Kids.

Jim and I, we are Adults.
Grown Ups, really.
Or at least, we are the most Grown Up versions of ourselves we have ever been.

We have a nice (albeit small) home, without the craigslist hand me down aesthetic of our twenties or the fear of not getting our deposit back because the carpets that were once white* are now beige.

*The only proof of this being the virgin carpet 

underneath an area rug in the dining room.

Hey honey, did we leave the oven on?

We favor the better seats at the outdoor concerts as opposed to the cheap ones, and quality over everything else when picking out goat cheese and salami.
We have a housekeeper, and enough cloth napkins and matching serving ware for a large dinner party.
As if, somehow, those are the real testaments to adulthood.
Actually, I'm fairly certain they are.
But then, every once and a while, there is a reminder of how both of us really feel like Kids in Dress Up Clothes.
Fakers!

Most often, it is when Sunday or Monday rolls around, and one of us realizes that the garbage bins had been left out in the back alley since the Tuesday before.

And I find myself thinking,

'Ah, they can't blame us! We're just Kids. Still getting used to Taking Out the Trash All By Ourselves.'

I have to remind myself that we are, for all intents and purposes, not children; rather, we are (forgetful) adults who should really take out the trash on a more regular basis.

As the World Turns.

"Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different."

C.S. Lewis.

When I was a child, my mother would watch The Young & the Restless, and even at five, I was tuned into whatever it was the Victor and Nicki were up to. (Those daytime 'Naps' they took together made total sense at the time, as I too often took daytime naps. With friends.)

And, even if we didn't watch for a day, week, month, decades, Victor and Nicki's lives continued on that show, in that world.

Actually, from what I can tell from the cover of Soap Digest or whatever its called, at the market - Victor and Nicki are still on the air, now almost thirty years later.

Though they may not still be Young, they sure do still seem to be quite Restless.

So, with the advent of social networking - the facebooks, the instagrams, and yes, the blogs, we can now tune into the lives of those we actually know, as anonymously as if we were watching them from the safety of the television set. 

And just like those soaps that we tune in and out of, those lives continue on even when we're not watching. 

It is so easy to forget that Life goes on and the World continues to turn even when we aren't tuned in. 

With as many life changes as I've had in the last several years, I have moved from many different worlds - the World of the Ex & His Family, to Patio World with Beauty and Goldi et. all, from Boutique to Corporate Retailer, from Friending and Unfriending.
So many slow changes, scene changes, costume changes.

When I broke up with the Ex, I unfriended most everyone from that world; his childhood friends and adulthood friends, his family that was to be my family, and anyone else even remotely associated with Him and with them. 

I wanted to disappear, and to become anonymous. 

Untrackable. 

And, more importantly, I didn't want to watch their lives go on without me. 

It hurt to much to know how replaceable someone's girlfriend was, even when she was around for years and years. It hurt to know that no one would really miss me, especially after becoming such a nuisance in the wake of the break up.

Like on any Soap Opera, someone can be written out with ease, and perhaps they're mentioned in passing every once and while, but really - once someone is gone, moved or out of the picture - they don't matter anymore.

No one from His World is going, 'Remember her? Those were great years for all of us.' (Probably because they weren't, but regardless.) Friendships long lost aren't wistfully thinking, 'Remember the good ol' days that were so much better with her in the picture?' 

As things change, they become just the ways things are - without us even realizing it.

Change doesn't ever 'Hit' us the way we expect it to. 

Our day to day movements simply evolve, and become the Way of our World. 

So, when I inadvertantly (or advertently, lets be honest) come across one of the unfriended in a newsfeed somewhere, and they're newly engaged or five months pregnant, or really, anything different from the last time I saw them, from the last time they knew me, it shakes me a little. 

Just as my life has changed, so have theirs. 

And even though I wouldn't rather be anywhere else, I get nostalgic for the friendships or relationships that are changing so much even without me being there. Yes, I understand how narcissitic this is, but it's the truth. It makes me sad to be unfriended with people who at some point in my life I loved or cared about, even if it was just because they grew up next door to an old boyfriend of mine. 

It makes me sad that from my remote veiwing area in Orange County, I am so disconnected from people I once celebrated life's big changes with. 

Granted, it makes me happy that I have the people in my life I do now, and that those big changes in our lives are and will be celebrated together; but, I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness when I come across someone with whom I was once close and now am not, and they have changed. 

Just like I have, I realize. 

And I wonder if they ever do miss me. If they ever reminisce about thistime or thattime, or if really they only think of me when I inadvertently pop up on their newsfeed too.

I wonder if when they see me, they think to themselves that I look older; and the implication of what that means about their own aging.

You know, I have three years in between me and the Ex now?  

I have just about a year or so in between my little beach town life. 

Jim and I will be celebrating our one year anniversary in just about two weeks, and I've been at my 'new' job for a year already.

And for every five minutes, ten minutes I spend doing something, it's easy to forget that everyone else out there is out there too, minute by minute.

Changing, living, aging.
It catches me by surprise sometimes.

Their worlds keep turning too.

Just as your own does.

Just as mine is.

I wouldn't change my world for anything, but sometimes I definitely feel the loss that comes along with moving on.
Of growing up and of change.

Sayonara NeverNeverLand.

When I return to the town I grew up in, I have this overwhelming sense of un-belonging. It's familiar to me, like an old house, but the people and places within it have changed in the ten years since I left. Its been almost ten years exactly since my dad and I packed up my mattress and headed down to the uncharted territory known as 'Southern California'. I remember on the Highway 5, two cars in-between my Volvo and his blue Astro van packed full of everything I owned at twenty one, sneaking a single cigarette in that seven hour, four hundred mile drive, and thinking if he saw me, I'd be in trouble.

