Getting Over It

When I quit work, we had to move. Bug and I moved to the desert. Big D stayed in Los Angeles and came to us on the weekends. At first it didn't matter much. Bug was nursing all the time and refluxing when she wasn't nursing and we two were a beautiful mess. But as the months turned into a year, the weekdays without Big D became grueling and the commuting back and forth for Big D became arduous. Bug became attached to her Daddy. It became obvious that we needed to move back. But in doing so, I have come to realize that this temporary move to the desert has been a buffer from the feelings of having to, for financial reasons and other more personal reasons, leave. The house in Eagle Rock has our blood, sweat, and tears in it. For now, it is still ours though we no longer live there. But I am realizing that I have to mourn a little for it and then get over it. Cause a house is only a home when the people you love are in it. And that is what I have learned. So, here is my goodbye to my lovely little house. I think we did right by you.

The Best Way To Choose A Home

We have lived in many homes--some owned some rented. I have come to believe that this indeed IS the best way to choose a home.

The Monolith

After we sold the condo we moved (escaped) to the cottage in Culver City. The owner called it a cottage but it was, in reality, more like a converted shed set back behind a row of 1920ish Spanish Bungalows. I called it my Innisfree at the time because the stress of the condo had sent me into a near mental collapse and I was looking for a hideaway or, more precisely, a hideout. There were some seriously insane people in the condo building--I'm talking horror movie scary--and I actually feared for my life. Or at the very least, my Chihuahua's life. And this place was so hidden I felt like even the Nazis couldn't find me. Of course, I eventually came to realize that all this seclusion turned in on me and made me even more fearful. If someone broke in to kill me, would anyone hear me scream? I know, I am terribly paranoid and the victim of an overactive imagination but it really wasn't a place you wanted to be alone in at night.

Being that it was some sort of converted shed that had undergone two or three expansions in its long life, it was full of charm but low on practical features such as closets. This set me out on a search for something which could contain all the sundry things one normally puts neatly away in closets or cabinets. We found this large armoire on craigslist. The seller lived in Silverlake and was moving to New York and needed to unload some of his eclectic possessions. This one being an antique Indian apothecary armoire. Of course, as my husband and our friend Jason, who we paid off to help move the damn thing from Silverlake to Culver City (too far for those of you not familiar with Los Angeles) learned, the most likely reason he was selling it was because it weighs more than than the entire naval fleet of the US Military. The sucker is heavy. On that very first move into the cottage, we christened it with the name Monolith ala Space Odyssey 2001 and it is truly deserving of the title. Who would ever want to move with that damn thing? Oh, I guess us since we've moved it three times.

It is now with me in the desert and has become something other than the monolith. It has become the black hole of clutter, the dark hole of crap. I'm not a hoarder, I love getting rid of my things, even things I like. I've given away furniture to friends, clothing to co-workers, and food to any charity that asks. Your interested in that book? Oh, you can have it. What comes around goes around. Out with the old in with the new. But, if I were to fall into a parallel universe and find myself in a Twilight Zone-like episode of Hoarders, and they were to ask, standing amidst piles of old receipts, unread books and magazines stacked high like a twisted Edwardian maze, if I could pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong, what exactly birthed this horrible reality, I would succinctly and without a beat, point to my nemesis, the Monolith, as the source of the insanity.

It is the one place in my home that I can't seem to get to. I can't seem to tackle. It is a junk drawer on steroids. It is the place I shove things when visitors are coming over. It's the place I put things that I want out of sight but can't throw out. I have everything from board games to bills shoved in that thing. I hate its utter lack of organization and yet I need it. I need it because it keeps the crap out of the rest of the living space. I know there will come a day when I will get rid of it or at least its contents and that will be a day to raise a glass and toast my freedom from the Monolith.

The Degradation of Conversation

A few statements that have come out of my mouth today.

Get out of her butt. --Said to the chihuahua Mateo who had his nose all up in Josie's (the mutt) business.

No, we don't eat dog food. --Said to Nola who has developed a fascination with the dog bowls. Hence, the next statement--

No, don't put your hand in there. It's yucky. --Said to Nola when she stuck her hand in the dog's water bowl.

Shoes don't go in the toilet. They go on your feet. --Said to Nola when she threw her shoe (fortunately an old shoe that no longer fits) into the toilet BEFORE I flushed it.

So, that is a snippet of my glamorous life.

Where I'm At

A Couple Dog Photos

Last Day of Freedom Blues

I made this salad on Friday. I usually make this salad by layering slices of mozzarella, leaves of basil, and rings of red onions then drizzling balsamic vinegar and olive oil and sprinkling with salt and pepper and a little oregano. However, I picked up these miniature mozzarella balls by mistake so I chopped everything instead. The photo is taken before I let it sit in the fridge a while and marinade which makes all the flavors soak into each other. This salad is delicious on a baguette or could be tossed with pasta too. I ate it on it's own.

