Life 2.1

My thoughts? It is the worst thing to do on the face of the Earth. I equate it to driving in rush hour traffic in southern California, only worse. Because there is physical exertion and btw, my back hurts. I’m 27. Not fair.

I’m officially over it (packing) but only 97% done. I think I might be developing an allergy to cardboard, specifically in box-form. And packing tape too. I haven’t worn makeup in approximately four days and thankfully my hair is long enough for a ponytail to get it out of my face, except for the day when I was ready to shave my head and start over because it was bugging me so much. I opted for a hat instead, to save myself from earning Britney as a new nickname.

Everything checks out though, as the boxes piled up in my dining-area-turned-staging-area. At final count, there were three boxes from the kitchen and a couple boxes of clothes, all medium-sized boxes, among some other random boxes. And of course, a record-setting eight boxes of scrapbook supplies (three little boxes, two medium boxes, two large boxes and one Cricut box). Oh, and two large boxes of albums, so call it an even 10.

Before I packed the albums, I scanned a couple more, you know, in case my moving truck burst into flames, I have some record of my existence. I also wrote “if you smell smoke, take me first” on the album boxes, just in case the driver needed my help finding them. I’m fixing to bribe him when he comes tomorrow to assure these particular boxes’ safe arrival in Napa.

These new pages include my UCSD Baseball albums and my life as a collegian and the second semester (aka the best semester) of my senior year, and the holidays that fell within those time frames. Those can all be seen here, in their respective categories.

In other news, because I’m not ready to finishing my packing yet I will share this layout, because I’m seriously ready to watch some baseball. I have decided I’m going to retire in Arizona so I can go to Spring Training every year and just sit and watch lots of baseball games all.day.long. I’m pretty sure it will be fabulous. Whilst packing, I turned the spring training games on TV (hooray MLB Network, boo having to return my cable boxes) and I’m so excited for the season. For no particular reason other than I ♥ baseball.

I suppose I should finish this packing up. I’m at that point where, when I have to unpack (eventually), I’m going to open two or three boxes full of a random collection of items and recall this moment, where I just didn’t care anymore and just needed to throw it in a box to get it to CA and didn’t care that the the lamp shades were packed with my dresses.

I suppose it’s pretty much common knowledge now, but since the cat is out of the bag… I’m moving back to California!

Yes, my time as a Southerner is ending. A job opportunity came up somewhat quickly and it’s been a whirlwind ever since.

The truth of it all is that I moved out here for one job and, at the end of the day, that job was really the only reason I could justify being so far from my family. Since that job is no more, it doesn’t make sense to miss Christmas and be so far away.

I will say that the people that I have met out here (who are always welcome in Wine Country!) really did make it an awesome experience and they were definitely in the “pro-staying” column but the “pro-California” column was rather long too.

It may or may not have included Taqueria Rosita among the reasons.

I will be moving back to the west coast on March 10 and in the meantime, I have been attempting to pack and sell off items that will not be making the trek back to CA. Packing is by far the least fun part of this whole deal but after March 10 I won’t have to deal with it for a while so hooray for that!

The new position will also be in the wine business, though this time I will be combining lots of various skills into one position that basically translates to running the hospitality department of the winery. I will be handling event and event sales, along with wine club/direct marketing responsibilities and of course, web/social media work.

I’m very excited about the opportunity and also very glad to be back in the pacific time zone.

So. That’s my big news. If it seems like I’m flying under the radar in the next week or so, it’s probably because I fell into a box while packing.

To my New Orleans friends, we will most definitely be planning some sort of evening out prior to my departure and to my CA friends and family, get the butter and garlic tri-tip ready, I’ll be home shortly!

I happened upon KA’s Facebook status today and she was feeling the urge to rock a side ponytail. I maybe encouraged her. And by ‘maybe’ I mean, I told her to not forget to secure it with a neon scrunchie. Which was when I remembered this gem of a story.

*I realize that some of you have already heard this one, but it’s pretty hilarious (IMHO) and deserves to be told again. Especially because KA is considering a side ponytail.*

My grandma happens to be the youngest of five daughters. She actually was a twin, but my great-aunt Jean beat her into the world by what I assume would have been minutes. The oldest sister of the quintet was my great Aunt June. I didn’t really know Aunt June all that well, mostly because she lived in Nebraska and also because she scared the holy bejesus out of me. I remember her as very stern, in a loving sort of way, but when you’re six, it’s the stern-ness you remember. She was also extremely religious. However, I do have one memory of her that stands out and it happens to involve a Star Stage Microphone so it’s definitely worth telling.