I have that same sense of un-belonging now, when I return to my Tiny Town on the Beach that I only left less than a year ago - barely six months 'officially'. Coffee shops I loved have closed, businesses have changed their names, and those who I knew by face and by name are few and far between. I really only know a few people there now, one being the owner of a restaurant patio that Goldi and Beauty and all my other relocated friends frequented often.

Who are You People?

Even he says that there's a new group running around town, younger and unfamiliar to even him.
I imagine this happens often in tiny college towns on the coast - Mass introductions, studies, townies, and finally(!) Mass Exodus as they - myself included - relocate en masse. My Tiny Town, a Neverland if I've ever seen one in the flesh, sees it's residents grow up, and move on - move onto better jobs, more affordable Houses and a whole new group of fresh face'd patio dwellers take over in their absence.
It's the natural order of things, I imagine.

I know this feeling all too well.

I saw my Restaurateur yesterday, as I was in town for a quick appointment - and when I asked how he was, he responded, 'Well, I'm not living in Irvine, so I'm good' with a sneer. 
I felt as though, somehow by moving on from our Neverland, I had become a traitor of sorts. And, in returning to that funky beach town, with its familiar derelicts outside the same dive bars at 3 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and its funky Mom and Pops, and its (now somewhat threatening) tattoo'd men cruising its streets - that I was, in fact, a Traitor. I left, returning once in a Blue Moon as a woman who wants wifi for her iPad so she can better look at Wallpapers. ('What's that? What does that mean?' the restaurateur asked, thinking it was some new gaming app, or slang for Godknowswhat.)
But, we chatted, over my single glass of wine, after his somewhat accusatory You've Left and So Has Everyone Else, and we caught up on... Well, nothing really.
There was nothing to catch up on, only things to remember.
He asked about the Ex of 5 Years, now nearly 3 years in the past - 'Still never spoken to one another'- and we reminisced about some of our wilder times. He inquired about Goldi & Beauty, and didn't seem too surprised when I informed him that they, too, had moved (on).

But as for Now: we had nothing to speak of, nothing in common. He'd broken up with Whatsherface, who didn't like Apartment F, and now was Just Hanging. And, I was looking at Wallpaper, the newest coolest thing all the ladies are talking about.
But that feeling of treason committed, that sense of 'Things have changed and  now you don't belong' permeated our entire conversation - or lack thereof. Questions of Jim's profession, and home owning status were met with...

Pause. 
A head nod.
An 'Oh.'

I got the overwhelming feeling that not only did he judge my leaving town and moving to Irrrrvine (safest city in America!) he judged my being with someone with a real job and a real house as opposed to the boys of my dating past; really, as opposed to the Lost Boys who populated my NeverNeverLand - the blue collar drunks and the terminal students and all of the twentysomething boys in the in-between.
Okay, perhaps 'judged' is the wrong word, but I could see the wheels turning in his head.
And that's not to say he wasn't - or isn't - happy for me, but I could sense the overarching impression of  'Oh, Orange County Boy ChaChing' being formed in his head. And, I guess, in all fairness, I don't blame him; there I am, hair an 'early Thirties' bob, with an iPad mini & my Malibu Bad Ass' Louis Vuitton Neverfull on mega-loan on the seat next to me, talking about picking out wallpapers for our bathroom.
But it's not because I left town to become some smug fauxsewife;

I left because it was simply time for me to leave.

Time for Me a leave this Tiny Town, just like it was time for me to leave my Hometown ten years ago.
My time was up in NeverNeverland. 
I had out grown it.
Like a house too small for a growing family, or a studio apartment to cramped for an Adult Woman.
And, like that, last summer, NeverNeverLand no longer held a place for me; and, furthermore, the place within it that I had once filled was that of an unhappy, childish girl - a girl who was (against her best intentions) sometimes not the greatest friend, and more importantly, at the very end of a cycle of self combustion.

I'm lucky I met Jim when I did, in the midst of rebuilding my own sense of autonomy and my sense of purpose and personal successes.
It just so happened that I had finished with the growing pains that came along with growing out of the that Tiny Town, and I got out, when the time was right.

And so, I got out, lucky that I had Jim to help me with the step.
And so, I moved on, holding both Jim & many a memory close to my heart.

And so, I bid adieu to my dear Neverland. 
And on my way I went. 

Confessions to Make.

I have a confession.
I keep starting to write things and then not liking them, so I don't finish the post.

I keep wanting to talk about things - the stresses of my job, the contentment of my relationship, the relatable things those I love are going through - and I get about two paragraphs in, and can't turn it into a cohesive essay about anything & I get discouraged and delete whatever has been written. I have had a huge case of writer's block in the new year, and I can't seem to beat it.

A few examples:

Jim got me a new laptop for my birthday. This one has a fully functioning 'L' Key.

Sometimes I cry when I pet Kat Moss because it was just the two of us for so long, I feel like we're a true Duo, and she's seen me through the hardest of times as well as the best.

I think I give really good dating advice.

Apartment F is fucking nuts a bit looney; with so much distance between him and that relationship, I now know that he is everything I thought of him, but worse.
The kind of worse you only see with retrospect's 20/20 vision.

I've been reading more. A lot, actually.

