IT WAS SO DISGUSTING WE COULD NOT EVEN WATCH IT. These photos are priceless, yes they are. If you look at them, you will see that we could not even keep our faces towards the screen. We couldn't even watch. I mean, except, apparently, for ONE PERSON. If you look at the photos, you will see that three of us are all turning away from the screen and ONE PERSON seems to be captivated and drawn to the screen in all pictures. That is all.



And then we passed out. Oh yes, you may have imagined that this rager ran all night, but you would be wrong. Here's photographic evidence that the majority of the party girls passed out before it was even midnight. Ha.



So, to review, our girlie night had everything you could hope for in your fantasies:

Sexy Costumes



Girl-on-Girl Dancing



Drunk Girls



Porn



Girls Sleeping Together




Hawt.

 

And...GO! A Friday Ten In Which I Give Up on the Rest of the Year

Ha! Do you like how I stopped the Africa updates right before the three single best days of the trip (lions, gorillas and zebras?). I actually have a rare 20 minutes of down time right now when I should be trying to clean out my inbox, but let's just update instead. There are many, many things going on right now.

1. I LOVE STRESS: I mean, I probably don't love the way that it ages me, but I do thrive on it. The good thing about the current levels of stress is that it comes at a time of year when I habitually get manic anyway. I'm averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night right now. You would think that with 20 hours of awake time a day I'd have time to answer people's emails or return phone calls or not bail on social engagements. Ha! Here's what I'm balancing right now:

- A stressful job transition that's also resulted in some bad mojo for some people who work/ed with me. So I'm basically working about 12 hours a day, on a good day. Literally, my day starts at 7:30am. Around 4pm, I go to the gym for a couple of hours, and then around 7pm I start working again. Usually until around midnight.

- November is NOT party season in Vegas, but we're determined to make our revenue goal, so finding people who want to party in Vegas during one of the months of the year when NOBODY parties in Vegas is hard.

- You know it - it's holiday season. I have a shopping list of 120 people plus a card list of about 300, and you know that the majority of that card list gets that custom, special letter that Pookie and I do together which is 3x the work of a card and 10x the expense of a card. And you also know that of that 120 people a lot of them get things that I make, and though I made 35 of something during the summer, that's still a lot to do. The good news is that I have "the spreadsheet" completed. The bad news is that I also have three months of late birthday presents that need to be sent out as well. Viva!

- I AM OUT OF SHAPE: Which means I'm running like a beast. I'm not sure how it happened. I was underweight before I left for Africa, but still in good running shape. I didn't gain weight in Africa, but I also didn't run. And then when I got back, I didn't get right back to running, and I ate a lot of pizza, but it wasn't all that out of control. But when I went for my first run back this week, I was sucking air at four miles. Not good.

- AND THEN I HAD A PANIC ATTACK ABOUT MY SCHEDULE. Literally, a breathing issue panic attack. I did my calendar, and I realized that between the time I got back from Africa and the week after New Year's, I had only two weekends where either I didn't have an out of town trip scheduled or I have people in town. One of those weekends is this weekend, and one is either the weekend of December 8th or December 17th, depending on which weekend I do "Holidays in LA." After Africa I had Halffington in town, then the eight million nieces PLUS Jess's bachelorette, this weekend is blissfully off. Then November: the first weekend Matty and Jess get married, the second weekend I am going to Vancouver, the third weekend there are LA girls in town, and the fourth weekend I'll be in New York for Thanksgiving. Then there is December: the first weekend I'll be in Texas for Paul and Kari's wedding, one of the next two weekends I'll go to LA, then I'll be home in Pittsburgh for the holidays, then I'll be in Arizona for New Year's. When I looked at that schedule, I had a panic attack. Because, if you're following, I have no down time during the week right now. There's nothing I'd want off that schedule though. So I'll just buckle down and make it happen.

