here today

 

happy birthday

 I am a baby about my birthday and I blame that on my parents. 

They've set up unreasonable expectations.  When I was little I had slumber parties every year & we had pizza and rootbeer & pancakes in the morning shaped like elephants.   My parents talked about the Big Day for weeks in advance, planning the presents, the invitations, the cupcakes for my class at school. 

God I love my birthday.

Everyone else hates it.  Poor Ben.  I have pictures of ten little girls in pjs making a pyramid with me on top, a big grin on my root beer stained mouth.  No way to compete with that.  My friends can't do better than last year, when the hospital where I was born was being demolished and my parents searched through the rubble for the perfect rock from the foundation then wrapped it up in two letters celebrating my Birth Day. 

When I was in college, my dad would write a birthday poem, my mom would send a box of apples from an Oregon orchard, sure that in NYC I couldn't possibly be getting good produce.  And this Saturday, on my 35th birthday, after hours of shopping and five new outfits for work, mom and dad took Ben & I out for dinner, I wore the sombrero and the waiters sang happy birthday to me in Spanish and oh boy, once a year at least, my parents get it right.

Posted by: 120pages at 15:34 | link | comments (4) |

24

 how did I not know about this perfection before a week ago when it arrived in the red netflix no more late fees envelope?  how did I not know about the tension, the relentless tension that is the first season of 24?  stuck inside during the ice storm, ben & i burned through eight episodes and long for more. 

kiefer sutherland, I applaud you for resurrecting your career and for making me believe in you again.

Posted by: 120pages at 19:18 | link | comments (2) |

ace money

I used to be in charge of the money in our house.  But I wasn't very good at it.  I liked to think I was good at it - I mean, the bills got paid and we had food and we only ran out of oil once but the oil guy came out the same day so it was only cold for a couple of hours.

Then we decided that it wasn't fair for me to always be in charge because I had to be the bad guy and say what we couldn't afford.  Only, really, I'm not good at being the bad guy so I would juggle and make sure we could always afford what we wanted.  Juggle means wait to pay some bills so we could go out to Thai Noon and I could get two Singhas instead of just water.

But we are grownups now with grown up jobs and a need to Save For the Future when we will be too tired to work. 

So Ben got Ace Money which is a magical program that he downloaded from the internet and it's making him Crazy.  Crazy.  He enters in our receipts and calculates things and suddenly there is no more juggling.  Now there is just crazy receipt nazi who makes me empty out my wallet every day and says things like "twenty-five dollars on candles? you spent twenty-five dollars on candles?" and when I explain that I went to Pier One and bought them ON SALE for the sake of our Budget, he doesn't get it. 

I hate Pier One.  Pier One has bad cheap stuff made by six year old children kept in factories in Hong Kong.  I don't shop there but the candles that I really like that are made by nice Northwest Hippies who probably live in nicer houses than mine, are ten dollars each.  Ten dollars.  So, I did our Budget a favor by going to the store that I hate and getting candles there. 

So I've gotten sneaky.  I hide the receipts that he won't like and only give him the ones for gas and food.  But it's going to catch up with me because he's started to look at the bank account online and yesterday I heard him say "fifty-eight dollars at the Pet Loft? that can't be right".  Because he knows that Lu's food is only thirty-five dollars so that means I also bought toys and chewsticks.  Because she needs them.  Because she is left alone all day while we go to our jobs and she is half dalmatian which means that she is very high strung and likes to have something to do all the time.  And I feel guilty because when I got her four and a half years ago I worked at home and so she didn't get as lonely as she does now.  every day.  Alone in the house with only some toys and chewsticks.

Ace Money is ruining my life.   

Posted by: 120pages at 09:52 | link | comments (1) |

the story

 I'm waiting for someone to call me back about a tax sheltered annuity.  While I'm waiting, I'll tell you a story about two flat tires, a bumper, the short film festival and Castro.

A friend of mine made a short film.  And it won awards but he was too poor to travel to the festivals to see it.  We were both living in L.A. so it was a happy day when he heard it was playing at the Mill Valley Film Festival near San Francisco.  We could drive there, stay with friends, eat at the buffets.  Free road trip, man. 

