The Newest Member Of Our Tribe

If you read my last post you know that I briefly mentioned our new Black Widow spider pet. I am not thrilled or happy or even mildly amused, as spiders are my biggest fear and my worst nightmare. That being said, I cannot kill it as it protects us Californians from the Brown Recluse, a spider so venomous a limb may be lost after a bite.

Okay, I am finished writing about this life update because I cannot feel my arms or feet and the barf is now collecting in the staging area known as the back of my throat. Gack, double gack!

Here is the latest photo taken not fifteen minutes ago of Sophie, Otto's new pet. I am horrified, petrified and soon to be mummified with fear and loathing in my Las Vegas. And, I hate gambling.

Sure, yes, okay, she is super hot, has crazy good legs and a gorgeous hour glass figure. I am in awe from the inside out. But bitch better check it before she wrecks it, is all I'm saying.

Did I forget to scream, "Ahhhhhhhhhh, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllppppppp?"

Catch Up With Some Ketchup

Between moving, travelling, a new, long and arduous commute, houseguests, writing class, last-minute auditions, social commitments, school graduation anticipation and my new amazing house crush, regular writing has gone by the wayside. No excuses, just reality.  Everything I planned to move forward on in March has now filtered into another softer ray of light. Just think Madonna’s make-up mirror before her early morning wheatgrass shot of agelessness and a chia seed colonic.

I have been quietly beating myself up about certain things and last night, I awoke at 3 a.m. to a punch on my earlobe from the guilt fairy. This little asshole with green wings and a sour attitude tap-danced in my ear and left me for dead after saying some pretty big words for a very small woodland creature.

Sure, this half-baked Tinkerbelle was a figment of my imagination and possibly the residual effect of a three-day weekend with good weather and bad food choices. That’s what an overdose of greasy sunscreen, rolled mystery meat products and poolside Q&A sessions that go nowhere will do to you. Oh, come on! You know the ones.

“How are you?”

“Is that a Polska Kilbasa or are you happy to see me?”

“What are you up to this summer?”

“Are your beaded sandals Montauk for Marshall’s or McCartney for Costco?”

“Grilled, organic Italian sausages remind me of so many failed summer romances of my youth. And you?”

“We are going to public next year. Are you judging me right now or did you get a red cupcake sprinkle in your left eye?”

But after getting back to sleep and having the crazy-ass dreams of a subpar LSD intern I woke up with a renewed sense of determination and focus. Now every writer knows that a statement like that could very well be the kiss of death to a great workday. It may even stunt the growth of a ruminating paragraph or a gestating past participle. In either case I wanted to say it, had to write it and most definitely need to feel it.

There is a lot of material going on in my life right now. Just look at the oodles and puddles of funny and sad and random and daunting and haunting. I met and photographed my Dlisted heroine Courtney Stodden last week and she was shit buckets of nice and now I feel guilty for mocking a girl who married an old man and a young lady who wears a dirty tube sock and Lucite high heels to Whole Foods.

My sister came to visit two weeks ago and we got along like, well, sisters, a huge step in a very strange and unlikely direction.

After planning out our entire summer to the day and hour and minute everything flipped upside down and we are now going with the flow and controlling none of it. Did I mention I WILL NOT renew my Xanax prescriptions for the overnights at the relative’s homes because I think I can handle it caveman style? We shall see.

I had a visit from a great, old school pal and feel renewed that healthy, fun and inspiring friendships actually do exist and that no one has to ever settle for less just because someone is a bully or needy or batshit crazy or plain old mean.

My father has been in the hospital for the last three days with pneumonia and I actually spelled pneumonia correctly without Spell Check or a dictionary cheering me on. Oh and yeah. He is going home today and I have been in major denial that he even got sick in the first place. Not going to let another fall. No way.

Dave bought me a new bike for Memorial Day, in lieu of flowers, of course.

We have a new pet Black Widow living in our waterspout outside our kitchen door. I am terrified. Otto is thrilled. Her name is now Sophie. Gack!

Dave had a major blow out on the freeway on Friday while driving Otto to school and his truck is so old and funky but took such good care of them as the tire exploded instead of flipping like a new car in just coasted to the side without any fanfare or flames. I am so grateful that no one got hurt but we still have to buy a new car because the truck will not pass inspection and the gas mileage is 5 mpg and a few things are broken… like the odometer, speedometer, heat, A/C, door locks, power windows and left rear mirror. This really sucks pole.