Here's the most awesome thing about that schedule though. So the other day I was having lunch with this boy I really like (and who I think really likes me) and he said, "Yeah, I'm going to be out of town the next two weekends."

And I immediately made my pouty face like I was so offended that he wouldn't want to spend time with me so badly that he'd leave a weekend clear. And he looked at me like I was the world's biggest hypocrite and said, "We're both really busy people. That's how it is with people like us."

AND I TOTALLY CONTINUED TO MAKE MY POUTY FACE LIKE I WAS 100% IN THE RIGHT. Which is, you know, ha ha ha ha ha ha, because if the question had been reversed and he had asked me what my weekend plans look like in the near future, I would have been all like "Yeah, why don't you talk to me in January. That's when it looks like things clear up for me."

Awesome.

And so I am stressed. My plans this weekend involve locking my door, closing my curtains, turning off my personal phone (but leaving work phones on, sigh) and chilling out - even if chilling out means that I'm actually doing work, just doing it in the comfort of my (now clean!) home. There will be crockpot action. There will be outings to the gym. There will even be laundry (which I find peaceful and relaxing - the sound of the dryer running in the background while I look at spreadsheets). There will be reading. There will be holiday crafting. THERE WILL BE ZELDA. And by 7am on Monday morning I will be refreshed.

And by 10am on Monday morning I will be in exactly the same stressed out, maxed-out place I'm in right now!

Listen, this is me saying I love everybody, but anybody who knows me knows that I go dark in November and December, and this year will be worse because of additional factors. Don't hate. Just know that when I'm not emailing or calling, I'm wishing that I were. If you are on Facebook then you get more action from me. That's all I'm saying.

2. A Little Ditty for the Marketers: Yeah, sorry, this is only funny if you've ever run a marketing department before, but since a lot of you have...

Me
So, you know, I would need the data on x as it compares to y in order to decide what I wanted to do with that situation.

Other Person
Um, yeah, the only way to get that data is manually.

Me
You mean, like, read it and enter it into a calculator?

Other Person
Um, yeah.

Me
But...but...it's housed in a database!

Other Person
Yeah, but there's really no way to easily ... let me just get you a calculator.

Let me tell you, there's some automation about to happen here. I can't think of a LESS useful way to spend my time than manually transferring data.

3. A photo that makes my photos look lame: It's seriously like Mr. Holland's Opus in Pittsburgh. I'm not even joking. My little bro just out-ghetto'ed me. "Mr. J" wins. I don't even know what to do with this.



4. Car! Detailed! Yes, finally. For those of you who have been following the saga, a can of Pepsi exploded in my car earlier this summer. The car needed to be detailed before that, but after the can of Pepsi exploded, it REALLY needed to be detailed. You know how sometimes things make it on to your to do list and then just keep getting moved to the bottom because it's such a hassle?

Then a couple of months later, I accidentally left some batteries in the car during the high heat and they leaked. Then the car REALLY REALLY needed to be detailed. However, not so much, apparently, that it rallied my ass out to get it detailed.

Then LAST WEEK I was on my way to a meeting and I hadn't eaten yet so I tried to eat sushi in the car. And at a red light, I went to open the little packet of soy sauce and it exploded all over the inside of the car.

But you know what finally got me motivated to get the car detailed? My tags have been expired for OVER A MONTH NOW because I've been too lazy to get my smog check done. The last time my tags were expired I totally got pulled over for a moving violation and had to eat the other $150 fine for having expired tags. So I finally got my car into the Saturn dealership. Exciting!

And then today I mailed in the smog check and the tag registration and was so excited that those things could be moved off my to do list.

And then I got home and opened my mail, only to find out that my lack of paying attention had meant that my driver's license had expired and I forgot to renew it, so I'm now driving on a suspended license. HOT.

I am a HOT MESS people.

