The Gurly Life

On being "arrested"

The last couple of weeks, I have been fundraising for the MDA, the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The deal was that a group of us from the office would get "arrested" by firefighters and get taken to "jail." Jail being The Old Spaghetti Factory, and "arrested" meaning a cute young firefighter 

 

who politely asked the receptionist to let us know he was there to pick us up. In a convertible Cadillac, no less - some paddy wagon! Look at me, I'm so jazzed to be next to that strapping young man, it's almost obscene. This young man is from one of our city fire departments, so how weird would it be if I had to sue myself for sexual harassment? Weird.

We rode in the comfortable luxury car to the restaurant, which serves gluten free pasta, by the way, otherwise there would have been bitching. The ladies hosting the event were very sweet, and they took this picture of us.

  

How you know that this is not a real jail is because of the big red hearts. Otherwise, it's TOTALLY realistic. Totally.

We sat at our table, and tried to look serious. This is the result.

 
 

We are terrible actresses. I need to remember than letting my boobs sag does not make me look serious, it just makes me look old.

One of the nice ladies came over to tell Ivy that her contribution paid for a day of camp for a kid with MDA (or something) and one minute of research. The she turned to me and said "Oh and you did great, too!" Eh-hem. Yeeeaaah. Ivy got a plaque because she raised lots of money. Way to go, Ivy!

After lunch, we go to meet Holly, MDA's goodwill ambassador, who told us all about summer camp. They ride horses (one person on each side and one person leads the horse), they swim, they throw goo at the camp counselors, and do all sorts of other fun stuff. But they need lots of assistance and helpers, and all that costs money.

  

Holly is in 6th grade, and what a pretty girl she is. Her eyes sparkle, and her little face is so full of life I felt so privileged to talk to her and hear what this organization funds. We were very glad we did this. I think next year I'll do it again, and will certainly continue to contribute to this wonderful organization.

Thanks to all of you who contributed to this event, it was fun and really sweet, and a great, great cause.

I look like a giant

My friend L from 30 years ago (see here for that post) sent me this picture. The three little girls in white were my classmates/friends. L is the one with the short dark hair. I'm in the front, and since the camera apparently adds 10 pounds, 6 inches and gigantism, I look much bigger than I actually was. I hope. God, I hope.

  

They are wearing white because this was their confirmation, I think. It's some mysterious Catholic thing that I don't know anything about, but that's what this was. Me, being the godless heathen that I am (yay!), I didn't do any of this stuff.

Friendship

If you remember, only 5 short weeks ago was my first writing assignment. Part of the assignment was to write my autobiography in one word, and mine was "friendship."

This came to mind about a week ago when I got a Facebook friend request from an old friend, L. And by old, I mean, OLD. Well, not old as in 80, but as in someone I've known for a looong time but hadn't spoken to in almost as long.

When I was about 9 (give or take), we left Italy and moved to Iran. My dad got a job with a company that had offices worldwide, and we were sent to Iran, just for starters. We weren't there for very long - this was the late 70s, and in 1979 there was a revolution against the then leader, the Shah. This was when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile. It's weird to have experienced part of that transition rather than just know about it. Anyway.

We returned to Italy, and I went to school across the street from where we lived. Yup. I used to walk to school. L was my age, and we lived in the same apartment complex. We both had cocker spaniels. We had known each other before I left for Iran, but I don't remember for how long or how close we were. But I have a feeling we were pretty good friends. We used to hang out and walk our dogs and pretend we were Samantha and her mother, Endora, from Bewitched. We would take turns with the roles. I can twitch my nose to this day, though it is not a talent I show off often. Come to think of it, I should.

L and I have been emailing back and forth, catching up on 30 years of life. She is married, with two kids, and dreams of running away and leaving them all to fend for themselves. You understand, Italian wives cook and clean and do all the laundry, and this is after a full day of work. No one else does anything, usually. One more reason why I would never make it in Italy, I'd be all, do your own damn laundry. In fact, when I lived in Italy with my first husband, Mario, his mother would wash and iron his shirts. I don't think he ever even dared to ask me to do it, knowing full well that I'd laugh at him and probably use a few choice four-letter words.

But I digress. As always.

Before we left, L and I were neighborhood friends - I went to a different school. When we came back, and I went to the school across the street, we also became classmates. This worked out well because I joined the class after the year had begun, and everyone had chosen (or been assigned) their cliques. L happened to be the leader of the popular girls clique. They were cute, too. But L was not a mean girl. I found myself in the popular cute girls' clique, which to this day is mystifying.