I don’t know if anyone remembers what exactly a Star Stage Microphone was, but it was the vehicle which pretty much allowed me to be Debbie Gibson at the tender age of six. It was a microphone on a stand that swiveled around and had a pedal on either side so I could make my voice echo (left pedal) or carry the note that I was belting out (right pedal), should I deem it necessary during my performance.

At one particular family reunion (the only one we’ve ever had of substantial size and caliber–we rented out a whole resort!), I was about six, and I insisted on bringing my Star Stage Microphone so I could compete in the talent competition. When you have a family the size of a small infantry, you can do these kinds of things. So the night of the talent competition rolled around and I had one of the women in my family put my hair in a side ponytail that was secured with a neon scrunchie (because really, that was the only way to wear your hair) and I marched to the front of the room (there wasn’t really a stage) with my cassette tape, my boombox and my Star Stage Microphone in hand, very self-impressed with my “professional setup”.

Wanting to surprise everyone, I hadn’t told my mom what it was that I wanted to sing for the talent show.

I can assure you that she, and everyone else, including my dear, so-very-religious Aunt June, were aghast that my song of choice was late 80s Madonna, “Like a Virgin”.

Oh yes. Yes I did. I belted out every word to that tune, not having the slightest clue what the lyrics meant or the fact that a 6-year-old singing something about being touched for the very first time might be inappropriate. Just maybe.

I think I probably gave Auntie June a heart attack. My mother probably wasn’t far behind her. But man did I rock that night.

So KA, you rock that side ponytail, but I will support you in fighting the urge to sing that particular Madonna song in public while doing so.

Today is my little brother’s 21st birthday. Now all three of us siblings could go out to a bar together (if I didn’t live 2200 miles away, that is) and that kinda blows my mind a little bit. In honor of Ted’s 21st birthday, I will share the story of my 21st because I’m sure that, six years later, I will look back and laugh right?

*Fair warning, in case you didn’t know it before, I’m a long story-teller. Sorry, brevity is against my nature.*

I should start by saying that my junior year of college, I lived with a girl who I met off of the UCSD housing website. I picked my roommate off of a four-sentence blurb. And she wasn’t all bad, but she and I weren’t destined to be BFFs. I attribute that (mostly) to her friend who clearly wore the pants in that friendship. This friend, who I will refer to as The Queen, was always using our apartment as if it was her own. I had brought a ton of kitchen stuff to the house relationship— pots, pans, plates, forks, knives, etc. Almost every night The Queen used all of it to cook, leaving me with nothing to use because everything was already dirty by the time I got home from work. For the most part it didn’t bug me, because, since I didn’t care for The Queen much, I stayed to myself. She was trying to run our “household” and I didn’t care enough to fight that battle. But she certainly didn’t leave room for me to have any sort of friendship with my actual roommate. The Queen’s sheer presence in the apartment was torture, a feeling that had developed over the past 5 or 6 months of me knowing her and her commandeering my house often. Well, that did it, along with my roommate’s affinity for smoking (something she lied about when I originally met her) and her constant dead-bolting of the front door and falling asleep so I was unable to get in when I would get home from work (after she made a huge point to say unless we were both home, it shouldn’t be bolted.) The list went on, but a high point was my 21st birthday.

My birthday was always about two weeks after we’d get back from Christmas break in college and in preparation for my 21st, I had taken a gift certificate I had received to Browns Valley Market and purchased four (butter-and-garlic) marinated tri tips which are possibly my favorite thing to eat, snackin’ cake aside. I froze them solid the day before I drove back to SD and then packed them on ice in a cooler for my drive. This was to be my birthday feast.

I even extended an invitation to my roommate when I got home, telling her I would be 21 the weekend of the 17th (my birthday was on a Saturday–woot!) and I told her I was going to have a few people over for dinner on that Friday and she was welcome to join us. As I recall, she nodded in agreement, not over-zealously, but in acknowledgment of my invite.

