The Gurly Life

This week in Maliboo Kitty

Kitty, bunny, bear.

Class of 1987

One of my recently reacquired high school friends, Marichu, uploaded some photos from high school. I myself really need to do a massive scanning project with the thousands of pictures I have, but it is rather daunting, I admit. Meanwhile, here are the pictures from Marichu.

These pictures were likely taken junior or senior year in high school, probably senior year. At the time, I lived in Tokyo, Japan, and attended the International School of the Sacred Heart.

 
In this picture you can hardly tell who I am, but I'm on the far left, looking to the right, with abnormally long bangs covering part of my face. At some point in high school I decided that I should grow my hair is what was essentially a reverse mullet: short hair, long bangs. Believe me, it was not a fashionable look even then. Marichu is 3 girls to the right, has what appears to be a headband (yup, mid-80s!) and she seems to be yelling something into a makeshift megaphone. I have no idea what we're doing or where we are, it looks like a school, but I don't think it was our school. It looks like we're rooting for something.

Here, I'm bottom right, crouched and trying to squeeze my butt into the picture. My butt was considerably larger back then, and I'm thankful that I don't fit into the clothes I wore when I was 18, because I was the size of my age. Marichu is in the back row, second from the right, and my best friend Niky is the really tall girl in the back.

Here we're on some trip, probably our senior class trip. Niky and I are in the second to last row. I'm the third girl from the right, sunglasses and hands behind my back, and Niky is on my right (left as you look at the picture), sunglasses and uneven hair. I think Marichu is two girls to the left of Niky, also wearing sunglasses.

It's hard to imagine ourselves as so young, so little. I think what's weirdest is that none of us now really feel very different from the girls we were then. I keep waiting to feel older, different, and it doesn't really happen. I notice that I need more sleep, and that I take longer to heal, and that I need to be more mindful of how I treat my body, but I still have that sense of possibility and open space and of my whole life yet to unfold in front of me. On the one hand, I think that is good, to still have that youthful anything is possible outlook, on the other hand, time goes by really fast while I sit around day-dreaming.

Anyway, it's fun to see these pictures. I can remember names, I can remember faces, but not all together. With the photos, they are coming together.

The other cool thing about this is that having lived all over the world, I have left many people behind. Finding them again, one by one, is giving me an unexpected experience of completion, of a circle being drawn to a close.

Friendship.

Happy fish

These were on the wall of a restaurant we went to a few days ago. Ironically, it was a sushi restaurant. I particularly like the googly eyes.

 

A bountiful harvest

This morning's Starbucks tea stop proved to be rather more fruitful than usual. First, I parked next to this, which should be in the dictionary next to the definition of the expression "jury rigged."

 

And yes, those are golf tees, and yes, those are duct tape glue marks on the side of the window. I guess even duct tape (which is used to keep space crafts together in a pinch!) could not hold up this window. I usually park a little father from Starbucks than most so that I can get a tiny walk in, and I guess the karma of health rewarded me this morning with this morsel of deliciousness.

I also found a music collection by Sting called "If On A Winter's Night," a collection of carols, lullabies and songs. It's a Deutche Grammophon record, too, so you know the quality is great.
 

This week in Maliboo Kitty

 

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.

A walk down memory lane, shared

Today Deirdre was at Brown, in Providence, RI. I was here, in LA, at our Brown Club of Southern California annual kickoff event. While I was at the event, Deirdre sent me a text message with a picture of the house where we lived.

It was her senior year, and my sophomore year (though it was perhaps my junior year because I skipped a year and graduated in 1990 instead of 1991), and we lived in French house. Well, it had been French house until the year before I lived there. It was for folks who were French majors or simply had an interest in the French language or French culture. That year, it was no longer French house. Liza and I shared a room and Deirdre was our next door neighbor.

The house was really large and the downstairs area was mostly wood paneled. We had one of those large wood televisions, and would watch SNL on Saturday nights.The kitchen and eating area were below ground with windows on the top of the room, and everything was a pastel mustard color, if you can imagine such an institutional color. Oddly, I don't remember the placement of the stairs.

Our rooms were on the second floor. Liza and my room was a large round room and a smaller square room that led to the bathroom, which we shared with the guys in the room on the other side. When we got there at the start of the semester, Liza brought her kitten, Micio. He was a black kitten and the tip of his tail was white. He was a wild kitty. A couple of times he ran around the room and leaped out of the second story window. He was longing for the great outdoors. 

The house has since been sold and is now someone's home. They've done a beautiful job with it, I saw it back in 2005 when I was at Brown for my 15 year reunion.

So here it is, the picture of our old room. The top floor window, the round one, and the window to its left, were my room. The one to the right, slightly lower, was Deirdre's room. I had a trunk under the round window, almost a window seat. My desk was by the other window.

 

This week in Maiboo Kitty

Maliboo Kitty, who still chases her own tail at 6 years old, likes to go to sleep on top of my Blackberry. When I'm looking for the thing, the first place I look is under the cat. Sometimes I don't need to look, I just hear her belly ring, and I know that's where the phone is. Naturally, she hisses at me when I shoo her off.

 

Historic Theater District

As I mentioned in my previous post, today we went on a walking tour of the downtown theater district. I cannot write a very thorough post about everything we saw, but here are some pics. The entire photo stream is here.

 
The Million Dollar Theater.

 
The Bradbury Building. Not part of the theater tour, but we went in to take a peek anyway.

 
The Roxie.

 
The Los Angeles Theatre. 

 
The Orpheum Theatre. This had some wonderful detail. Here's one example:

  

 
The Tower Theatre.

 
The Pantages.