I almost made the resolution to continue making lunch even though I am going back to work on Monday. But with the 6:30 AM departure from home and the brain dead state when I return back home at 6:00 PM I know this won't happen and why set myself up for failure? So instead I'll just have pleasant memories of my salad days.

The Luxury of Time

This is my last weekday of freedom before returning back to the the cave. One of the greatest aspects of the luxury of time is to be able to make and eat lunch at home. I love to step into the kitchen to eat when my body wants to eat not at 12:00 PM or as is most typical when I can step away for 5 minutes to pop something from the lean cuisine line of tastes almost like food products into the microwave and then scurry with it in hand back to my hallway excuse for an office. At home, I use fresh ingredients and eat what sounds good to me on a particular day not what I happen to have left in the office fridge. Yesterday I made a Greek salad and nearly cried. What happened to civilized living? This morning I woke up and felt human again and it only took two weeks to return to my species.


Cucumber
Tomato
Kalamata Olives
Red Onion
Feta Cheese (get the real stuff)
Red Wine Vinegar
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper

All ingredients chopped and seasoned to preference

How My Garden Grew

Some things lived. Some things thrived. Some things just made it. And some things died. The summer was hot and dry. They fought off fungus and whiteflies. Ana, my neighbor, brought them magical potions to make it through the drought. Just don't say the "F" word--frost and they should have a nice fall.

No Lights, Big City

Yesterday afternoon was really hot. I decided the only thing to do was to drink beer. Lots of beer. So Big D and I headed over to the The York to do just that. As we were heading into the bar at 5:00 on the dot, I could feel the heat rising up from the concrete and told D that it felt like the opening of Do the Right Thing, where you just know something no good is about to happen cause it is just so damn hot. So we drank several beers and headed home. At about 8:30 PM after just arriving home, the lights went out. Not a clean lights out, mind you but a sound like the world was a giant vacuum and had sucked in something it couldn't digest. And then mini-explosions filled the air and neighbors yelling "turn everything off, it arking its arking!" Then darkness and heat. The heat was so bad that we slept outside. That is when I knew for certain it is time to leave Los Angeles. The electricity came back on at about 2:00 PM today but it is still too hot.

Introducing Josie

Our family just got bigger. We adopted a puppy from a rescue organization this weekend. Big D found her on petfinder.com on Sunday and we passed our house inspection later that afternoon and then drove down to Carlsbad that evening to pick her up from her foster family.

She is part golden retriever/part German Shepherd. Although, that is just what they tell us and I secretly suspect she might be part horse. Needless to say, she is going to be a big dog. She has a sweet submissive personality and wants to please.

And Now We're Ten Years On...

in Los Angeles. The U-Haul puttered in on the 10 from Vegas ten years ago on the Fourth. Big D always seemed to find that symbolic. I never got it. Still not sure what it all means or if it even should. But I thought it worthwhile enough to mention, so there you have it. Never thought I'd still be here. If you asked me ten years ago as I was unpacking into my bungalow in Los Feliz where I would be today I would have said, or at least thought, some mud hut in Africa or a houseboat on the Huong River.

Big D Got a Grill

Big D has a hard time buying things. If a were to play shrink (and this is my wifely duty, right?) I would say this comes from a mix a childhood variables. First, he grew up on a Reservation and though it may be a derogatory term off the rez, "Indian time" does exist on the Reservation. Things don't happen fast. That's more of a western way of being. You know, I'm talking about the whole "if I want it I need it now" mentality. Whereas, on the rez, 'now' is at least an hour and a half in any direction. So, you have to really consider if you want it that bad to uproot an entire day to get it. Life just has a different pace there. A house might take years to get built or maybe never get completely built and, well, so what? Secondly, Big D's parents were pretty big on not buying things you don't absolutely need--maybe too much on this side. Have you ever noticed that if you swing too far in one direction, you end up completely on the other side? In other words, a couple of free spirited, live off the land hippies can wind up rigid controlling tightwads if they hold too closely to any one way of being.

I could go on with my shrinkville analysis, but it isn't really fair to Big D, so I'll just mention this and then move on...Big D has been looking at grills for about a year and a half, ever since our old grill went caput. He wasn't looking for anything fancy just something simple to grill shit up on and there have been several close buying calls but we always came home defeated without a grill.

