october 2004

I went to four grocery stores today, plus the farmers market. Not really to get anything, more to just go. I started at the farmer’s market, today was the good one, tuesday mornings from 8am till 1pm, I didn’t get there till 11:00, which kind of sucked because I missed the guy that sells chinese chickens and chinese fresh eggs fresh from his farm in Indio, I don’t know why, but the chinese chicken and eggs taste way better than the ones that I get at Trader Joes. I don’t know if its because they’re chinese, or because they’re fresher. I love the Torrance market because there are tons of Asians in torrance, and the market has all the great fruits and vegetables that you can’t find just anywhere, like Persimmons, special pears, lemon grass, long green beans, bok choy, and hundreds of other stuff that I don’t even know what the name of it is. I walked around and bought 4 fuji apples, some bok choy, cilantro, green onions, and a half a loaf of whole wheat bread. I really didn’t want to buy the bread, because I really want to be on a low carb diet, and usually i only buy bread for my boyfriend, but he is in seattle for a month, he left yesterday, and I guess I kind of liked the idea that I could buy half a loaf. Plus I plan on working out a ton while he is gone, so they say you really need some type of carbohydrates. And it is 100 per cent whole wheat. Oh, and I also bought pumkin seeds. pepitas. yum.
So then I went to go explore this asian market that I always see down on western and artesia, in gardena, and I have never been in, but I am totally obsessed with asian markets and food and the culture and everything. So I went in because I wanted to find some non-sweetened already made green tea, and this place was fucking great, it was like a swapmeet but with a grocery store too. There were little ceramic plates on sale for 98 cents, and tons of rice cookers and vacuums, and baby clothes from Asia. Then I went to the grocery part and looked at the aisles of soy sauce and noodles, and they had japanese spagghetti that you get in a package with no english except the labeling that said the ingredients and the calories and the carbs. I wonder how asians eat so many noodles and rice and have such small bodies, but people like me in california blow up like balloons if we look at a plate of pasta. It’s not fair. Maybe it’s because they eat off such small plates.
I’ve really been into eating little small things, like I only like my salad chopped up tiny tiny, and I’ve been eating off a saucer at home, and the night before last, we were at my boyfriends parents house and his dad was making a big deal because I was trying to eat the meat off the rib he gave me with a fork. “pick it up and eat it! Get in there! What are you doing?” he said. I just smiled and said that I was just trying to get to the last of it. I didn’t feel like knawing at the bone like a dog, but I didn’t tell him that part. We were driving back home, when my boyfriend said “They can really tell how much in love we are? Don’t you think?” and I was quiet and a littel surprised, because I was thinking more of when his brother asked us how long we’ve been together and he said “FOREVER, I feel like we have been together f-o-r-e-v-e-r...but we’re going to keep on trucking i guess,” so to me, that just seemed, you know, a little over the top. I mean, he was leaving the next day to go to seattle for a month, which is kind of like running away from us, because we do live together and have been together for three years, but at least he bought a return ticket. And I am planning a transformation in the meantime. I am going to transform my body, my attitude, everything. Starting tomorrow.
So today I just shopped. I went to the second asian market a little further down the road, that was definitely not as nice and smelled like dead rotting old fish. I put sesame oil, light soy sauce, and rice vinegar in my basket, and one package of ramen noodles that were flavored with bean paste. But then I put the basket down and left because they only had sweetened green tea, and also they only had one checkout person and about 15 people in line wanting to check out.
So by that time I was a little hungry and decided to stop at the hawaiin take-out place next to the big Kings Hawaiin bakery. Sometimes, when you get off the 405 freeway there, you can smell the hawaiin bread baking which is sooooooo good, except of course, that I can’t have bread. I ordered the hawaiin chicken nuggets with ramen salad instead of rice. i figure its my last day to be bad. I ate a little on the drive home, and then got home and wasn’t really hungry for the rest, and i just remembered that I wanted to get a pedometer to find out how many steps I take a day. So, I go back out again, but before I leave I call my boyfriend. “hey baby what’s up?” he says, he answered on the fifth ring. “Nothing, i’ve been so sore all day, and I just realized that it was from our little session the night before you left,” “yeah, but it was fun right?” “yeah but you made me do all the work...so whatcha doing?” “cooking some eggs,” it was 2:23pm. I figured it must have been a late night the night before. “what kind? over medium?” “you know it! my brother had his scrambled though, well i gotta go, buring the eggs, love you...” “me too.” and he hung up. it just feels so empty here. and messy. so i go to target for my pedometer. I look at the giant candles on sale, but realize that i have no place to put them, and even if i did, i couldn’t afford them right now, since i’ve been on unemployment for two months because the last show i worked on ended early, and the one I was going to start got pushed back and i had to turn down another show because I already committed. plus i wanted to have a little time off so i could really concentrate on losing weight and getting back into shape. but for some reason, i still am the same. even with weight watchers. i started that the week i finished the Vh1 show, and i weighed the most i ever weighed, so much i don’t even want to say. and i thought i had been following their program pretty well, until after the first week i gained 8 ounces, and then have fluctuated within the same 4 pounds the whole time. On sunday i weighed in and weighed exactly what i weighed when i started. Ithink i must have a sluggish thyroid. My boyfriend thinks that i shouldn’t be drinking so much. which i don’t really, i usually only drink when he drinks. which really isn’t that much. never mind, it is actually a lot. so much that when he told his brother he was coming to see him in seattle, his brother told him that there was to be no liquor in the house ever. and his brother doesn’t even see him that much, so if he thinks he drinks a lot, then i guess he kind of does. But I really don’t think me drinking is the reason why i’m not skinny.