I hatefuck watching Girls. I really don't like it, but then inevitably end up I watching it, hating it the whole time. Except for that episode where she stays with the handsome man in the Brownstone. I loved that one. All the rest of 'em though, make me want to take a cleansing shower. And I have theories why - which range from 'I simply don't like it' to 'As a society we are taught that women who are not conventionally beautiful (or even pretty at all) do not deserve love'.

Speaking of retrospect, I suspect that's the only view of the world that my own sense of self awareness can see.

I was terrified that I 'went back on my word' about so many things I said or wrote since I was single. I did, in fact. But I have forgiven myself, and allowed myself to enjoy having a home, a partner, and few less friends because I am healthier, happier and whole.

I want to be married.

I have always known that I function better in a world with external structure; which is why I am so happy now. But that, initofitself, makes me insecure, because I wish that I had the autonomy to be successful in creating - and thriving - within myself & my own internal sense of structure. I don't.

I am not friends with Goldi or Beauty anymore. I'm waiting for someone to ask why (no I'm not, actually) because the best poetic answer I can come up with is, 'I imagine I became very exhausting to be friends with.'

I'm very midly obsessed with Reed Krakoff.

That being said, I am grateful for my friendship with My Best Friend in San Francisco, and in our entire lives we have never been closer.

My aesthetic has changed quite drastically - with trend, job, osmosis and age. Think: fewer peace signs and more peplums. More Miu Miu, less Blue Life.

I'm cooking again, and for the first time in my adult life, I am open to the bougie Farmer's Market, locally sourced, clean food, organic mumbo jumbo I eschewed for so long, as it seemed like too slippery a slope into 400 calories a day of juices and maybe some prunes to wash it down. That fear was apparently too slippery of a slope itself, because it wasn't & I love it. Admittedly, that may have more to do with the quality of Instagram photo it affords, but really? Who cares?

These are all things I have wanted to write about, but haven't had the creative energy to ruminate on. With job, and an actual life that I enjoy just experiencing, and not necessarily dissecting every detail of (or if I do, I tend to do it ad nauseam to Jim, who is a very good listener).

Though, I do try and keep the I Want To Be Marrieds to a minimum.

Retrospect Ain't Just 20/20.

A new year. Twenty Thirteen.

Jeez.

Going into a new year feels good, to be leaving Twenty Twelve. 

Now that was a year of change. I remember last New Years, after having a shit night with the F, and not looking forward to closing the doors on that little shop by overlooking the ocean. Moving rapidly towards a a time of uncertainty, stagnation and unhappiness. 

In Twenty Twelve, for the better part of the beginning of the year, I was sad. Oh so sad.

Unhappy in my home, with friends who didn't quite understand, and who were already distant as a result.

Making decisions that didn't help the situation..

In Twenty Twelve, I got that kind of job I'd been wanting for a long time; the one with room to grow, with paid time off (which I still have yet to use, but whatever). In Twenty Twelve, I stopped being Token Single Girl, a title which fit neatly into my little beachside package of a life. I stopped being my Ex's crazy Ex. I stopped being a permanent fixture on patio's and porches in that Tiny Town I loved so much, but knew I had outgrown.

In Twenty Twelve, I lost friends. I still mourn the loss of those girls I love so much from my life, but change begets more change I guess, and when you no longer fit the title your friends think you deserve, whether it be 'Drinking Buddy' or 'Best Friend' or 'Charity Case', friendships are bound to be effected by it. I miss those friends, every day, and have them hidden from my newsfeed for the most part, so I don't look and feel left out, or figure out when they've lied about being 'out of town' even though we both knew that lying about being 'out of town' was what both of us wanted.

So, that's been a big change. A sad change.

But this year has also forced me to take a good look at what friends I have kept, no matter how far away or how close they live.
The ones who truly celebrate the victories and are support in the defeats. Whose pace of life allows for fluidity and change. 

And, in Twenty Twelve, I met Jim. 

Enough said.

Well, these were a hit.

In Twenty Twelve, I felt more connected to my family than I have in many many years.
My family as a whole. I feel less like the Forgotten Oldest Sister and more a part of the unit as a whole.
And, perhaps that comes from a better all around sense of 'wholeness' in myself. 

And so to end Twenty Twelve , we - Jim & I - had our party; and it was lovely. And, those who trekked all the way out to the inland suburbs of Orange County, those are my friends. Our friends. Come to the end of Twenty Twelve.

Bijou, who rarely has time to escape the back & forth from her house to her PR House, was one of the first ones through to door, with her sandy haired boyfriend in tow. In her perfect cornflower blue knee length coat, and bright red lips, she toured my new house. She, who was the first in the door way back when I moved into my Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached in Twenty Ten, was touring my couch and my bathtub and my life with the boy, and I was happy. 
And I expect that she and I will be friends well past Twenty Twenty.

She also had the coolest handbag, of course.
A true Carpenter's Bag, structured and perfect. 

And I had all the fixings for our fete; because I decided long ago that when throwing a party, or doing anything really, if I'm going to stress, it's going to be the things I can control: the table's spread, the handmade swizzle sticks. I can control the cupcakes but I cannot make people eat them. I can try to give people something talk about a la kicky conversation cards by Chuck Klosterman laying casually on the coffee table, or holographic glasses strewn about the house courtesy of Kate Spade, or by even labeling the cheeses with their name and what type of cheese it is - Moo! Baaa! - but I cannot control whether or not people actually converse. You can bring a horse to water and all that jazz.

So that's what I focused on - on food, music, ambiance, conversation starters. 

And I think it was a success. I had fun.

So much change fit into one year. But I guess that's been every year since the big break up of Twenty Ten. 

After five years of complacency, it was bound to be a couple of years of ups and of downs.