So in a recent trip to the ol' home depot Big D said, "let's look at grills when we go" and I said, "Only if you are actually going to buy one. Otherwise, I never want to look at another grill ever again." While at the depot we bought the garden hose we needed, some Damp rid, and priced some wood for a fence we want to build, and then, to my astonishment, Big D actually bought a grill. It's totally basic but an upgrade from our last grill and we have been using it since we bought it. The first night we made the obligatory hamburgers (black bean burger for me), then grilled salmon and grilled asparagus and grilled pineapple for dessert the following evening, and then shrimp fajitas--and I actually took some pics of this grilling episode:

The next night we made burgers again (using the leftovers from grilled shrimp fajita night as toppings). Tonight Big D and I agreed that we should order Indian food.

Pave This

My street needs to be resurfaced. Many streets in my neighborhood have recently been repaved. I've written two e-mail requests asking for a response as to when our street will be repaved. I know, it's Los Angeles---but hey as my friend Bee always says, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. So, I was searching the city's page for a number to contact a human being and stumbled upon this.

Bureau of Street Services
The Resurfacing and Reconstruction Division
Vision Statement
The Resurfacing and Reconstruction Division provides the highest uality of resurfacing by striving for continuous improvement and a search foe excellence.

Now I know I often have typos, even misspellings but hey I never claim that I strive foe excellence.

Privilege

My mother always had a dishwasher. Every one of our five billion different houses that I grew up in (cause my parents thought it was a good idea to have their kids change schools every fourth day) had a dishwasher. So, doing dishes meant quick rinse then shove in dishwasher. You see, dishwashers don't only clean dishes they function as a storage unit for dirty dishes.

Every apt. I rented before moving to Los Angeles had a dishwasher. Yes, the trade off for cookie cutter living in the burbs is new appliances. None of my apts in Los Angeles had dishwashers. Then we bought the condo which, despite its flaws, had a dishwasher. And when we got the hell out of the condo, we convinced our landlady of My Innisfree to put one in. Then we bought the house and I thought yeah I can live without a dishwasher for a few years. But no, I can't I Can't I don't want to do one more load of dishes by hand It fucking sucks and if that makes me a spineless wimp of a homeowner of a house that hasn't been updated since 1926 then so be it.

Look, this is the second load from one night's dinner:

and I still have all this to do:

I don't get it. I remember my grandparents having entire Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas dinners for 20 in their home and washing the dishes afterward by hand. Is there some technique I'm missing? A dinner for two can take me days of dishes to clean. How is this possible? I just want a dishwasher. There, I said it. And I don't mean a person to do my dishes (a job I had at a sports bar in vegas when I was a teenager). I want an automatic dishwasher---oh, the luxury.

Props to the Hood (Eagle Rock in the New York Times)

Hey check this out...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/realestate/25nati.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Looks like Big D and I have done it again. I attribute our ability to snuff out up and coming neighborhoods to poverty and a good eye. When we first moved to Los Angeles, we decided on Los Feliz because of it's proximity to our grad schools, because the bungalow was $600 (the cheapest we could find) and because it had a walkability factor that I was craving after living in Vegas suburbia. This was shortly after the LA riots and people liked to mention this fact to us when we moved there, "You are moving to Los Feliz? You know, the riots came up nearly to there." Or westsiders would say, "Oh, that's east of Hollywood, right?" But I didn't care, I could see the potential for the neighborhood and now look at the Los Feliz/Silverlake area. I'd say I was right.

After getting our MFA's we moved on to the westside. First, to the only dumpy area in Santa Monica, right near the Community College. At the time, this area had been ravaged by the bad rent control policies that ghettoized the apartment complexes. Again, we liked the cheap rent ($800 I think) and there was a little neighborhood yoga studio in walking distance. With changes made to the rental laws and the wild real estate boom in recent years, the area has totally turned around and now it's filled with cute shops and yummy places to eat (like The Counter, which has the best veggie burger ever--and this is a fact that is not open to debate).

Then there was Venice, oh Venice, my favorite place on earth. Our landlords were a married couple that had lived in the area since the beginning of time and had bought their home in the 60's for $6,000, a fact that still beguiles me. They were serious Christians and viewed their work as the lord's work. They would buy bankrupt/foreclosed properties and fix them up, kick out the crack dealers, and then rent them out to upstanding individuals, like myself, thank you very much. I loved that apartment with it's little yard and brand new hardwood floors. They even installed new recessed lighting on dimmer switches for us. I'd buy that place today if it were for sale. Anyway, we all know what happened to Venice. Abbot Kinney is now a second Montana, even, dare I say, 3rd street promenade. And you can't touch a decent house under a mil.