all of my friends are skinny, i mean, super hot really skinny. and they don’t even have eating disorders, well at least not anymore really. and they drink all the time. And they eat sometimes. But I guess that they aren’t nearly as obsessed with food like I am. I mean, they probably don’t hit 4 grocery stores in one day. After Target I went to Trader Joes to get some lettuce and I put my little pedometer on and it was 200 steps from my car in the parking lot to the entrance. I am really going to have to pick up the pace if i want to get 10,000 steps a day. I picked up some romaine and some white pumpkins and avocados and broccoli and light cranberry juice and calcium chews and looked at the cheeses even thoug I don’t eat cheese because i am allergic to dairy, but I love looking at the cheese. Squeezing the brie, imagining spreading it on crackers. actually i tried some brie once and it was sooooooo good, but i had incredible diareriia and cramps after, so its sad that I can’t have it. i picked up peanuts and looked at the wine and they didn’t have the italian sangiovese that i wanted so i went down the frozen aisle and looked at the gnocchi because I love gnocchi. i am half italian and gnocchi by far is my all time favorite-- pasta made out of puffs of potatoes? heaven! but i didn’t get it, in fact, it got so crowded in there because it was 4:00 and everyone was picking things up after work or after whatever else they do all day, and there was this girl with a Gap sweater on and cropped black pants and slip on shoes with kitten heels and she grabbed the gorgonzal gnocchi and some other frozen italian penne pasta and a bottle of wine and some brie and headed to the checkout. i imagined what it’d be like to be her, to be able to eat cheese and carbs and wine and still be skinny. she was probably cooking for her boyfriend. he was probably not in seattle with his brother trying to escape her. I picked up the light cranberry juice and the peanuts from my basket and went to the checkout, leaving the rest of the items i picked up over in the cereal aisle. Driving away I realized that I still didn’t get the salad i needed, nor the peanut butter, which i really needed, not the peanuts. the peanuts are in the shell and i don’t even really like peanuts in the shell. they were just on sale for a dollar. So i drove down Pacific Coast Highway in traffic, to the Whole Foods by my house in Redondo. I don’t even like that one as much as the one in Torrance, but, it was on the way, and I was running out of gas, and I didn’t have any money to get any till friday. Whole foods is always so pretty, and the people in there usually say excuse me if they bump into you. And the guys at the meat counter are always really anxious to help you. And I think that they are always checking out my ass while I am walking down and checking out the meat. They are always greeting me with a huge smile, “what can i get for you today!” and you feel really bad when you say that you are just looking, but today i did want something. Some really thin beef. In the asian markets, its so cool because they sell the super thin cuts of beef and pork and lamb for korean shabu, or japanese sukiyaki or stir frys or whatever. and I was thinking of asking mr. meat guy to slice me a rib-eye paper thin, but this is whole foods and the Rib-eyes are like 18.99 a pound, and even though i only needed a little, i wasn’t rich, so I got the milanesa, 1/2 pound, still thin and only $2.39.
I come home and pee and then put everything away and end up being too tired to cook, even though i love to cook, but the kitchen is a mess and i have no energy to clean, so i bake some “healthy” fish sticks and some yukon gold frozen french fries. only 300 calories for both. my boyfriend doesn’t eat that much fish because it reminds him of where we use to both work, Joe’s Crab Shack, where they have the worst seafood. well, maybe not the worst, but definitely the most frozen. When i waited on people, they would ask me “what’s really fresh today?” and I would have to smile and say “everything!” and when someone came in that really knew seafood would ask me if the fish was fresh, our answer was suppose to be “fresh frozen!” which isn’t fresh, i mean, it was fresh, then they froze it. i think when most food gets frozen, at one point it was fresh right? So you’re not lying, but you definetely aren’t giving someone the freshest product available. The Shack was also where we both met. He was a bartender and I was a server. I had just moved to LA from San Diego a year earlier, and had just got laid off from my fist real job, working in public relations for a bunch of skinny annoying bitches in santa monica. I was so excited when they laid me off, and so happy that i could go back to working in a restaurant where you made such good money and worked half as much as all your friends with real jobs. Working in a restaurant isn’t just a job, its a lifestyle. Start work at 5pm, stand around and wait for your section to be sat, talk to everyone else about how crazy you partied the night before, complain about your tables, flirt with cute guys, figure out what everyone is going to do after work tonight, try to make enough money so you can buy some coke from the kitchen guys, try to make more money so you can have enough to also go out drinking too, hope that the busser doesn’t think you’re making that much, since you still owe him for the weed he fronted you the day before. Get out of work at midnight, go to the dive bar that still lets everyone smoke inside and drink after hours. Go to someone’s house after the bar and do all the coke you bought earlier. Have sex with the hot new server you work with. Go to bed at 7am, sleep till 2pm, get breakfast, go to the beach, take a shower, go to work all over again.
Before my boyfriend was my boyfriend, he was a bartender and i was a server. He had a cool belt. But I didn’t think he was that cute. And I heard he was in a band, but I didn’t think that they were probably that good. The drummer worked with us too, as a busser, and he was always saying how good their band was, so then I really figured they sucked. One night I reluctantly went to their show, and they were pretty fucking good. He played guitar and he was insane. amazing. and we started hanging out, as friends, because he had just hooked up with this other cheesy chick named Holly Wood, really her parents named her that, and i wasn’t about to get involved in all the restaurant drama. i was older than everyone, and way cooler. i didn’t even like hanging out after work, i just did because there was nothing better to do, and all my other friends had real jobs and my nights off were school night for them, so i just did what i had to do.
My boyfriend still hasn’t called me tonight, i told him we didn’t have to talk everyday, but at least every other day, and shouldn’t he be missing me by now, like I am him? doesn’t he just want to hear my voice? So it’s 1am and I can’t sleep, i didn’t go to sleep until 4am last night, it’s really hard when you are so use to someone there. even if they do come home drunk and late alot. at least they come home. Only 33 more days till he gets back. I am on night two. thirty three more to go. it’s going to be a long month.