At the start of Twenty Twelve, I had no where to go but up.

Now, come Twenty Thirteen, I'm on top of the world.

I'm going to turn Thirty One in Twenty Thirteen. Coincidence? 

I think not. Just math. 

But still. 

And I'm glad Jim's turning 31 a little before me, it'll make it easier when my birthday rolls around.

Happy New Year, everyone. 
Happy Twenty Thirteen.

The Victor v. The Phantom.

Ya know, I haven't been writing as much these past several months. I haven't had much to say, nor have I have too much inspiration. Torment is a beautiful muse, you see, and happiness only begets more happiness. Meaning, I sure as hell have a lot to say and pick apart and remind myself to be grateful for when I'm dealing with loneliness or a general undercurrent of sadness; but when I'm happy - that's it.
I have few words for it other than 'happy!', 'love!' "partaaaaaay!'
Sure, things aren't Perfect, but they're as closed to it as I have had in recent memory.
In memory.
And when I really think about the last six months, who I was when I turned thirty, God so much has changed. 


I am thriving.
I have a couch, a bathtub and a Boy. (And, a grown up career path to boot.)
I made my demands of the World, and after a scuffle with World, I came out The Victor.



And sometimes, okay all the time, I look at that Boy, and at my World, and I cannot believe it's all mine.
Finally, I see what I want and I know I deserve to have it.
I see his profile catch the light and he looks beautiful and we are happy.
We wake up laughing and fall asleep contented. We are well aware that things are not always so perfect, and we game plan on how to deal with curl balls thrown.
But, when we wake up fall asleep and all the time in between, we are at a loss for a better word than 'Love'.
We times'd it by pi, then realized that's not very large, so we added an infinity, and then some.

It scares me to think that the Ex of 5 Years and I fell out of Love and we didn't even notice. I think about it a lot actually; I try and pin point exactly when it happened, when did we fall out of love? I don't know. It was well before we broke up, obviously. But when, exactly, I cannot recall. Though, truth be told, I can hardly believe we were together for five years. I can't remember what we talked about for five years. I mean... What did we say to one another for 1,825 days? I remember the backhanded, the fights. I remember the really wonderful, especially from when we first met.
But the in-between? That's a blur.

Babe, tell me again, the origin story of 'Motley Crue'? 
(No joke, when the Ex and I ran out of things to talk about, I'd ask that exact Q.
It'd keep him going for at least an hour.)

It scares me immensely to to think of falling out of love with Jim.
To sink into a relationship that is becomes something other than Lovely.
I am afraid of taking his love for granted, and vice versa. And to not notice until it is too late.
Or, conversely, to notice but not to care.

I learned so much from my relationship of five years, and the subsequent period of crazy dating that followed; but what I am determined to take away from my Ex is to have chosen a partner that will not fall out of love with me, and I not him. When I reflect back on my past relationship, what I feel most is a sense of being disliked. My Ex did not like me very much. Especially not there at the end. He didn't have a ton of respect for me; and when I repeat some of the stuff he said to me back to myself, my feelings still get hurt, years and years later.
My feelings are oft hurt by a Phantom Ex Boyfriend.
Jim thinks I'm smart and hilarious and wonderful and I think the same of him. And I have vague memories of Liam thinking similar of me when we first met, but he changed his mind.
And that still stings.
And that still scares me.

Its scares me immensely to think of Jim falling out of love with me.
I have to remind myself that he is not him and they are not the same.
I have to remind myself that what has passed does not have to be the rule.

This is good stuff.

But you know what the real difference is between the two?
I told Jim about these fears, and he did not disregard them.
He did not tell me I was being crazy.
He just reassured me he wouldn't.
And then, from another room, I heard him making up new words to a We Wish You a Merry Christmas,
(I kid you not.)

...I love you more today than yesterday but not as much as tomorrow...

Though, truth be told, I'm not sure if he was singing to me or to Kat Moss.

Fete.

Put your party shoes on.

I did it; I decided to throw a party.
A White Elephant Holiday Housewarming. 
With the tagline, 'Wrap your crap' 'cuz I'm cheeky like that.

White Elephant.

Kat Moss is totally invited.

I'm in the mood to throw a party.

A fete of sorts, ifyouwill.

Cozy, easy, post-Christmas yet pre New Years.

Every time I get the urge to throw a something-small I inevitably end up going back and forth back and forth about whether or not to actually throw it, because I get afraid that even if I did throw a party, no one would show up.

I imagine me, alone on the couch, metallic party hat on, curtains drawn, a single sad balloon hovering halfway between the ceiling and the floor. 

No one's coming to your sweet sixteen party, Louise.
Pathetic Party Kazooooooooooooooooo.

It's silly, really.

Then I go back and forth, trying to figure out who exactly I would invite, and I get overwhelmed at editing an invitee list (I always end up inviting some rando at the last minute anyway for fear that no one'll show) and then I end up deciding not to throw a party because it's too much of a headache (egoache), but the urge doesn't go away.

I'm in the mood to throw a party.
The internal fête battle rages on. 

Sunrise, Sunset.

Here I am, like I am most mornings - prework, or day off - I've made a point to wake up around the time that Jim leaves and enjoy my morning (or whole day, but not today) in Our Space.
Yesterday, I went to the market and bought what I usually buy - flowers and house knick knacks - nail polish, hand soap, a vintage looking edition of Pride & Prejudice that will inevitably never be read, but will look pretty on my dresser.
I arranged the flowers in my many many vases & blast Bon Iver on Pandora all day (or morning, as I am now.)
Then I peruse --- eBay, Pinterest, Facebook, you name it, I am in engrossed in it.
Yesterday, in particular I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at a photo story entitled, 'Rihanna's Sexiest Tweets' until I stopped, and thought, 'What the fuck am I looking at?'

