Head Over Heels

This is the story of how I lost a pair of heels that were very near and dear to my heart....this is a sad, sad story (don't be fooled by my smile in the picture). My friend Kari had a gorgeous pair of yellow heels up for grabs one day when Beth and I went over to her house for a BBQ last summer. The only catch? We both wanted them and they fit both of us nicely. What were we to do? Kari's Aunt Marge cleverly announced that we should have a walk off for the shoes. So, that was exactly what we did. Kari turned up the salsa music, everyone stood around and Beth and I each took our turn down the 'runway.' I confidently strapped on those heels, worked my hips to the salsa music, made people laugh and won those shoes fair and square. Don't listen to Beth when she says it was a tie and she generously handed them over to me!     ; )

I loved those heels. They were everything you wanted in a heel and more. Strappy, yellow, comfortable and pretty. I wore them to my sister's wedding, to my friend Mary's Bachelorette party in Las Vegas and to her rehearsal dinner in Palm Springs. Palm Springs- that is where they would meet their demise and I would have to bury them (but not their memory) and head back to Los Angeles without them.

It all began the night of the rehearsal dinner. Everything was going well- I was getting many compliments on the shoes, they were still comfortable and I was having fun. I thought my shoes were also having fun but I was wrong. Dead wrong. As I walked arm in arm to the shuttle with my fellow bridesmaid, Lety, I felt a weird wobble on my left foot and I sunk down a few inches. What the hell? I looked down and my heel had snapped clean off the shoe. I screamed, held the heel up in the air like Mufasa did to Simba in The Lion King and cried out, "has anyone ever met someone who lost a heel like this?" Just as I expected, everyone in unison answered, "who else but Erin?"

RIP Yellow Guess heels. You will be missed.

Dwight Yoak-whom?

This was the third year in a row that Beth and I made our way out to the desert for the Stagecoach Country Music Festival. It is one our favorite times ever and this year was no different. Although it was the hottest weather we have ever experienced, we still braved the climate, slathered head to toe in sunscreen, intricately placed our Shark Skin flasks in our pants and/or bras and headed to the Empire Polo Club in Indio. Besides tailgating in the parking lot, trying to stay hydrated while sweating to death and finally crossing through the security checkpoint with our free booze in our pants, we ultimately love to see the bands. This year on the Toyota Mane stage we saw Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum, Thompson Square and Dierks Bentley to name a few. Between the big acts and our annoying trips to the steaming hot and smelly port-a-potty’s, we did make our way over to the side stages to see a few other acts. Like Dwight Yoakam. Or at least who we thought was Dwight Yoakam…

We were a little drunk when we made our way over to the stage to see Dwight and when we got there, he was already performing. We joined the rest of the crowd, singing and dancing along to his legendary music. We kept commenting on his tight, black leather pants, his dapper ascot and his slicked back poofy helmet hair and wondered if he had any plastic surgery. What did it matter, though? This was Dwight Yoakam and we certainly were enjoying it.

The next day, while we were eating at Subway, we decided to ‘Google’ Dwight Yoakam just to see how old he actually was and if he had gone under the knife. We were surprised when the numerous pictures that came up looked absolutely nothing like the Dwight we had seen. We were confused. Did we see Dwight Yoheim? Yight Doakam? Shmight Schmoakam? We looked at the lineup again and saw that Dwight did in fact play from 5:30-6:30 on one of the side stages. Huh. But we also noticed that Marty Stuart played from 5:30-6:30 on one of the side stages as well. We ‘Googled’ Marty Stuart and to our surprise we saw that shiny haired, ascot loving smile glaring back at us. Dammit.

Say Cheese!

I am usually a very outgoing person and don’t mind small talking with strangers but sometimes I just need ‘Erin time.’ Like today, when I was enjoying my salad outside Trader Joe’s in the warm sunlight. Just as I took a bite of my grilled chicken salad with rice noodles, a guy sat down on the bench next to me. This was completely normal at this hour, as many people frequent the benches outside Trader Joe’s for lunch. I didn’t think anything of it, until he asked me how the salad was. I quickly responded (mid chew) that it was good, hoping that our brief conversation was over. Nope! He then proceeded to tell me about all the different salads that he has tried from Trader Joe’s and began to embellish on his vegetarian lifestyle. He asked me if I ever tried to be a vegetarian and I told him I was a vegan momentarily but missed cheese too much. Well, I must have been talking to a cheese connoisseur because it was as if I was talking about shrimp with Bubba from Forrest Gump the way he responded to my comment.  

