Two more signs that I should move.

1. I saw an ant in my closet.
2. Spider in the closet.

Moving is just effin' stressful. Apartment hunting, roommate hunting.

Added on 7/31/08:
3. I just killed a millipede-looking-creature in the kitchen.

Noticed that this is a mini-entry but I gotta go. The kitchen sink is leaking.

Ah, discomfort

Ladies and gentlemen, the Itch Festival has begun. I have been attacked. 14 mosquito bites within twenty-four hours. One of them is blowing up to the size of a ping pong ball. It's two days later, so they're all swelling up, itching like mad, and creating quite the irritation.
Where are these mosquitoes coming from? Must be happening in the middle of the night, because I just wake up with these wounds. There should at least have been an opportunity for me at retaliation to kill off these suckers. But while I'm sleeping - this must be the cowardliest of all militant strategies.

Why I get mercilessly attacked and no one else in the apartment does, I have no idea. Everything's clean, I've sprayed on bug repellent, and lit some citronella. Maybe it's my blood type...

I walk outside to my car in the morning, suspiciously eyeing the large, idle puddle of water with various rubbish floating in it. Ughh, standing water.

I gotta move.

No, YOU hold on.

Chick who answered the phone: Please hold...[music begins playing]
Music stops.
My other line rings.
Me: Oh -hold on one second-
I am on the other line for all of about two seconds and now I can see that the other woman who put me on hold has immediately dropped off.
Easy way to annoy others: Put other people on HOLD, but you yourself, won't hold.

My left index finger itches.

Taking the edge off. The blur.

What a hectic and red-eyed Monday. I'm feeling the need before lunch to do something later today to cushion the stressed brain and muscles from the day back to work from the weekend. Softening the blow. Hmm, I guess that's a bit harsh. Something to...take the edge off. Felt the need for it after Monday, Tuesday, and feeling another day this week will bring the same. I should find something quick other than projects to work on. Otherwise I may take to eating cheese. Exclusively.

My brain is drained. A red-eyed Tuesday. Managed to nosh on a bowl of cereal, fruit and yogurt, a banana, and the top of a muffin. And then was still hungry.
I do believe the days are blurring together. This morning I washed my face twice, I was so tired. Usually it's being half-asleep in the shower and either double shampooing or forgetting and going straight to the conditioner, but today the facewash did double duty. I feel a little - Ed Norton's character in Fight Club pre-Tyler Durden. Some people are just born not to be morning people.

I like to think of myself as an afternoon person.

LOTW

Eat, Pray, Love
From the Brazilian guy in Liz's party of new friends she's just met..."I can't dance, I can't play soccer..."
And she goes,"Maybe so. But I have a feeling you could play a very good Casanova.' Time stopped solid for a long, long moment then, as we looked at each other frankly, like, That was an interesting idea to lay on this table."

Firstly, oh shoot!. Secondly, what a deliciously sexy moment you've reminded me of. I kind of want to bust out the heels and the red dress.

If only I had a red dress...

It's the food.

Saturday morning. 7:30 a.m. Ah, now what will you do today?
1. Eat first!***
2. Hit the gym.
3. Take out trash/do laundry/Target run. That would bring me to 4 hours later..
4. Call several of the trusties for tonight's plans.

Yesterday's glorious Friday afternoon brought an earlier weekend. And pizza. It's the little things in life that make a world of difference. Well, maybe just the food. Yeah, it's the food.

It is then that I realized it has been over three years since I had a decent slice of pizza. Met up with fellow East Coasters Sara G. and BJG, after taking a whole freaking hour in traffic from Universal City to the BH. That Santa Monica Boulevard can be quite the biatch.

But good pizza and soda and all is well in the world. I also realized that I've become quite anti-social with juggling an online class, full-time work, hitting the gym, apartment/roommate hunting, and catching up on reading. All that and avoiding Hollywood takes an abundant chunk of your time. Switching priorities means something gets knocked down a few notches. Also, the overall ease of spirit.

Today - not sure the laundry will get done. But today, I choose to spend outside in peace. With something to eat.

Today. New pimple, apartment hunting, and Stop Interrupting!

Aren't we supposed to stop breaking out after high school?
I have a new pimple on the side of my mouth. The down side to this spot is that it hurts whenever it gets wiped with a napkin, or touches the side of a glass while sipping. Who knew the side of your mouth gets touched that often?
* * * * *
Okay, there's one thing in Hollywood that I like. Ah, live music. Sad when it takes you ages to remember the last time you had fun. Oh, working stiffs. Hollywood, 1. Not Hollywood, 100.

So I've joined the apartment-hunting club. Or the, I need-to-look-at-places-because-I'll be-homeless-in-five-minutes club.

I killed a roach last night.
It felt like a sign. Maybe it's God saying, "Yeah, you know what? You really should move. It's time - get on the stick!"
It's the whole poverty stricken stigma of finding a bug in your apartment. I wonder how many roaches the one that I've seen is representative of, the ones unseen behind our furniture and walls. I think I've killed at least a handful of spiders in the past year, and I've seen enough cobwebs to deck out the late Aaron Spelling's place in October.

