Happily Ever After

At the beginning of the year, I decided that for 2014 I was going to plan a little monthly LA adventure for the Blah Blah Family. We would go somewhere we'd never been, do something we'd never done, you get the idea. Well, as I have mentioned, one of our close friends got married in February, and it was such a HUUUUGE wedding that everything else took a back seat. First in early February there was the bridal shower, which had a Victorian theme, and which was held at a Victorian tea room, and for which we were told to wear period attire:

The hat isn't mine, but it's pretty great.

I am looking quite the demure and fancy lady here.

Sweet Dub was at the bridal shower because he was the photographer, but the kids did not attend, so we can't count that toward our monthly adventure. As I may have mentioned, the wedding itself had a Roaring 20s/Gatsby theme. Guests were asked to wear attire appropriate to the era. In the two weeks between the shower and the wedding I spent much of my spare time hunting down shoes for all three of us Blah Blah ladies, not to mention dresses, headpieces and jewelry, not to mention all the usual things like cleaning the house, braiding hair, doing laundry and oh, going to my job. So not a lot of time there for an adventure either. 

However: the wedding itself was the first time either of my kids had been to a wedding (okay, Viva did go to a justice of the peace ceremony at a courthouse for her cousin, but that was an on the fly wedding, not a huge event like this). The venue was magnificent, and none of us had ever been there:  the Park Plaza Hotel.  

The Park Plaza Hotel is one of those places from back in the heyday of old Los Angeles, and you can just imagine how incredible it was at the height of its glory. Today, it sits in the midst of a congested, run-down and crime-ridden area. It's an historic landmark and doesn't operate as a hotel any longer, but can be rented out for events like weddings or for TV/film production. Inside, you forget about the funky neighborhood it's in and kind of lose yourself in the glamour. 

Image credit:  http://parkplazala.com.

I took a lot of pics at the beginning and then my phone died right after the ceremony. Awesome. But I can't include a lot of the pics here because I don't have permission to publish from the people who are in them. However, here is my lovely fam:

And here is a pic of me hanging out with Ceeya, Best Flower Girl in the Land, before she went down the aisle:

Sorry, no full-length shot of me. Waiting for Sweet Dub to finish editing all 900 million photos in order to send me at least one. The wedding got underway 45 minutes late, at 3:15 in the afternoon. GAH.  The wedding event, by the way, was segmented into:

(1) the ceremony and
(2) the post-ceremony cocktail hour, both for 100 people;
(3) the reception, which seated 300;
(4) a Cotton Club-themed "after party" (I know. What?), which was to have a capacity of 500 people. (I think you already know that I didn't stay for that part, since for one thing, it was a Sunday night and we had work and school in the morning; and for another, I had children with me.)

If you are wondering whether I actually got up and danced on stage at this event, as I mentioned here:  NO. No, I did not. That portion of the event did not take place until nearly 10:00 PM, and I was long gone by that point. My kids and I were in our jammies and watching How to Train Your Dragon by 7:57 PM.

But the important thing is: it was beautiful, and the newlyweds looked enormously, gorgeously happy. And it was sort of an adventure, and certainly only one that could happen in L.A. The End.

Window Shopping

(Putting on my Andy Rooney voice for a moment:)  Have you ever noticed that when you are running low on funds, the universe bombards you with all kinds of beautiful things that you lurrrve but can't afford to buy? Have you also noticed the converse, in which when you happen to have some play money and want to treat yourself, you can't find anything you like?

I am currently in the former camp, and it is not my favorite place to be. There is a sort of workaround, which is the spectacular online pinboard, Pinterest. Oooh, I love love love Pinterest. The cool thing about Pinterest is you can pin something and then a few days/weeks/months later as you are adding to that particular board, you might realize you don't lurrrve something as much as you once thought, and you can delete it. It's almost like buying the actual thing and then having buyer's remorse, except that no cash has changed hands, and that is infinitely better for one's wallet. 