About a week later, in passing, my roommate mentioned she was going to have her wisdom teeth out. In an attempt to bond with her, I told her I had had mine out and that my parents thought it would be funny to take a camcorder and memorialize my chipmunk teeth for all eternity . She said she was glad she was at least having it done on a Friday, where she would have the entire weekend to recoup, before having to be seen again in public. It was then that she told me she had scheduled the appointment for January 16. Sirens and little red lights went off in my head but all that came out was “aw, bummer! You are gonna miss out on the tri tip for my birthday dinner! That’s the night I’m having people over. Oh well, I have more in the freezer, you can try it another time.” I though surely she wouldn’t feel up to being social after having oral surgery.

Fast-forward to me getting home from work on Thursday the 15th. My roommate’s mother (a classy broad, who had a tiny stud piercing in her nose and from the looks of things, shared her 18-year old daughter’s wardrobe despite being more than twice her daughter’s age) along with the aforementioned 18-year old daughter, are in my apartment, along with The Queen and my roommate. Apparently they were all going to stay with us that weekend because my roommate “needed help” after having her wisdom teeth out. I’m sorry, but it’s not like the removal of her wisdom teeth immobilized her. She didn’t need help getting out of bed. Why was it necessary for half her family to stay with us?

The best part is that they were going to live it up before the surgery and the mom was going to hold down the fort while the other girls went out to the bars (yes, the 18-year old went along too). I even made a comment to the mother later on in the evening when I took the entree out of the freezer to thaw, thinking that if she were anything like my mother, she would have enough common sense to register that information and leave/make her (and others in her party) scarce the next evening.

Irritated that the one time I wanted to have people over she herself invited a house full of people to stay over, I reminded my roommate before she left for the bars that I was going to have people over for dinner the next night since I couldn’t go out til midnight on that Friday night. It clearly went in one ear and out the other because I got home (early) from work to get dinner ready the next evening and found The Queen using all of my dishware, pots, pans and anything else I would have wanted to use for the one time that I had people over in the common area.

I was pissed, I didn’t care that my roommate had had her wisdom teeth out that day, and I didn’t hide it.

Terse and biting words were exchanged between The Queen and myself. There was also a heavy dose of sarcasm doled out on my part when The Queen rolled her eyes at me for being irritated and asking them if they were ‘going to be done anytime soon since I had a planned dinner party that I had already informed my roommate (you know, the girl who actually paid rent?) about’. She continued cooking with my stuff, with zero regard for the fact that I needed it to fix an entire meal for people who would be descending on our apartment in less than two hours. I vacuumed over their conversations, retreated to my room, called my mother, crying that I hated living with my roommate…it was not awesome.

The guy that I was seeing at the time arrived bearing an armful of flowers and, bless his heart, jumped in to help as I tried very hard to not cry tears of frustration. I was only having about 4 people over and they were all previously aware of The Queen and her constant presence and otherwise bitchy personality so the evening was no shock to them.

The dinner turned out to be a debacle unto itself. I ran out of propane for the grill and had to break out my charcoal grill, which in turn slowed the cooking of the tri tip. I was having to wash some of their dirty dishes in order to have enough to use for my meal and the entire time my friends were over, the other “party” stayed in the room, watching the Laker game. Yea, that wasn’t awkward at all.

Finally, they retreated to the roommate’s bedroom when we sat down to eat. At 10pm.

Halfway through the meal, I had calmed down and my friends and I were laughing and talking. I hear my roommate’s bedroom door open and The Queen comes out and asked if she could “talk to me in private for a minute”. Seething at the interruption, I walked to my bedroom doorway approximately 10 feet from the table (we didn’t exactly live in a mansion, mind you) and sarcastically asked if this would work for her request for privacy.

She begins, in a patronizing voice: “you know…I know it’s your birthday and all, but…you know…she just had her wisdom teeth out and…she’s under the weather…” and she continues to tell me a whole host of other feminine issues my roommate has and closes with “so you and your friends really need to keep it down.”

Excuse me?

I was almost shaking I was so mad at the gall she had to tell me how to behave in the apartment that I paid for, that she didn’t.

I glared at her and told The Queen that my roommate was perfectly aware of the fact that I was planning this dinner before she scheduled that appointment and it’s unfortunate that it falls on the same day as the one night I wanted to have people over but if she had a problem, she needed to come talk to me.

