Love

Me: mom was kind of a star yesterday because she asked me a million times
if i would like something to eat
and i cried over the questions a million times
and shook my head no
no i will not eat
then she put the matzah ball soup in front of me
and i ate it
and i was nourished

ED: cute
that's like a poem
sort of like a cross between shel silverstein
and a psalm

In Which I Shrink to the Combined Weight of the Olson Twins

Gather round, children, and I will share with you the story of the Great Stomach Flu of aught-eight.

[Spoiler alert: This piece contains graphic descriptions that may not be suitable for easily grossed-out readers.]

It started on Sunday, when I was frantically asking all the women at EW's going-away party for menstrual painkillers, because that's what I thought the problem was. Turns out, it was not ovary cramping, but stomach cramping that was ailing me, and it's a miracle I got home before the barfing set in. Keep in mind that I haven't barfed in earnest since 1998—curse that raw spinach salad from the commisary at 20th Century Fox, where I interned the summer of my 21st birthday!—so this is not something I am used to. It was shocking.

The cramping, which hit in rolling intervals, became so severe that my folks insisted on coming over late Sunday night (even despite my protestations on account of fear that their presence might heighten the drama rather than diminish it), and the poor things had to bear witness to the gnarliness and the moaning in agony. It's funny: because I've not been married or had a baby, I haven't had that level of doting devoted exclusively to me since, say, college graduation. I could hardly say anything when my mom was rubbing my face and neck with a cold washcloth, but if I had been able to speak then I would have told her thank you, thank you so much for being one person on the planet who will always do this for me, do anything for me, no matter how awful I look, and no matter what else.

By Monday morning, I had determined that there was a predictable pattern: After each time I threw up, I had a period of about 15 minutes during which I felt better, before I felt worse again. I would use this time to close the shutters that the cat had opened, or plug in my laptop, or stretch my legs by taking a few steps around the house (I was confined to bed the rest of the time, except when I had to run to the toilet to barf, when I found I could move surprisingly quickly). I even used one of my post-barfing respites to give an interview to an Us Weekly reporter working under deadline on a story about Oscar parties; I was impressed with my fortitude on that one, believe me. But it is not a good week to take off a day of work altogether, so alas that was not an option.

Other than those precious moments, though, it hurt to do anything. I had to brace myself each time I wanted to do a quarter turn in bed (from right to front, or from left to back), because I was afraid it would make me queasier or exacerbate the pain. I couldn't even watch TV for much of yesterday because it made me too dizzy, and at the worst points I couldn't even open my eyes because I was too light sensitive.

At some point, I remember the blue-eyed boy came over and put on People's Court, and there was something about a girl who was suing her landlord for sexual harassment, and I was curious whether or not she was cute, but I certainly couldn't turn my head or even open my eyes to look. The blue-eyed boy took a wet towel to my lips to try to allay the discomfort from the dehydration; I had had to stop taking even water because it made me ball up in pain and then vomit. It's possible our relationship has surpassed another milestone, now that he's seen me heave bile (that's all I had left) while sobbing and praying out loud for death to take me.

I was counting on my stomach bug to run a typical 24-hour course, but I was panicked that it would not; my sister recently had it for two days. I was counting the hours (more like minutes) in abject desperation. Off and on, I slept from 7 p.m. last night until 8 a.m. this morning, and when I was up, I was better. Sweet mercy!

Now, look, I don't want to get all M-K Olson on y'all, but I know people are curious if I lost any weight, and believe me—I was too. I stepped on the scale several times during the ordeal. By this morning, the digital scale was vacillating between 124.8 and 125.0 pounds, people. (Yes, in a bizarre twist, I just put my weight all up on the Internet.) I haven't weighed that since I was like 4-foot-9 with no boobs in grade school. And it's a shame that most of those few pounds I lost are the result of dehydration. When I gain them back, I'm going to be totally buggin because it will take me months to lose them for real—if I ever do—just through working out and eating right (which, admittedly, has lately been paying off quite reassuringly too). All told, it was about 44 hours that I had nothing to eat, half of that time with no water either.

If I had known I was going to get that banana bread for free—that was the last thing I ate on Sunday—I wouldn't have made all those lower-fat substitutions in the recipe and I certainly wouldn't have used Splenda...

Anyway, morals of the story: Purell and obsessive hand washing. Nobody wants what I had. Nausea and vomiting are the cruelest tricks of fate out there.

I'm It

Capella tagged me! And apparently that means I have to respond by writing half a dozen unimportant things about myself in this public forum. But I hate to be left out of anything (junior-high backlash) so I will have to hop on this bandwagon.