We set out in the Honda Civic Hatchback - tunes in the tapedeck, windows rolled down, smiles on our faces. 

When the first tire blew, it knocked off the bumper. 

We put on the spare, ran out into the middle of the freeway, grabbed the bumper and stuck it inside the car.  We drove the rest of the way with the bumper between us, three normal tires, and one tiny spare.

The festival was fun.  The parties were really fun.  The best one was held at a swanky house with tents and champagne and bread pudding and old people in fur coats discussing FILMS.  We ate lots and drank even more and tried not to break anything, then left the party with a bottle of champagne that I stole.

Waiting outside for the valet, holding the contraband bottle of champagne, we stood next to one very sparkly well-dressed couple.  The man said in a very snooty voice that he wondered why anyone bothered making short films anyhow as there Can't Be Any Money In Them.

At that moment, the valet arrived with our car.  And he BACKED it up to us so that the view the snooty couple got was a bumperless Honda Civic Hatchback with three regular tires and one spare tire, several dents and the bumper INSIDE the car sticking up between the two front seats.

We tipped him really well.

On the way home, another tire blew.  (What are the odds?)

We pulled over at a gas station and inside there were business cards for Castro the Tire Man.  He travels up and down I-5 in a big truck.  Full of tires.  Not only did he sell us the tire, but he bolted the bumper back on the car, laughed at our tale, and only charged us sixty bucks. 

Moral of the story:  Don't make short films, there's no money in it.  

Posted by: 120pages at 14:45 | link | comments (1) |

dead stories

 As a writer and sometime teller of tales, I hate that some stories have to die. 

For example, I have a great story involving the loss of two tires, a bumper being bolted on by Castro the roaming I-5 tire man, a short film festival and valet parking that is funny enough to make you choke on your drink. 

But I don't get to tell it anymore because it begins with "my ex-husband".  Stories that begin with an ex-husband are too distracting to tell.  People's minds start to wander "how can she be divorced, she's so young?" or "what ex-husband?" or "is Ben jealous" or two hundred other things that keep them from listening. 

I lose my audience with an ex-husband story and that sucks.

Posted by: 120pages at 12:37 | link | comments (3) |

new information

just heard that the last thing I did in the year 2004 was an interpretive dance to The Cure while holding silver tinsel.  and there might be pictures.

Posted by: 120pages at 16:47 | link | comments (3) |

i am not twenty anymore

So on New Year's, when Ben & I found ourselves at 3:30 in the morning, two miles from home, preparing to walk, I took a hard look at my life.  Which was not easy, considering how very much champagne I'd consumed over the previous 7 hours.  I took a hard look and saw Ben in G's grandmother's crocheted hat, me with N's purple tennies, yoga pants and holding a vodka bottle filled with water so we wouldn't, you know, get dehydrated on the walk.

At that point in the evening, it was much too difficult to call a cab and try to remember my address so I told Ben we should walk.  And since Ben had started doing shots of Kahlua at midnight, he was ready to follow me anywhere so long as I didn't try to touch G's hat. 

New year's miracle:  The cab driver who appeared on Ainsworth street at 3:30am looking for "Jack".  Without him, I'm pretty sure Ben would have ended up sleeping in someone's lawn & I would have ended up two towns over, a big smile on my face.  

I am not twenty anymore.  But on Friday night, I drank like I was twenty.  And it was really good times.  The girls traded shoes, I smoked two cigarettes, and became obsessed with remembering everyone's rising signs (there were quite a lot of Scorpios there).  And pointing.  N became a five foot high Bette Davis in her grandmother's handmade Swiss silk shirt telling me that she would be a lesbian except for the fact that she likes dick.  I like dick, she kept saying, ruefully, as she tried on my heels.

And the ex-best friend and I remembered why we loved each other and, at least for one night, forgot about the past, hugged and laughed until we cried.

it was worth the hangover.  and I hardly ever say that.

Posted by: 120pages at 16:41 | link | comments (2) |