And I feel whole.
I love finding a Rebecca Taylor dress for $15 as a surprise for my sister on eBay, helping my Malibu Bad Ass find a Minute Clinic in Denver, making plans for next Sunday with two of my old shop cohorts, responding 'Yes' to evites and generally just feeling helpful and happy, all while being surrounded by fresh flowers and feisty cats in a House with a Green Door.
On the couch or in the bath.
On our patio, with the furniture I picked.
I like my mornings.

But, I still have problems falling asleep.
I hate those moments of pre-sleep where my subconscious sneaks up on me, and I start thinking nonstop about the 
'What if's...'
Of memories I've willed myself not to remember.
Of things I could have done differently.
What if Jim dies... What will happen to me... How long would I be able to stay here in this house... It's not mine... Could I afford the mortgage... Could I get out of bed...
The moments in the interim of sleep and wake have been an Enemy of mine for a long time and I tend to stay awake as long as possible, doing anything possible to avoid the interim, until exhaustion hits - like a child with barely one eye open - and I just pass out without the actual falling part...
And the only moments of discord that Jim and I ever really have are when he's threatening to close his eyes before me, leaving me alone with my sleepy scary thoughts.
I get huffy, like a tired child up past her bedtime.
It's frustrating. For both of us, I imagine. Left alone, usually I wrestle with my fears for awhile and fall asleep, only to wake in the morning with only a vague memory of their existence  They're there, but only in those in-between moments, those moments I have trained myself to avoid with terrifying accuracy.

Last night was no different & and even though I had made the decision not to try & stay awake until the night just faded to nothing, I still lay there thinking the aforementioned what ifs -- and like many nights, I curled up in a panic to Jim, waking him from his new sleep, in tears. What if... How long...?
He's so sweet; when I am able to articulate the fears that have amassed cancerously in my tired brain,
he doesn't brush them off, he just holds me.
He asks if I want him to call his lawyer.

No, I just don't want you to die. 

He squeezes me and assures me that he doesn't want to either. He tells me of something he read about  in his own daily perusal of the interwebs, of a girl and her boyfriend falling asleep, where the girls tells the boyfriend she hates falling asleep because she gets so fixated on her next days' to-do list, and the boyfriend is confused because when he falls asleep, he thinks about things like rocket ships made of french fries. 

I envy that boy. 

Its so odd, being alone with my thoughts all morning, I am happy and whole and looking around at a warm space of my own creation, complete and happy.
But alone with my thoughts, on or around 10:30pm most weeknights, I am greeted by an old enemy - I am tired, and scared and sad.
The dichotomy of it - the two parts of Me - the day and the night, the happy and the sad - they are what make me my Whole-est, I guess. 
That I do not run, or attempt some other form of running away, that is a miracle in it of itself.
That I go to bed, or at least agree to try, on a regular basis, is new to me.
That I wake up as happy as I do is new as well.

It's an even trade, I guess.
Fears are fears, we're all going to have them.
Lucky for me, I get to wake up to a comfortable & blessed existence come the sunrise.

I'm always going to be afraid of what I cannot control. I'm always going to have memories that I wish were never made.
I'm always going to wrestle with my own propensity towards sadness and fight for my happiness.
I am always going to be working for a balance.
I am finding a balance.

Zelda.

I'm reading Zelda by Nancy Milford. Written in 1970 about The Zelda Fitzgerald, I'm totally sucked in - taking photos of passages and texting them to my Best Friend in San Francisco. I love a book (especially a biography about my favorite generation of artists, The Lost Generation) that speaks to me from page one. I''m already lost in a world of a girl from eighty or so years ago.
Read it with me.

Growing Pains.

When I was a child - as my mother tells it - I would, usually at dinnertime around our family dining room table, stand up on my chair, raise up my arms, and demand the attention of my parents,

Look! Look how Big I've gotten!!!

As if, over the course of our spaghetti entree, I had grown from a two foot tall child to a five foot tall adult.
As if to announce,

Look! I am growing up right in front of you! As we speak! As we eat!

Around the same time, 

I also used to cry, real tears, sobbing, at four years old that, 

'I don't want to go to college.' 

And, as children do, I have grown up. 

Trés Grow'd Up.

Look, look how big I've gotten. 

However, in this Growth Chart that is Life, in growing and changing, and regressing and growing some more,   with all of that, comes Change. Capital C. (No shirt, Shitlock.)

But what happens when you outgrow things you love? 

When an old t-shirt, that used to encapsulate your 'You-ness' so perfectly, now just seems illfitting, outdated and threadbare? 

When a friend who used to be the Second Pea in your Pod no longer fits alongside you so comfortably? 

When a 'Signature Scent' becomes an unpleasant olfactory reminder of a really bad year.*

*Michael Kors. 2003.

What do you do when you outgrow a best friend? 

When what used to be so comfortable is now not. 

When silence is now awkward and no longer filled with camaraderie.

Or worse, when silence is really just a filler for festering? 

I certainly don't have any answers, no matter how big I get. 

You want the what section?!?
It's like I don't even know you anymore.

But, I do believe that - like in relationships - we deserve standards and paper planes and friends that treat us well, with patience, and with love. And I have failed on this count many times, and am right now, as everyone has. As we grow, and as we change, and as we sometimes no longer see eye to eye with our best of friends, and as I realize that no one is perfect, especially not me, and as I get more and more at ease with my own imperfections, I realize that sometimes the outcome of Growth is that sometimes you grow out of your friends. 

