Wishes

Wandering through Little Tokyo the other day we stumbled upon a wish tree.

It was absolutely bursting with wishes.

I wanted to read them all. They were so good! So strange and sweet and weirdly specific!

Here are a few I saw and liked:

"I wish I wish with all my heart to last forever with the love of my life!" - Erick <3 Zaida

"I wish for a dog."

"I wish for all the art supplies and people I love to be happy :) and to see all the bands eva. And for my grandma to get better. And for all the sad peeps to cheer up. And for an A on my finals."

"I wish to live a life of genuine passion and never regret things not pursued."

"I wish to meet Cody Martin"

"I wish it rained pizza. By Max."

"I wish for everybody to be okay. Not just for me. For everyone."

"I wish for a horse."

I didn't leave my own, partly because I am superstitious, partly because it cost a dollar and cash is so last century.

I do sometimes wish it rained pizza though. And for everybody to be okay.

Here's to halo halo

So, have you heard? It's really hot in LA this week.

It's the sort of unrelenting, brain cell arresting, crankiness-inducing heat that makes it difficult to have a conversation that doesn't at some point veer into The Weather. Sure it isn't humid and yes there are no mosquitoes, but let's get real: our charming 1930s apartment does not have air conditioning. And its big gorgeous windows? They are like magnifying glasses angled toward the sun. And though it's perfect and lovely 345 days of the year here and I should probably just shut my big mouth and count my blessings, I tell you, this week has been rough for those of us who work from home.

Aside from sitting in front of the fan with a freezer-cooled washcloth on my head, I have been venturing into the library to take advantage of their a/c. This works alright, though there seems to be a perpetual storytime going on and for some reason storytime makes babies cry in libraries? Go figure.

Anyway, when Jared came home from his air-conditioned office the other day and mentioned some frozen Filipino treat he had just heard about called halo halo, I leapt from the couch in slow motion and herded us right back into his car to go find this cold delight.

Ok that's not exactly true. First I googled it, because I am a child of the Internet, and I like to know what I am getting into.

The results were intriguing! As someone who wants all her food to touch, halo halo seemed like my kind of party. A cold, colorful jackpot of endless ingredients (like flan, tapioca, sweetened beans, coconut, jello, jackfruit, yams, bananas, you name it) all mixed together, then layered with shaved ice and evaporated milk and topped with a scoop of bright purple ice cream? Sign me up immediately. I mean, sure I had no idea what it would taste like, but based on the pictures alone I knew I must try it.

Plus it would be cold. And did I mention it's hot here?

We ended up in a strange mall in Eagle Rock where, next to a bustling Seafood City we found this tiny Filipino Gelateria. The super friendly kid behind the counter wanted us to try all their interesting flavors, but we were too excited about our halo halo to wait. We ordered it with Ube, because the color is amazing, and I'm here to tell you it was the right choice.

This stuff is amazing. Creamy and cold and surprising. Every bite is different yet it all somehow blends together in this perfect rainbow harmony extravaganza and you know what? I'm just gonna to stop writing this stupid blog post right now and go get some more because I don't know if I mentioned this but IT IS HOT IN MY HOUSE.

Halo!

Neighborliness

Walking with Loki through the hilly streets today I heard someone yell, "Glad you got him back!"

I turned and saw a distant neighbor walking his German Shepherd and waving at me. "Everyone was so worried," he said, listing the names of neighbors I didn't know, "but then AJ said you found him the next day."

"Yeah, I did," I said. "Some nice neighbors had him, we got so lucky!"

I didn't know this person's name, but I knew he lived on a ramshackle house on a steep hillside about a half mile away. I'd often seen him in the heat of the afternoon, sweating through his bandana, blaring disco and oldies from his boombox while tending his enormous veggie garden.

I waved goodbye as our paths diverged and continued on my walk. It was a crystal clear day, and the mountains were sharp in the distance. I had one of my frequent "I love this place" moments as I ducked under an enormous bougainvillea to find some hidden steps down to the road.