todays email to my best friend

Hi! I miss you! I am getting depressed about turning 30 and part of me wants it to pass quietly with little fan fare-- my boyfriend is not a planner and will not be planning anything more than a dinner for me-- and honestly, i think i just would want to have a nice dinner with lots of wine and good food and conversation, i was going to maybe have a party on the roof of my place, but when i started thinking about it, I really don't have enough friends up here that would even come, or that i would feel like celebrating with.
Or maybe we could go to a winery somewhere in santa barbara or temecula-- i've never done that before, i don't know, i hate planning my own birthday, I love planning other peoples, but hate mine. I don't like to be the center of attention, I don't like to feel like people need to go out of their way for me, I can't even remember what i did last year for my birthday, or the year before that...
sorry, i think that i am just depressed today. I need a job. I hate looking for one, so now i need to figure out what i want to do so i can do something full time. My house is a mess and I have no energy to clean it. Sometimes I wonder if I'm with the right person, or I am just trying to make him the right person because I don't want to go through dating again, but it would be nice to be with someone that is a little less selfish and doesn't think it is a burden to plan something nice for my birthday! I need to clean out my closet, throw away stuff I never wear. I'm out of conditioner and can't afford to buy the good stuff my hair needs.
Hmmmmm, i think thats it-- did you see Jody's wedding pictures? they look really happy....
i wish i could just run away to italy and live and love and laugh and sip esspressos at a little cafe.

That is how I feel today!
thanks for listening

lazy

okay so i think i have a lazy problem, either that or I am addicted to the internet, I am suppose to wake up everyday and write something, anything, as long as it is about 2 pages, and instead I peruse blog after blog, then myspace page after myspace page, then gossip blogs then the top 20 most emailed articles at the New York Times, then the LA times, and now today, I am late....suppose to be at X-games by 1:30, and it is 1:20 and I am still in a towell, not dressed, nowhere near ready, but still not really doing anything!

working again...