I went in for a dream job last Thursday and hoping I get it or last make the short list of candidates. Meanwhile, I am trying not to think about it by washing my kids underwear, spying in the neighbor’s cat contemplating a crap in our yard, mentally re-organizing the office and emotionally eating lunch.

I was just given the amazing gift of seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall live. It was epic, moving, intense, life affirming and tragic.

 Here’s to an album and a man who started me thinking at the age of twelve and got me to cry like a baby last week under an L.A. sky of possibilities and punk rockers.

A man I saw walking into the concert. Committed and cool as soda pop.

Until next time,

DC

No Title Necessary

I am sitting in my new dining room overlooking our beautiful guacamole tree (avocado, but a girl can dream) and nothing is coming out of my clogged brain and onto my computer screen. I want to write about my weekend in Wisconsin and my grandfather’s memorial service and my wacky pack family and the bourbon we toasted with and the shrill sea shanty singing and the summer sausage I overindulged in and the bratwurst burger I made love to (that’s right!) and the fact that I am far too old to share a hotel room with anyone (no offense to M, but seriously) and the sadness of watching five children sit around swallowing the pain of losing their only surviving parent and feeling like an eavesdropper and wanting to run away and missing my boys and doing my best to embrace arms that do not like hugs and smelling the summers of my youth all around me in wet wood piles and freshly cut grass and bacon greased cast iron pans that kept me fed during my little league summers so many games ago.

But just as I did when grandpa passed away in January, within a week of my father-in-law, I seem to be unable to write anything at all about the death of a great man and the patriarch of a colorful and complicated family. In fact, my writing has all but ceased to exist and my creative fountain is dry and cracking. It’s as if I have emotional constipation and no verbal Ex-Lax within reach. I am by nature and by nurture an extremely emotive human being. I get mad, happy and sad quicker than a Halle Berry hand gesture in a TMZ snapshot. I rage against machines and I yodel to the mountaintops and I sing to the bleachers when my feelings bubble up. I am half Brazilian and that half is usually a Carmen Miranda headdress of ha ha’s and boo hoo’s.

But I cannot seem to let loose or weep a willow or write a riddle when it comes to my grandfather. Maybe it was his advanced age of 92 or the fact that his last few years were difficult ones for him and that makes me feel that he is in a better place. Maybe I ran out of tears over Christmas vacation after Dave’s father passed away. Maybe the stoicism I witnessed over the weekend in cow country permeated my South American sloppiness and I am now officially a repressed Protestant lady person.

Or maybe I am stuffing my feelings like a cheap, store bought Thanksgiving turkey because I feel too much to feel. The loss of an elderly grandparent sucks. He was a funny, smart and complex man who I knew well, loved lots and lived with every summer during my childhood. I adored his wife and I love that I was lucky enough to know him the way that I did.

But that loss makes sense. That loss is how it is supposed to happen. That loss is logical and can be rationalized and tucked away in the file marked “LIFE”. What cannot be tucked away is a terrible illness of a forty-four year old a man with two small children, a wife and a big, beautiful life.

My friend Sam was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer this past February and there really are no words for this kind of unjust bullshit. In the last few months I have spent a little bit of time with him taping his thoughts and jokes for his kids so they have something to see and hear if he loses the swordfight with shitty. To say it is heartbreaking to film a man living every moment with every naked emotion is a waste of words.

Last night a group of his friends got together with him, his wife and his mother to share stories and join in healing prayer to try our best to lift him up so he can kick the fuck out of cancer. The people who attended were as varied and confusing as a bowl of salt-free Chex Mix and the tears came and went. But mostly the room was filled with hard, deep laughter, the kind that makes you pee just a little and look around to see if anyone noticed.

I miss my grandfather and I miss his laughter. I mourn my grandfather and I mourn for his children. But I accept and understand and respect the laws of nature and the handbook that Father Time wrote in sand even before Cleopatra got her period. I don’t have to like it but I get it.

But come one. A man in his prime with a wit as sharp as an ice pick and personality as illuminating, irritating and electrifying as any Rick James B-side should not be fighting for his life and hoping to hear his infant son one day say, “Fuck you, Dad. I am NOT grounded” before stealing the car keys. 

Whether an over-mentioned box of chocolates or a crappy carton of broken eggs, life is messy and sticky and right now I can’t find the mop.