As I wound back up the street toward my house I passed the neighbor sitting on a plastic chair at the foot of his hill. He waved again then held out a plastic grocery bag. "Here, have some squash and stuff. And these cherry tomatoes. I got a million."

"Hey thanks!" I said, taking the bag.

"Next month I'll have watermelon," he said, gesturing to the sprawling tangle of leaves on the hill.

"Awesome."

I smiled as I walked home in the sunshine.

I have a Neighborhood.

Independence Day

One sunny evening, a few days before the Fourth of July, Jared and I were hanging in the scrubby backyard of a friend, eating hotdogs and watching a band play a Bee Gees cover.

There were a few dogs at the party, some of them standing timidly between the legs of their owners, some casually cruising for scraps among the guests.

"Aw, I wish my dog was here," I said to the girl beside me. "Though, I guess he might be kind of freaked out by the random fireworks." In the distance, we could hear faint explosions. People were practicing for the 4th. I sipped my drink and thought of Loki, home alone with the windows open for the breeze.

As magical and unique as we like to believe he is, our dog is pretty standard-issue. Ferocious when it comes to squirrels and bees, (and annoyingly friendly to skunks and raccoons,) he is utterly terrified of fireworks. You'd think that being born in a barn in the middle of an Iowa blizzard and then spending the first 3 years of his life enduring its spectacular summer thunderstorms would have toughened him up a little, but alas, he's a trembling, crying, leash-pulling baby when it comes to explosion sounds. The worst part is, we are no help to him. He doesn't want to be held, or pet, or spoken to in a soothing manner, he just wants to RUN. I used to jokingly wonder, as the sky cracked open above us, where he would actually go if he got his wish.

With Loki safe at home, we stayed a few more hours at the party, first watching the sunset from on top of the roof, then moving to the front porch to eat an entire bag of "Touch of Lime" tortilla chips.

We drove back around 10:30pm, parked our car and walked up to our house. We glanced up toward our living room window as we approached, expecting to be greeted by two fluffy white ears, but the window was empty. "I guess he's asleep?" I said to Jared as we walked up our steps.

Upon opening the door, instead of the usual skittering of nails, crying and tail-wagging, we were met with a strange silence. Jared frowned, "Loki?" Silence. I looked at Jared, confused. Very carefully we began walking through the apartment, opening all closet doors, expecting any moment for him to come bounding toward us. "Loki?"

Then I noticed a slight flutter of the curtain that covers the sliding glass door in the office, then the breeze picked up and it blew into the room, revealing a slightly open door, and an enormous, dog-sized rip in the screen. My heart caught.

We stared silently at the ripped screen for a moment, the curtain innocently waving, unable to fully understand what had happened, and then we ran outside. The screen door leads to a fenced courtyard shared by four apartments, but in a panic he could jump that fence. He had. We dashed to the car and began driving through the neighborhood, up and down the winding streets, our heads through the open windows, calling his name. But he was nowhere to be found.

In a daze we made it back to the house and set out an action plan for the morning. We tried to sleep, but  found we couldn't. He hadn't been wearing his collar. He had never been missing before, and our darling neighborhood now seemed cruel, full of terrible strangers. I thought of the men who came in vans in the night to pull on car door handles and root through the garbage. I thought of the freeway, so near. I thought of the cars that raced through the narrow streets. We were no longer in Iowa City, where a lost dog could bound happily from one yard to the next until friendly neighbors gave him biscuits and walked him home. We were in this huge scary place. Who knows what they do to lost dogs here? My mind was on a loop. I couldn't shake the image of him, scared and alone, running endlessly, dodging cars and coyotes. It was too much to bear.

The morning was a fog. Jared called the shelters from work and I made a million flyers. As they printed I put an ad on Craigslist and on some LA blogs. Then I set off with my cell phone, a staple gun and a roll of duct tape, following a few paths we liked to walk together, sticking my flyers to every telephone pole and utility box I could find. I carried a dull, cold feeling in my chest. It felt surreal to be walking these paths without Loki beside me, and I couldn't quite bring myself to understand that he might really be gone.