I originally got onto Pinterest to find ideas for kids' birthday parties, and then I got sucked into creating boards for home decor and recipes and outfits and hairstyles and such. It is kind of addictive, so I try only to use it from my phone. If I have a full-size screen to scroll through, I am a goner. Gah, so embarrassing. But having said that, I realize that my creative outlets at this point in time are: decorating my apartment; combining things in my closet in various ways to create new outfits out of what I already have; doing hair; and cooking. And as I realize that, I feel a little relief, because so often I mourn my lack of creative expression and feel depressed about it. I am just using different mediums at this moment, and that is okay. 

"As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning."

 - Brene Brown

 

Gettin' Gatsbyfied

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

 

So I am going to this wedding in a couple of weeks, and the bride is a very dear friend of the family. She is loud, and foul-mouthed, and complicates things endlessly. She is also generous to a fault, loyal, hilariously funny and loving to the point where she would without question take a bullet for anyone in our family. You take the good, you take the bad, and we love her, so here we are. 

 

Our friend likes to live large. She is an event planner, so naturally, her wedding has become a huge event. It is a 1920s themed wedding, being held at an art deco landmark LA hotel, and she has asked that all her guests dress in 1920s themed attire. I have been looking online at 1920s beaded dresses and found one I LOVE (a reproduction) for $400. Well, that is not going to happen in this current scenario. So I have decided to do a modern interpretation of the theme, and today I bought this:

 

Image courtesy of Bloomingdales

 

In the 1920s, dresses had little to no definition at the waist:

Image from Vintage Dancers - go check out the site, it's cool.





I bought a kind of art deco looking belt to slap around that bad boy and we'll see how that looks. I am going to wear long strings of pearls or perhaps a tassel necklace, depending on what I can find, and probably some 1920s shoes from Modcloth. I may try to set my hair in finger curls - will let you know how that turns out (I've been watching tutorials on YouTube).

 

So okay, I am getting all that together, feeling pretty good. And then today I received an email from the friend, saying that she is putting together a performance AT the wedding, and she is asking selected couples who have what she describes as successful marriages to participate. She wants me, as one-half of one of those couples, to lip-sync a song to Sweet Dub in the middle of the reception at this HUUUUUGE wedding. Holy Jesus!

 

You know what? My first reaction was to say no...so I said yes. Totally outside of my comfort zone, and I might embarrass the hell out of myself, but I'm going to do it. It will be a complete surprise to Sweet Dub and he will love that.

 

I get to pick the song. I am thinking I might do a Josephine Baker or Edith Piaf song. Or, in keeping with the theme, there's always Fergie:

 

I kid, I kid. But I do like her manicure here. And by the way:  song suggestions welcome!

 

One Moment in Time

Have you ever used a day book? Or read one? Day books are simple journals that are used to record daily events as they occur -- back in the day, one would write about little happenings such as "first snow," or "finished Little Women today," or "zombie apocalypse, ugh."

 

Apparently, people still keep them online, formats vary widely and sometimes, sometimes you might see them in the form of a blog post. (You see, I actually did have a point there.) Here is my daybook entry for today - Monday, February 10, 2014.

 

------------------

 

I am thankful...that I was able to reconnect with friends this weekend at a bridal shower.

I am wearing...a gray and silver polka-dotted sweater with an aqua scarf, cropped dark gray pants, knee-high black high-heeled boots, and silver circle earrings.

I am wondering...what the hell I am going to wear to my friend’s wedding in two weeks. It’s a 1920s/Gatsby theme and we are asked to wear attire appropriate to the era. Note that Ceeya is the flower girl and Viva is a guest. I have dresses for them but no shoes yet. I am trying not to stress over this, as I know I will get it together, but I have not yet found anything for myself that I would LOVE to wear and that I might wear again.

I am pondering...why toilet seat covers have become such a big thing on public toilets. Is it really that hard to squat?

A favorite quote for today...

