Can You Call it a Rat Race When You're Chasing a Mouse?

Mickey Mouse that is.

I learned a lot about the All Star Game this year, getting to have it in my proverbial Southern California backyard. There's something fun about loving the city you live in, and loving baseball, and then watching the two come together in holy matrimony. And there's something special about knowing the best in baseball are all right there gathered in one place, with a town celebrating them from banners to fountains, to Mickey Mouses spread across 4 counties and all the cities that make them up. Like every All Star Game, (statue of liberties in New York, other monuments in other cities) the MLB adorned Mickeys were spread throughout, giving fans and tourists and girls who just like a good scavenger hunt the chance to explore new places, find delicious coffee ice cream, and put a lot of miles on their car.

There were 36 in all. 30 for the 30 teams. 1 for the American League. 1 for the National League. And 4 All Star Game themed 1,000 pound statues.

When the contest first originated, the locations were not disclosed. One would have to find it, tweet a photo, and become eligible to win a prize. I came upon the good fortune of others who found them, and put together a color coded, over analyzed list of my own. I won no prize, other than some photos, and quality time with the man I call mine.

I start via the nontraditional, with lessons. See when you agree to a scavenger hunt over 36 locations throughout southern California, one that should have for all practical purposes been spread through weeks, and you do so in 2 evenings after work and a Saturday afternoon, well you see, there are bound to be lessons. I start with the traditional, the number one.

Lesson one: My boyfriend and I, despite our ridiculously good looks and all attempts in opposition of this fact: are just like every other couple. We fight over directions.
Two: Two evenings and a Saturday afternoon, as I've alluded to by stating directly so, are inadequate amounts of time to drive over 500 miles in city traffic.
Three: My GPS was well worth the $70.00 and California sales tax, even though she was less than perfect and by the end we had moved to the mute mode.
Four: While you plan and make up lists and chart them on maps from north to south to closing times, and fill up on gas - when you get there, and you haven't charged your camera, it's all sort of a moot point.
Five: Signs indicating no touching, leaning, any contact really with the Mickey, are more like suggestions. Right?

I thought so.

But after $50 in gas, $60 in parking and toll fees and a bribe to a valet to watch the car while sprinting across a one way street, I saw them all. Oh I almost hit a seagull that flew in to my windshield, but he lived, so all is fine. Right?

I thought so.

Night one was dedicated to LA Mickeys. We started first in West Hollywood at a clothing store across from Pink's Hot Dogs because the website had it closing at 8:00. As it turns out we don't really know when it closed, because it certainly was not open when I broke most traffic laws to get there by 7:30. In any event besides some mocking by the neighboring business, we were able to photograph #1.

Moving east I had mapped 4 in and around Hollywood & Highland, including the Kansas City Royals at El Capitan. By the time we'd gotten there it had been removed days prior due to vandalism. Who hates the Kansas City Royals I asked? Kansas City Royals fans I was told.

We then moved farther east. Mind you we'd both worked all day, it's closing in on 10:00pm and we'd had our share of Hollywood crazies theorizing in a pizza parlor conspiracy theories. (I like a town that makes me look normal!) But we drove to downtown LA where we parked illegally at the Music Center and found the best Mickey of them all, the Dodger Mickey, went to Union Station and watched a movie being shot, and unsuccessfully attempted ESPN Zone at LA Live which had already closed. It was after 11:00, probably closer to midnight, when we drove from downtown LA to the Santa Monica pier, for the final one of night number one.

It made the most sense the following night to visit the ones around Disneyland - The Grove, The Stadium, The Convention Center, Hotels, City Hall, Downtown Disney, the like. Figuring most fans would be centered here, 13 were within reasonable driving, if not walking distance. I woke up with a "mickey" hangover the following morning, "no more mickeys!" I declared to my boyfriend, but we had to finish them Saturday before they were removed.

Saturday was a challenge. Even before starting our adventure, I'd driven 130 miles, with plans to drive to Bakersfield, CA the following day. One was put in Rancho Cucamonga, at Victoria Gardens, 60 miles roundtrip from Orange County, but it made the most logistical sense to hit it up first. The Nationals have Strasburg, and now Bryce Harper, and while I don't believe they deserved to be disrespected by President Obama and his White Sox hat as he threw the first pitch on opening day, I also do not believe they deserved their own Mickey a 60 mile roundtrip drive away. The Cubs was rightly placed at the Orange County zoo deep back in a Regional Park which had it not been for this whirlwind I doubt I ever would have discovered on my own. The next several were a fury of malls and promenades, a performing arts center, a trip up the coast, from Laguna to Fashion Island, to the Newport Sports Museum, and the Strand in Huntington Beach. It was rounding 10, and despite plans to take separate cars for logistical reasons I made the executive decision to knock out Long Beach, and the lone one left in LA at ESPN Zone LA Live. I secretly hated having to drive clear back to LA to one I'd previously been to, especially since it was the hated Yankees, but I was pitching a complete game here.

And with that I'd had them all. I had a brief, "what do I do now with my life moment," which I dealt with by asking Jeff "what do I do now with my life." You don't think I think things and not say them do you? But we shared a Mike's Hard Lemonade and a quarter of it drank, passed out full and proud of ourselves.

I wish I'd had more time to actually get to see the places they were placed, having been the point and all, but would spending several leisurely days visiting promenades and museums sound like me? Yeah not so much.

Now take everything I've just said and imagine it now in the reverse (because I loaded them all backwards).












































Location Listing Found Here: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2010/index.jsp?content=disney

Kitten Impossible

Sure my cats were trying to kill me a few years back, my friend, thinking this clearly was not the case and instead hilarious (they were I'm sure of it!) - made this video. Madi, may you rest in peace, but I knew your true intentions. Your evil, evil intentions.