1) I am desperately afraid of the wisdom-teeth-removal surgery that I have to schedule this spring. Terrified. So much so that I cried in the office of the surgeon during the consultation, as she was showing me the teeth in my head on the X-ray, and saying something about drilling to carve away the bone. Anyway, this fear comes from the trauma I experienced when I had oral surgery in junior high. I remember that before that surgery, the doc had said that I should ask my parents for a CD, which the staff would play in my headphones as I was being sedated. So I asked for Depeche Mode 101; I thought I was being super stealthy because that was a double CD set! Ha! Score TWO for me! But not. What I went through with the pain and the bleeding all over the pillow was not worth all the Depeche Mode tracks in the world, which was saying a lot for 13-year-old me.

2) I can't believe it's the 25th anniversary of Thriller. What happened? Dubin and I used to have that album, which was one of those fold-out numbers on which, if I recall, Michael Jackson had a leopard draped over him or something? A jaguar? At any rate, it was one of the few records I remember us having, along with the theme from Grease, and the story of Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo. (Holla if you remember that too!)

3) My cat, Cali, has a pathological clothes-eating issue, and therefore his insurance policy does not cover gastritis. What's the point then, jeez?

4) I have this weird thing where, if I watch a movie with a lot of hand-held camera action, I feel very nauseated. It's an equilibrium issue or something. This happened for the first time when I saw Murderball at the Landmark Sunshine in New York. I eventually had to leave the theater and walk around the block. This happened again more recently when I saw Babel at Century City. I spent most of the last half hour of that movie in the bathroom over the sink, sweating, and trying not to barf. Nasty.

5) I never pulled all-nighters in college, mostly because I have always hated procrastination. But I came close to pulling one for work on Sunday night after the Grammys, when I came home at midnight from three parties after the awards and still had four stories to file. It was a very surreal kind of thing. I kept rubbing my eyes like a baby who needs a nap, but I totally did it. Anyway, that segues into the last useless tidbit:

6) I am not a late-night person. I realized this early on, when mom let me see a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in junior high (three junior-high references in a single post—snap!) and I totally fell asleep during it. I thought that was so incredibly lame of me, since I rarely got to do anything cool that started late like that. Even in college, I wasn't a late-night person either, and sometimes I would even offer to be the designated driver into San Francisco so that I could manipulate everyone into leaving when I was tired, because the BART had stopped running by then. (Sorry, girls! But I assure you this was not always why—sometimes it was because I was just an awesome friend with a Ford Escort, willing to be selfless for the team.) I just don't have the all-night gene. On Friday nights, I like to do the same walk-to-Trader-Joe's-to-buy-the-same-salad-ingredients routine, capped off by a glass of wine and the blue-eyed boy's signature Tabasco popcorn (next to no oil, please) and a few DVR'ed episodes of California's Gold on the couch. Call me lame, but I cover events for a living. A girl's got to sit on the couch with Huell at least once a week, mmmkay?

So there you have a bunch of useless info that no one with a job will read fully, but whatever. Anyway, apparently the rules of this tagging game mean that I am supposed to tag four other people to also write six things. I can't tag my sister, who already did it, or Capella, who also already did it. So that leaves LF, who only blogs in haiku form, so I'm not sure how that will work. But it sounds interesting. I'm also tagging Megan. And CJ, who blogs on MySpace, but he's hella funny and usually makes reference to some contemporary fashion designer who borrows inspiration from Vanessa's sweaters on The Cosby Show but won't cop to it. And the fourth person I'm tagging may determine him- or herself based on whomever has the time and interest.

No presh.


PS: It took discipline not to write about the gym here, but I have a complex that I write about the gym too much. But a) I am gym obsessed lately, in a good way, and b) it's one arena that it is not dangerous to write about because I don't care what anyone there really thinks of me, nor does anyone—with one exception—even know my last name enough to Internet search my blog. Oh, and look: I just wrote about the gym again, dang.

Things I Thought About During Yoga Class Tonight

work
house paint
spinach (whole wheat pasta with)
sweatbands (useful?)
blue-eyed boy
the Ashram (curious)
Super Bowl
Pasadena
TMZ
work
check-engine light
glasses
dry cleaning
rain (unhappy with)
mom
working out (tomorrow)
friend (AE, moving)
positivity (striving for)
work
restaurant recommendations (Grove adjacent)
friend (LP, studying Final Cut Pro)
tomatoes
vacation (Mexican Riviera cruise?)
vacation (Turkey?)
this list (making)
Valentine's Day
PBS
vacation (San Simeon?)
Coachella
wine
working out (last Thursday)
friend (MG, feathered haircut)
New York (Capella, moving to)
New York (work, traveling for)
steam cleaning (carpet)
Project Runway
Devon Aoki
Lululemon
headlines (punchy)
Obama
Dubai (L.A. Times article on)
Santa Barbara
sister (birthday, Wednesday)
Essie polish in Wicked
yogi rhetoric (vs. stereotypic California rhetoric)
Huell Howser
friend (MW, cute glasses)
looseleaf paper (notes from 1992 to EW on)
work
blue-eyed boy (cold, coming down with)
Ikea
Times Square
new dress (bras to wear with)
Zicam
Home Depot
donuts (I wish)
Bed Head mousse (integrate?)
State of the Union

Is anyone in here really getting close to achieving transcendence? Man, honestly, that must be amazing.