Photo of me (not from today, from this weekend's vintage Victorian bridal shower):

 

 

P.S. Do you not love the old lady hat? I die.

 

Working a Long-Range Plan

Image Credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter Two
In which we discuss how to get there from here.

Yesterday, I had lunch with a dear friend who is also a former co-worker – in fact, my former office-mate. We talked about our future plans. I told her that I am feeling this pull to go back to school. “For what?” she asked.  

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Communications, maybe?”

She made a face and snorted. “Don’t waste your money with that, you’re already a great communicator,” she said.

“But I want to learn more of the tech side of things,” I said. “So I don’t need to go back to school full-time, just take a class here and there.”

“Yeah, try looking at some extension courses,” she said. “And I can connect you with a couple of writers who are freelancing and doing really well. One in particular, L – she is really easy to talk to, and she can tell you how she segued from freelancing part-time into a career as a full-time writer.”

It all sounds so simple, in a way. But I know I have to take one step at a time as part of a long-term plan to transform what my work life looks like now.

STRETCH.  

I am telling you this because I expect you to hold me to it, blogosphere. Don't let me shirk!

Lost in LA

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, Yo shi.

Today is Friday! I think I am supposed to be writing something about Los Angeles – my adopted hometown, the birthplace of my marriage and my babies, a pivotal place in the Lisa Journey – in honor of the upcoming 20th anniversary of my relocation here. 

When I first moved to Los Angeles in January of 1995, I was living with my then-boyfriend (now ex of many many years), in a half-way decent apartment on Hollywood Boulevard. If you are familiar with Los Angeles, you will be horrified to hear that I was actually living on Hollywood Boulevard, but if I tell you that it was the part west of La Brea, in fact almost as far west as Fairfax, you will realize that it was okay. Yes, even in those days before Hollywood was starting to reinvent itself a bit, that stretch of Hollywood Boulevard was fairly safe. Although I do believe that after I moved out and my ex was still living there, the apartment was burglarized one day while he was out. 

At any rate, it was a half-way decent apartment, and it was on a bus line, which was crucial, since I did not have a car. As a Bostonian, I was raised on transit lines, and I did not get a driver’s license until I was 20. I did not actually own a car and drive on the regular until I was 27. It is a vastly different lifestyle, being from a city where one walks, or rides the subway or the bus wherever one wants to go. I arrived in Los Angeles, one of the biggest cities in the world, and I expected to walk out of my apartment and that a bus would come by within five to ten minutes. A bus schedule? Who ever heard of something so ridiculous? 

Oh, silly, silly 26-year-old me. That was a pipe dream. 

But here is one thing I loved: the section of Hollywood Boulevard where I lived had sky-scraping palm trees lining the sides of the street, and you had to crane your neck way back to see the tops.

I loved that a few blocks down the street, when we would stroll along on one of the side streets between Hollywood and Sunset Blvds. (was it Curson? Was it Sierra Bonita? I can’t say), there were all these adorable bungalows, and that in the front yard of one of them, behind a four-foot high fence, there were two massive Great Danes – one black and white, one tan – and they would bark a couple of times as we came near and heave themselves up and lay their great paws and legs over the fence easily, still with their hind feet on the ground, and fawn all over us and let us rub their giant microwave-sized heads, and wag their tails with great dignity. 

I loved that I could walk to the Alpha Beta supermarket at the corner or Fairfax and Santa Monica (sadly, no more – it is a Whole Foods) and that I might run into Angelyne in the parking lot. 

I loved the unexpectedness of it all, the vastness of it, the random bits of delightful weirdness which seemed part and parcel of Hollywood life – all the more remarkable because I had resisted moving there in the first place. LA was such a sprawl, I thought. I feared it. I might be lost in it. And I was, lost in it. But not in a bad way.

Next Generation Artsy

Recently, the Blah Blah family undertook a little creative adventure. I am looking for new things for us to do these days--things to give my kids a different perspective, to broaden their horizons, Lord, maybe enrich them a little bit.

