Bastille Day 2010

Not long after Americans celebrate their Independence Day every July 4th, the French honor a similar holiday ten days later. This is known as Bastille Day. I could go into the history of why the Bastille is important, (even though the monument in Paris dedicated to this event is tiny and underwhelming just like a lot of things I've experienced lately), but that's not what this post is about at all. Two years ago on July 14th, while the French were setting off lots of fireworks, wearing scarves, and eating patriotic colored cheeses (I'm really not sure how they celebrate to be honest), I was having quite possibly one of the worst days of my life.

That's it?

Let's rewind the clock back to Summer 2010. (*Diddly do diddly do diddly do*) I had basically been unemployed since mid-November, even though I had recently attained an expensive but ultimately worthless college degree. I had briefly worked for the Census, (oh god, the horror!), and was reading scripts for a screenwriting competition at $10 a pop under the table (shhhh!), but still drowning financially. My unemployment checks didn't even cover half of my rent, and I was tearing through my savings just to afford little luxuries like the occasional ramen noodle packet and electricity.

Oh life sustaining yet nutrition less white carbs.
So delicious when you don't depend on them for survival.
 I may have this for lunch just because I can now afford real food.

Thankfully, my parents were able to take over my exorbitant student loan payments temporarily, which was a major financial hardship for them. I was also hugely overweight at the time. Not that this was unusual for me, but it certainly didn't help matters. I didn't really know that many people in Los Angeles, even though I'd lived there for a whole year. So basically I just sat alone in my apartment all day desperately combing Craigslist and other job listing sites for anything to keep the tiny South Central studio roof over my head.

It was a shitty, shitty period in my life. Weeks would go by when the only time I would step outside my door would be to move Stan from one side of the street to the other for street sweeping days. If it wasn't for this simple, yet very important task, I would have had no concept of what day of the week it was. Street sweeping was the only thing that gave me structure in my life. That's why I awoke with a jolt when I heard the obnoxious beeping of the street sweeper at 8am on Wednesday, July 14th, two hours before it was due. I had been planning on moving my car right before 10am, so I bolted out of my iron screen door wearing only a t-shirt and bright yellow happy face boxers. Sure enough, the entire side of the street was empty, and Stan was nowhere to be found. A helpful neighbor sitting on his stoop informed me that my car had been towed.

It's sad when this is the only thing giving your life structure.

This was a first for me. I had never had a car towed or even legitimately ticketed in my life! (Ok, there was that time six months earlier when I got a fix-it ticket for a busted headlight because Stan's cover fell off and lightbulbs always seem to burst). I was flabbergasted, flummoxed, and in all other ways bewildered. Luckily, said helpful neighbor knew where it had been taken and the impound was within walking distance. So I got dressed and walked the streets of South Central to rescue Stan. Remember how I said I was unemployed and broke at the time? I think I had maybe $40 in my checking account and that was it. My credit card practically screamed out loud when I had to fork over $300 to retrieve my beloved vehicle. It turns out that they were paving the street that day, without notifying the residents of Mont Clair St. They did post signs saying 'temporary tow away', but they did not have a date on them and I swear they had been up since the previous week. You know how they tend to leave those signs up for weeks after completion...

Sigh.

When I got to Stan, I noticed that not only was I towed, but there was a ticket on his windshield. SERIOUSLY? I didn't know you could be both towed and ticketed for the same offense. Yup. You can. The ticket was only for $60, which doesn't seem like that much. However, this paltry amount would have literally bankrupted me. I was so depressed that I didn't feel like going home after the impound. So I drove. I ended up all the way in Santa Monica, just wandering the beautiful, clean, smoke-free streets. Until I found the King's Head pub. And proceeded to drown my sorrows with cider and over-priced fish and chips. (Hey, I'd already spent $300 on my only credit card, what's another $30 at this point?). After the pub, I walked around the beach and pier, being all classy and day drunk, wallowing in misery. I had to stay there for several hours until my ill-advised mini-bender wore off and I could go home.

Ye Olde King's Head Pub. 

But I ended up fighting the ticket. I sent in a letter to the Parking Violations stating my case, and waited. And waited. To this day, I never received anything from them. Then my dad gets a letter from the DMV saying that I can't re-register my car until it's paid. Only now it's $154 with the late fee.

"We could certainly party with the Haiti-ans!"