The guy starts asking me what my favorite cheeses were, told me which ones he preferred, how blue cheese contained penicillin, how parmesan was surprisingly easy to cook with and how swiss was not…blah blah blah blah….I thought someone was playing a trick on me. As he got more and more excited on the cheese topic, I just nodded in disbelief that I was actually “having a conversation” with this guy during my ‘Erin time’ and wished I could just walk away. But oh no, Erin is too nice and sat and listed to every last minute of Cheesy McCheddarson’s speech until my lunch break was over. As I was walking back to my office I surprisingly had a craving for a mozzarella cheese stick….

Eye Have No Idea How I Got Into This Situation

Writing about my New Year’s Eve champagne bottle trick failure last month got me thinking about past New Year’s Eves and how something always goes wrong for me…like last year when my best friend Beth got married on New Year’s Eve in Tucson. What could possible go wrong? Erin, that’s what!

It all started when a stray spark from one of the sparklers that was given out at midnight burned a hole through the top of my pantsuit. Next, as I went to use the restroom inside Beth’s parent’s house, I heard a faint voice calling my name in the other bathroom down the hall. Who the hell was calling my name? I was a little drunk and very much confused. As I made my way down the hallway, I noticed it was my friend Kari’s husband, Elan, calling out for my help. Why was he calling my name? Where was Kari? This was not good…

Just then, Elan burst out of Beth’s parent’s bathroom looking like he had just done something horrible. He looked at me like I was the light at the end of his tunnel. “Erin, I just puked in the toilet and it isn’t going down! Don’t tell Kari!” Great! This is all I need, to be stuck in the bathroom with my friend’s husband keeping secrets. This was starting to feel like a bad soap opera. I promised Elan that I wouldn’t look into the toilet; I pushed him out of the way and proceeded to take the back of the tank off the toilet. As Elan stumbled to get out of the way, he knocked over his glass that was sitting on the edge of the tub, shattering it. Wonderful! Now I had two messes to clean up, stuck in this bathroom with my friend’s husband. Was I being Punk’d? Where was Ashton? I told Elan to clean up the glass as I reached my hand into the tank and manually flushed the toilet. Yes, I am part boy sometimes. As Elan was on his hands and knees drunkenly cleaning up the mess, the toilet cooperated with me and his puke went down…success!

I stepped over him to get to the sink to look at the damage I had done to my face and hair and noticed that my eyes were a bit red. For anyone who knows me, I don’t take well to red eyes and may even admit to a slight addiction to eye drops. I opened Beth’s parent’s medicine cabinet (now I was just overstepping every boundary) to see if there was any Visine inside. I found something resembling eye drops and quickly squirted the liquid into my eye before someone discovered I was shut in Beth’s parent’s bathroom, alone with my friend’s husband, rummaging through their medicine cabinet. Before I could even get the cap back on, my eye started to burn and I doubled over in pain and screamed. Through my other watery and half open eye I peered at Elan, who was now standing over me in complete horror. He had no idea what was happening and looked like he had just discovered a dead body. Just then, I heard Kari say, “Where is my husband?” and Beth’s dad walked in the bathroom to see what was going on. Elan and I tried to explain the situation as he called for help. Can you say embarrassing?

Just then, a small crowd started to form outside the bathroom and Beth’s sister-in-law who is a kindergarten teacher and has flushed sand out of plenty of kid’s eyes on the playground walked in to assist. I showed her what I put in my eye and she immediately shook her head. Apparently Beth’s mom is the last person on Earth who uses hard contacts still and I had poured the solution she uses to wash them directly into my eye. Brilliant, Erin! After a ten minute session under the faucet getting my eye washed out while Elan tried to explain what happened, I could see again. I should have brought an eye patch that night because for the remainder of the reception, my left eye was completely bloodshot and I had mascara stains all down my cheek. Beth and Kris are still married, Kari is still my friend and Elan told his wife that he puked, so I guess it wasn’t all that bad…

An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctors Away

A few weeks ago, my friend Lisa, who is a producer on the daytime talk show, The Doctors, left me a voice mail asking me if I would be interested in coming on the show. Honestly, I had never seen the show before and had no idea what I would be doing but I was intrigued, so I called her back. When I got a hold of her, she told me that the segment was going to be about ‘bumps down there’ and they needed an attractive girl with a big personality who would liven up the segment. Me? I laughed….here I was, trying to pursue my dream as an entertainment host and now I would be on television talking about vajayjays? Why not! I told her I would do it as long as I didn’t have to lie and say I had any sort of bump down there short of occasional razor burn and she convinced me it would be fine and gave me all the details. I was a definite yes. I called my mom and told her that I was going to be on the show talking about vaginas and she laughed for about ten minutes.