After over a month off, living the life as a woman of leisure, (thank god for unemployment, i was a somwhat un-broke woman of leisure), now i am back working at the lamest of reality shows...which i will leave un-named as to protect my co-workers that hate this place as much as i do! yes, so now i will be back blogging, i am trying to be less sporadic in my posts, though no one i believe is even reading this unless they accidently come upon it. But a girl can dream right?

the disconnectedness is catchy

I have a weird obsession with bags. I’ll shop, and no matter what, i can’t seem to throw the bag away, I’ll try, folding it up neatly and walking up to the trash can, but then i think that I might need it for something sometime, and place it in the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink, or underneath the kitchen sink. Same thing with boxes, like i’ll buy new make-up and can’t for some reason throw away the box it comes in. I know i won’t need the box, but yet, again, i can’t seem to get myself up to throwing it away.

People are obsessed with a lot of things in LA, like, coming home from the bar, I notice people always going to run the stairs on Avenue A at 2:10 a.m. It’s safe here, in South Redondo Beach, to go out late at night and do things like that. We don’t even lock the door at our apartment, well, we live in a security building, but even feeling safe enough to not lock the doors is a huge thing. I don’t think many people run the Santa Monica stairs at 2 in the morning, but, they could, i mean this is LA after all. My gym is open 24 hours and I do try to go, at least I try to go at night instead of going to the bars, It’s better to burn 600 calories than to drink them. But usually, the bar urge far outweighs the gym urge.

LA is a very interesting place. I think its so interesting becaus you can’t really say “LA” because it encompasses so much. I grew up in san diego, and i thought that was big, until i moved up here. Now I go back there and someone says, “oh we’re at the beach and we want to go downtown but its so far,” and I’m like, far, dude, it’s only 8 minutes. Where I live in LA it takes me 16 minutes to get to the freeway.

Which also explains the disconnectedness of LA. Like, I live in the south bay, not far, still considered LA county, but in fact, very disconnected. If we venture out to Hollywood, we always, have to leave by like midnight, so we can make it back to the south bay for last call at the bar by our house. But most of the time, it is very difficult to get people to leave the south bay to go anywhere north of Manhatten Beach.

But It’s really the same all over. Living in Long Beach, it was such a trek to get to Newport, and living in Burbank, it took serious effort to get to the West side. People in LA live in their own bubbles, visiting the same coffee shops right by their house, seeing the same people at the same hip happening bars and night clubs right next to home. I wish there was a more convienent car less way to get around LA, but LA is too vast and for as much that there is to do, I’m not sure as many people as could do really experience it.

reunited and it feels so good

okay so the craziest thing happened, I got contacted by one of my old high school best friends, Bianca, and I hadn't talked to her in about 10 years. But the really weird thing was i was just thinking of her, I was driving to work yesterday and I saw an old Nissan Sentra just like the one she use to drive when we were seniors, and i thought, gosh i wonder what Bianca is up to? And then literally, today, I got an email from her... it is so crazy when you put stuff out into the universe like that, it ends up coming back. In high school her dad worked nights at the local jail, so we were partying all night every night at her house until 6am when her dad came home from work. He'd also made the mistake one day of telling her she could paint her room however she wanted, so we promptly had a painting party that consisted more of writing things on the walls-- qoutes to live by, pictures of each other, our tagger names, just plain silliness. And so since she didn't want her dad to know that we were all coming over at night, we all only came in through the window.

rain makes l.a. really pretty

I saw a rainbow this morning, not one of those half-kinda-in-the-sky-half-bow but a real fucking huge end to end rainbow. Cheesy, i know, but it really made my morning on the drive to work. Despite all the houses falling off the hills, flooding, and sink holes, Los Angeles does look really amazing when it rains. Every normally brown dead hill has come alive, green and gorgeous. Driving over the 405 this morning into the valley, I saw streams and mini waterfalls in the crevices of the hills right past the Getty. The last time I went to the Getty, I stared out from one of the balconey's onto the L.A. basin, and all I saw was brown and grey and a few semi-green palm trees. But today, L.A. is beautiful, gorgeous, majestic. If I wasn't already having a love affair with the city, I would certainly be trying to edge my way in now! And I know it's glamourous to live in the Hills and be cool, but I guess it's not really that cool when your house starts to fall down the embankment. Or your driveway is blocked by 8 feet of mud. Maybe that is why people in Malibu really drive SUV's. Every few decades it becomes a jungle out there...