When I exhausted my stack of flyers I walked back home to print more. I frantically checked Craigslist and the blogs and my email, then set off in my car. My plan was to hit the local coffee shop, then the library, then the dog park. I parked at a meter a block away, stuck a flyer to a telephone pole, looked at the picture of Loki's happy, trusting face, and then, I looked up toward the coffee shop to see that same, real-life face looking back at me.

I had been looking at his face all day, and for for a split second, what I was seeing didn't fully register. Was that really even him?

The dog was being walked by a girl about my age, and from a distance, there was a chance it was a different samoyed, hers, and so as I charged toward them I actually worried about scaring her, and I took out my stack of flyers and sort of waved them in the air as I ran and began babbling incoherently about I'm sorry I don't mean to be weird but is that your dog because if not I think it's my dog and see here are the flyers I made cause we lost him last night and I've been going around trying to find him and- the girl's eyes got huge, Loki was crying and wagging and jumping up on the end of the leash. I grabbed his fluffy face in my hands, tears in my eyes. "I can't believe it!" the girl said. "I'm here with my husband, he's inside hanging Found flyers in the coffee shop at this very moment!"

It was a doggy miracle. They were our neighbors two hills over, they lived along one of our walking paths. He had run into their yard the night before and they had taken him in, given him water and cared for him. I hugged her. I was overwhelmed. They walked with me to my car and told me how he kept staring out the windows and whimpering all night, presumably looking for us.

(In my flustered state I didn't even buy them a cup of coffee or get their full names or anything. I felt awful about this later and I actually tried to find them on Facebook by typing in "Maggie," which was the girl's name, but did you know there are a lot of Maggies living in Los Angeles?)

I drove Loki home and he ran up the stairs to our house. I gave him a slice of turkey and a dog treat, and we played tug of war with his toy skunk for a while until he fell asleep next to me on the floor.

He was exhausted. As he slept, he twitched his little feet and yipped loudly, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was dreaming about his wild adventure. I petted and hugged him, waking him up gently. He opened one sleepy eye and looked at me, lifted his head slightly, looked around the room, and then, with a flump, fell back into sleep.

Welcome home, good boy.

How to Entertain Two Teenagers in Los Angeles Without Going Crazy or Going Broke

One of the best things for us about hosting out-of-town guests is getting to go into tourist-mode in our own city. Los Angeles is huge (duh) and broken up in to a million distinct neighborhoods, and it can be easy, during our day-to-day, to stay within our manageable 6 mile radius of Silverlake-Downtown-Echo Park-Highland Park-Los Feliz, and ignore the glittering Westside or the sometimes underrated Valley, or the vast Southside, or even (shudder) Hollywood...

So whenever visitors are in town (note: please visit!) we take the opportunity to break out of our familiar routine and go forth into distant neighborhoods. There we try new restaurants and bars, take more impressive hikes, partake in whatever cultural activity is on offer, all in an effort to entertain and pamper our guests while giving them a taste of the diversity of this city. Also, often, we try and convince them to move here. (Note: move here!) And as a bonus, we pretty much always have an awesome time discovering new things to do.

Usually a large part of our plan consists of simply eating and drinking at interesting and delicious places, because really, what more do you ever need? But last week we were charged with hosting Jared's 15-year-old sister and her best friend for a few days, and for a moment we panicked. What do you even DO with children that age? They can't go out for cocktails, or even most concerts, they're too old for "little kid" activities like the zoo, and their culinary interests are firmly in the spaghetti-with-red-sauce/bean-burrito-no-salsa/cheese-pizza-no-toppings camp. To make matters worse, we don't have a TV, and our apartment is quite small, and we had no idea whether they would be into outdoorsy activities like hiking, or cultural activities like museums or concert halls (lol, as if)

(Diorama at the Natural History Museum, not a live elephant.)