So with all the resources at my disposal, with minimal research I came across the Arts for NexGen program at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Well, what?! This is a free (FREE!) program for kids under 18. They have activities for kids every Sunday. Free! Metered parking around the museum is free (FREE!) on Sundays. Each kid who is a NexGen member can bring one adult guest with them every visit--free! Are you seeing a trend here?

Well, I signed the kids up online and received their membership cards in less than a week. And we went to LACMA, and I am embarrassed to say it's the first time my kids had been there. They loved it!

Tickets and maps and things, oh my!

We were helped along in the beginning by some nice folks who were helping direct people for Andell Family Sundays, a free (FREE! But I would imagine, underwritten by the Andells, so free thanks to them) day of kid-friendly activities on (coincidentally) Sundays at LACMA. They helped us map out our agenda and gave us some tips on what to see and where to go.

We stopped by Metropolis II, a cool miniature cityscape with tiny cars and trains that whiz about. We participated in a Photography and Light activity in which a NexGen docent talked to the kids about light and shadow and gave us all paper and pencils and encouraged us to find art that we liked and draw it. I chose this photograph:




Viva chose to draw me drawing the photograph, while Sweet Dub photographed us both:




And later on we ran around and under the Levitated Mass:

That's Ceeya, looking especially tiny.

And we tried creating little vignettes with shadow boxes and photographing them:







And then we had lunch from one of the skazillion food trucks parked across the street:

(That's Belly Bombz, by the way.)

And then it took me like three weeks to blog about it. But it was still fun. The End.


P.S. Totally recommend!

Patience, My Precious

All indications from the universe lean toward telling me that I must be patient. I have had two weeks of servers crashing, appointments going wonky, and heavy traffic. Just now, I composed an email to someone about a job posting and my gmail will NOT SEND IT.

Something else must be in store. I remain hopeful.

 

P.S. I wrote this and stupidly tried to post it, not making the connection that Blogger is also a Google platform. Thus, if gmail is not working, neither is Blogger. I is smart some timez.

Permission to Fail

It is still early in the year yet, and folks are still kind of riled up about resolutions, and achieving things, and highfalutin’ aspirations about making themselves better people and whatnot. In that spirit (and I by no means seek to denigrate such folk, as I can sort of count myself among them), I present to you “Fail Fast, Fail Often,” a recent article on the Daily Beast. (Well, actually, not so much an article as it is an excerpt of the book by the same name.)

The premise of this piece is that we too often get bogged down in details instead of taking action. The authors exhort us to do things badly, as fast as we can, because if we increase the quantity of our output we will stop worrying about the quality of the output – and yet, and YET! Somehow mysteriously letting go of worrying about the little details often results in higher quality output. At least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

There is something to be said for this, at least for me, because I am one of those “getting bogged down” people, with the result that I can too easily talk myself out of doing something because it will require Too. Much. I convince myself that I don’t know Enough to do said thing, so I get bogged down in learning more about it, and putting off doing something while I try to backfill what I think I need to know. And then after I have made two or three steps and realize the great enormity of all there is yet to learn, it becomes a monumental task and I get caught up in something else and never get back to it.

What? What? Is that really the best way to go about things? Clearly not.

Where I get bogged down is in expending time and energy on an idea that isn’t going to work. They key is to determine if the idea is workable. It is not always clear or obvious. But I like the idea of kind of throwing myself into it quickly, and seeing if it’s all that and a bag of chips, as I imagined it to be, or whether it’s simply a no go. And then moving on to the next new shiny thing.

So again, for 2014 it’s all about that one little word for me:  STRETCH. Get out of the comfort zone. Do things a little differently. Or maybe a lot differently. As the authors say,

You can’t know what something is like, how you will feel about it, or what will result from it until you actually are doing it.

It’s pretty simple actually. Let’s get stretchin’!