By Any Other Name

It really used to peeve my dad, when my sister and I were small, when we would refer to my mom in her presence by the female pronoun instead of as "mom."

She said we could do that and now she's saying no!
She won't let me!
She doesn't understand anything!

I never really got why that bugged him so much, but every now and then I will hear myself reduced to a pronoun, and I get it now.

Dress Distress

me: my shirt has cali's hair all over it and my shorts are too short and my shoes are ug and i look trashy today
oops
girl needs better lighting in her dressing area
sis: i looked trashy yesterday, but different trashy, like I belonged on COPS
me: cops?!
sis: i was wearing a marines tshirt and track pants and flipflops and had a baby attached to me
me: DANG girl
sis: all i needed was curlers
me: why do you even own a marines t shirt?
sis: who knows
i have no clothes and here's why
1. maternity clothes - don't fit, duh
2. pre-maternity clothes: i boxed them up for a few months and now i'm too lazy to go dig them out
me: nice
you are officially a mom
but what's my excuse today?
i have no bebe to blame for my bad outfit (and by bebe i'm not referring to a bejeweled velour track suit either)
sis: now that you realized you have nice legs, you pushed it too far?
me: yup
must be it
sis: understandable
me: always taking it too far, that's me
sis: if short is good, shortest must be better
me: riii-eeeght?
sis: seems logical
me: and i'm nothing if not perfectly logical

Cabin Pressure

Six days after my nephew was born, I got on a plane at PHL and headed home to LAX. Since having said goodbye to my sister at her house the day before, I'd hardly stopped crying. Part of it was the obvious: Because I'd decided to fulfill my commitment to attend the wedding of a dear friend in L.A., I'd left Philadelphia before my nephew's bris. This had been a rending choice. Part of the reason I was sad was that I didn't know when I’d see my sister again, or the baby, and “time marches on,” as my dad is so fond of saying. And I hate that it does.

The other reasons for the tears were more abstract. Everything had been hyper-poignant in Philadelphia. Like when I ate with my folks at City Tavern and my dad’s salad came with a purple orchid on top, and my mom was so determined that she should take this little second-hand flower to my sister. She dusted off the blossom and asked the waitress for a Styrofoam cup to transport it in. My dad poured a half inch of water into the cup, and my mom placed the bud inside, and we kept it in the cup holder of the rental car until it could safely be delivered to my sister. The way my mom was so precious about how this flower must be taken to her daughter—this killed me. There are lots of other reasons too, but my Internet self is not nearly honest enough to dissect them here.

I hardly slept a wink before I got on the plane, and then got up at 6 AM to head to the airport, where the security line was a hundred miles long and I barely got in Southwest's nightmarish B line in time to get an aisle seat directly in front of a screaming baby, for whose parents I should have had sympathy, particularly under the circumstances of our own family’s developments, but didn't because I was so dang tired. Seeing the tears, the girl sitting in the window seat asked with genuine concern if I was OK, and I really believed she was interested in the answer—which I would have told her with details, because I am the type, but it’s so complicated and I’m not even sure what it is.

Something about my mom handling an orchid from my dad’s salad with extreme care because it was for her daughter who is recovering from surgery, and because my mom would have always done anything for her daughters? Something about how I have a tiny new nephew who weighs five pounds less than my cat, and who could be god-knows-how-old before I see him again because we live far apart and that sucks? Something about how I’m going to turn 30 in a month and people in Philadelphia seem to be doing different things at 30 than people in New York or L.A., and how that complicates the value system in my head?

Meanwhile, the guy in the middle seat, who was wearing a ball cap that was brown mesh in the back and fake woven wicker on the brim, was oblivious to my--er--lack of composure. And he had a lot to say to me about his cat Daisy and the dog who’s name I can’t remember, and the crawfish his wife found in a pond and put in their daughter’s aquarium. (The wife, who goes by “All-Biz Liz” because she makes the family's decisions, and has no faith in her husband's decision-making abilities, had trouble carrying, which is why they had their daughter so late in life. So I was told.) This man had no idea that I was not really in the right emotional space to be on board with his idea that the way to make a million quick is to be a child’s birthday party entertainer, like this Safari Lady who came to one of his daughter’s friends’ parties and got $200 for entertaining the kids with goats and snakes for an hour. Can you imagine? $200! Get a couple of those bookings in a day—maybe four in a weekend—and you’re so set! That's the way to do it, boy, I tell you.

