I'm Going To Be Rich!

It seemed like when my friend Alicia and I lived in our apartment in Hollywood, weird things always happened around us. Maybe it was the area we were in or the company we were surrounded by, but Hollywood was (and still is) a strange place. I swear there was about sixteen people living in the two bedroom apartment to our right and our landlord drove a Bentley and a Range Rover and was once threatened by our upstairs neighbor with a machete. Alicia and I were clearly on the patio spying on that drunken shenanigan. We were also on the patio spying on our neighbor across the street one night when his girlfriend busted in yelling at him, threatening to tell his wife about their relationship until he picked her up and threw her over the fence. The neighbors to our left were always throwing crazy Quinceaneras every weekend with flashing neon lights and such loud music that Alicia and I had to scream to talk to each other in our living room. Every morning a guy would sell tamales on the street out of the back of his pick up truck, and one day I came home from work to find a quarter of our living room carpet covered in termites....but the best thing that ever happened in that place was when I thought I discovered a new type of bug.

Alicia and I were out on our patio one night when I saw something moving around on the ground. I turned on the patio light to find a giant bee/ant like creature about two inches in size. Of course I screamed and called Alicia over to check it out. I'm pretty sure we had both been drinking which heightened the excitement of this whole experience but we had never seen anything like the critter we were staring at. I immediately grabbed a Tupperware from the cabinet and captured it, convinced that I had just discovered a new species. I honestly started to look up different museums that may be looking for new types of insects and was already planning out how I would spend my millions after I received some prestigious, scientific award.  Not knowing what to do with my little moneymaker, I stuck it in the freezer to preserve it like any great scientist would do. I even called over our friend Brian to inspect him and ensure me that I had in fact uncovered something fabulous. He agreed and told me I needed to get that thing into the National History Museum or something. I was so proud that I snapped a picture and sent it to my friend, Beth. Of course that girl knows every time of flower, tree, bird, cat and bug and wrote back, "that's a Potato Bug (also known as a Jerusalem Cricket) you dummy!" So I Googled 'Potato Bug' and sure enough that stinking bug was all over the Internet already. Obviously we had never seen such a bug being from Maine because they are native to Western United States and Mexico. I'm actually glad Beth was the one who called me a dummy and not the editor of the scientific journal whom I was already drafting a letter to....

Damn You, 'Parenthood!'

My mom and I are the biggest fans of NBC's 'Parenthood' but we are usually on different coasts while we watch it every Thursday night. Last weekend, I had a chance to watch it with her for the first time and as any other fan of the show knows, we cry every time. This time was no different. Enjoy! 

Oh Honey, Put Those Glasses Back On!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Halloween......and that I also have extremely sensitive skin. (Thanks, Mom!) For the most part, those two don't mix well together, especially when it comes to my love for the holiday and my desire to go all out when it comes to my costumes every year. So, it made me really sad  a few weeks ago when my eyes started to get a little red whenever I used a certain eye makeup remover. So I switched to using Coconut Oil as an eye makeup remover because I had heard so many great things about it! You can eat it, slather it all over your body and whiten your teeth with it...You can pretty much swim in it and it will transform your life. After the first few days of using it to take off my eye makeup, my skin was looking fantastic!

And then I woke up one morning and my eyelids were bright red. Although it hurt to put on makeup, I had to so I wouldn't scare off my co-workers. Then the redness spread to under my eyes and it started to get dry and itchy. I immediately made an appointment with my dermatologist knowing that Halloween was around the corner and my Miss Argentina (from Beetlejuice) costume required a full sea foam green/blue face and body paint and heavy dark makeup around my eyes. What was I going to do? I then started to do some research on the Internet thinking that it had to be the coconut oil. I read an interesting article that said if you are of European descent, DO NOT USE COCONUT OIL ON YOUR FACE. There it was, practically shouting at me! I was of European descent and I was using coconut oil on my face. BINGO and CRAP! So I stopped using it and canceled my dermatologist appointment, apparently thinking that I was now a doctor who could solve this herself by slopping on a mask of cucumber, yogurt, honey and oatmeal every night and it would go away. Although, it was getting a little better around my eyes, the redness was not completely gone. Mind you, I was getting a lot of compliments of how great my skin looked!


But then Halloween night came around and there was no backing down- I was painting my face no matter what! I had two parties to go to that weekend and both involved face paint. It was a chance I was willing to take! After the weekend was over and Sunday night came around, I scrubbed the crap out of my face, moisturized like crazy and put a few tea bags on my eyes before bed. But when I woke up on Monday morning, I was horrified! I looked like Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre-Dame wearing the red Ninja Turtle's eye mask. 

There was no way I was going to work looking like this! I put on a pair of sunglasses and drove to my dermatologist's office....Although I didn't have an appointment, the receptionist told me that the Doctor would be able to see me right away. Actually, I took off my sunglasses to show her my face and she gasped and said, "Oh honey, put those glasses back on!" When my dermatologist came in to see me, I told her what I had done to myself and she just kept saying, "poor thing!" I wanted to whip out the pictures of my Halloween costume and show her that it was well worth it but I thought it would be a tad inappropriate. She gave me some cream and pills and that was that. The next day when I woke up, the swelling was completely gone and the redness had certainly subdued a bit but it was still obvious that my eyes were not normal. I wished I could have worn my sunglasses to work but I sucked it up and for the first time ever I didn't wear a stitch of eye makeup that day. I am now almost completely healed and I have to say the best part about those pills are that they make your skin so dry that it feels as though I had a face lift. I may be on to something here....