WHAT THE HELL????!!! I had to call in three separate times and wait on hold for them to determine that they sent the letter with the decision that the ticket was valid (B.S.) to the wrong address. Luckily, I was able to sweet-talk them into waiving that late fee, "totally based on my powers of persuasion." Cher Horowitz would have been proud. And since I now have a job (though I still manage to be broke all the time), it's not quite as painful to shell out $60. But since the registration deadline is ticking, I had to make sure that the check got mailed today. Because naturally this is the one case where you can't pay over the phone or online. Argh. So I literally chased down the mail man, who happened to be driving by. He was very friendly and took my letter for me. He was also a champ and didn't laugh when the back full of donated clothes I happened to be carrying split all over the road. (I was going to make a pit-stop at the Salvation Army barrel thingy). It was quite the slapsticky sight to see.

Clearly Sadie has a "Stan" of her own!

Super long, depressing, and boring story short, this was one of the worst days of my life. The only thing that got me out of my funk was that my adorable, spunky niece Miss Sadie was born the next day. So even though my life was still super crappy, I realized that being an aunt makes it all worthwhile. (Cue the Awwwws here!)

Pretty Much the Cutest Thing Ever

I'm tired and still semi-cranky so I'll make this one short and ridiculously sweet. You know when you have a bad day and all you want to do is call your mom and vent about it? (Because you're a hopeless mama's girl/boy like me?) Well when I called my mom tonight after what I call a classic example of Clusterfuck Friday (where everyone is terrible and everything goes wrong and for some reason it usually happens on Fridays) she was babysitting my kickass little nephew Ayvind.

Ayvind is about 18ish months old now and smart as a whip. (Though how whips have any sort of intelligence is beyond me.) He's quiet and contemplative for a baby, taking in the world and forming his own tacit opinions of it. But he can still giggle and peek-a-boo like a boss. He's a man of few words, though he possesses great understanding. He knows exactly what you're saying, he just chooses to communicate back via sign language. According to my sister-in-law, he can speak about 50 words, but can sign up to 230.

Pictured: Baby genius.

Also I'm not sure what he's signing here,

but it is probably something like

"Holy crap, I'm friggin' awesome!"

Anyway, so my mom was giving Ayvind a bath while she talked to me on speakerphone. The whole time Ayvind kept shouting "Pooe! Pooe!" (Which is my brother's nickname for me -long story-, so now I'm 'Aunt Pooe' which also prevents confusion since his other aunt and I have very similar first names). Ayvind knew exactly who I was, although we haven't spend nearly as much time together as I wish we could.

According to my mom, (who could have been lying since she was also trying to cheer me up) he signed "I love you," and tried to kiss the phone. Then he tried to give the phone a rock to play with, all the while saying "Pooe! Pooe!" Since he doesn't talk much, it was an honor to hear him say my name. Especially since I had such a crappy day. He also loves rocks, (which is a bizarre family trait I thankfully did not inherit) so giving me a rock was a symbol of great sacrifice and love.

The point of this is that you can't stay upset and frustrated when you have an adorable little guy 450 miles away who adores you right back. (Though I still find it hard to believe he remembers me even after not seeing me for at least 4 months. That's roughly a quarter of his life!) You pretty much made my day, Little Ayvind. Aunt Pooe loves you too!

Night of the Living Spatula

Today is my oldest niece's 6th birthday. It makes me feel really old to remember a time when this person didn't exist and now they are practically a teenager (kids today grow up so much faster than we did). Naturally I got all nostalgic about the night Miss Ally Paige was born...(insert clip of Wayne and Garth wiggling their fingers diddly doo diddly doo diddly doo as the screen dissolves into black and white).

APRIL 13, 2005

The reason I was not present for the birth of my brother Scott's firstborn was because I was goofing off with the rest of the advanced placement English students in Ashland, Oregon. We were all at the Shakespeare Festival, a kickass celebration of the Bard and adolescent tomfoolery. The APES to Ashland trip was on occasion notorious for normally well-behaved honors students to get footloose and fancy free, Oregon-style. And after studying our fannies off the whole year for the AP test, it was time to rock out with our codpieces out. Of course the year we were finally old enough to go, the administration (read: The Man) decided to get tough about kids sneaking booze, pot, and other various paraphernalia of debauchery (how do you like them SAT words?). Anyone caught during the random suitcase searches would be sent home immediately and worse. Well, crap. I guess we'd just have to enjoy the quaint Ashland scenery and Elizabethan theatre (note the 're' spelling).

Ashland Shakespeare Festival

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Shakespeare. But I was looking forward to some crazy "what happens in Ashland, stays in Ashland" stories. Especially since I had never done anything wild in my life. (Unless you count buying condoms and chocolate pudding from Raley's the year before as a gag gift). Nevertheless, my friends and I were having a great time crammed into a tiny hotel room with a buffet of delicious treats (I recall cheez-its, mini muffins, and gummy bears specifically). Things did get a little wacky when we were all simultaneously locked out of our rooms and had an impromptu hall party that was promptly squashed. Then my friend somehow made our toilet explode into a beautiful fountain and we had to have maintenance come save us from the rushing tide of toilet water. We rewarded them with mini-muffins.