Stop Interrupting!
I hate it when I find myself interrupting someone. Sure, you get bored hearing someone drone on or talk without letting others get a moment edgewise. But it's just so rude. It's the slightest but completely infuriating thing when someone ELSE interrupts YOU. Because when you interrupt someone, this is what you're really saying:
"'I believe what I am saying is more important than what you are saying.' And I can't find another way to see that than: 'I believe that I am more important than you.' And that must end." [Eat, Pray, Love]
So true, Liz Gilbert, so true.

COTW

the Christian Bale-looking guy at my neighborhood gym in Studio City.

tall, dark and handsome guys that came out of hiding at a certain Hotel Cafe show! Seriously, where have you been all this time?

The Woman That Does Not Text and LOTW

I no longer send or receive text messages on my cell phone. After changing my plan and identifying how much the cost of text messaging capabilities were adding up to each month, each year, well, you get the picture.

There's something about it that never sat well with me. Sending a few lines to your friend. You respond back. Three or four messages go back and forth. Something you could have solved in ten seconds of talking if you just hit SEND and talked to them. Revolutionary, I know. There's also something about it that makes me want to scream, "just grow a pair and call the person!" Especially when it's a guy - you can't be a man to at least call, really? It's rare even to get a voicemail message anymore. From anybody, it seems. You leave a voicemail message, and I'll be at your house baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch. You handwrite a letter and mail it to me, I'll be cooking a three-course dinner.

I don't accept text messaging as a valid method of communication. Not even a missed call. The wonderful 'Chocolate' cell phone, when it slides open, which can happen when I just toss it into my purse, will open and list 'Missed Call' when I've missed a call. And when it slides closed, it closes the status update and I don't ever see it again until I open the 'Missed Calls' option on the phone. But if you didn't leave a message anyway, it probably wasn't important. If you didn't need to let me know why you called, whatever.

But I've found that this perspective is not always the consensus.
"I called you last night, but you didn't call me back."
"Well, you didn't leave a message."
"Yeah, but you didn't call me back."
"Why didn't you leave a message?"
I suppose, then, we're both guilty. My argument, then, is that, instead of the occurrence of phone tag, if the initial caller had left a message, then, at least the other person would know what was up. Instead, the sad phone tag continues. All because no one left any messages. Text message tag. Missed call tag. Facebook wall-to-wall tag.

Add that to the flaky landscape of SoCal, and we're easily in Jadedville. Ah, flakiness. That's another blog in itself, which I'm sure will happen sooner or later.

So many ways we have to communicate with each other; we live in such a luxurious time. Perhaps it does save us time, perhaps it only further complicates our lives. Time being the essence of everything that's been on the brain lately. Yet I still can't prevent getting stuck on the freeway, spending precious minutes looking for parking, futile hours tossed in the wastebasket of the evils of Los Angeles. Moments that keep recurring in that I have bouts of, "why didn't I get a Mini Cooper? Then I could fit perfectly right...there."

But there's always something to want more of, better of, brand-spankin' newer of. But I digress.

SO many things wrong with the apartment. The space in which you come home to, should not be a source of stress in your life. It's your home, my goodness. As I type this, I sit in the second floor apartment on a barstool. The oscillating plastic fan that my roommate assembled is blowing and providing the comfort in this 98 degree day (and still hot evening) along with a cold glass of water. The water pressure in the sink is still shot. The neighbors downstairs are blasting the bass on their stereo, which means they're probably banging each other. This morning, albeit a holiday morning, was not without the sanitation employees loudly taking the contents of the dumpsters of a certain studio's loading area, via monstrous trash truck. They're doing their jobs, but whenever it happens it is not without a complete and utter sense of wrongdoing that I hear the racket at such early morning hours. The small dog downstairs is yapping. I haven't washed my car in over a month since the street parking is prone to early morning sprinklers so I don't see the point. The garage, which may or may not be blocked by delivery trucks, other residents' cars, takes more hassle to open and close than to be worth the wasted minutes of life.

I just don't understand it. All these snags that keep coming up in life that serve up obstacles everywhere I turn. Like life is consistently trying to make things harder than it is. Things that make it harder to relax, things that some people never face but I find myself facing and trying not to dwell on them, trying not to become stone-cold with resentment. The struggles of starving artists, of big dreamers, of diligent assistants that have the burning passion of ambition and artistry, of success and love and getting somewhere bigger than their own small towns and humble beginnings that nobody in this town seems to talk about.

I breathe a few sighs, I'm sweating because it's still hot up here. I'm sure my make-up looks great under stress.

Today I feel old.

Lines-of-the-Week

Jason Mraz,www.freshnessfactorfivethousand.blogspot.com :
"The road is long and seamless. Even over water. And though the tar is paved in blood of the last animals on earth, it is also a path paved in love & light, where every direction is just a roundabout way home." My heart, my heart.

Flipping Out's Jeff Lewis, on Zoila, his housekeeper, asking for the weekend of her birthday off.
Jeff: "Who's gonna do my laundry? Who's gonna cook my breakfast? (beat) She's so selfish." Oh Bravo, how you make me laugh so.