Lessons Of The Week...

I've learned a lot in my 33 years but it seems that this past week, I was very overwhelmed with a few life lessons that I hadn't experienced yet...Lesson One: Don't heat up your Brussels Sprouts in the kitchen microwave at work. Your boss will run around the office asking why it stinks like broccoli and then your co-workers will make fun of you all afternoon. Lesson Two: If you try Frank Body Scrub (it's literally overpriced coffee grounds that you scrub all over your body to get rid of your dead skin), only take one handful of the coffee scrub in the shower with you. Otherwise you and your bathroom will smell like the local diner at the peak of the breakfast rush and your tub will be stained black.

Lesson Three: Don't have any packages delivered to the San Diego Hard Rock Hotel, they will sit in the mail room for a week. My good friend Rania sent a bottle of champagne to the hotel for me to receive upon my check in this past weekend since she wasn't able to make it to my Bachelorette Party. She texted me yesterday asking me how I liked the champagne and I was like, HUH??? Come to find out (after almost a half an hour on hold with the manager at the hotel) it had been sitting in the mail room all week. Awesome! Lesson Four: Don't day drink in excess on the night of your Bachelorette Party...you will pass out at 10:30 PM. Lesson Five: Don't get a spray tan before you get a manicure and pedicure. The water will turn brown and you will look like you are wearing white socks and gloves. Lesson Six: Don't drink a lot of vodka when you usually only drink beer at your sister's Bachelorette Party. You will puke in front of all your big sister's friends and then again on the street in front of a little boy and his dad. Dad to his son as Grace is puking- "that's why you don't drink so much, son!"

No Worries, I Can Fix It!

I've been known to pull some MacGyver moves in the past and I think it's due to my father being the best handyman I have ever met. This week, our fridge started to make a loud rattling noise which was driving Anthony and I nuts! It only seemed to stop when you would push it to one side but clearly we can't stand there all night and apply pressure to the left side of the fridge...we do have lives! I was at my wits end (and yes, we do have a handyman that should be en route to fix this problem any moment) and needed to fix the problem ASAP, so I used my (blonde) brain and came up with a great solution- a paper cup! I shoved it between the wall and the fridge to give it that pressure it needed to stop the rattling...I'm a freaking genius! Although the noise stopped, it does make a loud crackling sound every time you open the fridge, which freaks both Anthony and I out because we forget that it's the cup making the noise and not a monster living in our wall. I guess you win some, you lose some.....

Blonde Moments Part Deux

I had another blonde moment month where it seemed like I was consecutively saying and doing dumb things back to back...and frankly even I laughed after each of these incidents. Duh! Here we go. On our direct flight to Austin a few weekends ago, I was thinking about how my friend Beth is terrified of flying but she is graciously heading out to Austin for our wedding. I was hoping that her flying experience would be perfect on the way to the wedding and I turned to Anthony and asked, "do they have a direct flight from L.A. to Austin?" We were on it...

Anthony and I did a three day juice cleanse last week and since I didn't have to work on MLK Day, I agreed that I would walk the 6 or 7 blocks to Pressed Juicery to pick up the juice. It didn't occur to me until I was cashing out that I just bought 36 bottles of juice and had to walk the 6 or 7 blocks back home. By the time I arrived at our apartment, I was sweaty and practically bruised from the bag straps.

Anthony and I went to Drago Centro for a few drinks earlier this month (it's a pretty trendy and happening spot during Happy Hour) and I had to pee really bad. I walked over to where the bathroom was (in plain sight of Anthony at the bar) and pulled on the door, which didn't open. I assumed that it was locked but thought that it was weird that there was only a single stall at a busy restaurant like this one. I waited almost five minutes and decided to go back to the bar and wait there. I told Anthony that there was someone in the bathroom and I would have to suck it up and deal with the pain of having to pee when I saw an older lady walk right up to that same bathroom door and push it open. I looked at Anthony, smiled and said, "apparently you have to push the door, not pull!"

Party Trick Gone Wrong....Part Deux

You know the old saying 'screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me?' Well, in this case it was 'screw up once, shame on the champagne bottle. Screw up twice, shame on me.' I should have learned my lesson not to perform my champagne bottle trick on New Year's Eve (see my previous blog ironically titled 'Party Trick Gone Bad') but I was feeling good that night (and a little drunk) and decided I wanted to show off. I bought a cheap bottle of sparkling wine at Trader Joe's so I didn't have to waste any of the good stuff as we rang in the New Year. In my head, I had it all planned out. The countdown would begin as we all went outside to witness my amazing trick. I would hit my mark just as it turned midnight and everyone would cheer and throw confetti while sipping on champagne. This was the first time anyone I was celebrating with would see me perform my party trick. Anthony has seen it before, but his mom, sister Sarah, brother-in-law Paul, our friends Phil and Ivanna and their three sons would be seeing it for the first time. Talk about pressure! In my defense, it has been a while since I did the trick, it was sparkling wine, not champagne and it was a cheap bottle. (I bet you can see where this story is going). So here we all were, standing outside as we count down the last seconds to 2015...three, two, one! I sliced the blunt end of the knife across the seam of the shaken up bottle, just as I do every time I successfully do this trick. Nothing. I slice it again. Nothing. On the third try, I am getting a little aggravated and thus hit the top a little harder, smashing the bottle in half and spewing glass all over Phil and Ivanna's patio. Dammit! I tried to muster up a smile but I was left speechless, holding the bottom end of the champagne bottle as everyone around me is dying laughing. Trying to convince everyone that I could in fact complete my trick successfully, I looked over to Phil and Ivanna's youngest son, Abram and his upper lip has a speckle of blood on it. He told me that the cork hit him in the lip and I immediately thought I was never going to be invited back to their house ever again. Instead, they let me try my trick one more time (I nailed it on the first try) and Abram asked me to autograph the cork for him. All in all, I think it was a successful New Year's....