Forever Plaid

That night we all got ready for our non-Shakespeare night. We got to see Forever Plaid at a cabaret type theater, which was quite the treat. It was kind of a broadway meets barbershop quartet show that was just delightful. During the intermission I checked my voicemail and discovered that my sister-in-law, Nay, had gone into labor earlier that day! I could barely concentrate during the second half knowing that I was about to become an aunt for the first time! As we piled back onto the bus after the show, I announced to all that I was officially an aunt at the tender age of seventeen. My fellow students didn't seem as excited for me, but I was walking on air! Though I was a little pissed that I missed the birth itself. Miss Ally, impatient as ever, decided she couldn't wait to terrorize the world until her Aunt Pooe (long story) could get to the hospital. Silly girl.

When we got back to the hotel, a bunch of us had gathered in our hotel room to hang out, watch TV, plunder our junk food buffet, and do whatever it is teenagers abroad do. It wasn't enough for me though. We had to celebrate the occasion by doing something crazy! They had already taken away the booze we would never have had the guts to bring anyway, so a toast was out of the question. We were high enough on sugar, like cracked out little squirrels. Looking for some way to act out against the Man's oppression, we decided to go on a quest for porn. Don't ask me how we came to that conclusion. None of us had seen any before, and felt this was a rite of passage we had missed. The only place we could think to find some was the Albertson's across the street. Surely they had some sort of dirty magazine we could giggle and shriek over.

So about eight of us snuck out into the hall when Mr. Duda caught us red-handed. "Where are you guys going?" He demanded. Me, "We have to make a quick Albertson's trip." (Which was true.) "What could you possibly need from Albertson's at this time of night?" (It was like 10pm). Me, not missing a beat, "It's personal." To which Mr. Duda got really flustered and most likely assumed I meant feminine hygiene products. "Oh, well you can take one person with you, but be quick about it." So I took Kirsten, the only one of us who was 18 and could legally purchase pornography. We headed across the street to Albertson's, barely avoiding getting hit by cars.

After looking around the store for a good 20 minutes, we discovered that grocery stores in Ashland do not carry porn. What a shame. But the porn wasn't the point. It was the epic and dangerous quest, fraught with peril in the form of grumpy old English teachers and speeding vehicles. We couldn't go back empty-handed. So we scoured the store for something to bring back as proof that we had made it. Then we came across the kitchenware aisle. The plastic spatulas seem to have a heavenly light about them. Of course! Spatulas! Spatulas are just as good as porn! So we bought two of them (and some batteries for my camera) and ran back across the treacherous street, laughing hysterically all the way.

A Spatula.

We walked back into the hotel room, the spatulas behind our backs. TA DA!! We revealed our loot, and the group seemed a little confused. But being just as hopped up on sugar as we were, they suddenly burst into peals of laughter too. We had a mock swordfight with our kitchen utensils and collapsed on the floor.

When I finally got back into town and was able to visit Miss Ally Paige in the hospital, my brother Nick and I bought her a yellow duck we named Spatula with a promise to explain the story one day when she was older.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLY!!

Snow Can Suck It

I hate snow. I hate it more than the Lakers, more than grammatical errors online, more than Asian food of any kind. And that's a lot. It's fun when you're a kid, and you can spend hours making giant snowballs named Big Bob Pataki (true story), or make four-foot deep snow angels during freak snowstorms. It's pretty if you get to stay home and watch it turn the world around you into a magical, sparkly wonderland. But if you have somewhere to go, or someone is coming to visit, snow turns into this dark, dangerous, diabolical entity disguised as a natural phenomenon. It turns a normally blissful twenty-minute drive on the beautiful pine-tree covered Foresthill Road into an exercise in terror. Especially if you drive a car like Stan who has only one sad headlight that does little to illuminate the pitch black forest from which deer, raccoons, and other creatures could sprint out at any second.



The 450ish mile trip from L.A. to my tiny hometown halfway between Sacramento and Reno went fantastically, if only because one of my best friends, Kelly-Bean hitched a ride with me. We jibber-jabbered like lady chickens, rocking out to my cheesy girl power playlist (Pat B., Kelly C., Aretha, and the Spice Girls mostly), planning our future weddings like the super girlie girls we so aren't. So even though it was dark and raining most of the way, the hours seemed to fly by, driving into the abyss. But once I dropped Kelly off at her house, I immediately started to panic. My mom had called to warn me that it was snowing on the Hill. I could have crashed (bad choice of words) at Kelly's, which probably would have been smart. But you know how it is when you just want to get where you're going and sleep in your own bed. So I forged on into the wilderness.