I went through a year long phase, just recently culminating in a very sub par movie, a phase entitled: "I hate every movie I see." Be it rentals, at $1, be it movie theatre new releases. I hated them all equally. Even when oscar worthy movies came and went, I hated them. I secretly feared I was fully engaged in this 30 year old thing, and just starting to turn my noise up at everything. I've generally been pretty agreeable, so I liked not this strange phase. I stuck with the $1, because, well if you're gonna hate things, it's best to do it on the cheap. My local theatre is a spectacle. I don't know how it's even standing, but it's cheap as all, and at $5, I can afford to probably hate a movie and mad dog talking teenagers. But with $5, you're getting, $5. You're getting sticky floors, and that wonderful moldy smell. Somewhere in this year long hatred of every movie I saw, I started to enjoy this $5 sticky fungus theatre. It became endearing to my LA hardcore run down I've seen everything roots. I finally saw a movie about a month ago, that I'll declare was subpar, so I'm out of my hated phase, which is nice. I've been seeing a lot of subpar entertainment lately - entertainment I wouldn't dare declare I'd spend $20 on. Slap a 3D sticker on the outside or not. Now with New York theatres, some of them charging $20 a showing, well I think I will stick to half liking most of what I see at $5 at my local sticky fungus theatre.

Happy Friday.

A Silent Covenant with the Youth

I've had theft on the mind. I've had it on the mind for the past 2 weeks, 2 weeks that only just concluded in my car being broken in to. So it feels, as rather frustrating as it is, appropriate. It feels appropriate that I had been contemplating purchasing a car GPS, and had I, that too, would have been taken. It feels as though God, even while sorting through things that make little sense to me, gives me very visual representations, giving me just what I need when I need it.

I've heard words like unfair and nonsensical and theft in the last 2 weeks, and those were words associated with two CSUN students from the greek community, I too partook in and still participate in as an alumni advisor - and the loss of their lives in a very tragic, publicly reported car accident. I knew them not personally, no more than through friends of friends, but their loss was for me, striking and remarkably sad.

And the theft of young life, is the topic of this writing.

Loss of any life, at any time, unexpected for those left, or expected for those that leave, is our hardest humbling humanly challenge to overcome. But young life, is both unexpected, and thievery. More than numbers in newspapers, their ages weren't my focus until their memorial last Monday. Until that point, in trying to understand what had happened, my thoughts turned first to how the students whom I advise were handling it, and quickly after, and I'm shamed to say, selfishly.

They looked like girls I know.
Because they are girls I know.
They are every girl I know.
They are me.

See because we all, in great strides to embrace youth, and living every day like it could be your last, take chances. Some safe chances. Some unsafe chances. We've gotten in a car and not worn a seat belt. And drove while on the phone in a hurry faster than the speed limit. Drove while pre-occupied and perhaps after drinking. And as taboo as it may be to say it, I have done those things. I have done those things , but being able to say so means I acknowledge responsibility for it. But in taking of young lives, I shift between anger for making those same careless decisions, and to God for breaking a silent covenant with the youth to err and be forgiven. To mend broken bones, broken homes. To be given second chances.

As I mentioned their ages were simply numbers. Even references to upcoming graduations didn't strike metaphoric harmonic chords to the point of emotion. But the memorial speakers were something else. They, through streaming tears and sadness, shared stories of their friends and sisters' lives, lives that I had to journey very far back to even identify with. Because as they spoke of their sorority big sister, and bedazzling fraternal plaques, fraternity date parties and formals in the desert, I realized how much I'd grown since those days. My sorority friends are something entirely different to me now. Where so if someone asked me to speak of my big sister, I'd probably spend the afternoon writing an essay about 5 ways I love her, but the plaque I made for her wouldn't make the list. And in those moments, where I selfishly identified, and then didn't identify, I realized just how short their lives were cut. I realized a deeper level of sadness in those speakers that wouldn't even be realized until years from now when this comes as a passing painful memory of that thing that happened in college.

We are humbled in death, as in making sense of why we live. Why my mistakes were forgiven, and theirs asked of their very existence. But in being angry with God, I still get to be blessed, that in getting another day to live, I get another day to understand that awe empowered covenant. To express in the way I'm the most comfortable, and familiar, the written word, that this experience of loss is both awful, and full of awe.

Perfectly Normal

Despite my parents original prenatal great expectations of me, I turned out very average. Even among the things I'd note I'm good at, in a global sense, I'm still just average at those things. We've all got a purpose and I'll live the rest of the time I've got sorting that out. But great - great is for the bees, bees and Dickens novels.

I think there's some sort of genetic predisposition of parents that their kids must be the best. And that's rather unfortunate. Unfortunate only because my mom just looked so miserable at that soccer field watching me averagely play soccer. And it had to have been such a disappointment to her when I proclaimed there was just too much running involved.

I think when I'm a parent, I'll be better at just managing my expectations. And wish my kid was fun and spirited and well adjusted, over being supremely awesome at any one thing.

Even being drafted to a major league baseball team probably carries the argument of some sort of greatness, most live in a AA team in the outskirts of major cities, and never smell the beer and dogs of a major league summer. So when Dallas Braden, as you may now know him from his Sports Illustrated cover, and late night talk show circuit, was drafted 24th in 2004 by the A's, great wasn't a word we'd associate with him or his career, or his mark on baseball.

And when we saw him lash out at Alex Rodriguez weeks ago for running across a mount, human, more than great, was how we'd describe him.

So as of Sunday, if anyone knew Dallas Braden, a very human, very average pitcher he was. But then maybe that's why we enjoy sports. Because one day you wake up average, and one night you go to sleep part of baseball history.