5. Can we talk about SMOS briefly? You know how every year around this time, when things start to get crazy busy in my world, I start this lecture about how "I REALLY need to do something to slow the pace of my life down?" And then I go into this whole inner turmoil about how I would benefit from slowing myself down, but my nature is to live fast and big and I'd hate to have missed out on any of the things I would have missed out on if I didn't live that way? Well, can I say that in many ways this year I failed to slow the pace of my life down (see the two month schedule above as Example A). However, SMOS has totally made me slow down at least a section of my life. I have the most lovely, wonderful, beautiful men in my life right now. And if I had been going at my normal pace, I'd be well ensconced in another relationship by now and would have missed out on a lot of wonderful things I've learned. So, I'm saying, SMOS is the best thing I've ever done for myself. I did have a little bout of "single insecurity" going on the other week. And Shimmy reminded me that that's the point. As she said, "You need to become secure in the insecurity." She is so zen.

Slowing my life down will, once again, be something about myself that I try to work on in 2008. The other one will be trying to be at my best even when I'm not motivated or not inspired, which is something I learned this year is a weakness of mine. That is all.

6. I went through a phase this week where... I couldn't stop lusting after Luda. Yep. Sure did. I mean, like, talking about how hot he was all day long to anybody that would listen. Then Pookie drunk IM'ed me, and he sent me a copy of "Sexy Motherfucker" by Prince. And then I couldn't decide who I thought was sexier. Here, ponder for yourself.



7. The best thing you won't hear on my public playlist this week. You won't hear it, because I can't find a copy to put on the playlist, but there's a 2 DISC cd set of mashups of Britney and/or Madonna songs that made it down the girl chain from Ang to Shimmy to me. All the mashups are good, but there are two I just leave on repeat and listen to over and over again. One is a mashup of Missy Elliot's "Pass That Dutch" with Madonna's "Holiday", and the other is a mashup of "Holiday" with D-Child's "Make Me Lose My Breath." AND THOSE TWO MASHUPS ARE SO GOOD. You should totally try to find them online somewhere if you can. I can't stop listening.

Also, why do we love D-Child? It's because of lyrics like this:
"Ooh
Two things I don't like
when I'm trynna get my
groove -
Is a partner that meets
me only halfway, and
just can't prove -
Take me out so deep when you
know you can't swim-
Need a lifeguard and I
need protection-
To put it on me deep in
the right direction.
Ooh
You understand the facts
that I'm trynna give to
you-
You movin' so slow like
you just don't have a clue-
Didn't momma teach you
to give affection?
Learn the difference from a
man and an adolescent
It ain't you boo, so get ta steppin'"

Secondly, here's a conversation Halff may not have wanted to be made public. He and I are in the car (unfortunately pre-detailing job) listening to said cd (disc 2!).

Halff
These mashups are way better than the original Britney and Madonna songs.

Pause

Halff and I Simultaneously
Except for "Holiday." That's a great song on its own.

What have we learned? Mash any song with "Holiday" and everything gets better.

8. Cat Blog! This is honestly how fat Sly is. This is how he's sitting: He has his back paws on one chair, his front paws on another chair and his HUGE GUT is actually hanging between the two chairs. I am a bad mom!



9. Because I need a number nine ... Listen, I'm going to come clean here. Because the Rockies are Ry's favorite team, I always put $5 on them to win the World Series at the beginning of the season as a show of faith to him. The odds at the beginning of the season were, like, 30 to 1. I'm sorry. I know so many of you are Red Sox fans, but mama wants a pair of $1300 snakeskin Versace shoes she saw the other week. Go Rockies!

10. And a playlist! When I get super stressed like this, the music sounds more like a nightclub. Why? That's so obvious. Because nightclubs are where I reduce stress. Here's what we're listening to in Jocelyn world right now.