Luckily the roads weren't icy and treacherous yet, but there was a half-inch of snow and Stan does not carry chains. I had to drop my speed from the 55mph limit to about 30, but eventually made it home alive. I just had to trust that Stan would deliver me home safely to my mommy, and he came through big time. I could barely see a thing between the one headlight and the thick snow flying at me, reminding me of Star Wars light speed. It's been a long time since I've driven in the snow (having lived in So-Cal for the past five years), but I forgot how cool that aspect is. I was pretty much driving blind, but imagining that I was co-captain of the Millennium Falcon alongside Han Solo helped with the fear. Yep. Major nerd moment, but at least I survived.



So now that I'm back in Foresthill for Thanksgiving, I've decided to make a list of everything I like about being home:



1. TV!!! I actually get to watch television! What a concept! Specifically, What Not to Wear, which is my biggest guilty pleasure and one of the few shows I love that I can't watch online (believe me, I've tried) And it's on a screen that is actually bigger than my laptop unlike my own TV.



2. My dog, Jesus (don't be offended, I named him that because he's gentle, loyal and friendly and protects us from burglars, bears, and squirrels and loves everyone unconditionally)



3. My cats, Piccolo and Peter. Though they can be little bitches sometimes. Like most cats I suppose.



4. This probably shouldn't be this low, but seeing my family, obviously. Especially my baby nephew Ayvind who is pretty much the cutest little boy alive. I have proof.



5. My dad gives Stan a check-up to make sure everything is all right. Currently the back windows are stuck open which isn't a problem in balmy L.A., but when it's snowing outside, that's probably not a good thing.



6. Foresthill really is beautiful. It's a crappy town to live in, with an extremely sparse population of rednecks (imagine all Southern stereotypes without the accent), and an even sparser (?) selection of food and entertainment venues. But with the trees and the canyons and rivers, and wildlife, it's what a lot of people would call paradise. Not me. But you know, if you like that sort of thing.



7. While there is never any food in my parents' house, there is a current pool and hot tub in the renovated garage with a tv so you can swim and watch movies at the same time. Sweeeeeet.



8. Getting to see old friends, going out to breakfast at Awful Annies, Waffle Barn, or 2AM sausage and applesauce at Denny's (keep your fancy restaurants, give me Denny's any time)



9. Playing a real piano. Especially since I have to practice my solo of Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah" for the Sally Tomatoes winter concert. Ack! I must apologize to Rufus in advance.



10. This might sound really trivial, but the water here is frickin' delicious. Especially if you suffer from the floater-ridden off-clear murky suspect crap they pass of as H2O in L.A. I was dying of thirst the whole way home, but a) I don't believe in paying for water if I can help it. And b) I look forward to a glass of ice cold, crystal clear mountain spring tap water whenever I make the trip up to Nor-Cal.



In short, Foresthill is the kind of town you can't wait to leave, but love to come home to. As long as it's not bloody snowing.

UPDATE: Naturally as soon as I finished this post, the power went out all night which was just difficult and annoying. It is awfully pretty outside and today I'm going to the Mandarin (as in oranges not Chinese) Festival. I just hope Stan will forgive me for having the windows open and subjecting him to this frightful weather.

Ayvind Finn Hutchings!

My first nephew (though 4.5th time as an aunt) was born last night around 9 or 10pm. It was a looong, difficult natural labor, and both my brother Nick and amazing sister-in-law Tia were just exhausted. But it's all for the best since now we finally have a beautiful baby boy. He's small, but mighty at 5 lbs, 14 ounces, and 19 inches long. He has black hair, almost like a mullet (awesome!), which is even better since most Hutchings babies are born bald. I myself remained that way until about the age of 3.

Yes his name is Ayvind Finn, which most people won't be able to say, so it's Ay (as in pay) and vind (as in wind). It's originally Scandinavian, but they changed the spelling to make it easier to pronounce (hee hee). I think it's gorgeous though and totally suits both parents and baby. Finn comes from Tia's best friend Donna who they couldn't name the baby after, as it is a boy, and they didn't want it to get beat up too badly. Though with my unusual brother as his father, this might be inevitable. So Donna chose Finn which I think is adorable. His nickname is the "Mini Pooper" since Nick and I call each other Poo and Pooe respectively. I know it's dorky, but it would take a long time to explain why. So Ayvind is officially the Mini Pooper.

I wish I could be there, but sadly, I am stuck in LA, waiting anxiously for pictures of my first nephew! I have another niece or nephew arriving in I think July, so this is all just too exciting!