Dallas Braden pitched just the 19th perfect game in the history of the game, and American League or National League, north west south or east, whatever divides you, an impressive accomplishment like that has no choice but to get a big nod of awesomeness.

My favorite thing about this story is while he's something of legend in the sport, he's something of perfection, normal he'll probably remain,

"My ugly mug slapped on a magazine on newsstands all across America is scary for some readers," Braden said, "but it's pretty cool for me."

While the closest I will get to a pitchers mound is good seats, and I'll still always insist there's just too much running in soccer, perhaps my parents still have a chance to see me be great at something.

Trash Flowers

My imagination doesn’t just get the best of me; it is the best part of me.

I had a very typical mother’s day, splitting time, the meals and candy, cards and nice gestures. My mother insisted I donate to charity instead of gifting her this year, and I chose the Tennessee flood as my worthy charity.

I spent the afternoon in Newport Beach and took an autoferry to Balboa Island. I braved the wind, and enjoyed a burger and malt on the pier. At days end as I held my breath past the beach bathroom I saw a bit of plastic poking out of the public trashcan. Blame it on the crowd, a crowd full of the homeless and those in use of metal detectors, I reached my hand right in that trash can and pulled out – lilies. They were beautiful lilies, baby lilies, not yet to maturation or in bloom. I did a mental review of the 5 second rule, and be it mother’s day, lots of other mother sort of advice. Don’t pick that up. Look both ways. Don’t drive so fast. Cross your legs. Say your pleases and thank yous. I couldn’t recall a rule about retrieving perfectly lovely flowers from a trash can.

In the 4th grade my frog died. We had gone to Circuit City to get our family a new refrigerator, and when I arrived home, on the bookcase in the living room, stretched as far as a desert mile, was my frog. We learned in the days to follow that this particular genre of frogs needed to be fed live food, and my cheap bloodworms didn’t satisfy his hearty appetite. I’d killed him. If was too young to have murder on my hands, but I also too young to understand the frog burial process.

“Rebecca, we will need to dispose of it.”

These 8 words sent me in to a fury few save Naomi Campbell could replicate.

We agreed until I calmed down we’d keep it in a Ziploc bag in the garage refrigerator (remember we’d gotten a new one now!).

Every other day my mother would bring up that damn frog. And every time she would send me in to a panicked state. I have to imagine there was a point my Mom figured she’d have to send me off to college, when the time came, with Ziploc in hand. Or down the aisle to meet my groom, ziploc in tow.

Death is hard to accept.

Two weeks to the day, the day of the big refrigerator purchase, and of the untimely murder, my Mom tried yet again. This time she had a plan.

“Rebecca do you know what dispose means?”

I hadn’t. For 2 weeks every time she spoke that word, I imagined my little friend, frog legs being chopped up in our kitchen disposal, cutting in a continual circular sort of way.

“It just means throw away. Do you think we can throw away the frog today?”

Oh, when you put it that way, sure. Why didn’t you just come out and say that?

I’m not going to pretend like being my mom is the easiest job in the world. But then again I’ve never seen a mug that says that. “Motherhood: The Easiest Job in the World”. It wasn't easy when one of my first words was "damnit" and my mom learned of this as I yelled it repeatedly from our front porch trying to put together a puzzle. Or when I brought home a failed test in the 2nd grade for her to sign, and instead signed it myself in the biggest 2nd grader handwriting you ever saw, and returned it to my teacher. Or when my mother explained the birds and the bees to me in junior high, and not believing her theory on how all that works, asked for further proof from the library.

As I stood at the trash can, and I rewinded and flash forwarded 30 years of lessons and the difficulties of parenting me, I couldn’t recall anything wrong with snarking perfectly lovely flowers from a trash can, either through linguistic misunderstanding or otherwise.

I stood and held those flowers and my mind journeyed through a dramatic scenario that would have landed those flowers in a public trash can on a California beach. My embarkment to the car surely by minutes missed, what was probably a very public display of anger, yelling, hands being thrown and tossed about every which way. See being a mother, and being a daughter, or being a mother, and being a son, is never an easy relationship, and in no way is this the first time you have heard these words. My mom on a cocktail of Valium and Oxycontin (post surgery) enjoyed her day. But through the haziness of narcotics she will acknowledge it’s a bumpy road, and it’s also alright to say so.

So I took those flowers, in essence because no one was looking, and not recalling my lessons to the contrary - and left them that evening at my boyfriend’s family’s home. They had seen their origins and leaving them there was more convenient than lugging them everywhere I would be from that night until today.

This morning I got a text that read, “I just wanted you to know your trash flowers look great!”

I laughed – you know, because that’s funny. But also because I find my trash flowers symbolic of the beauty and the source of love flowers come from, and how that love can be so difficult to express, and to understand, and communicate.

So my wish for the universe is to whomever those flowers came from, and whoever they were meant for, shall you realize the depth and breadth of love the connects mother to daughter and sons to their mother.

Oh yeah, and thank you for my flowers.

Cat Heaven

It's been 2 1/2 weeks now since I lost Madi. She was my cat. My pint size kitten like cat. And just as anyone who has experienced loss, grief, losing a pet, will tell you, it gets easier. On day zero I laid horizontal on my couch and silently sobbed until I was dry. By the next day I had to return to work and on brief occasions, I had to sneak away to be sorrowful. Day two was better, and then came the weekend, where a passion for life and the warm nature of spring all but settled my woes and brought some joy, and distractions to my everyday. Come day seven and eight, eleven and twelve, the reminders faded away, and the flowers were cleaned from the coffee table. I was back in a routine, safely insulated in an almost cocoon like feeling of being able to remember her without being sorrowful. The cat that remained would search the house, and on one occasion I am sure I caught her crying. I tended more to her, and to other love in my life, and it did, as I started this paragraph describing, become easier.