I tried to cover my head with the blue Southwest “blanket,” so I could “sleep,” but its mystery fibers were asphyxiating me, so I moved it aside from my face just as a stewardess walked down the aisle. She asked me did I need a hug, and gave me one, and seemed to really, really mean it. She offered me a drink on the house (which I wouldn’t normally have declined, but I had to somehow get myself to the rehearsal dinner in Pasadena without falling asleep at the wheel) and came back instead with some water and a box of tissues. Women have this ability to give hugs and make people feel better. It’s amazing how many men don’t (all due respect to those who do).

And my inability to understand their reasons for that must come from the same Mars/Venus schism that ultimately results in the husband wearing a shirt that says, “I’d rather be fishing but my wife’s nagging would scare away the bass." Or what have you.

Anyway, I was all prepared to come home alone in a taxi (the blue-eyed guy was in Cleveland, and my parents were in Atlantic City on a day trip from Philadelphia, so who would come get me?), and was prepared to miss the noise terribly. But when the wheels touched down and I turned on the ol' Treo, there was a message from AE and oh my god she totally missed me and she's checked my flight status online and knows I'm early and is on her way to pick me up and we'll have lunch and discuss, it's all good, girl, for real.

Thank heaven for friends. For real, girl.

I'm an Auntie!

"Dean"

eight pounds, two ounces

via emergency c-section (sister fully morphined, but OK!)

Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia

12:24 PM EST, Saturday, June 9, 2007

Yo Ho, Yo Ho...

A while back, I spent a day with the blue-eyed guy that started with a hot air balloon flight, and proceeded with a back-country Jeep ride, a cattle round-up, two games at Wagon Wheel bowl, and a trip to the outlet mall. (It was what my mom would call "over-defining the situation," which is funny because she first defined that phrase, then coined it.) It was totally surreal and fun.

We kind of had a day like that on Saturday. We went for a hike in Franklin Canyon, which was only slightly laughable because we're the two city kids looking at each other semi-retardedly like, huh, check us out here in nature! even while we were in full view of the valley. But we got in some good Half Dome training (albeit about 90-minutes worth, but it's a start), and, importantly, we tested out our backpacks and shoes to see how sturdy our gear is before the crajor* hike, now just 12 days away. So far so good, but I'm totally buying one of those water-to-mouth-hosey things, because regular old water bottles aren't going to cut it apparently. Also I seem to have developed a late-life heavy-face-sweating issue, but that's neither here nor there.

Afterward, still in our grubby outdoorsy gear, we stopped at an estate sale in Holmby Hills on Mapleton, sandwiched between the Aaron Spelling estate and the Playboy Mansion. It definitely had its share of $50K furniture and paintings, but it also offered walk-in closets full of vintage duds and other semi-affordable finds. Sounds gold mine-ish, I know, but for some reason it wasn't quite. There was no evidence that this woman had done any shopping since the late 1960's, and most of her gowns were labled Bullocks Wilshire and I. Magnin. Kind of rad, but also kind of ugly. Plus, her feet were much smaller than mine (pity--some good nude peep-toe Ferragmos on that rack; just what I've been looking for) and she seemed to have had a tiny waist and outsized bust. How lovely that must have been for her! Moving on.

So then we went home and changed into our best pirate gear (no we didn't, but we should have) and headed out to Anaheim for the Pirates of the Caribbean premiere. Hello, it was awesome. I didn't realize how long it had been since I'd been to Disneyland until I realized how gleefully I was tugging onto the blue-eyed guy's sleeve, begging can we please puh-leeeeease go on Splash Mountain even though it's nighttime and cold, please, we can sit in the middle so we don't get wet, come on, it will be fun, please? And then I ate churros like it was my job (actually, I guess it kind of is my job in this context--sweet) and watched the movie and saw fireworks and wore my Mickey ears with the pirate earring all night long, until I fell asleep in the car on the way home. I figure, if this is what turning 30 feels like, I can totally dig it.



*Crajor = crazy + major. I made that up while writing a comment on my sister's blog and now I'm trying to get it to stick. Anyone with me?

Can I Help it That my Future's so Bright?