Well I'm happy to report that aside from a few flight-related frustrations, the visit turned out to be a smashing success. And in case you are interested, here is exactly how you entertain two young girls in Los Angeles for five full days:

First you stock your kitchen full of Trader Joe's Frozen Pizzas, dry pasta, and multiple jars of spaghetti sauce. Trust me. Then you simply go to: Third Street Promenade for window shopping and watching street performers; Umami Burger for a coke and a burger with all the goodies scraped off (for them), and one with all its regular deliciousness intact for you; Venice Beach for ice cream, strolling, watching skateboarders, and getting henna tattoos; the Stairs of Silverlake to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood Sign; Amoeba Records for music browsing; a hike to Griffith Observatory on a beautiful day with an enthusiastic dog (making sure you run into Odd Future shooting a video (score!)) Mexcali for authentic tacos; a long stroll through Chinatown, Olvera Street, and Little Tokyo to look at tchotchkes; Pinkberry for pinkberry; the Americana for shopping and a PG-13 movie (Rock of Ages); Beverly Hills for a long drive past the fancy houses and a slow trek down Rodeo Drive; Santa Monica Beach for chillin' and getting a rosy sunburn next to the screams of the roller coaster; In-N-Out in Eagle Rock for scarfing animal-style; Hollywood for an obligatory walk-through including Grauman's Chinese Theater; LACMA for culture and pictures of Urban Light; Leela Thai for the girls' first Thai food; the Academy 5 in Pasadena for two-dollar matinee of 21 Jump Street; the dog park for dogs; a few more walks; annnnnd you're done!

There now, wasn't that a breeze?

How to Score a Refund From Your Terrible Internet Service Provider in 12 Emotionally Complicated Steps

Based on true events!

1) Decide after months of mind-numbingly slow Internet that it may be worth it to upgrade to the slightly faster version.

2) Call your Internet Service Provider to learn that the slightly faster version is only $6 more a month! Make a bunch of salty snacks in anticipation of getting to stream season three of Breaking Bad without random jumps and pauses in the connection.

3) Three weeks later, when your bill comes and it is $38 higher than expected, get disproportionally angry and call your Terrible Internet Service Provider in a huff.

4) Two and a half hours and three transfers into your call, verify your account number for the fourth time and confirm your “favorite singer” to a tired-sounding woman in Indianapolis. When she pulls up your overcharged account she will exclaim, “Well this can’t be right!” Agree. She will make keyboard clicking sounds and tell you to expect a refund on your next billing cycle. Believe her if you like. 

5) When the next bill comes, repeat step four, this time, with a fast-talking man in Philadelphia. Tersely explain your problem. Verify your account number. He will pull up your last two bills and exclaim, “This can’t be right!” in the same incredulous tone as the woman in Indianapolis. Agree. Attempt to extort an immediate solution from him with what you think of as your signature blend of “firm charm.” Fail. Demand to speak to “a higher up.” Fail. Warily believe him when he tells you to really expect a refund on your next billing cycle.

6) During the next three still-$38-higher-than-they-should-be cycles, up your calling regimen to twice a month, tag-teaming with your husband in a version of good cop/bad cop in which he plays the “Personable Southerner” and you play the “Aggrieved Harpy.” Verify your goddamn account number. Use your "mean" voice. Use your “unacceptable” voice. Threaten to cancel, knowing full well that they’re the only high-speed Internet provider in your pocket neighborhood. Know that they know this too. Use your pleading voice. Begin to see your failure to obtain this refund as a reflection of your general insignificance in the world.

7) Have a revelation. Search out your Terrible Internet Service Provider’s Twitter handle.

8) Tweet at them.

9) Receive an immediate reply.

10) Six minutes later, answer your phone to a serene, beautiful sounding woman named “Kate.” She’ll ask you how your day has been in a voice that will make you feel like the two of you have spent the last five months together in a tropical hideaway. Is that a waterfall in the background? Kate already has your account number. Kate just needs to confirm the name of your favorite singer. She will compliment you on your music taste. Then she will refund your five months of built-up overcharges with the customer service equivalent of a toss of her luscious brown hair. She will ask if there is anything more she can do to help and she will give you her personal line at the company headquarters. She will wish you a great rest of your day.

11) Ten minutes later, after you find the refund sitting placidly in your account, come up with a really snarky tweet about the power of public complaining,

12) But find that you just can’t bring yourself to do that to Kate.