I am not a things person. With $200 in my pocket I'd rather have a memory than a thing. A trip tubing down a river outside Austin, Texas than a plasma television. My apartment smells lovely, but it's simple, filled with a lot more remembrances of things I've done, and people I love, than it is expensive things. But I am a girl, in more ways than an affinity for lip gloss and couture footwear, and on everyday, and twice on Tuesdays, I round the stairs of my second story apartment and hope, hope to dear God there is a present waiting for me in front of my doorstep. It is a ridiculous wish. Why who am I to deserve a gift, on any given day, and more importantly more so on Tuesdays. But I do, and it is, and so it will.

So perhaps it was a will to the universe to send me a gift. Perhaps it was a God knowing I was moving on, afraid to do so for fear of forgetting her - when I arrived home Sunday, after a weekend away, with a box for me.

I was holding an overnight bag, and my purse, two days of mail, and it was awfully warm and stuffy, but I was bound and determined to open the box before I walked inside.

A book, from my friend Lisa, "Cat Heaven," with a card "a bedtime story for you and Sophie."

I think she'd probably be very upset to know it made me cry, but it did, so don't tell her. Ok? But it also was just what I needed. Two and a half weeks out, moving on, needing to know that she's alright, and remembering her is a sweet memory.

The New Business Model

We're living in a new age. An economic age where the greatest risk you take is not taking one at all. So I'm 30 and doing all the normal musings of a 30 year old. Conversations with my mom that end in "you do realize you're 30." And waking up every day sure today is the day I make something of my life. But see I'm certain that when I shuffle through my imaginary mental scrapbook in the year 2070, when I'm terrorizing my kids and grandkids with my irrational requests, I can also say I've made something of this dear body and flesh and life and spirit and mind.

And if all else fails, one you readers must appear at my memorial with the words I need you to say, "Shit damn, f word (shake head) she did try."

The new business model doesn't ask for a whole lot of anything. Heck mom I can even do it! See the new business model is a truck, and a twitter account. The new business model is a roach coach. The sort you go to, and you wait. And you wait. And people, well me, we're obsessed. A quarter of my day, the quarter I'd qualify as the productive quarter is spent following these trucks through the 60-70 miles from north san fernando valley to south orange county. I've seen shaved ice from a roach coach, korean bbq tacos, and meals served only on frys. Home Depot roach coaches eat your heart out! It is a new movement, my new obsession, where a meal is completely uninteresting to me, until I've eaten it out of a roach coach on a crowded street corner, with plastic utensils, in uncomfortable heels.

But, and I was not looking forward to this point in my tale to you, I've never actually eaten at one. I follow them all, and I get excited when it's down the street, like one was today, but in the same line of thinking that I turn down every opportunity to meet my idol Miss Britney Jean Spears, I apply to the roach coach. Even if it was the best experience ever, like best ever, it would be over.

Perhaps I'm a girl of the chase.

Happy Hump

I didn't make this up. I didn't even go searching for it. It landed in my in-box, and I laughed, and you probably will too. Unless you're not funny. And then in that case, I don't even know why we're friends.

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.



2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.



3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.



4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.



5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?



6. Was learning cursive really necessary?



7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.



8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.



9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.



10. Bad decisions make good stories.



11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.



12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.



13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.



14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this -ever.



15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run
away?



16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.



17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.



18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.



19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.



20. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.


21. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.


22. I would rather try to carry 10 over-loaded plastic bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.



23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.



24. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.



25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?



26. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!



27. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.



28. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?


29. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.



30. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate bicyclists.


31. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.



32. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!

An Epidemic of the Tiniest Proportions

Everyone is having babies. Pregnant. “Prego,” cutely stated. “It’s an epidemic,” I told my boss, as I set out for Babies R Us for lunch.

I’m a baby person as much as the next guy. I’m an animal person, and I’m a baby person, and as long as they can sit still for three hours and nine innings of ball, I have no further comment on the issue.

However now, if this pertains to you, I mean you no disrespect. But as a non baby owner, there are some wrongs I’d like to right. Setting sail around the world spreading the gospel of someone who knows nothing about babies, and, you know, how it ought to be.

A visit to Babies R Us, just as the last time I went in 2008, is an absolutely bewildering experience. If I’d eaten this, and drank this, seen a smoking caterpillar, perhaps more sense it would have made. But I just had bad Panda Express, and the regret, coupled with the confusion, might have toppled me over the edge. The point I’m trying to make, perhaps I can only make when I just come right out and say it, and stop trying to be fancy what with my fancy language and fancy words is: I know nothing about babies.

I hold them and they look uncomfortable.
I listen only enough to straight forwardly say, “I don’t understand you baby.”
The last time I changed a diaper I put it on backwards. The mother asked if I was going for a thong look.

I was.

I know nothing about babies. Except that one day I’d like to have them/one/I’ll figure it out. In the meantime I have a lot of time to judge, and have opinions, time I most properly would not have if reversed.

I do not need to know the details of labor. Nope. Don’t.
I do not need to know the contents of your baby’s diaper.
Your kid is so cute. Really. But so are you. Please put your photo back up on social networking sites.
‘We’ are not pregnant, you are.
‘We’ are not going in to labor, you are. He’s gonna hit up the cafeteria, make some phone calls, and be back for the photo op.

But with this, comes assurance someday when I have them/one/I’ll figure it out, I’ll give you too much information and think ever burp and diaper is noteworthy. I’ll replace my picture with the fetus’ and remember if only by distant memory those days, when I had enough time to sit back, have opinions, and a laptop free of throw up.