This one time I took the Chinatown bus from New York to visit my sister in Philadelphia. It was hella hot outside and we went to catch the end of the Live 8 concert with Stevie. So we're walking and this guy stops us on the street and says to me, "You look like that one singer--what's her name? Mariah Carey!" And after he walks away, I go to big Dubin, "I don't think I really look like Mariah Carey, do you?" And she goes, "No. It's just that nobody in Philadelphia wears sunglasses that big."

Thanks For the Memories, Coachella 2007!

Sis: where exactly were you guys staying?
me: we stayed at the quality inn in indio
in a king smoking room with a pullout sofa bed
very glamorous
Sis: whoa, so it smelled like smoking and air conditioner and stuff?
me: yeah
it was kinda ghett
or "bust out" as [my Brooklyn-by-way-of-Youngstown-Ohio friend] would say
but everything was crazy sold out
Sis: "bust out" means ghet?
me: even our room was $224/night with our AAA discount!
and it was kind of a coup to even get it
yeah
bust out is good, right? i'm trying to implement
Sis: wait: 2 things
me: k
shoot
Sis: 1) 224 a night????
even with the three As?
me: yes. for a smoking room at the quality inn with one bed and a AAA discount. and a small bug problem.
Sis: because of coachella, right? i mean, not normally
me: because all the cool kids with bangs flock to town and grab the rooms
right
totally because of coachella
Sis: ok also, you're trying to implement bust out - is bust out an adjective? That's so bust out?
me: yes
like: "our room at the quality inn was bust out, but at least it was close to the concerts."
or for another example:
it was so hot that [the Mexican architect] was fanning herself with her dirty-ass flip-flop. that was hella bust out
Sis: ok
me: or we saw a girl on sunday night walking out of the venue with a plastic bag tied to one foot because she apparently had lost a shoe. that was mad bust out
yeah
Sis: ok whatev you say but it's not totally intuitive

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

It seems my parents are getting awfully close to selling the house I grew up in. We moved in there when I was three-ish, and now I'm almost 30, and I'm trying to be pragmatic about it. At least I hope they get a fair price, and that some family with two cute little curly-haired pudgy girls moves in. So I'm sentimental and change resistant, but I can deal with this.

The idea of that address not belonging to the Dubins anymore has always been heartbreaking, when I've thought about it. That's the address that's been on my driver's license consistently, through probably 25 rental addresses of my own in four other cities. But now it's got to be time for the next chapter. As my mom told me on the cell when I was browsing the racks of Forever21 in the mall last night with my fountain Diet Coke, "That part of our lives is over. You girls are all grown up. It's a new era." Sniff.

Hi A,

As an undergraduate my favorite campus building was Sterling Memorial Library. There are simply no words adequate to describe the place, inside or out, or how I felt in it. If I must have a religion then it consists of books and my cathedrals are the great libraries. Most of my education occurred alone in the stacks of Sterling. The building was constructed in the depths of the depression, a time when Yale had money from hugely successful benefactors and New Haven was filled with skilled Italian immigrants—hungry for work. It is hard to imagine how it could ever be recreated absenting those circumstances.

There is a story, probably apocryphal, concerning Sterling’s opening in 1933. Yale in general employs very low-key signs to define its buildings. It is said that the University Librarian wanted to place a typically small sign outside the building which read, “This is NOT the Library. The Library is inside.” Even if untrue it is a great story with an important message.

Our house was wonderful chiefly for what was inside. The most important product of that experience is the emergence of two smart, talented and generally wonderful young women who are well poised to make their own homes in the coming years. Your Mom and I look forward (keina hora) to events in these. Furthermore our new home, even among the Topangan hippies, artists and nouveau riche lawyers, will always welcome you.

XO,

Dad and Mom

Seriously, Do It

Maybe eight or 10 years ago, I was walking with my sister in Berkeley. We were walking from her Ford Escort wagon with the architecture nerd bumper stickers on it and the Taco Bell toys in it to the YMCA downtown, where we took a totally empowering kick-ass (ahem) boxing class together.

She is more than two years older than me, which at some point in our lives was a significant difference. It must have been around the time she'd just graduated from college and she said, "You know, when you're small you think you can or will do everything in the course of your life. Maybe you'll live in Africa, or Panama, and you'll go up on a blimp, and maybe you'll go up in space. You won't necssarily do anything in particular, but you can and might do everything. And then at some point, you realize that you won't or can't do everything. You pick some things you want to do, and you may not do the rest. And you realize that and accept it, and that's just the way it is."

At the time, I found this very shocking and upsetting--I don't even know that I really believed it was true yet. I've since realized that you do make some choices, and some choices you make render other things unlikely or impossible. Kind of. But the trick is to continually think of your life as a changeable entity, because you can always do something else. Maybe you can't do everything in the in the realm of possibility for human beings, but you always control your option to do something else that might make you very happy. (If the person who inspired this post is reading, then for god's sake, go find a place for yourself at a public art organization that moves you! I want to you to be happy. I want everyone to be happy!)