P.S. I originally wrote this for The Billfold, a website which I adore, and which you should probably read everyday if you care at all about your life. Just sayin'.

Pretty Much The Coolest Stop Motion Post-it Note Music Video You'll Ever See

Justin Webb and friends made this. It took four months and 25,000 post-it notes. It is amazing.

Check out his awesome band The Family Bones, and tell 'em I sent you.

22 hours in Palm Springs

We finally managed to fit in a (very mini) getaway for ourselves, and Reader, it was precisely what the doctor ordered.

We spent Thursday night and most of Friday in fabulous Palm Springs, where the sun is hot, the Coors Light comes in these icy metal bottle-cans, and you can spend an entire morning and afternoon just reading in a lounge chair and nobody will say a thing about it.

We stayed at this amazing little hotel where each room had its own private courtyard (complete with hot tub!) 

We checked in Thursday evening, opened some celebratory wine, then went and grabbed some dinner at Spencer's. Afterwards we walked back through the warm night air, marveling at the giant craggy mountain looming next to us, the billion glittering stars, the overwhelming peacefulness, etc.  

Then we went for a midnight swim. 

I know! 

The next morning we woke up early and toasted the day with mimosas that we classily sipped out of plastic cups.

Then we hung out in our little courtyard soaking in the crazy desert morning sunshine as the smell of jasmine wafted over us from the actual wall of jasmine that separated our room from the next one over. 

I KNOW! 

I had all the supplies I needed:

In case you are curious, (and why wouldn't you be?) here is a lil 360 view of our courtyard. 

Can you tell that I am/was basically obsessed with it? 

Plant-covered walls FTW, amirite? 

Checkout was at noon, so we stayed until 11:59, just gettin' so tan and reading so hard.

Next we had a yummy Mexican lunch and headed out to the Agua Caliente Casino to see if we couldn't convince them to let us hang out by their pool for the rest of the day.

I think it was my giant pink hat that did the trick. They handed us a pool key like we were high rollers and we proceeded to lounge in the shade of a magnificent palm tree/umbrella combo for the next four hours, occasionally slipping into the water or padding to the tiki hut to get another ice cold brewsky. 

It was, what's the word I'm looking for here? Perfect? 

Something like that anyway.

A Sunday at the Griffith Park Old Zoo

Strollin'

Laughin'

 Dog chillin'

 Bangle nappin'

Additional strollin'

And some trees.

Morning Awesomeness

I was sitting having my coffee this morning and eating my breakfast dessert in this really warm beam of light that was just hanging out at our dining room table and I thought, there is no way I could ever want to live anywhere in the world but here.

I could hear birds singing over the rushing sound of the freeway ocean.

The dog was snoozing in his own sunbeam.

My view through one open window looked like this:

Through another like this:

and through another like this:

I mean, c'mon!

Have I mentioned to you how I love this place?

P.S. I'm not the only one who eats some form of dessert after every meal, right? Right?

On Working from Home Without Losing What's Left of Your Mind

I am writing a book. I have been writing this book for what seems like the entire history of time.

At some point, the wonderful people at Scribner decided they would take a chance and agreed to publish said book, so long as I finished writing it within a respectable framework of time.

And so, when school was done, Jared and I left behind our normal-person teaching jobs and our easy Iowa life and moved back to my homeland of California. Here we started a new life, one comprised of Jared leaving every morning for his normal-person teaching job, and me staying behind for the abnormal-person work of writing a book.

Now, I think that there is a certain type of person who is perfectly suited to the bizarro-world that is having an enormous chunk of completely unstructured time with a deadline planted waaaay down at the end of it, but that person?

She is not me.

BUT! All that really means is that I have had to develop strategies to get my lazy, distractible, procrastination-prone self to do the work that needs to be done. And so, since I think that the best people to take advice from are the people who are naturally bad at something themselves, I present to you my time-tested tips on working from home without turning into a toothless hermit muttering into the darkness and plucking on a one-stringed fiddle.