"Do It Well" - J-Lo: OHMYGOD! How much do I LOVE the new J-Lo single WITH a breakdown from my boyfriend Luda? I've been warned that if I don't stop playing and dancing to this in the work environment there will be a boycott, but IT'S SO GOOD. I work to it, I do laundry to it, I run to it. It's the best thing EVER. Or at least recently. You can't even listen to this and then listen to "Gimme More" and take Britney even a little bit seriously. I LOVE J-LO.

"Lose My Breath" - D-Child, "Pass That Dutch" - Missy Elliot and "Holiday" - Madonna: Okay, I can't give you the mashup, but I can give you all three singles and you can imagine. And dance. You can imagine, and then you can dance.

"Sexy Motherfucker" - Prince: "In a word, it's you I want to do." Or, better yet, "I want to get to know you, tell me what you do, what you eat...I might cook for you."

"Sexy motherfuker, shaking that ass, shaking that ass."

"End of the Night" - Luda: I mean, I could have picked any song here. He sounds smooth and sexy on anything. That is all. If for no other reason, this song is on because of these lyrics:
" By the end of the night you gon' be wantin to marry a nigga
Cause I make 'em erupt like volcanoes, you just shake and you shiver
Get 'em up, get down, turn around and put your face in the pillow
Cut 'em up like Jason, just face it that boy Luda's a killer
Half man, half gorilla, beatin all on my chest
Pleasin all of your flesh, squeezin all on your breast
Givin you reasons to rest, and ain't never say no to papi
Wake 'em up like Folgers cause I fold 'em like origami
Hey mami let's get it poppin like Orville Redenbacher
The way you move once you started nothin could ever stop ya
Sweeter than Betty Crocker, and I'm ready to belly flop ya
Just mention today but for now I forever gotcha"

Yep.

"Great Pumpkin Waltz" - Vince, Guaralid: Okay, so you'll only get a snippet here, but I've been listening to the whole thing. You know how I love my Peanuts holiday dvds.

Oh, God, come on, that's awesome how I just transitioned from Luda rapping about dirty sex to Charlie Brown. Give me points!

Special Extra Bonus Item! So I can't sleep (shocker) so I log into Facebook because I notice that AshleyPooh has tagged a new photo of me. It is a photo of me and my niece Stephanie "recovering" on my couch the night after all of these photos were taken. Nice, Ashley. Thanks for bringing this picture to the public. I really think the comment I left Ashley on Facebook says it all, which is, "Why would you post this? I look like I just spent five days doing crack."

Which is also what I felt like because my body doesn't recover from staying out all night two nights in a row as quickly as it used to. But I have no pride, so I'll share.

 

"Great news, Jeremy, DoodyBubble is totally available. We can get right on this tomorrow!"

Subtitled: LA is Always, Like, an Adventure





One of the things that I always did love about living in San Francisco is that, if you wanted to go create an adventure one night, there was always something to do to create that adventure and there were always playmates ready and willing to have an adventure. LA is like that for me, too, which is probably why I'm on my way there. (Yes, really.)

I had a good weekend of adventure.

On Friday night, I went with shamus? and Tom to get midnight tacos and then to the Hard Place Pompeii party. Which was at the White Slave Trade. In an alley. In Echo Park. I have three most favorite stories from the night, and also, you can see all of the Hard Place band photos here.

Story Number One: "Well, then I can't help you."
So, let it be said that I loved everybody I met. They were all creative and fun and nice and lovers of the absurd. However, I think that I am not telling anybody anything that they don't already know when I say that I am not so much attracted to LA scenester boys in skinny jeans (which, by the way, in my mind are as much as much a travesty on men as are manpris and Crocs). However, possibly as punishment for, well, pick it, God gave me a little scenester boy. This one was so devoted to his favorite band that he had ridden his bike from Burbank to the show. Because bike was his preferred form of transport, which is important later.

I was not in the mood for game. I had not been in the mood for game to begin with. Bike Boy kept telling me that my gold lame stretch pants from AA were so hot he couldn't stand it, which may have been the funniest thing any boy has ever said to me in my life while trying to pick me up. Because, I think we all know that gold lame stretch pants are not hot on ANYBODY.