Avoiding Loss

In the last five days I've experienced sadness, and guilt, deep and unutterable remorse and I've gone to extraordinary measures in those five days to ensure I never have to experience loss again. Why I can't even remember the right lose to use. Is it loss, lose, loose? I'm clearly not very good at it in physical or literative form. If I walk softly enough, keep my voice low enough, looking at no one, weaving from conflict, never forming bonds again, in a cave of fear and a shelter of security, I'd live forever and never speak again of the subject of loss.

See I don't even like when my baseball team loses. There's nothing good that ever comes from loss. On a shutout Saturday I attempted by every way one could, via text message, to negate that loss. But I do speak English, and you can't have bad reception by text message, and see, there's no one here leave a message, still doesn't get you out of the woods. A loss is a loss, and it will chase you down the leftfield line, over the foul pole and find the most faith held fan.

But in negating loss, even I eventually have to accept, life isn't lived. Pets can't be loved, and family would be an advantage never cherished.

So I have today to stay above the 500 mark. Win more than I lose, so that someday when I experience a shutout, in baseball, as in life, I can breathe in, shake my head side to side, and say, shit, that was one hell of a game.

81 Avenue 51, Indio, California; Coachella Valley

After months of job seeking, job seeking that included the bizarre, the mean, the illegal, the misleading, the disappointing, and the tiring, I had an epiphany.

What united all these employers, was the typical sorts of conversational exchanges:
1. Let’s go over your previous job experience.
2. Oh you’re a Dodger fan?
3. Are you good at dealing with difficult people?

My uncle owns a family business, one in which during the hiring process he subjects everyone to what he’s termed, “the nice test.” Simply put, you must before any critical skills, be a nice person. He’ll teach you to 10 key. Nice you need to bring all by yourself.
But I happen to live in a city where that’s the exception.

Working in the Los Angeles entertainment industry has been an experience – and a half, and nice is not something you find on any old 75 degree Friday. I have absolutely had nice bosses and big shout out to that one. But the rest, the rest, well the rest, yeah they’re something else.

I’ve had bosses throw file folders at my head and relay inappropriate personal voicemails from their, well, not their wives. I’ve had screamers, and door slammers, and I once procured the services of a friend to animate for personal entertainment my boss having a meltdown in his office as therapy for me. I’ve had experiences that live in separate parts of my brain, because having to think about them on any old 75 degree LA Friday would make my blood boil.

So unplanned, when asked if I was good at dealing with difficult people, I had an epiphany, being good at something and wanting to do that thing are two strikingly different questions.

“I’m not interested in working with difficult people, no.”

I didn’t get that job, but if the last thirteen paragraphs haven’t told you anything, I probably wouldn’t have wanted it.

For the horrible, for the terrible, for the clinging to the edge of sanity, comes some very decent stories. You know like the time my actually very awesome ex-boss called me his hotel set on the grounds of Florida’s Animal Kingdom, informed me a family of giraffes, baby, mommy, and daddy, were looking at him through the sliding glass window, and asked if I could do something about that.

From LA.

I’m not the 30,000 mile away giraffe whisperer, but I’d guarantee you’d have pretty accurate luck if you shut the drapes.

Who ever thought I was the voice of reason.

But on the eve of Coachella, I have my favorite story.


I worked for four people at this point, but the CEO was my main dude, go-to, report to, signs my timesheet honcho. He was going to Coachella, and for what it mattered to me, he could go to Saturn on his weekends, because I wasn’t on a blackberry and that was him time, and this was me time. We both returned from very awesome weekends, him Coachella, me probably something equally as terrific with little small talk and one request.

Him: “I went to Coachella this weekend.”
Me: “I remember.”
Him: “I lost my wallet.”
Me: “Bummer”
Him: “I’m gonna need that.”
Me: “Yeah”
Him: “Why are you still standing here”
Me: “Going”

I returned to my desk, pursed my lips and nodded very assuredly.

I’m very sure Coachella is a small place, where very few people go, very few honest people, who found that wallet, a wallet I’m sure you remember exactly where you lost it, and brought it to a location, staffed by more honest people, who will pick up the phone when I track down their phone number offer to (free of charge) Federal Express that wallet, and smile, to our office.

“Are you sure you don’t just want me to re-order a new wallet and cards for you?” I yelled across the office.

Crickets.

I want to be challenged at work (does not equal sign) tracking down a missing wallet in the Coachella valley.

By Friday I had delivered the bad news: I’m done with this nonsense. I’d found two phone numbers to two lost and founds, where the voicemail boxes were full. I’d talked to most of the staff, took reports, and interviews, and that wallet was long gone, being spent on beer and women in a better place and he just had to accept that.

So to my Coachella goers this weekend – enjoy. And if you find that goddamnit son of a __ wallet, just don’t mention it to me.

Hello Kitty, Goodbye Kitty

I can't fathom a sadness like this clings without end, because if it did, I can't imagine anyone wanting to undertake it again.

I was in no business to be a pet owner. I was 20. And a full time college student. A full time sorority sister. A full time employee with a full time job. But I was also full of a lot of love too, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at Katie's Pet Depot one block south of Wilshire, and half a mile from UCLA, I'd walk, on my lunch hour, to visit the animals there in the window for adoption. It was soothing. An hour to myself, away from my sort of terror for a boss, and a terror of a world.

When asked if I'm a cat person, I say "I'm whatever my landlord will let me have in an apartment person." And in most places I've lived, those are cats.

I made smalltalk with dogs, and cooed at gerbils, softly petted bunnies in large circular glass enclosures, and talked up one, Sandy, who told me I needed a cat in my life. I hadn't thought I needed one, but she was Sandy, and who was I to tell this Sandy, and her adopted animals, I didn't need them.

They needed me, if anything.

