AND THE STRANGE THING IS I DON'T KNOW WHICH I PREFER
I'm
the kind of person who likes neighbors. I enjoy being neighborly
and I like being neighborlied in return. That said, I'm very particular
about not crossing lines if the relationship never progresses into
friendship, like how one of my old Burbank neighbors wants my phone
number so we can 'chat'. Given that we were not friends, this is
a time-suck recipe for disaster, and I'm trying to figure out how
to get out of it. The good news is that I've been slowly meeting
neighbors here, and one of them invited us to their fourth of July
party tomorrow where there will be a keg and fireworks, which is
all I need to know. I just looked across the street and it appears
that my across-the-street neighbor is black, and I've lived here
for two months now and this is fresh news. Also, the man next to
her appears to be brain-damaged, and I think I saw the man next
door peering through my bathroom window yesterday as I sat down
to use the facilities. An interesting cast of characters we have
here. Not that being black makes you interesting, but this is a
small town, so maybe.
Top
things on my mind:
1.
Sometimes I get angry, and with the anger comes a sailor's mouth,
and last night I yelled at Gray that he was a "stupid fucker!!"
really loudly and our windows were open and now I'm wracked with
guilt that all the aforementioned neighbors will think I'm an a-hole
and put me on their interesting cast of characters list, but not
in a good way.
2.
I really do think I'm not stimulating the baby's brain enough. Also,
at play group with kids his age, he cries more than they do and
is more clingy and less adventurous. This is not good.
3.
Still fat, and not happy about it. I have taken to bicycling the
nearby trail for an hour and a half a day, though, so hopefully
my midsection will become a little less midwestern soon.
4.
As alluded to in my last entry, I don't think I'm ready to get pregnant
again, but the pressure is on. Which of course means it won't happen,
because nature does not like pressure and stress. We are not actively
trying, but I am tracking the course of my eggs and their fallopian
journey each month in order to prepare.
5.
I just edited a wedding video and finaled it in the course of two
days (during mornings, naptimes, evenings) and it felt really good
to do something that started as nothing and became a finished product
in the end.
===
Life
here is interesting. Have I talked much about the move yet? It feels
like I've been here for ten years. We keep having all these guests
and then we go away for awhile and there isn't much downtime so
it feels all frenetic. But it's absolutely beautiful here, like
gorgeous, like when I think of my walks and bike rides here with
the baby and compare them to walking around the concrete neighborhoods
of Burbank I shudder. It makes me think we were foolish for staying
there so long. And it's semi-isolated here and sometimes foggy and
cold, and it's weird renting a house after being a homeowner (for
instance I want to rip out this kitchen and redo it SO BAD but I
know I can't touch it and its green formica countertops because
they don't belong to me) but there are plusses to it, too, like
when the plumbing goes bad somebody else pays for it. On the flipside,
if say it's 105 degrees in Burbank and the rentors in your house
run the air at full blast all the time and get a new power sucking
refrigerator and then the electrical goes wonky, we have to pay
for it. So, tradeoffs.
Also,
some people here are more LA than LA people. We were in Costco the
other day and this girl was such an LA whorebag it was unbelieveable.
She parked her car wrong in a pedestrian walkway and Gray called
her on it and she was like, "Who are you to tell me? Mind your
own business." And he started to give it back to her and I
told him to take it easy and don't be a jerk in front of the baby
and then he got mad at me for supposedly siding with her and then
I called him a stupid fucker!! and everyone stared. Not really that
last part.
===
We
spent a few days up above Mendocino last week, and it was beautiful.
We were in the house we've been in before that's right across from
the beach, though it's funny how this year wasn't as exciting since
we already live at the beach. And there were no family meltdowns,
because I stayed out of the kitchen and everybody else took their
medicine. The closest it came was when one family member started
to talk behind the back of another family member and all of a sudden
everybody wanted to have a gossip festival and I nipped it. I kind
of hate talking about other people behind their backs... it should
be fun, but it seems so dumb to me. If you don't like somebody,
tell them your problem with them and maybe they'll be like, "You're
right, I *am* a rageaholic and I will work on that now that you've
brought it to my attention. Thank you!" It could be that easy.
I
had a lot of obnoxious cleavage the afternoon this was taken. It's
good that the baby's helmet is there or this would be triple-X site
of the day.