Then it was on to Mar Vista. This was our first foray into real estate. Take yourself back a few years when the market was so hot you could actually see a glow over the West LA sky. Big D just knew we had to get a piece of it. So I somewhat grudgingly went along (I really loved that Venice apartment). We bought a fixer condo in the no man's land area of Mar Vista, the part squished between Venice and Washington blvds. After much blood, sweat, and tears (and I mean this literally) we flipped it two years later for a nice profit. And left behind not only a really cool renovated condo but a funky little neighborhood with stores like, A Mano, Soaptopia, and even a hip coffee house, Venice Grind.

We spent a few months chillin' in Culver City, in a hideout of a cottage I like to refer to as my Innisfree, because it provided the peace I needed to regroup after the condo drama. In the time we moved in and out of Culver City, so much change has happened there that it would take too long to describe. Just check it out next time you are there. Let's just say it's not your parent's dull, dingy, watch the weeds grow boring Culver City of yesteryear, its filled with galleries, boutiques, and bistros--and that wine bar, Bottlerock, which I will try next time I'm in the CC.

So, that takes me to now. Last night, as we sat outside in our very own yard in Eagle Rock, a fire crackling in the fire pit, drinking pinot, and listening to M. Ward, Big D said, "It's been a year since we signed escrow." And it has been quite a year--from the major plumbing work to the birds that prefer to nest in the shingles of our roof than in the multitude of lovely elderly trees. Transitional neighborhoods can have there ups and downs but I love the vitality and the community I have found here and can't wait to see all the changes in the neighborhood come to fruition. This time, I think we'll be here a while.

Post and Ye Shall Receive

A couple days ago I posted the hideous photos of hip high weeds growing in my front yard. Well, like magic, they are gone! I am calling the dirt that remains Desert Landscaping:

So, I am hoping this posting technique will work in reverse and bring good things in as much as it takes bad things out of my life. Internets, please bring me this:

Oh, and did I mention----I AM ON VACATION FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS, take that SUCKAS!

Bringing Down the Neighborhood (or maybe just fitting in)

FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY, PLEASE GET ME A LANDSCAPER!

See, I wasn't kidding about my garden of weeds, what I like to refer to as California Native Landscaping http://girlintheroom.blogspot.com/2007/03/bleach-is-your-friend.html. I'm especially fond of the added touch of garbage, aren't you? Here's another view:

Bleach is Your Friend

I am writing this post in response to this entry that I come upon in blog-world : http://one80three60.blogspot.com/2007/02/ma-vie-en-vert-part-one.html
and all other white-bred, upper-middle class (though that isn't very impressive if you live in Vegas, the armpit of the world, where you can work at the local Von's and be upper-middle class--we're talking cheap cookie cutter housing people) bored housewife bloggers who are looking for ways to complicate their lives in a desperate attempt to fill the void (not that there is anything wrong with that).

And back to me...

It is quite possible that my mother, the original clean freak, actually said the title of this post, "Bleach is your friend" to me as an innocent. Not much of my mother's habits resonate with me today, but this one stuck. Bleach is your friend. Why? Because it kills things, gross things like viruses and bacteria. It also gets whites white better than anything else.

I like chemical cleaning products. They kill things too. Lysol is one of my favorite brands for cleaning products. Here are a few things that Lysol kills:

Some of the germs LYSOL® Disinfectant Spray eliminates on hard non-porous surfaces include:

Bacteria-

• Staph and Strep


• Salmonella


• Escherichia coli


• CampylobacterFungi


• Athlete’s Foot Fungus

Mold and Mildew Viruses-

• Rhinovirus -The leading cause of the common cold


• Rotavirus - The leading cause of infectious diarrhea in children


• Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) – The leading cause of lower respiratory infection in children


• Poliovirus Type 1


• Adenovirus Type 2


• Herpes Simplex Virus Types 1 and 2


• Hepatitis A
  

For more about the joys of Lysol, visit:
http://www.lysol.com/

In the afore mentioned blog the chic also talks about pesticide free gardening. There are a few things wrong with this:

1. She lives in the desert--She shouldn't be wasting water gardening.


2. She lives in desert--why is she wasting water on a water fountain?


3. She lives in the desert (in an over-sized tract-house) in which I am sure that she runs the air conditioner which causes the ozone to be destroyed--life in Vegas without an ozone or water--well, that's a nice future that she is creating for daughter.


4. She lives in the desert????
   

Now back to me...

Being the true naturalist that I am, I use only California Native Plants so that I don't waste water. Ok, that is so totally not true but I love how high and mighty it sounds. Actually, my home in Los Angeles has no landscaping because we be way too po', so stuff just kind of grows on its own. My favorite method for routine gardening is to spray anything that obviously looks like a weed (and I can't pass off as a desert flower) with weed killer. I prefer Round-Up.

As a footnote, I grew up in Vegas. Some of the best people I know live in Vegas. I am kind of possessive of Vegas--cause I was there first dammit! So my apologies for any offense.