rule 1, you better drive fast, even if it appears like you can't

My boyfriend doesn't know how to drive in L.A. He's been driving here since he was 16, yet he has no idea how to get anywhere and hasn't mastered the art of maneuvering, lane hopping, or overall speed. He'll sit angrily behind a semi for miles, gripping the steering wheel, cursing while no one will let his visibly signal blinking truck in. He'll call me annoyed that I suggested he take La Cienega instead of the 405 to the 10 at 8:30 in the morning. Then call back and apologize when he intuitively took the Fairfax fork, avoiding impeding congestion from construction, thus getting him to work on time. He really hates driving with me. I jump from pocket to pocket, trying not to hurt anyone, cutting slow ones off nicely (don't they know they really need to pay attention and hug the car's bumper ahead of you, lest get jumped on?) Oh, I've had my share of aggravations, like the bitch in the BMW (the cheapest one) practically hitting me while cut in front of me, then as I responded with a hand placed continuously on my horn, she had the audacity to flip me off when she had almost caused a most horrendous fender bender on the 405 South at 6:02 p.m. But, to live here, you must learn the rhythms of the freeway. You must know each stretch, where the lanes expand then contract. You must also learn the exits to the best sidestreets, since sometimes the freeways don't neccersarily take you where you want to go. They also sometimes take you nowhere, when because of an accident or police pursuit you are stuck moving two miles an hour. But the greatest thing about living and driving in LA, is the random acts of kindness the traffic gods bestow on you, the day when you leave the valley at 4:13 p.m. on a Friday and get home to South Bay in 40 minutes. You keep looking at the clock, thinking, there has got to be some mix-up! This can't be! I can't possible be driving so fast at this hour! Those are the days you live for. And the rest of the time you just thank god for KCRW, Air America Radio, Indie 1031, and of course, your iPod with the car radio converter.

It's coming off slow, but its coming off...

Okay, so I have been dieting now for about 17 years. And I am only 29. I was always really skinny as a little kid, I was allergic to dairy and a very picky eater. I would only eat mashed potatoes, french fries, and the fat off the ends of pork chops. But my parents were never alarmed, they wanted me to eat SOMETHING, so it was really no big deal. That was until puberty hit at age 11. I remember going into the Gap instead of the kids section at JC Penny's and having to buy size 1 jeans, because my hips were too big for the size 12 (kids size mind you) in the girls section. Then in 7th grade, everyone had Guess Jeans, and I was so bummed because I had to wear a size 27 while everyone else wore a 24 or 26. (But I pulled up a pair of size 27 now and damn do I wish that I could even squeeze a leg into those!) Feeling extremely fat compared to my peers, I tried to unsuccessfully diet, by only eating apples and peanut butter, but no matter what, I was always a size ahead of everyone I knew. Finally in high school, at 16, I went on weight watchers with my mom-- I was 134 pounds, which felt humongous on my 5'1 frame, and I successfully lost 14 pounds just in time for prom. But over the summer I gained it all back, and spent the next five years gaining. On the eve of my 21st birthday, I was tired of not being able to wear a bikini on spring break and wearing half shirts out at clubs, so I went to mexico and bought diet pills (you know, the ones they banned-- Fen Phen and something that started with an R) and lost 30 or 40 pounds, and kept it off for awhile, but over the next 8 years it all creeped back. I went back to Weight Watchers last year and was shocked that I weighed 148. I quit after 3 weeks, having lost nothing, and then over the year, after getting a desk job and quitting my only aeorobic activity, waitressing, proceded to gain another 18 pounds. My "A-Ha" moment was when I walked out of my house, wearing a peach fitted sweatshirt and black skirt, and someone in big obnoxious truck yelled "You really shouldn't wear orange, you look like a pumpkin!" I ran back upstairs crying. My boyfriend, the sweetest thing in the world, wanted to go find the guys and kick their ass, but it was that moment that I had had enough. So now I went to Lindora, paid a ridiculous amount of money, but since December lost 15 pounds. I was kinda bummed because i felt like I should have lost more by now, but hey, 17 years of dieting might slow things down a bit. My goal is to be thin by 30. And I know that I shouldn't say this, and people say all body types are different, blah blah, whatever, I really am going to be thin, very thin, LA Thin, but that is another entry.