I walked back to my guests and told them that apparently we were being too loud and we really should keep it down. They felt my pain and shook their heads in disbelief. We quickly finished eating and I stacked the dishes up in the sink before inhaling some snackin’ cake and we left. I might have slammed the front door upon my exit.

We went to a bar in Del Mar where the bouncer let me in at 11:30, to enjoy a drink thirty minutes premature, because my friends told him to ‘trust them, I had earned it’. I had an apple-tini before retreating home to a dark, quiet house later in the night.

When I woke up the next morning, there was a note from my roommate’s mother on our white board where we left phone messages. It read “do your dishes so you don’t get ants.” Umm…thanks for the tip. I don’t know what kind of home she lived in, but mine is typically clean enough to where if I leave dishes in the sink over night, ants don’t come. It wasn’t as though they had been piled up for a fortnight.

After that fun-filled weekend, my roommate and I didn’t speak and only communicated via post-it notes, unless we had to ask each other to move their car, since we had tandem parking spots. Unless she just left me a key on the kitchen table and a post-it that said “move it yourself if you need to.” That was special. I moved out as soon as our lease was up, since that weekend was merely icing on the cake of run-ins, but it certainly was a “memorable” 21st birthday.

It is my sincere wish that my brother go 3-4 in his scrimmage for his birthday. That would be a way better way to spend such a milestone.

When I was in elementary school, we had to read the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and we then had to write a fictional story along the same lines. I think I wrote something about forgetting my homework, my mom making something I didn’t like for dinner and not getting any hits in my softball game. A tragic day indeed. But if I were still in contact with Mrs. Bess, I would resubmit my story, based on today’s events.

Today, I set out in my car which had a brand new front bumper (which, for the record, was busted up previously, thanks to someone else–not me). I had picked my car up from the shop on Friday night and left today having driven it pretty much for the first time since I had it back from the shop. I headed to the warehouse because I was told I had to pick up a same-day sample and deliver wine to a restaurant downtown for someone. Fail number one. Upon getting to the warehouse, my samples weren’t ready and the wine I had to deliver wasn’t there. I put in a phone call to find out what was up and I found out it was already delivered. Awesome. After leaving the warehouse, I was headed to my other account and as I sat waiting patiently to turn right (turning right on red=not allowed) the traffic to my left in the lanes that went straight (and only straight), had a green light. I still had a red.

Finally my light turned green and as I proceeded to turn, so did the Nissan Xterra in the straight lane next to me. Right into my bumper. She tore it off almost all the way. My brand-new-not-even-dinged-or-mud-splattered-yet-bumper hung by a screw and some plastic as I dragged it into a Burger King parking lot. We exchanged information and then I had to wait 2 hours for a tow truck because I couldn’t get the bumper off all the way thus making it undrivable. Then, all of my customers started calling with their orders, which I had to take while riding in Ray’s Tow Truck in which he had the windows down on the expressway. I had to apologize multiple times to my customers for having to ask them to repeat themselves.

After my drive to the body shop, where I was greeted on a first name basis because I had just seen them not but three days ago, I had to politely ask them to wait while I handled work business. They were very nice and looked at the car to assess the damage while I punched orders with their 4-year old grand daughter who offered to help me with my work if I dressed her Barbie.

I was beginning to get a smidgen hungry at this point because it was 4:45pm and I had only eaten a granola bar and a cup of coffee all day and I couldn’t tell if my headache was from the events of the day or hunger. It was a toss up.

While I waited for Enterprise Rent-A-Car to come get me, the granddaughter showed me how to walk a dog which, in reality, was a broken yo-yo tied to a plastic toy that had a flat surface that slid across the office floor.

When Enterprise arrived, I was reunited with my buddy Ed, who was also the same guy who picked me up from the exact same body shop on Thursday. He asked how business was and if I had a good time on my birthday.

When we returned to the Enterprise office where I was hoping to be reunited with the car I had just turned in, I was told to sit tight while they called the other branches because they ran.out.of.cars. I was then shuttled to the next town over where I was given the last car they had to rent out: a mini van. A mini van. Which btw, isn’t even helpful in my line of work because the trunk area is sunken in (you know, where the stroller goes?), making wine case loading and unloading not easy.

Oh and it only had 1/4 tank of gas.

Then I had to go BACK to the warehouse and fill out paperwork during rush hour traffic. I arrived home in my loser cruiser at 7:10pm.

I win Alexander. I win.