My sister also said to me one time, after she called her boss in San Francisco and announced that she wasn't coming in, not ever again (and then moved briefly to Alabama): "We always imagine the consequences of our actions are so dire. But it's really not always that serious."

It's not really that serious. It's not.

Back to the Future

Mercifully, about 16 years ago, I got my braces off. At that time, the orthodontist glued in a permanent retainer behind my four bottom teeth, and there it stayed through high school, college, post-college chaos, graduate school, and since. The retainer traveled with me to many of the continental United States, the territory of Puerto Rico, and a few countries. The retainer was not obvious to most people looking at me (although I am rather animated and I talk a lot, opening my mouth really big, so maybe people did see it sometimes), and it became a part of me--just like, maybe, my navel ring, which I never even see anymore, although it's been there for half my life. I regularly ran my tongue along the ridge of the retainer, and I knew it was there, although I never formally registered that knowledge or cared. The retainer also kind of made it hard to floss, except using this loop-like contraption, which is kind of lame and labor intensive.

Today, I went to an orthodontist at UCLA and there, in his third-floor mural-covered office, that retainer got plucked right out of my mouth without ceremony. I'm so sentimental and resistant to change; I almost cried. I ran my tongue over the spot where it was and there was nothing there and it felt really weird, kind of naked. (When I was the blubbering maid of honor in my sister's wedding, I took out all 19 of my earrings at once for the first time since I'd gotten pierced. It was the same kind of nakedness, a feeling of loss, but it felt clean and uncluttered too.)

So I was there in this orthodonist's office--not five blocks from the orthodonist's office in Westwood where I'd reported for all those torturous braces check-ups and tightenings and general nightmarishness--getting my mouth filled with green goo for making impressions (for a version of my retainer to be worn at night). That very specific faintly minty, generally gross taste--that brought me back. Braces. Woah. I don't relish the idea of getting older (eew! 30's only four months away now! Make time slow down!), but I don't miss the days when those inadequately filed-down wires used to tear up the insides of my cheeks while the Sally Jessie Raphael-red glasses decked my little face, framed by a pre-mousse mane of stringy hair, topped by an uneven row of imitation-chola double-decker bangs. My metabolism may have slowed down, but my hair looks way better now and I have a car.

26 Miles Across the Sea

Maybe because I was tired with a low-grade hangover, I believed the blue-eyed guy when we got on the freeway and he said, "Look, we're going North." I totally took it at face value. And it wasn't until like an hour later, that I realized we were going more like due South, and when we got off the freeway where the sign said "Queen Mary," I was like, "I knew it! That's where I thought we were going on our surprise mini-break!" So he pulled the Mini into the Queen Mary parking lot--and then did a crazy oy-worthy turn back out of the lot, through a pair of "Do Not Enter" signs, across the road--to the place where you board the boats to go to Catalina Island.

I cannot tell you how excited this made me--this thought of getting on a boat on the sea. It made me feel like a little girl again (literally--because my sister's sixth grade teacher used to take the class to Catalina every year on a big field trip, and I'm sure as a third grader this made an oh-my-god-that-sounds-like-heaven-why-am-I-not-just-a-little-older-so-I-could-go-too indelible impression on me), which regrettably, is kind of rare for me these days since I think so dang much and spoil things by so doing. So we boarded the boat in Long Beach and went out on the Pacific Ocean 26 miles to this island that was so much prettier than I would have ever imagined it. Even though the terrain is just the same as you might find in Malibu or Topanga, it looks so--exotic. And it feels so apart from the mainland.

Like how Palm Springs kind of feels permanently stuck in its 1960's Rat Pack heyday (one reason I love it), Catalina Island kind of feels stuck in its own glory days of, say, the 1930's, when Big Bands played for the dancing crowd in the spectacular Casino ballroom, and when MGM took its crews and high-waisted-skirt-clad starlets to the pristine shores of Avalon to film its big-budget pictures. The whole place feels in real life like it looks in the Deco travel brochures, when its slogan was: "In all the world, no trip like this."

Anyway, so we checked into the hotel and left for this lovely walk up into the hills (and I could totally dig it, even though I skew tennis shoe averse, except in the gym), and climbed all over the Wrigley memorial, and held hands through the botanical gardens, and joked about all the silly plant names. We looked at the fish from the pier--the Crayola blues and oranges right there in the perfectly transparent water!--and climbed on the rocks and ran our hands over the pretty tiles that used to come from the pottery plant on the island (and probably now sell for a small fortune on eBay; I just remembered I want to look). Then we ate a totally indulgent meal that didn't count, because the island has a magical quality to it, which I'm sure wipes out calories associated with Italian food and brownie sundaes and cocktails.