Our Egg-Cellent Discovery

The other morning, I opened up the fridge, took out the carton of eggs and made myself an egg white omelet. I had the carton open, next to me by the stove the entire time and didn't notice anything strange. About a half an hour later, Anthony decided that he wanted to make an omelet as well, so he opened up the fridge and got out the carton of eggs.

He immediately started laughing and asked me why I didn't tell him that there was something strange about one of the eggs in the carton. I looked at him puzzled as he picked up one of the eggs, held it up and started laughing again. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I walked over to the carton of eggs, looked at them and busted up. One of the eggs was ridiculously bigger than the others. How I didn't notice it blows my mind. Duh!!!! One of these things does not belong here...

Adventures With Stella

About 7 years ago, Alicia, Ryan and I decided to leave Los Angeles and begin a new chapter in Boston. But in order to do that, we had to sell/give away/pack all of our crap and drive across the country with our pets Stella and Sampson. Alicia's English Mastiff, Sampson (God rest his soul) had quite the setup in the back of her Jeep with his dog bed sprawled out for him to rest the entire trip back. But my cat, Stella was not so lucky and had to ride in her crate in the front seat of my car all the way back to the East Coast. We stopped frequently to feed them and let them do their business but when we spent the night at various hotels across the country, they hated us. First of all, both of them had no clue what was going on for the entire week it took us to get back home and second of all, they were MISERABLE. Poor babies. At least Stella didn't do the extremely loud, "MMRREEOOWWW" that cats in stress love to vocalize for the entire ride back. Anyone who has a cat knows exactly that type of meow I am referring to. It usually occurs when the cat is in the car, bathtub, or on the way to the vet. It is freakishly loud and you never thought that type of sound would come from their body! But she did stay up all night when we were trying to get some much needed sleep, jumping from my bed to Alicia and Ryan's bed driving all of us nuts. And then when we did attempt to lock her in the bathroom she would "MMRREEOOWWW" all night long. When we checked into the hotels, we told them that we didn't have any pets as Stella's crate was easy to sneak in, but sneaking Sampson in? That was another story. Don't ask me how we managed to get a 150 lb. Mastiff in and out of tiny motel rooms all across the country without anyone noticing, but we did. It was quite an adventure that we endured with our pets and I don't think they ever forgot it.

Although I miss her every day, Stella now lives with my parents in Maine, as I didn't want to risk putting her on a plane when I decided to move back to Los Angeles in 2010. I would have been that girl that everyone hated while my cat was "MMRREEOOWWW-ing" the entire flight. But lucky for me, Stella never lets me forget that I 'gave her up for adoption' or that I made her ride shotgun cross country with me for an entire week. I swear, she is seeking a kitty revenge on me. Last time I was home, I woke up to her on my head chewing my hair....

Baby Jesus...

When I was little, I adored my Cabbage Patch Kid my mom went to such trouble to get for me. This was in the 80's when people actually killed each other over those silly dolls! If I remember correctly, my older sister, Amber and I would do anything to get our hands on one of those dolls for our Christmas gifts one year and I believe my mom ordered a generic Cabbage Patch Kid doll out of the J.C. Penney catalog (I used to love that catalog!). We would have no idea what the doll would look like or what sex it would be until we tore into that brown paper bag that it came in on Christmas morning. They were the real deal with Xavier Roberts' signature on the butt and the green and white birth certificate from the cabbage patch but they just wouldn't come in the yellow and green boxes for some reason. Amber opened hers up to reveal a boy with light brown hair named Paul, who she immediately renamed Paula and dressed only in girl clothes. It was basically a quick, easy and painless sex change operation. I opened my bundle of joy to find a bald boy with some name I clearly didn't like because I promptly renamed my new best friend 'Baby Jesus.'

If you remember anything about the Cabbage Patch Kid dolls, some of them came with a small hole in their mouths so they could suck on the bright yellow plastic pacifiers that came with them. Well 'Baby Jesus' apparently didn't like his pacifier because I would only feed him peas and Kix cereal, making for a very messy cleanup for my mom. I would take 'Baby Jesus' everywhere with me! He even accompanied me to my first day of Nursery School. But I especially liked to take him to the store with me when I would go shopping with my mom. The only downfall? There were a few times when I would drop him on the floor at the supermarket and I would yell 'JESUS!' so my mom would stop the cart to pick him up. My poor mom, mortified and red in the face would have to explain to the other shoppers who stared at my outburst, that I was just yelling for my doll, 'Baby Jesus.' They just didn't get it...