Ok, I said, I'll take this one.

I drove back after work, picked up Sophie, and there we were, at home, pet owner and pet ownee. I was 20 and I'd never had my own pet. I'd had family pets, and if something belonged to me, reported directly to me, it was much more in the shape of a mouse or a frog or a turtle. Sophie was able to show me affection in a way I'd never experienced with Templeton my rat from age 8 through 10, or my mouse, who lived one evening before falling victim to my terribly cunning team of dog and cat. But Sophie was also able to show me, too, I wasn't enough. And after 3 months, she sent me out to find a pet, a companion, a cunning partner, for her.

I had been a pet owner and she a pet ownee for 3 months, so I didn't know how to procure a cat for my cat or a pet for my pet, so I started with the simple: I'd just tell people that's what I wanted to do. Universe, give to me what I ask. Through one coworker, and her mother, and my coworkers mother, and her coworker, came my coworkers mother's coworkers friend, and alas an address, somewhere deep down the 110 in the mountains of Pasadena.

There lived a cat, age unknown, only that she'd been pregnant before age of consent and delivered a litter herself. All living in the outside, mountains, fending for themselves. In a word we've learned never to utter, save for just saying "the c word" her entire litter was eaten by coyotes.

She knew sadness too early, and home, she so desperately needed.

"She likes you!" they said. While I'd come to learn, she liked everyone, that night I took her home, Madi Lynn I named her, and there began a 3 weeks of a mistake, I was sure I had made.

There was hissing, and hiding, and mean looks. "I got her for you, Sophie! Be nice!"

And just as everyone said, just as I was ready to turn around and drive her back up the 110, friends, fast friends they became. This apartment, and each one I had after, also became theirs.

I've always said a pet is the most interesting of friends, because they know you like no one else. They know you at your weakest and most vulnerable, they know you through years and a decade of your life, that you see mirrored back at you.

Your only obligation: take care.

And through college, 7 bosses, 3 jobs and 6 apartments, I tried.
And she, me.

There were these nights I was so full of energy I could not sleep, or days so low I needed love, and we'd turn on the music and dance.
And dance.
and dance.

A project, any project, she was there. She was there to provide absolutely no assistance. She sat on my hand as I wrote away. Attempted to write away. Laundry, a car wash, even a trip down the street to be noisy, she came with.

I slaved away, she rolled in the dirt.

It's in her absence, that I do what has to be typical, split my time with beating myself up, and mourning the loss.

I tried to give her away on more than one occasion.
We didn't get along.
She bossed me around.
If she wanted wet food in the middle of the night, she woke up to tell me.
She looked like a kitten, but she roared like a monster.
It's how she got away with murder.

She liked spicy tuna rolls
and flaming hot cheetos
wet food and dry food and every kind of food food
and on more than three ocassions she'd steal pizza right out of my hand.

So when I saw her Tuesday night, out of the corner of my eye, chatting away on the telephone, her shaking unable to walk, deplete of herself, I knew that emergency care she required. We ruled out kidney failure, and diabetes, hyperthyroid perhaps, but that would require more tests. It wasn't this, but maybe that, there was no way to be sure. She was pumped with IV fluids, and sent home, skinnier, and frailer than I'd ever seen her, in just a day she went from someone I knew, to no one any of us knew.

That night we slept side by side. Her eyes laid open, mine too. When I finally met sleep, she snuck away. I awoke that morning and searched the house. Every time I'd find her she'd find a new place to hide, be by herself, saying to me over and over she was ready to go.

I drove her to the vet.

You have three options, I was told. All of them require many tests, hospitalization, xrays. Poking and prodding galore. But her quality of life was gone. That won't ever return. She's ready to go.

I thought about my 20s, that big ol' chunk of my life, made better by her, if though most of it was me declaring we didn't get along. I couldn't let it be marred by me clinging to an inability to let her go.

She had made her choice. I just had to accept it.

There are things I would have done different. I could have been more patient. Probably not have offered her to every stranger and Jehovah's witness who came to my door. But what I never would have done different is have her as my friend. Or in saying hello, be afraid to say goodbye.

Please Uncover Your Eyes

The LA Times byline for LA Baseball yesterday read -

"You may now uncover your eyes."

I don't proclaim rocket scientist status, and my ACT and SAT score got me firmly in to a state school, but I do know it's generally impossible to read with your eyes while covering them.

When I embarked on my baseball loving life a decade ago, an embarkment foolishly to win the heart of a college aged boy whom caught my eye, I did so as a fan of the Dodgers. I lived in LA, the stadium was close, and he was a fan. I was 21 and that's what you did in the year 2000 when you know as little about life as you can read covering your eyes.

Two and a half years, three apartments, and ninety five arguments that all amounted to one thing - you're the wrong guy - I left that relationship with one mug, two cats, and a brand new hobby.

I had to decide if I liked this team on it's own merits.

My mom had always been a fan of the pro and con list system.
But what if there are so many pros mom, but there's this one con, I mean that you just have to give more value to.

We moved to a weighted pro and con system.

The numbers added up and by thorough accounting, proper vetting and all intelligent due diligence, it said one thing:
You're a Dodger fan.

I wish any of that was actually true, because I had tried one evening to make it mathematical. But love, love is more complicated than an IRS tax form and rocket science.

I loved them. I loved the Dodgers.

So for all of us who fall below the measure of rocket science status, an attempt at an explanation of love does justice to proving us as feeling, thinking beings, smarter than the proverbial smartest.

I sought in cushion of my mid-20s to prove my independence, and proclaim an identity in individuality.

I was now just a baseball fan, I said, one hand on my hip, brows burrowed, sassy shoulders moving to and fro.