I woke up yesterday in time to see the sun rising over the sea, because I wanted to make the most of our few hours left (so I prodded the blue-eyed guy and made miscellaneous fidgeting noises until he told me I better stop it, but by then it was too late because he was awake too, ha). Over breakfast I told him I wish we never had to go home and I wish this weekend would never end.

Before we got back on the boat, I bucked Jewish superstition by buying my nephew-in-utero a mini T-shirt emblazoned with a crab and the message: "I'm a little crabby. Catalina Island" (A nod to when my sister used to torment me by saving crab pincers wrapped in napkins from meals at seafood resuatrants and then reanimate them and make them talk; really, it was more traumatic than funny, but you get the gist.) On the ride back, he napped while I watched his alma mater Ohio State knock off Wisconsin on the TV in the lounge.

Then it was straight to Venice, where he plays beach volleyball every Sunday; it was the first time I went with him. I set up my towel and my iPod and my New York magazine, and he asked me, "Are you having fun, baby?" I said, "Are you kidding me? This is the best. weekend. ever."

26 Miles (Santa Catalina), the Four Preps

Twenty-six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me
Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance, romance

Water all around it everywhere
Tropical trees and the salty air
But for me the thing that's a-waitin' there--romance

It seems so distant, twenty-six miles away
Restin' in the water serene
I'd work for anyone, even the Navy
Who would float me to my island dream

Twenty-six miles, so near yet far
I'd swim with just some water-wings and my guitar
I could leave the wings but I'll need the guitar for romance, romance, romance, romance

Twenty- six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me
Santa Catalina, the island of romance

A tropical heaven out in the ocean
Covered with trees and girls
If I have to swim,
I'll do it forever
Till I'm gazin' on those island pearls

Forty kilometers in a leaky old boat
Any old thing that'll stay afloat
When we arrive we'll all promote romance, romance, romance, romance

Twenty-six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me
Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance, romance

Twenty- six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me

For the Sin of Envy

It’s been two weeks since my last confession. I mean my last blog confession. It’s only been one day since my confessions in synagogue on the Day of Atonement for the sin of…

…slander, and for the sin of gossip.
…for the sin of selfishness.
…for the sin of indulging evil thoughts, and for the sin of lust.
…for the sin of not hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and for the sin of being poor in spirit.
...for the sin of speaking foolish words, and for the sin of not controlling my tongue.
…for the sin of being proud and for the sin of lacking zeal.
…for the sin of not being quick to forgive, and for the sin of holding resentments.
…and for the sin of eating a peanut butter Balance Bar on the fast day so that I could file a story on deadline without fainting…

…and miscellaneous others. By the way, for high holidays services, we joined the congregation of the synagogue led by the cantor who married my sister earlier this summer. And it was such a rich, song-dominated, warm experience that evoked my eleven years of Jewish summer camp in Malibu—one of the great blessings of my childhood and adolescence—more vividly then anything else since.

(Something else evoked summer camp recently too: At the Abbot-Kinney Cool Kid festival, we ran into a fab girl who had been a fellow camper back in those days, who I always thought was like the best, funniest, most outgoing version of me on a good hair day. And she’s still as awesome as all that, so it was such a kick to see her.)

Anyway, I was moved to confess here again when I got delivered to my inbox today a Snapfish photo album containing pictures of a minutes-old child belonging to an old flame. By all rights, he shouldn’t even know how to reach me. But he still does, and here’s why.

To start from the beginning: In college, I spent a couple months dating (well, it was more like “hanging out,” since as close as anyone came to going on proper dates in Berkeley was having a face-size hummus sandwich at Intermezzo or sitting on Sproul Plaza and listening to the drum circle and talking smack about how passersby reeked of patchouli.) a fellow film student who I’d really started to like, by the time a mutual friend told me he’d had a girlfriend the whole time. Naturally it should have been over, severed cleanly, right at the moment I’d paged him 4-1-1 (ha!) to confirm that it was true. But it lingered on as things do, until it got really ugly, and we’d hiked up to the Big C one night, and he was distraught and told me up on that hill he’d have to tell her the truth, and when we came down, he went straight to her house, if I recall, and did just that. It was high drama, and she was beside herself, and moved away or something, and the details are sketchy, but he followed her out of town, and I didn’t have contact with him for years. Until.

It was winter in New York two years ago and I was cold and I was trolling Friendster, and there he was, married, with a baby. I wrote him to say it was nice to see him settled and happy. Within two emails it came out that he loved his daughter very much—a beautiful biracial girl with wild, light curly hair, huge eyes, and a Christmas birthday—but his marriage was a disaster.