That best friend you've had since Kindergarten, her actions no longer are forgivable, or easily disregarded, because you're 'just kids'.
I mean, sometimes you just realize that in all this growing up & getting big, you don't really like who your friends have grown up to be.  

Or that the best friend who got you through your darkest time cannot seem to see past your darkest time. Or when you simply realize you don't like to be around a friend anymore. Or when you start to realize that your friend feels the exact same way about you. That she doesn't particularly like you very much either.

Relationships change as we change, but how do we remedy a change so uncomfortable? 

How do you remedy the relationship when you also recognize that change = things with never be the same? Without blame, and without causing emotional unrest? 

Without feeling like shit, and beating yourself up about it? 

I don't know. 

It's all well and good to talk the about friends that you can just pick up the phone and not a beat is missed after weeks of busy busy. About friends who just seem to 'Get You', even from 500 miles away. 

I realized last night, that in the last five years, I have seen my Best Friend - in the flesh - four times. Three of them being in 2007 or 2008. We joke to each other that ' [my] Best Friend is really just a floating voice in [my] ear.' And it's true. But when it comes to 'First Best Friend', she's it. We do not skip a beat. We can be floating voices for eachother once a month or multiple times an hour. I cannot live without her.

But outgrowing a 'Second Best Friend' or a Third, or most painfully, your First, is almost worse than a break up. 

I mean, if you think about it, a 'break up' really just means, at the most elementary level:

'I don't want to pretend procreate with you anymore.'

(Or, I don't want to procreate with you in the future.)

Emotionally, that sits a bit more soundly with people (me) no matter how sucky it is to hear, or how painful the break up may be, than when you outgrow friendships, & you realize some combination of:

We have very little in common. 

We don't get each other anymore. 

 

We have nothing in common other than our hair.

You disappointed me. You've changed. I've disappointed you.  

I don't really like you anymore. We don't really like one another.

Or, the worst, 

You (or I) have not been a good friend.

They all suck. 

'I don't want to have sex with you anymore' versus 'I don't really like you anymore'. Both suck, but one's really fucking personal, and is wholly about you as a person, and can't be justified by Darwin, or male stupidity, or anything that feels out of your control. 

'We've outgrown what used to be awesomely super fun' sucks too.

And coming to peace with this outgrowing of certain relationships is really hard.

Especially, when you're unsure of whether or not its actually a reflection of Growth. 

I mean all I know is that I'm trying to be my best self, and even in doing so, I still fail.
A lot.

People change. And grow. Thank god for that, really. 

Makes me really grateful for those friends I can call after weeks and months and years and not a beat has skipped. 

xx : bijou bijou.

Smug Satisfaction.

In just six short months, since turning Thirty, I have become the type of woman who responds to the oft repeated question of, 'How are you? What's new?' with some variation on,

'Fantastic! We've finally finished most of the house/We're doing the closet next/We're thinking about hardwood floors...' 

Who the fuck am I and why am I so fucking happy?

Morning Rundown.

I haven't been able to sit down and write, but thankfully other people have too, and they're smart and funny and one even has a scanner, or something, and I'm jealous. But here are some links, some thoughts, and that's all she wrote.

Fuck! I'm In My 20s!
(Its better once you get to the second page, when she's not just yaadaaa yaadadaaing about her book tour. Like, yeah, we get it - you're smart and funny and you got a book. No, I kid, but the stuff is better once you actually get to the stuff.)
Update: It's brilliant! If you like me, you'll love her & want to to print out her doodles and fashion them into a coloring book and invest in the 64 color box of crayolas, cancel your brunch plans and just spend your Sunday coloring.

Eat The Damn Cake
Uplifting and inspiring and true.

CB2
Crate and Barrel's Ikea inspired sister site, but its like waaay better than Ikea and still reasonably priced.

OkCupid Inspired Art.
Hilarious & so so so true. Might I add, all I remember from Jim's is how under his 'About Me', he wrote, 'Man, strawberries are a great fruit.'

Also, I do want to mention that I have had one of the best weeks ever, and that my general mentality of 'Work Hard & Be Nice to People' has really paid off.
Because working hard and being nice should always pay off.
I got like a really really big promotion.

And! And! And!
Has everyone else noticed the wave of acrylic 'ghost chairs' out there lately?

Its like the new Letter Blocks of DIY/pinterest-dictated interior design.
Do I need one?
I like the idea...
Bijou always has good thoughts on interiors.

My Sunflower.

I'm a Grown Up Thirty Year Old. 

Thirty years on this planet, almost Thirtyandahalf, and I am finally a Grown Up. But, as you know, it took me a hellava time to get here. In fact, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be a Real Grown Up, but just a kid wobbling around in high heels playing the part.
(Not true, I walk really well in heels, but you get the point.)
But here I am, Thirty, up for a promotion I may not get, living in a home that actually has a mortgage (granted, its not mine) with furniture that is not a collection of hand me downs, Ikea krap & craigslist finds.
My bedside table if from... Crate and Barrel. Whatiszismadness?


Oh My Twenties.
More like Twenty Lifetimes.
My twenties felt like several lifes squished into a decade.
Twenty lifetimes, with acne and wrinkles, with roomates and with live in boyfriends and sometimes with both simultaneously.