It is also important to note that shamus?, Tom and myself had no place to sleep that night. None of us had so much bothered to work that out, and all of us were like "We'll just figure that shit out after the show." That's how we roll. So, at one point, I'm trying to extract myself from the couch with scenester boy, and I'm like, "I need to go check in with shamus? and Tom. We don't have a place to sleep tonight."

Scenester Boy
You can come back to my place. I have a fold out couch in the living room. They can sleep there.

Me
In Burbank?

Scenester Boy
Yeah. Burbank.

Me
What are we going to do about your bike then?

Scenester Boy
We can take it apart and put it in the back of your car. Then you can drive to Burbank.

I see how it is. YES. We're all about the preservation of the environment by riding bikes, but when the possibility of getting laid is on the table - LET'S BURN SOME FOSSIL FUEL.

There were many reasons why that hook up wasn't going to happen, including but not limited to a)I was tired, b)I wasn't in the mood, c)I wasn't all that into it, d)I was on my period, and e)I am way too old and make way too much money to hook up with somebody just so that me and my two gay friends have a place to sleep that night. I totally stopped doing that sometime in my mid-twenties.

Anyway, it's time to extract from the situation. shamus? is about to walk away and I grab him by the toga (oh yes, yes he did) and I'm all like "You can't go anywhere. Help me." So shamus? actually offers up a good excuse to leave the situation. And that excuse is, "Lady friend, do you need a vodka drink? I'll buy you one, but I'm not carrying it for you. You need to get your ass up and walk to the bar."


I give you MAN TOGA.

Now, admittedly, he's given me a perfect reason to disappear. The entire world can see that I need a drink. He's offered to get me one. All I have to do is get up. But immediately the struggle begins in me, and my brain starts screaming "What up, bitch? I can't believe you think I'm getting off my ass to get a drink when you have perfectly healthy legs and arms to bring said drink to me over here." And before I can stop myself, I say, "I am NOT getting up to get a drink. What's wrong with you?"

And shamus? stares at me. Baffled by my reluctance to leave the very situation I just said I needed help getting out of (making this moment a microcosm of my entire life). And he sighs, and he says:

"Well I can't help you then."

And then he disappears. Leaving me there with all kinds of bad touch on gold lame and having to live with the results of the uncontrollable dose of princess in my blood. And in the best news you will hear all week, somebody actually took a picture of this entire scene while it was going down. Perfect.



Story Number Two: Five Dollars, Please.
Shortly after shamus? disappears, I get up and go after him. He is standing by the door with one of the guys from The Passionistas. If you didn't notice it in the photo, the guys from The Passionistas had made their togas from American flags. Perhaps you are offended by this, perhaps you are not. In either case, you don't need to tell me about it because I am not the person who showed up in an American flag toga. I am simply relaying a story that requires you to know that there is a person in a toga made from an American flag.

To this moment, I am not sure how this happened, but shamus?, the guy from The Passionistas and I ended up working the door. I really don't know how it happened. One minute we were talking, and the next minute we were asking people for $5 on their way in. We have no idea where the actual doorman, a large man with questionable dental hygiene, disappeared to. But at one point, the actual doorman comes back. And he's on some substance. And he looks at the guy from The Passionistas and says

"Thanks for working the door for me. Thanks so much. You know, you know, I'm gonna tell you something. You know about all that shit that went down at Roswell? You know? Like aliens and shit? Yeah. You know where George Bush was born? Yeah, like an hour from Roswell. George Bush isn't human. He's an alien implant. And global warming isn't global warming. It's making the climate right for the aliens. I'M FUCKING GLAD YOU DENIGRATED THE AMERICAN FLAG, DUDE."