He’d gotten that girl from our college years to take him back—and then he’d gone and married her.

I’ll have to skim over a couple months spent rapt by the weird sham of an electronic affair I’d had with him after we got back in touch, because I’m not proud of it. But I was lonesome, and I envied him his life: He drove his sensible sedan back to his family in his warm condo every night. And he envied me my life: single, totally unencumbered, responsible only to myself, spent money on shoe sales and not diapers, went to parties in New York for a living (never mind that I rented a frigid apartment where I lived alone and never had enough heat or hot water or enough electricity to run my space heater without blowing the fuse, and then when I invariably did, having to pray to god that my super was in town so he could unlock the gate in the sidewalk and flip the fuse box down there so the lights would come on again). It was a perfect storm of mutual jealousies and intense history.

I asked him one day why he married that girl, with whom he fought all the time, and who didn’t seem to make him happy, and who he didn’t seem to make happy, and who hadn't made him happy enough seven years earlier to keep him from cheating. “I just wanted so badly to win,” he said, about the years he spent monomaniacally trying to get her back. “I lost track of what it was I was fighting for.”

This weekend his wife delivered their second child, a son. They’d decided to try for another child when they had a period of upswing in their relationship in the winter. He doubts now that it was a good decision, but he will be a good father, I’m sure. Insofar as you can be a good father to a child while failing to communicate honestly with his mother.

From my reconnection with him, I've really learned the lesson about the grass not being greener on the other side. But an even more valuable one is the one about making sure you know good and well what you're fighting for before you dedicate your life to that pursuit—because you just might get what you fought for.

Debbie Sings the Hits

My 10-year high school reunion passed last year, for me quite unceremoniously. I went to one high school (North Hollywood magnet) for 10th grade, where I had good friends. And then I transferred to another school (Beverly Hills High, said only in a hushed voice), from which I would graduate after two more years, to which I never felt connected—and where I made exactly two good friends who are still very close to me. So it was hardly a tough decision not to fly across country to try to manufacture some emotion in a creepy La Meridien ballroom.

My ‘Tross had a different experience. He was born and bred in the Bay Area, and still living in Oakland with much pride when it came time for his 20-year Berkeley High School reunion two years ago. So he went. And I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the details, but here’s my impression of the message he took away from it: Contrary to the cliché about life being short, it’s actually not short at all (barring an unexpected tragedy). It’s long, and it can be tedious. You’ve got to be in it with the right person for the right reasons, or at least not in it with the wrong person for the wrong reasons. You have to make choices in life and in love that are sustainable and won’t eventually bore you or ruin you—insofar as you can ever see any of this coming (which very often you can when you don't ignore obvious things). He saw people who had been married and divorced and have teenage kids. And married again. Or whatever their circumstances. Life is long, things happen.

We have this wicked tendency to front load our lives, and when you see yourself barreling toward 30—as I am—you want to keep yourself from going crazy on your birthday by making sure you’ve done everything, in spite of your suspicion that it doesn’t matter if you have or haven’t. (By the way, my older sister’s 30th birthday a year ago went over OK, without any emotional breakdowns. Except that my doting auntie in Delaware hosted a party for which she bought a mylar balloon that said on it “Still Wild at 30!” This one detail understandably made my sister want to jump out a window.)

I had a counselor at summer camp named Debbie. I think she may have been my counselor at least two years in a row, because I remember her so well. I remember her figure was very voluptuous, and she used to show it off at the pool in a red one-piece bathing suit with black mesh triangles at the thighs and cleavage, and I remember she was sweet as pie and treated her campers like real friends, and I remember that she used to put on a karaoke track in her boom box and sing Madonna’s “Crazy for You” for us while we went to sleep at night in our cabin. She had a voice like a bell. Because I imagined that, as a counselor, Debbie was so much older than we were as campers, I’m sure I thought she was a total grown-up. I probably thought she had a cool car (a Volkswagon Cabriolet maybe? Chrysler LaBaron convertible?), paid a mortgage on a great house, had a fab boyfriend or husband with an awesome mid-‘80’s hairdo, and was generally all set up. But in reality, she was probably 17 when I was 10. So maybe she’s only 36 now. And maybe she still doesn’t have everything all set up. Because I certainly don’t yet. And that’s OK. That’s B.R.U.N.C.H.!

Anyway, while I will be wearing an elegant floor-length navy silk dupioni bridesmaid gown at a very important wedding in San Francisco this weekend, my delightfully easygoing Midwest ex-boyfriend will be attending his 10-year high school reunion in Champaign. I wonder what he’ll find there.