All of these lifetimes, squished into the early part of a new century. Its funny, how when you live in a small town, with the same people roaming the streets with you over the same timeline how each and every change in your life is (however slight)  part of a greater whole.
At 21, I moved down to a new city sight unseen with my bed in the back of my dad's minivan.
Into a condo by school, where I hung my favorite Sunflower painting from back home up in the dining room. Off to college! I promptly met a stoner Frat boy who became my College Boyfriend (we all have one).

Hazy nights from party to party to Jack in Box to party to home, my roommate and his Frat Brothers in tow. This was not a good look for me. 
In the peripheral was always a pretty blonde girl, the girlfriend of a Brother. She I were not friends, but mere acquaintances  the kind that in college you inevitably end up introducing yourself to almost every weekend.
My roommate at the time went and rushed a sorority - to 'make us friends' and there too, in the peripheral, was another pretty blonde girl. I had a crush on this one's boyfriend.
After a move to my second apartment of my Twenties (this one I loved) with its interior French sliding doors, pool table and Craftsman built ins - including a diner style breakfast nook (booth seating!) into which my Sunflower painting fit perfectly - and the subsequent breakup with the Fratboy College Boyfriend, I met a bunch of girls through a pretty brunette in one of my summer school classes.
And in the peripheral was - yes - another pretty blonde girl, the roommate of one of my Best Friends from College.
Still now, I was barely 23, but felt old for my age.
In this home with the Breakfast Nook, I met the one-day-Ex of 5 Years.
Which catapulted me to the life I lived for most of my Twenties.
And my third Apartment of my Twenties: the one I shared with him.
Sunflower sitting perfectly in our kitchen, on a wall that was so perfectly suited for it, its like it had been waiting for that painting since the day it was built. Up winding stairs, and over hardwood floors, my Sunflower watched as I went from a College Wild Child, post-roaming the streets of Hollywood in glitter shoes and Wilco drenched adventures, to a Mild Mannered Twentysomething Townie Pseudo-Housewife. And in the peripheral, again, were those same three pretty blondes. At the time none of them my favorites, per se, as I knew very little of them, and saw them only when out and about in town. I was jealous of the First Pretty Blonde because I thought I could sense that the Ex of 5 was attracted to her. (I actually stormed out a dinner once because this insecurity got to me so much. Ahh, 25. Insecurity rules when you're 25.) Pretty Blonde #2, the sorority sister, and I formally met on a really bad night, and stayed aquaintances, but nothing more. Pretty Blonde #3, the roommate of my friend, I always resented because she always looked like she was having such fun, without a care in the world, while I was living a life of What Will the Neighbors Think? .

Our Roaring Twenties.

All of us in our twenties.
Living out our terrarium-like twenty lifetimes year by year, sometimes intersecting, though rarely.
Students to girlfriends to jobs to happy hour.

Within the span of a Decade, a Year, a Month or a Single Moment.
It seems as if... In your twenties, your life changes in the blink of an eye.

I believe this is true for life in general. (Um have you seen what Thirty has done to me?!?)
A pimple pops up over night, and so it seems wrinkles as well. And grays.
Your life is fluid in your twenties.
Those who were once only in the peripheral of what seems like the way life will always be, can so instantaneously move to the very forefront of Your Everything.
I always thought that the First Pretty Blonde would always be the Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College. Then she became The Girl Who My Boyfriend Flirts With.
So naturally, I assumed that she would always then be the Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Boyfriend Flirts With. 
(Whether or not this was actually true is still unconfirmed by the way.)

One 4th of July, I was caught blindsided by the overwhelming dislike that the now Ex of 5 Years had for me. Dislike that had, in fact, been building up for months and months and months.
Have you ever felt like your partner just doesn't Like You? 
I'm sure that that is not a feeling exclusive to your twenties. I'm sure none of this is.

And that Sunflower painting watched as that boy came home and told me he would never be my Husband, and we would never be Us again.
It did not see when, weeks later, he told me that he'd been greatly mistaken and he missed Us and he missed Our Sunflower, because he said it in the room where there was only a shadow of where the Sunflower painting used to be but wasn't anymore. 

Where I said, silently to myself, That Sunflower was never Ours. 
Because it was hanging perfectly in my new Kitchen Attached to a Room.
Where I said, silently to myself, That Sunflower is Mine. 


It was mine and it was in the Fourth & Last Home of my Twenties: My Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached. Where Kat & I fled after the disastrous break up with the Ex.
On August 1st, 2010, where my Ex's wonderful father hung it so perfectly in my new kitchen.

But even though I still had my Sunflower, I'd still lost the closest thing to a Home, a Husband, and Family in one slow moving swoop. In what felt like an instant. I was 28 by now, and I was broken.

But my Sunflower hung so perfectly in that kitchen, watching me navigate the lifetimes of twenty eight and twenty nine and thirty.
It watched Kat lounge in the sun, it watched me so poorly maneuver through the worst Autumn I can remember, of being alone and lost and sad. It watched me write the better part of over two hundred blog posts.
And it watched as the Pretty Blonde who was my College Best Friend's Roommate, the one I was so jealous of because she got to have all the fun, get dressed for a night out in our Tiny Town and it watched as she and I became fast friends.

I actually had this print too for a long time.

That Sunflower watched as we came up for the outline for The Story of Goldilocks, and it watched as that friendship helped me become who I am today.
Pretty Blonde Girl #3, that girl who was in the peripheral of so many of my mini-lifes of my Twenties is Goldi.
And that Sunflower watched me pluck out gray hairs with fervor that grew with even more fervor, and it watched as that tiny apartment went from Exile to Refuge to Cage.
And while that lifetime was happening, I was re-acquainted with the Second Pretty Blonde. She too, was at many of those college parties, often with that Boyfriend I had had a crush on so many years ago, and she too has made me who I am today.
Behind Pretty Blonde Door #2 is Beauty.