I'd also like to pretend any of that is true, but I bought a cute Cubs hat at Lids in Glendale that I wanted to wear to ball games, and I was in law school, so I came up with an airtight argument should anyone ask.

I'm told life is less about seasons and holidays, and marked more on measure of our growth. We're born needing help, and then fight to "do it myself mommy." We grow in to wearing our Minnie Mouse dress to school everyday because we can, and dismiss judgment, until time we care about peer feedback again.

I'd tell you I care about what other people think about me - if you tell me what day and time you'd like to know.

For years spent exerting identity, comes equal years seeking belonging.

Succeeding at these years depends on what side of the coin you cling to.

So 30 years of life, 10 years of a baseball enthusiasm, and one very used up Cubs hat later, I proclaim while reserving all ability to modify at any time in perpetutity,
I'm a Dodger fan.
I'm a Dodger fan more so than a pro and con list,
a pro and con list weighted and given value,
tested over failed relationships,
disappointing season endings,
and a losing start.

But as only a Dodger sportscaster will say, someone with absolutely no objectivity, a home opener is the beginning of your season. And today we won.
So today I uncover my eyes,
forget last week - like you do when you grant forgiveness to those you love,
and say:

It's time for Dodger baseball.

A Place with Promise

I haven't really thought much of heaven. In the same vein as I refuse much to care about the day after the much talked about day in December 2012. If I go, I go. In the meantime I tell people I love them a lot. And besides a childrearing where to open up the box to a gift, I must have had already drafted my first draft of a thank you note (before being allowed to write it on the nice paper), I believe strongly in the thank you note. For the reasons we are all familiar with, etched in concrete in our cliche, it could all be over, and I want people to know I'm really thankful. And I hope they have a great birthday. And I'm sorry for their loss. Because those things can't be said when we leave, and those around us leave, or when we grow distant.

Thank you so much.

So I don't know if it's the being really present in my gratitude of todays gifts, or the writing of cards which keep me and the US Postal Service busy, I forget about heaven. It's somewhat surprising since even at stop lights I like to long at drivers in cars next to me imaging where they work and live, what cereal could be their favorite, whether they're in love and where they bought their sunglasses and what makes them dream.

I can create a story and a visual around a parked car - until I get honked at.

But heaven is a place I don't think of much, to even my own surprise.

Easter and the rise of Christ is a reminder, and death. A death is a reminder.

Even the worst in most animals in better than the best in people. They are beloved because their innocence is not forced or in fear of disappearing, and their lifelong need to belong to you never dicipates.

My little cat is an asshole, and most time I see her in the hallway I greet her with a "oh you're still here." But I secretly love her. Like I love a lot of people - and as this story goes - animals outside of four corner box of my immediate life.

Several weeks ago a bunny I petsat for - for 10 years, passed away. For it's life it was always good with dogs, and even reasonable affectionate with humans, but as long as I knew him, he'd never let me touch him. This past December, he sat in my arms, and while I claimed some win for finally getting what I'd always wanted - to pet him, I knew now that his stobbornness had washed away from his spirit, he'd too fade away. Unable to hop anymore, losing control over his back legs, he no longer belonged in this place. He died not many months after.

Last night, my adopted family's treasured adopted rescue also succumbed to failing kidneys and old age. Named Wendy for the Peter Pan classic, I only imagine most write or speak or remember their animals for being supremely "happy," and she, well so was she. I had tried to kidnap her on ocassion declaring she'd be happier living in Los Angeles with me, but unspokenly we know the obvious, this dog was happy right where she was, and anywhere she was. She dug, and took a very much needed nap on your lap, and not like your dog, she was a very good dog. The best dog.

When my friend emailed me today to tell me, because she knew I'd want to know, we spoke of how her cat, Promise, would very much welcome Wendy to heaven.

I hadn't thought about heaven, I thought. But I did, I started.

"Oh I bet Promise just looked over her shoulder at Wendy there, rolled her eyes, and turned her head away."

We both laughed. Promise was something else.

But in thinking of Wendy, and Promise, and that bunny hop hopping his way in to the afterlife, I thought about heaven. A place and story constructed in my head, to find comfort in their loss, in their presence. That their memory, their interaction, with me, and each other, will remain intact. Their spirit, finding permanence after their life. In my mind do they always live? Or hippity hopping, taking long afternoon cat naps, and chasing cats, they will have for always. I will only chase the dragon to know. In the meantime I just like to think of them, be a bit sad, and smile with the gratitude of their presence in my present.

Things I Knew You Know?

In moments of clarity I'll admit there are worldly and things beyond this world more important than baseball. God and love, family and peace, among them. But in other moments I'm more convinced it's those very things that draw me back every year. What I ask you is more calling than fresh sod on opening day, and another opportunity to say the words I come to be served back in September with a side of defeat, "this is the dodgers year, I know it." So it's of no value or consequence I proclaim enthusiasm for another new season, or that this is the year the dodgers take it all, or that I will be unreasonable entertaining any other conjecture.

Gainful employment, and the Dodgers refusal to reschedule opening day around my schedule, means another year of absentee status from opening day. It makes my tender heart melt and cry and bleed, and other illusions of metaphor, but it just is. And a lot of life is about learning to know the stuff you ought to have knew. People in process, we are. And I, no exception.

This year I swapped my blues for an Angel opener. I scurried and shuffled my ballet flats as fast as they'd go, and got to Anaheim in time for the middle of 1st - not bad for commuting 40 miles in rush hour and after I'd walked across a business park, a busy street, and the Angels parking lot, I'd made it. I parused the pop's popcorn, and sat down to watch some ball. Within minutes I fell in immediate discomfort. I'd had some health problems for the past months, but not rising to the point it would take over a good ballgame.