One New Thing

Image credit:  Catatonique, Wikimedia Commons. MANHATTAN BEACH, CA IN THE MIDDLE OF A CALIFORNIA WINTER.
 
I realized suddenly over the holiday break that I am coming up on 20 years in California (in September 2014) and 20 years in my adopted hometown of Los Angeles (January 2015). Well, I have to do something, I thought. So here on Ye Little Blogge, I am introducing a new feature, which I hope to include every Friday. Each Friday I will post something here that is uniquely Los Angeles. I have also committed my family to one new L.A. adventure per month, which I will then write about here. 

Oh, I know, you can hardly stand it. Or, maybe, you know, you just could not care less. Either way, I embrace you - I just can't help it. 

I am also hoping, over the course of this year, to plan some sort of event in January 2015 to mark this anniversary. Just because, why not? It's fun to have something fun to work toward. (It's also fun to have fun, but you have to know how.) Ideas welcome!

one little word 2014

Well, hello and Happy Twenty-Fourteen!

I hope your holidays were spectacular. Over here in Blah Blah Land, we were felled by nasty colds the week before Christmas. By 3 pm Christmas Day, the kids were still not out of their pajamas and any chance of us getting to my in-laws' for dinner was twisting in the wind, as neither Sweet Dub nor I could summon the gumption to peel ourselves off the couch. We actually did not do much of anything until the weekend. You'd think I could sit down at the keyboard at least once but obviously I was just too far gone for even that!

Moving on: here we are, and I have spent some precious moments doing a bit of a "Year in Review" in my journal and setting some priorities (NOT resolutions, you know how I am) for the coming year. I also caught up a bit on my blog reading and ran across the "one little word" concept, thanks to Elise over at enJOY it. I think I vaguely remember it from last year, when I considered it but decided then to create a mantra rather than just one word. I am a late adopter.

At any rate, one little word is a concept originally developed by Ali Edwards. She asks:

Can you identify a single word that sums up what you want for yourself in [the coming year]? 

It can be something tangible or intangible. It could be a thought or a feeling or an emotion. It can be singular or plural. The key is to find something that has personal meaning for you.

The idea is to find a word that you want to guide your steps over the next year. One little word didn't come to me right away -- I considered and rejected several, and then: STRETCH popped into my mind. Ba-bam, that's the one.

Why STRETCH? Because in 2014:

I want to move my body more.
I want to expand my horizons.
I want to get outside of my comfort zone.
I want to increase and enhance my skills.
I want to move beyond my current parameters.

I don't, however, want to increase my waistline. STRETCH pants are not the angle I'm going for. (Although I did get two new pairs of yoga pants for Christmas and they are bomb.)

How's about you? You got one little word?

Merry merry

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! Wishing you and yours all the joy of the season, for real. Peace!

The Way Things Work

If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out… Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.
― Randy Pausch

Oh, my. So Thanksgiving happened, and NaBloPoMo ended, and I went back to work on Monday and it has been days on end of bitching and moaning. Surprisingly, most of it is not coming from me! 

I recently came across this article on the Greatist site, and while I don’t work in a cubicle, I do work in a shared office with no divider. Working in a shared space means that you are always painfully aware of what the other person is doing – for example, when they are on the phone or when someone stops by to ask or answer a question.  Or when they feel comfortable enough to just blurt out whatever comes into their head, regardless of whether you are deep in thought and on the cusp of a breakthrough as revolutionary as the theory of relativity (What? It could happen.).  Also: I am a talkative person anyway, and easily distracted. If you start talking to me I will all too easily start talking back. And then we’ll look up and fifteen minutes have passed and I am still no closer to cracking the next big thing in particle physics, or better yet, finishing up my quarterly fundraising report.

At any rate, this article reports that “employees in cubicles face 29% more interruptions than workers in private offices,” and that those who are frequently interrupted “report nine percent higher rates of exhaustion.” Yeah, that’s right.

