Fire & Ice

Hello my little friends.  I feel like I say this every week and I’m becoming that old lady who says the same thing over and over again without noticing but I mean it when I say this week has been crazy.  From fires and engagements to scripts and Christmas specials on Netflix, Costa Rica planning and bunting – which I learned in a very ‘Who’s on first?’ fashion is how Australians refer to flags and banners – it’s relentless.  I WISH I had a parent who would put me in a timeout right now.  I would gladly sit in a corner and do nothing and feel zero shame about it.  I feel like every stressed out person I’ve ever hated on television – like Paris from Gilmore Girls.  That is not how I saw this whole adult thing panning out for me.  I imagined endless pizza parties and movie marathons in blanket forts and all the wine all the time because I CAN, not because I actually NEED it to level out in this post-glacier Titanic ship life I’ve built for myself.  I’m currently lying in bed with no lights on in an attempt to will time to stop.  It isn’t working but I’m very stubborn.  This could go on for hours.  I have no idea why anyone says I’m overdramatic.

After all my talk about wanting to crawl inside of books and live inside of movies, I finally got my wish.  And like most wishes, it wasn’t what I thought it would be and I take it back for the most part.  Fires raged through California, burning cities, neighborhoods and homes.  The devastation it has caused is unbelievable.  Mother Nature can be a beautiful nightmare.  I walked out of my apartment on Saturday and I truly felt like I had entered the apocalypse.  It was the city of ash.  The sky was covered in a haze so thick, I could taste the fire with every breath.  At night, the fires glowed over the hills on the horizon.  It looked like a volcano slowly leaking lava across the sky.  The pictures that have been taken, the smoke infused sky, the animals left behind, the stories I’ve been told – it’s all beyond heartbreaking and a reminder that we have so much to be grateful for.

So if you think you’re having a bad day, it might not be so bad.  We say it a lot.  Today is the WORST.  Is it?  Is this Sophie’s Choice?   Sidestory, I did not know what her choice was until I announced to an entire Christmas party that when I have kids and they misbehave, I’m going to put them in a corner and make them read Sophie’s Choice and everyone looked at me like I was the mom from Gone Baby Gone – in my defense, I just thought it was a really long boring book about philosophy – I couldn’t get past 10 pages.  I DIDN’T KNOW, ok?!  I didn’t know.  Now I know not to make kids jokes about Sophie’s Choice.  It’s a learning process, okay?   Anyways, living in California has been interesting lately because when someone says they’re having a bad day it’s like ‘did your house burn down?’  And I get everything is subjective but that’s what we’re dealing with over here.  I’ve lived my worst day and I can honestly say no day has ever come close to that degree of awful.  There is so much power in the world around us and our past and where we’ve been.  Perspective is everything, don’t forget it.

On a lighter note, this weekend, for the second time in my existence, I will be dutifully playing the role of the flower girl at two of my dear friends’ wedding.  I googled flower girl:

Adorable – check.  Little – meh.  Lady – sure, why not? – check.  3-8, shut up.   Ladies and gentlemen, I introducing to you (insert harp music here) the flower lady!  Now just imagine you’re being showered with rose petals and scents of laughter and sweet pea.  Alas, another wedding.  Alas, no plus one in sight.  Singles table for life.  On that note, another one of my friends got engaged.  Shocker.  I am happy for them.  Truly, sublimely happy for them.  I love my friends to the bone, but they’ve set the bar so damn high.  My friends don’t just get engaged in their backyard on a Monday or in a rocketship at Chuck E. Cheese, they do this:

ARE YOU JOKING MY ASS?!  Like what the hell even is that?!  Beyond the fact that they’re the living Ken and Barbie – that backdrop?!  That’s in the world?  Is this real life?  This picture looks like it was photoshopped and choreographed from the wardrobe to the fingertip.  I’ve never looked that elegant doing anything.  Furthermore, how am I friends with people THAT cool?  There is no engagement in my future that will equate to a single ember of whatever that is.  When I get engaged it’ll probably end up being by accident in a basement with a Silence of the Lambs poster on the wall.  No bended knee, just a “So you wanna do this thing?” with a mouthful of corndogs.  Expectation is the root of all heartache, am I right?  Alas, my friend are fancy AF.  I need new friends.  Obviously I am kidding and I couldn’t be more excited for these two beautiful people – celebrations of love?  Don’t mind if I do.  As if I need another reason to drink 😉   That is, if I’m still invited.  HA . Kisses to you Rick and Jen!!

I don’t really know how I went from fires to engagements, but that’s the kind of week I’m having.  Welcome to my life.  Watch out for the broken glass.  Fire and Ice.  That’s how it goes from time to time.  When you’re hot, you wanna be cold and when you’re cold you wanna be hot – oh how life always gets the best of us in the end.  Bad things are going to happen, there’s no escaping it.  Many times, it’s going to be out of our control, but we can decide how we react, how it shapes us and we take from it.  I’m a big fan of choosing your battles.  Make sure it’s a battle worth fighting.  Persevere always.  And if any of you figure out how to stop time, please – for the love of all things snuggly – tell me!  I don’t have a lot of money but I do have an arts and crafts drawer with an imagination of a four year old.

My love goes out to all of my fellow Californians, especially those who no longer have a home to go back to…wishing you all the strength, support and hugs you need to rebuild…xx