When I sat in silence, I could be ok. I'd say in repetition, "you're ok, you're fine, this will pass, there's no sort of pain that is beyond what you can handle. you're ok, you're ok, you're ok." But when someone would speak to me, because this isn't out of the realm of what's to be expected at a social engagement, I learned I couldn't speak inside my head and reassure my pain, and listen. I excused myself several times, just to be alone, and be in pain alone, until by the 7th inning, I knew this wasn't something I could handle anymore. I couldn't handle this on my own.

"I'm going to have to leave. You stay, I'm going to urgent care."

I tried to call in advance to let them know that while it was 9:30 I was going to break every law to get there by 10:00 by closing and to wait for me, but it was the 7th inning stretch, and while I chose to suffer in silence, fans showed their enthusiasm for the opening of baseball in the way I would have, had I an ability to. I couldn't get through, so I just had to make a run for it.

I'm unfamiliar with Angels stadium. So much unlike the way I know Dodger stadium. I know longtime consession workers, and have hung out with the ice cream guys in their breakroom. But here I was sad and sick and in pain, and lost. I'd never left a baseball game early in my young life, and in a way I can't express through english venacular that also made me so sad. I took what ended up being the longest way out of the stadium, and once I reached a series of ramps that seemed to make no progress towards exit, I prepared to run.

Now if you know my boyfriend you know he loves Angels baseball. Like a lot. So what business did I have to say, "leave and come with me." I couldn't.

But I got to the bottom of those half dozen ramps, and there he was. "Did you think I'd really let you leave and do this on your own?"

I was guilt ridden, but I had to make it before closing. In ballet flats, I ran across two parking lots, major traffic barriers, and a concrete wall, when I made it 4 minutes before closing.

The Angels won, and by the next day I felt better, if for now. The Dodgers lost their first couple games, and that in no way gave my pain a relief. But when I look back over my life, over baseball, the opening days, the 2 grand slams in one inning and 4 home runs I once saw in a September, the spring training games, and trips across the country to see rivals play in Wrigley and drinking beers with Cardinal fans, I have no other choice but to put this at the very top. Because for the reasons I've described, baseball to me is about a showmanship of being the very best you can be everyday, and that image of my boyfriend, the biggest baseball fan I know, leaving his opening day early, to run half a mile with me to urgent care, is what I always knew the best in people was, you know?

The End of The World

Now I can't imagine it's ever ideal to begin ones narrative with a title like ours, one that can only lead readers to the most obvious of conclusions: my Barbie pink high heels have been kidnapped. Stolen. Held hostage for ransom. Missing in action. Now perhaps it even invokes an illustration - me and my closest shoes, gathered around a small grave, heels held low in respect, for the tomb of the missing totally adorable shoe. But, no, alas, they are safely tucked in my closet at time of print.

Let's take a look. Yep, yep, there they are. Safe and sound.

So then with a title like ours, what is left? See overserved and forced to drink peach bellinis (forced I tell you!), an invitation to teach a creative writing class on literary construction of your "own planet" to a group of elementary school kids, and being made to watch movies like 2012 and History Channel documentaries on (insert our title here) by my boyfriend who clearly is not aware of my aptitude to be horrified by these things for days, and you have me, thinking about (insert our title here again), a lot.

I have always asked many questions. Why? But why? But then why? The reason I was single so long? Now so very obvious.
My father in order to put the final punctuation in my questions, said, "I think they just did that to make you ask questions, Rebecca."

That worked for a time - like most cork stoppers, but then air seeped in destroying the wine. As a (near) (alleged) grown-up I can't imagine the world functions on scientific principles doing things in strict order for purposes of making one Rebecca Simone Wareham ask questions.

Bluff I call on you Papa Wareham.

I don't blame him entirely. I was quite wordy, even then, and how was he supposed to enjoy his classic rock and the fine Los Angeles weather what with my blabbering in the backseat, and sometimes the front, and on the lawn, and in the rocking chair, and in my bed, and kitchen table. The man should have been able to eat in peace. But no, I had questions.

As a (near) (alleged) grown up, I give the internet most of my questions, and become satisfied with whatever lies it dishes and diseminates. And while the internet is valuable in this way, when it comes to people, well I never once did or do or will trust someone with a lot of answers.

See when you ask enough questions, you're bound to, by the simple laws of physics and nature and Jeopardy, get yourself an answer, even sometimes in the form of a question. So the end of the world at hand, seems a question, that lately, if you count Nostradomus as lately, so many have the answer.

Like so much of what I've described, and how I've lived, thinking about the end of the world - California cutting off at the San Andreas and floating in to the Pacific ocean, plates being shifted playing Twister with continents, hot spots getting damn cold, all of it ending December two years and change from now - well it just becomes two thousand and twelve questions. Questions that really have more to do with living, then ending. I wonder how people will live differently knowing as some do with many answers, that the world is ending. Would people not have that additional child to add to their family? Not move? Not start a business or invest or learn a new skill. Would life end before the end? Or would it, in cliche induced frenzy, start?

One car ride home from dinner, my boyfriend asked me what I'd do if the world ended.

"I don't care," I said.

I don't care I said, in my best twelve year old tween-ness bratty voice and tone and face. I don't care. But I don't I explained. I have control over so little. I am, at my most basic, a human, with responsibility to do my best, and a lot of trust in God seeing me through. If this is it, cool.

Cool.

But it clearly wasn't over then - because I didn't stop thinking about it. I've had dreams. And when my grandma brought up the 2016 Rio Summer Games, I did my best "eh I don't know those are happening for sure." It clearly has made me unnerved. And not in a way that makes me question my tween response. Only in a way that the questions, only build. Only in a way that can possibly be done, to make Rebecca Simone Wareham, of Valley Village, California - ask more questions.