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...

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!