Now what ever became of The First Peripheral Pretty Blonde, Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Ex-Boyfriend Flirted With? 
To me, this is the most interesting example of how much life changes with time, and how fluid and wonderful life can be. It is weird, Pretty Blonde Girl Number One, is the prime example. Because, for many years she was just a memory of so-n-so's girlfriend from college. Then, at a drunken dinner somewhere around 25, when we still didn't know each other and probably had to be reintroduced, and I probably relayed the story of when her then-boyfriend passed out by my Volvo in '04, a story which I doubt she even remembered, and I was so certain that my then-boyfriend was, ya know, into her that I got up and left abruptly.
Well, she is close with Goldi and with Beauty, and has been since college. At my Lifetime 28, Pretty Blonde Girl #1 and I probably went to a brunch of bottomless mimosas or something, something I barely remember,  but however it happened, we became facebook friends.
Still, not even knowing much of each other other than hearsay & hair color, when I finally got up the gall to share this project with more of a mass audience, I blindly sent her the link.
That Sunflower watched the Dutchman arrive and leave and what seemed like a Lifetime wrapped up into a single summer and it watched me get ready for Goldi's 27th Birthday Party in San Diego, being hosted by both the Del Mar Races & the First Pretty Blonde Girl  and her New Boyfriend.
Pre-races, we popped a bottle of bubbly, and that Pretty Blonde came down the stairs, I remember it so clearly, and said, 'You're a really good writer.' 
And she went on to tell me and whole kitchen about this project. It was the first time someone I didn't really know very well, barely at all, gave me feedback about this. It felt good. This project somehow connected this Pretty Blonde and I in a way that I had never experienced at that point. (Actually this blog has allowed me a closeness with people that I've never experienced before, and in turn has allowed me to be more myself in 'Real Life' as well.) She and her Nearly Perfect Boyfriend also became a Litmus of sorts for me, for some reason, with my Paper Planes and all that, because I looked at the two of them, and thought, 

'Ya know, thats what I want. Thats what I deserve.' 

I watched as she went on mini breaks and full blown vacations. I watched as her relationship had many aspects that I wanted but had never had in my own.
I watched as she got outta town, met a Man and Grew Up.
I watched and it gave me my own aspirations*

*Now, I'm not advocating comparing yourself to other's, 

I'm just saying its okay to know 

a Good Thing when you see it and work from there.

Its funny, now, because, now when I am whining about living in what was My Not My House Home but paying rent for place at the beach, she texted me with, 'I'm so glad I'm not the only one doing that!'
Its an odd yet wonderful connection she and I have.
She's no longer Pretty Blonde Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Ex-Boyfriend Flirted With. 
In my Twenty Lifetimes of my Twenties, she has been an unlikely constant, like My Sunflower. She was one of the Must-Comes to my own Birthday. She is someone I am always happy to see, whether it has been a year or a month. She is someone who, though we don't speak often, when we do, its as though we've been friends for years and not a moment has passed. I am happy for her.

My last text from her reads,

We are so lucky!

Because we are.
She's the one who gave me the idea for this post; though, quite frankly, it sort of took on a Life(time) of its own.


And, at Thirty, I too, grew up, met a Man and got outta town.

October 1, 2012. Two years and two months in my studio. Time Flies.
My lease was up today on My Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached. 
Its not my exile. Its not my refuge. Its not my cage. 
Its just not mine anymore. 

I live here in Orange County, with Jim now. 
For Realsies ya'll.

My First Home of my Thirties.
I have a home.
And so does my Sunflower.
And again, it has a wall that has been awaiting its arrival, next to my side of the bed.

It got here yesterday, after we did the final gutting of an apartment I will never return to.
I will never go to that home again. Though parts of it live on - Beauty and Goldi both have remnants of it in their homes now, but for the majority of it - the furniture I had collected so slowly in my twenties - the shabby beachy blues and whites and seafoam green pieces that I so came to love - those are gone.

It still watches Kat nap in the sun.

But not my Sunflower. 
That's Home now.

A special thanks to Les. 

My Malibu Bad Ass.

A good friend can talk you off any ledge, 

even if its just a sidewalk's. 

Soooo... I accidentally stumbled across some ancient facebook fodder on an old picture, between my boyfriend and his ex. It was a surprise, to see this mystery woman's face for the first time, and to get tangible (or at least, sort of tangible) evidence of what I already knew was, at some point,real.

So a little shaken and a lot in need of someone to remind me that it is just an old (old old) post on the 'book, I rang my Malibu (by way of Long Beach and sometimes Denver) Bad Ass.

Hi. What are you doing?

Uuuuhhh... Watching Gossip Girl.

Oh... Well, I came across ---yaddayadda--- and need you to remind me that it's nothing, over a year old and that Jim loves me.

And without skipping a beat, she replied,

It's nothing. Its over a year old. And Jim loves you. Jeez. The man can't keep his eyes off you. If he wanted to be with her, he would. But he doesn't. He's with you. Stop looking at it.

And just like that, I felt better. 

And just like that, the conversation veered away from shaken, and towards scored Michael Kors booties and photo shoots. 

Not that I was worried or anything, I was just... Surprised.

Funny, what I took away from the entire half an hour, was less about running into uninvited words and more about how good it feels to have Good Friends. 

So, off the ledge of that sidewalk I walked, and instead hopped into the shower to restart my day.