The problem with the shared space is exacerbated when the person with whom you share space is having a hard time.  Even when the issue is a legitimate one, because there is another person there to hear the tale of woe, it seems to drag out the issue rather than resolving it. I don’t want to minimize the tale of woe, but I want to make it go away, because my involvement detracts from me getting any of the skazillion projects I am working on completed in any coherent or satisfactory way.

I am currently putting together a pitch to convince my boss to let me work from home at least one day a week. I think I will be way more productive if I don’t have to manage multiple interruptions. If she doesn’t go for it, it does not bode well for my future here. Sweet Dub’s schedule has been changing lately and I may need more flexibility, so perhaps I should be looking for a different environment anyway.
 

What’s your ideal work environment?

Day 30

On this last day of NaBloPoMo, I just want to say: whew! I did it!

The hair wars in my family continued over Thanksgiving. I don't understand what my child's hair has to do with anyone else in her family nor why they want to make her feel that she is not as pretty if her hair is not pressed straight. My daughter is beautiful. She is also smart and hard-working and funny and kind. I love her pretty little face and I love the deep conversations we have and the insightful remarks she makes. She brings me joy.

In that spirit, I leave you with this: How to Talk to Little Girls. Enjoy!

The Hang of This

I was proud of myself for writing a post ahead of Thanksgiving and for figuring out how to schedule it to post itself on Thanksgiving Day. I knew the day could easily get away from me. So yesterday when I had a few minutes of free time, I wrote another post and saved it so I could stay ahead of the game.

OF COURSE: I logged on today to post it and it's logging it as posted yesterday. Or maybe that's just my phone...?

Anyway, I still have a long way to go with this mobile blogging thing. Stay patient, my friends.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Betwixt and Between

I called my mom to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving. I called both the landline and her cell number. In both cases I got a message that the number had either been changed or disconnected.

Huh.

Emailed her via Facebook and gmail. No response yet.

Have left a message with my sister. This is very strange.

Further updates as events unfold.

Thankfully

Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants. - Kevin James

Wishing you all a day of elastic or drawstring waistlines. Wishing you a day of abundance not only in food, not only in thanks, but in family, friends, love, contentment, comfort, and all the things that are the opposite of stress. Wishing you peace. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Is there a doctor in the house?

(This year in 5th grade, Viva completed an entire unit on the "amazing body machine," including doing a PowerPoint presentation on the cardiovascular system in front of the whole school.)

(This evening...)

Sweet Dub: My eye hurts.

Viva: Let me look at it. You know I'm a doctor, my degree is hanging on the bottom of the fridge.

What more do you need, really?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Have a Laugh

Today kicked my butt. I got nothing for ya, NaBloPoMo.

 

Trying to upload a video of Ceeya for your enjoyment, but technology is rather ornery today. Did it work? The little girl giggle has to be one of the most infectious things on this earth.

Christmas Countdown!

Yeeps! For those who celebrate Christmas:  it is exactly ONE MONTH away. Aiiiiii!

Why do I feel like it has gotten away from me already? We usually have our holiday photos done and ordered by now, and we haven't even done our photo shoot yet - I admit I feel a little under the gun. (We are planning on shooting on Thursday or Friday morning and then designing and ordering the card over the weekend. Hopefully I can then receive them and do a mail-out by the weekend of December 9th. Time to get my mailing list together...)

One of the things that can too easily leave me scrambling at the last minute is stocking stuffers.  Not so much for the kids as for Sweet Dub. (I have also been known to buy them for myself now and then - don't judge, sometimes I just see something I would really like that seems perfect. Smiley face emoticon here. You know how it is.)

I was quite happy to stumble upon this in my Internet wanderings today: a list of men's stocking stuffer suggestions from the Art of Manliness blog. I think there are at least five items that Sweet Dub would be quite happy to receive.

As for my wish list: honestly, I have what I need. I would like some red boots since my wonderful old burgundy ones bit the dust last year. But truly I would be happy with an Amazon gift card and a few hours free to read.  And maybe a massage.

What's on your list?