But you know, that's kind of besides the point. The point is that we were good friends, and that I left and then I forgot a lot of the things we did together, and how much time we spent together, and she didn't forget. She missed me when I left. I don't know why I never knew this or didn't think of it, or perhaps we wrote to each other and over time lost touch.

The point is that here we are again, 30 years later. We're catching up, and who knows what kind of a friendship we are going to have now.

Meet Shiro

Adam's new Toyota Prius. Shiro is the Japanese word for white. Classy, yes?

  

To his friends, however, he's Pepe.

Hangin' out with my girls - updated

This evening I'll see my law school girls at a young (hah!) alumni thingy in Century City. I don't really want to drive to the west side, but I will to see my girls. I'll end this later with some photos. Stay tuned.

[Updated to add]

 
Here, I'm with Izabelle.

Anne (who's pregnant), another law school collegue whose name I don't remember, and Susan.

 

With pregnant Anne. I know, you can hardly tell. We hate her. With love.

A rambling brunch

Today I met some friends-slash-coworkers for Sunday brunch at the Queen Mary. It has become an annual tradition, as Vicki, her brother Bob, and Virginia all have birthdays within a few days of each other. We meet to celebrate them. Also in attendance: Johanna and her Jerry, and Vicki's friend Brad and his daughters, Sarah and Peyton.

The Queen Mary is a beached luxury cruise liner. Its maiden voyage harks back to 1936. During WWII, it was used to ship troops across the Atlantic, so in addition to the lusciousness, it also has guns. Very Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, only art deco. 

The brunch has every kind of food imaginable, and as is often the case with buffets, I will never eat enough food to do them justice. Lucky for me, there was an omelet station where nothing touched anything with wheat in it. The lady making omelets was a rotund, smiley woman with a very heavy Philipino accent. Or, as she would have said, Pilipino. As each person walked up, she would say "You obelet? Ebyping oh jes beggies?" In case you didn't catch that, "You want an omelet? Everything or just veggies?" And in each and every case, the person would look at her bewildered for a couple of seconds and then would say "Excuse me?", and she would repeat herself, always with a happy smile.

I am thrilled to report that there is plenty of healthy and delicious food for those of us who really would rather not stuff ourselves silly. Besides, I was wearing a cute dress, and I didn't want to ruin it with a faux-pregnancy pooch. In fact, I was even sporting some cleavage today. Ooooooh!!! You say. Oh yes. Jerry took a picture of it, as well as Vicki's. Birthday cake, indeed.

Sorry, dad! But hey, just focus on that leather jacket I got you. 

Ok, ok, here's what we looked like, from further back, though I think my cleavage is even more obvious, if that's possible. I was all, so, who else wants to see my tits? Gah!

As usual, I was the only one with a camera, so I got pictures of everyone. If it weren't for me, I swear, no one would know what they look like in pictures. Speaking of which, here are the rest of the pictures if you'd like to see them.

We sat and ate and chatted and laughed, and ate some more, for about 2 hours, after which we moved to the bar. Well, everyone else moved to the bar. I went for a walk around the ship, a tour if you will,

to sun myself and just to take a look-see. I also managed to get lost and couldn't figure out for the life of me where "the bar" was, it turned out there were about 5 bars. I bar crawled for while, then I thought maybe everyone had left but they would have called me to find me, so that couldn't have been it. Finally I was able to find my peeps and we sat outside in the sunshine and breeze getting caught up. It was a perfect day. 

At one point I was outside chatting (ok, flirting) with Vicki's friend Brad, and Bob came out and said "Hey, what are you two up to out here?" I got all self-conscious and I blurted out, "Well, we were having sex until you interrupted us." Eh-hem. Fortunately, this was the right crowd for that. Pray to whatever god you pray to that I don't say something like that at a city function. And for the record, we were not having sex. I think there are rules about that.

The bar had live performers, who were pretty good and sang recognizable tunes. If you've ever enjoyed drunken karaoke, I recommend the spectacle of drunken dancing. Drunken sexy dancing. Drunken sexy girating dancing by people wearing leopard print. Oh yeah. The nice thing about it is that you can easily avert your eyes if things get too weird or kinky on the dance floor. But in truth, can you avert your eyes? Like can you avert your eyes from the train wreck?

Brad suggested we go to the bow and do the whole "I'm king of the world!" routine (a Titanic reference), but I thought I would be likely to get those flowing robes tangled up and then end up dangling off the side of the ship and need to be rescued. This would of course make Brad the hero, but I was worried that I would end up upside down, skirt around my face, my big underpanty butt in the air. I think when being rescued one should always wear jeans. Great. I can now add this to my fear of being stuck in an elevator for hours, only to get rescued by hot, single, age-appropriate firefighters after I've peed myself.