We did not work the door for much longer. That is all. And for the record, this is how the night ended. If you didn't know better, you would think that shamus? was all emo and I had overdosed. But really, there's just no better way in my world to end a night than curled up asleep next to shamus while he's wearing a bedazzled shower curtain as a toga.



Story Number Three: It's 4:10am! Do You Know Where Your Jocelyn Is? So, we leave that show/party at around 3:30am. Still with no place to sleep. shamus? looks at me. "What are you going to do?" I'm like, "I think I'm just going to get on the 405 and find a hotel closer to Long Beach since I need to be there in the morning." And so the three of us split up. But after I get on the 405, my thought process is as follows:

"You know, Shimmy said to me yesterday that she had to leave her place at 5am on Saturday morning to go for a run. If I just drive all the way to Long Beach, I'll get there a little after 4am, which is right when she should be waking up. That works. That totally works!"

And so I drive my ass down to Long Beach. And I pull up in front of Shimmy's bougie building. And at 4:10am I text her this: "Hey! Txt me back if you're awake!"

My phone rings.

Me
I can't believe you're awake!

Shimmy
I can't believe you just texted me.

Me
Can you come down and let me in?!!!!

And that girl, that wonderful girl, she came down and let me in and put me to bed and made me tea later. Right now, don't you wish that you and I were tight like that? Because if you and I were tight like that, I would possibly show up at your place at 4:10am begging you to let me in, then invading your calm and peaceful home while wearing some gold lame stretch pants and a hoodie, smelling like cigarettes, booze and alley urine and justifying all of this by yelling "YOU'RE SO LUCKY, IT'S LIKE GOD SENT ME HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU GOT UP AND WENT RUNNING THIS MORNING!!!!!!"

That girl is wonderful. I am not wonderful because, really, who behaves like that?

As for the rest of the weekend...
Well, it was pretty much perfect. Shimmy came back from her run, and we went out and had crepes and mimosas (well, I had a mimosa, Shimmy is being good). The I managed to spend $160 on two dresses MADE OF T-SHIRT MATERIAL to take to Africa. Then I managed to spend $70 on two candles. Then I turned to Shimmy and said, "Maybe I should spend some money today." That's when we realized that shopping should stop and went and had PinkBerry instead.

And then we slept. I think the plan was more like "nap," but I slept until Charles called to tell me that dinner was at six. At which point, I was like, "Uh, maybe six thirty - I'm still in Long Beach." And then I arrived at dinner at 7:00pm. Shadalan, Shimmy, Charles and Luci were ALL there before me, and Shimmy didn't even leave until I was supposedly five blocks away from the place.

But that excepted, dinner was lovely. It was beautiful outside. Charles and Luci had brought two lovely, lovely bottles of vino. Shadalan looked like a beautiful Persian princess. Shimmy was hungry. I was thirsty. Conversation was easy and laughter was frequent. And we all left contented.

The next morning, Shimmy and I got karmic-ly cleansed and talked about anger in the world from a Buddhist perspective. You can decide for yourself if that was time well spent for me when I tell you that after I got back to Vegas that night, I had to pull over to the side of the road to talk myself out of ramming my car into the back of the car in front of me to make them drive faster. So maybe that class worked in that I didn't do that, and maybe it didn't in that I still wanted to. Whatever.

After getting cleansed, we filled back up with this ridiculously good diner food that included but was not limited to all of the following on two plates: toast, french toast stuffed with cream cheese and sugar, hash browns, poached eggs, gravy, corn beef hash, some kind of eggs of a scrambled or omelet variety, avocado, bacon, sour cream...you know what, I'm missing something. Even the man sitting next to us was like, "You guys put a huge dent in that for such little people."

And then it was time to leave, and if I didn't have the fact that My Favorite Mike (MFM) was in town and we were having dinner at Rao, I would have cried about leaving.

So.Fucking.Tragic. That's what I'm subtitling that weekend. Only because of that picture of shamus? and I.

I miss you LA! I'm headed back any day now! Seriously!