Tip One: Shower and brush your teeth! This may seem obvious, but let me tell you, when you roll out of bed morning after morning to an empty house where there is no one to see you or be offended by your slovenliness, it can sometimes be hard to remember why such things are even important. Don't fall into the trap! For Heaven's sake clean yourself.

Tip Two is related: Dress yourself in some halfway decent clothing, maybe even dab some makeup on your face. Again, it's tempting to feel like it doesn't matter what you look like when you are all alone, but I'll tell you, working from home is a mind game. Looking like someone who might be seen in public is a trick that will give you a psychological edge. Besides, the UPS man will see you. He sees all.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Working from home is just like having an actual job. It's just that you are the only one around to enforce the actualness of it. It's sort of like how you have to set aside tax money from your advance because there's no one to withhold it from your paycheck and you do that, right?

<cough> moving on...

Tip Three: Designate a fixed portion of your day to the work at hand and then stick to it. Start your work when it is supposed to start, and, perhaps even more importantly, END IT when it is supposed to end. This is actually the most crucial point of this whole lecture besides brushing your teeth. Before I figured this out my entire life was lived in a fog of guilt-induced anxiety. I couldn't take pleasure in anything I did because deep down a voice would be scolding, you could be writing right now! Nothing is worse for your creativity than that stupid voice.

So, figure out what time of day you are best at what you do and then stick to that time. It will probably not be eight hours. It must be manageable and realistic if it is to work. The important part is you are not allowed to watch puppy videos during that time. You are not allowed to read blogs during that time. But when the time is up, you are to wrap up what you are doing, and then you are to leave work.

"Leaving work" is such a crucial point that it deserves its own tip. Tip Four: Dedicate a section of your house to your work that is not related to the other things that go on in your house. Best case is you have an office with a door that closes, but I realize that may be a bit of a luxury. So. If you must work on the couch in the living room, try to do your TV and puppy video watching in a chair. If you must work in your bedroom, set up a little desk for yourself, don't work in your bed. Boundaries can be very tricky to manage when you work from home, but they must be maintained if you are to hold on to your sanity and not fall into believing that every minute of your day is about your job.

work-free zone

Tip Five. Keep your house tidy, and spend some time getting it set up to be as pleasing as it can be. You are going to be spending a LOT of time in this space. Do whatever you can do to make it a place of calm and not chaos. The chaos will get you down and the UPS man will judge you.

Tip Six is the happiest. Get a dog.

Then you can walk him. This is a very very good thing to do. Moving your stiff, chair-addled body, feeling the sun on your pale face, looking at things that are three-dimentional and not part of your computer screen, these are the things that will keep you from going off the deep end. You can also talk to your dog, if you feel like it's strange that hours pass every day without the sound of any human voice.

Which brings me to Tip Seven: During the parts of your day that are not your working hours, try to have some form of human interaction. This could mean walking to a coffee shop or going grocery shopping etc, but it could also mean simply opening up your gchat window and making jokes with your sister Olivia, who has a real job in a real office, or with your friend Matt, who is also a crazy home-based writer like yourself. Just don't let these chats bleed into your working hours like I sometimes do. Be vigilant!

Tip Eight. Don't allow your online Scrabble accomplishments to stand in for actual accomplishments.
Am I the only one who does this? Don't do this.

Tip Nine. The weekends are weekends and should be treated as such. Is it Saturday? Get out of your house! Go! What are you doing sitting here looking at a computer screen? You have all week to do that. Go be around the actual people! Go on a hike! See some music! Go to a nerdy party! Whatever. Just don't let me catch you here.

Tip Ten. When the walls are closing in on you and the words you are writing are all meaningless drivel, and your dog looks like he has lost all respect for you, and you feel like throwing it all away, do two things. First, lie on the floor of your living room for ten minutes with your eyes closed and play this song.

Then pick yourself up off the floor and read this.

Then get back to work, you old so and so.

You can do this!

(top photo by Shelby Duncan)

P.S. Below are my four favorite books about the writing process. I cannot recommend them highly enough. I've also heard great things about Writing Down the Bones, but have yet to check it out.