But, as is so often the case, I digress. The day was relaxed and fun, and I got to hang out with some friends without really ever looking at the clock. A lazy summer day, right at the start of fall. There is no better way to spend a Sunday. I can't remember for the life of me what I was working on last week. Isn't that wonderful?

Supporting the troops

More specifically, supporting a troop.

My friend Anthony (aka Anthony The Massage God), joined the army. This surprised me, if for no other reason than he is 41. He's in excellent shape, I have no doubt he can keep up with the youngsters, but last I checked you had to enlist by a certain age, which happened to be younger than 41. But maybe I'm wrong.

Anthony is (was?) a massage therapist who works with extreme athletes, like ultra-runners. When I first started getting hip pain, which quickly became crippling, Anthony got me walking again, for which I will forever be grateful.

At the time, Anthony was studying acupuncture and mentioned that he regretted not joining the Marines. So finally he decided to join the army. 3 months after completing bootcamp, he was off to Iraq.

About a month ago, he mentioned on Facebook that he would like to get postcards from California, he misses it. I have decided to send him a postcard every week. Joanne at the office suggested getting a box together for his company.

I'm sending him a book, too. It turns out that sending books to people in the military requires a lot of paperwork, not to mention excessive packaging. Not just a box, reinforced on all sides with tape, but the post office also suggests putting a card inside whatever you're sending, so that if the package gets torn up, they can still get it to the person. And then, there are the forms. Aaaah, the forms. I had to fill out a FIVE PAGE FORM, and I haven't even gotten to the post office yet.

The whole thing is a bit stalky, I think, but if I were out there I would want my friends to send me postcards and books and things, to know that they are thinking about me and wishing me well. It doesn't happen very often in life to have the opportunity to repay someone for something they did that made a difference in your life, and I sure hope this is one of those opportunities.

If any of you would like to send Anthony a postcard, please let me know I'll give you his mailing address.

Willow is a rock and roll trollop

Today Willow and I went for a bike ride. After an hour of whatever it was we did, we finally got on our bikes and off we went. First, we stopped off at the local fire station, where they were having a fundraiser. I guess now that budgets are being cut, the LAFD is taking matters into its own hands. There were tacos, a truckful of LAFD paraphernalia, and firefighter-made salsa. Mmmh.

We wandered around and got our pictures takes on one of the engines. Here I am, ready to drive off

 

Now, I don't remember having that flabby pooch, but since I stopped running there are all sorts of little rolls of flesh where there were none before. Ah, well. Here's Willow

 

If you notice, Willow is wearing new Keens on her feet, a birthday present from our friend Michael. They match the fire engine.

I did find this fire hydrant thingy, which I like to call a veritable cornucopia of colors.

Having biked three whole blocks on an empty stomach, it was time for lunch. We went to The Counter, where you customize your burger. Mmmh. Delish. Excellent meat, and they can make it on a bed of greens which is essentially a salad. I thought I was not going to be able to pedal after that, but instead was quite the happy fed biker.

We braved Lincoln Blvd to get to the bike shop, where we intended to buy baskets for our bikes. Because, you know, we're not cool enough. But the basket we wanted was only available in white, and I thought why draw attention to our dorkiness any more than necessary. We will wait until the black baskets come in next week. Instead, I bought a bell and Willow got some lights for her bike. The rear light has a Knight Rider mode, where the little red light swings from one side to the other and back again. The bell is a straight forward RIIING RIIING kind of thing. Its best use for today was to periodically let Willow know I was still there and had not been run over by a truck or abducted by aliens. Or simply distracted by bright colors.

We continued our meander around the marina, and finally arrived at Fisherman's Wharf, where a rock and roll band was playing its little heart out. Some senior citizens were rocking out. We pulled up on our bikes and listened for a short while. Within seconds, a rather hot sax player spotted Willow and played his way over to her, and this happened

 

Willow is a rock and roll trollop. The rest of the bike ride was without incident, but Willow's reputation is sealed.

My friend the ob-gyn

I was talking to JM, a Brown friend who lives on the east coast. He's an ob-gyn. He told me he was talking to some women at a barbeque over the long weekend, and they were saying they would not have sex with him because "you might evaluate me." He responded, "Have you ever considered that I might bring a particularly useful skill set to the situation?" Stunned silence ensued, during which the possibilities were doubtless fully mentally explored.

Friends!

Yesterday I had lunch with three generations of friends: Michelle, her new baby Daisy, and Michelle's mom and dad, Pauline and Barry. How absolutely extraordinary to have THREE GENERATIONS of friends. Don't you think? It's awesome.