That next Thursday, I took the day off from work, slept in, picked out an outfit and headed to Paramount Studios sans makeup because she told me I would be getting my hair and makeup done before the show. Snap! When I arrived at the lot, I parked and let her know that I was there. I was surprised when she said that she was sending a golf cart to pick me up and I already felt like a celebrity. Now I understood why these D-list reality stars milk their fifteen minutes of fame for all its worth- it felt great to be ‘famous.’ Once we arrived at the stage, she led me upstairs to my dressing room, yup, MY dressing room. It said ‘Erin’ on the door and everything (I mean that IS my name but it was just fun seeing it there). Okay, so now the girl from Maine was coming and I think I peed a little from excitement as I waited to get my hair and makeup done. Once I was camera ready, I hopped out of the makeup chair and lined up with the rest of the ‘audience members’ waiting to head down to the set. Spoiler alert- all of those TV shows that you see where you think the audience members are chosen out of the blue are a hoax! Basically everyone in the audience is an extra and the chosen ones who will actually be brought up to the stage are all planned. Nothing is real on TV, not ever the cases on Judge Judy… sorry kids!

After being placed in the audience and getting prepped on where to stand once I got up on stage and what I was supposed to bring to the segment, I was a tad nervous. Basically I was supposed to be the audience member who got called up when the gynecologist was discussing good and bad bumps on the vagina and feel these make believe bumps and say what I thought. Here I was, Erin from Maine, touching fake vaginas on TV…my family was definitely going to have a viewing party once the show aired. What if I blanked and couldn’t think of something witty to say when asked about the vagina? What if I did horrible and my friend never wanted me to come back?  How did I get in this situation again? Then I took a deep breath and thought, it’s just casual vajayjay talk on national TV….Yikes! 

When my segment began, it all seemed like a flash and the next thing I knew, I was up on the stage next to Doctor Lisa and the hot doctor (who is too hot to have a name) grazing my hand over a board of bumps commenting on how one looked like a wad of bubblegum and if I saw that one I would run screaming to my doctor. Soon enough it was over and I was on my home. My friend texted me shortly after and said that I did fabulous and I was happy she thought so, because it was all a blur to me. At least I made her happy…and my vagina, I’m sure!

Unlikely Proposal

LA is very weird....today, as I was walking back to my car in Mid-City, I got a sweet proposal, but it wasn't from my boyfriend. My car was parked off of Wilshire and Hauser at a meter and as I got in the driver's side, I figured I would call my sister because the meter was blinking green indicating that I had more than enough time to stay in the spot. So, when the City Parking Enforcement pulled up next to my car, I naturally kept on gabbing because I wasn't doing anything wrong. After a few minutes, the car didn't move and actually pulled up so he was eye to eye with my window. I glanced over wondering if I was about to get towed or something and he motioned me to roll down my window. Oh crap, now what? I told Grace to hold on as I rolled down my window and replied, "Yes?" He asked me if he could ask me a question so I told him yes. Looking me right in the eye, he said "Will you marry me?" Completely taken aback, I burst out laughing, rolled up my window and drove away. LA is very weird....

Six Reasons I Am (Who Else But) Erin...

There are various reasons (as those of you who follow my blog know) that I am Who Else But Erin. Here are my top six reasons...Why not five? Because I'm Erin, that's why!

• I am still getting over my intense fear of squirrels. Yes, squirrels.
• Last night while I was shaving my arms in the shower, I accidentally cut my hand with the razor.
• I love bananas on their own, but I can't stand eating anything mixed with bananas like strawberry banana yogurt. Yuck!
• If I start eating outside, like on a picnic, I love the fresh air. But if I am eating at the dining room table and someone opens the sliding glass door and I smell fresh air, I get grossed out.
• One of my goals in life is to find a dead body.
• I have a pickle obsession. I love all pickles, pickle juice and anything pickled. I could probably pickle my own arm in a jar and eat it....well, not really. Anthony and I went to Costco this weekend and he bought me a big jar of pickles (because I was a good girl) and said, "don't eat that whole jar tonight!" I replied, "I can’t promise you anything..."