Run.

I am not an athlete. This is nothing new, I've never been one. It's not like I was at one point, and then lost it. I'm just naturally the opposite of Sporty Spice. There's this video of me when I was about four, I'm wearing a pink dress and my poor dad is trying to teach me how to play wiffle ball. First he tried pitching on for size. "Over your shoulder, behind your head, pitch it!" I sucked at pitching. I still suck at pitching. I don't risk throwing anything at anyone, ever, because I'm fully aware that, odds are, whatever I'm throwing won't end up anywhere near where I want it to. So then he moved on to hitting, you know, with that skinny yellow bat, and obviously that didn't work out too well either, so he finally just comes up behind me, places his hands over mine on the bat, tosses up the wiffle ball and together we swing and connect and it's a home run and blah blah blah.

Instead of being excited about it, I just dropped the bat in alarm, exclaimed "OUCH!" and ran away. And that set the tone for the rest of my life. Later on, at the age of twelve, I would convince myself, my parents, and a team of pediatricians that I had "exercise induced asthma" based on my vivid descriptions of how difficult it was to breathe after gym class. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I was just unfamiliar with what happens to people when they run, but at least it gave me an excuse to walk a ten minute mile with the rest of the asthmatics for the remainder of middle school.

I hate gyms too and I'd prefer to let my metabolism do the running, but I'm also aware that I live in L.A. now and a sad fact of living in L.A. is that :

1) Everyone else loves gyms more than cupcakes

2) There's nowhere to walk/jog anywhere in my general vicinity that isn't a gym.

I'm not in Boston anymore. I can't fall back on the unavoidable vertical trek up Revere Street to get me home while simultaneously making up for my hatred of gyms. So occasionally I will get all crazy and go for a run around the track of this decrepit park in North Hollywood where prostitutes sleep in the grass and groups of hippies show up for their Tai-Chi silent, slow motion karate chop sessions. I did this once while I was unemployed and made it all the way around the park without stopping and was really proud of myself until I experienced an exercise-induced asthma relapse and had to sit down, trying not to pass out in the grass like a prostitute before making my way back home.

Now that I am employed, I'm a lot less antsy about getting requisite time out of the house, mostly because I get so little time IN the house. At the same time, I now sit at a desk for about twelve hours a day, which makes me concerned about blood clots and/or bed sores due to lack of motion a la paralyzed Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby as well as getting even fewer opportunities for happenstance cardio. The funny thing is, now that I'm aware of how little exercise I get, I'm a lot more health-conscious in terms of what I eat. Exercising always had kind of a weird effect on me where I'd feel like since I ran that one time three weeks ago, I could totally eat that pizza. Today I did a couple rounds of the godforsaken Santa Monica Stairs and was completely justified in investing in a pretzel in an attempt to make my poor quads stop shaking. Considering this particular delusion, it's probably better for me to just eat my peanut butter and celery and call it a day.

My whole existence is pretty much just one head game after another.

Milk.

This just in:

If you happen to like your beverages so cold that it kind of hurts to drink them, there's a good chance that they will freeze if you let them get pushed too far into the back of  the fridge. If this happens and you wake up to a half gallon of partially frozen milk, do NOT assume that the still liquid portion of the milkcicle is the same milk you've come to know and enjoy with the occasional/frequent cupcake. 

It is definitely, definitely not. There is a reason it didn't freeze and while I'm not sure what that scientific reason is yet, what I can say with absolute certainty is that there are some crucial elements in milk that freeze quicker than the other elements, and when you drink some without the others, it is Just. Not. Right.

Roads.

A couple of weeks ago the people across the hall got evicted from the building. Okay, so I'm actually not 100% sure that it was definitely eviction but at any rate, they moved out quickly and angrily. They were probably evicted. 

Anyway, so they're gone and the new people have moved in and one of them has a DeLorean. A real one. I assumed it was, of course, because whenever I see a car that looks remotely like it could have been born in the 80s I automatically jump to the conclusion that it's a DeLorean, but this one actually is. I really like it. The only problem is that it's a Los Angeles Smog colored DeLorean so the first day that it was parked there, I went to back out of my parking spot and since I had gotten used to the spots behind me being empty (as their previous occupants were evicted/moved quickly and angrily) and  since this DeLorean is basically invisible, I backed into it.

The cool thing is that it totally didn't matter. 0% harm done. For once, I caught a break in a parking garage. I just feel a little guilty for hitting someone's time machine. I hope I didn't mess up their flux capacitor because I doubt my insurance would cover that.

Wolf.

On the way back from Tucson over Labor Day weekend, I found myself at what must have been the ultimate Mecca in terms of truck stops. I'm talking a bona fide truck stop, not a New Jersey rest stop with a Cinnabon and a half hearted Burger King, a Truck Stop. One fully stocked with survival gear such as this truck alarm horn thing that can be heard from something like a fifty mile radius, basically the trucker equivalent of a rape whistle, which is kind of ironic, because I always operated under the stereotype-fueled assumption that the truckers were the ones doing the raping, but anyway.  This place had Trucker Trouble alarms, it had over the counter Viagra, caffeine pills, showers, a "TV Theater", an A&W/Taco Bell, Danielle Steel books on tape... I'd say you name it, they had it, but there were things there that the average person would never even think to name, so trust me when I say it was something special.

What made it extra super special to me was the clothing department, fully stocked with frayed denim vests, wannabe Harley Davidson paraphernalia, and, most importantly, majestic wolf sweatshirts, 2 for $10.00. Two. For. Ten. Dollars. Now, while I admit that one of the items on my 276 item Hate List is articles of clothing featuring endangered animals i.e. wolves, whales, dolphins, etc., I have to admit that it's less a hate and more a fascination with the desire to wear such a shirt. The people that march through life decked out in sweatshirts with majestic wolves screened on them over coordinating turtlenecks are such a specific race of human that you can instantly peg them the minute you catch a glimpse of them, proudly displaying their favorite animal as the focal point of their wardrobe.  Kind of like the Amish, or people who really like the Medieval times, 0r people who think they're wizards, or Civil War re-enactors. 

When we stopped in Santa Fe on the road trip, Liz kicked off the Normal People Owning Wolf Shirts Movement and invested in a really special tie-dyed green t-shirt with a stoic Indian princess cuddling a wolf on it. Sheer majesty, to say the least. It would be hard to follow up such a find, but that is exactly what I did at this, the truck stop to end all truck stops in the middle of the desert. I threw down my $5.00 and walked out with a large, white sweatshirt featuring a howling wolf and a pine tree that may or may not have been painted by Bob Ross. It's kind of hilarious, when you think about it. It's even more hilarious because I have to confess, this happened about two weeks ago and since then there has not been a night that I haven't used it as sleep wear. Sexy, right? I can't explain it, but there is just something about a freshly laundered, enormous, white, Bob Ross-ed wolf shirt that makes sleeping that much more enjoyable. 

I don't know what this new habit says about me or if I'm, God forbid, being a Hate List hypocrite, but I have decided that it is worth mentioning now, at 1:30 AM, God knows how many "Absolut Angels" in the bag. Apparently, according to Absolut, the flavor of Los Angeles is acai berries (what the hell are they, anyway?) and pomegranate. 

That's full of crap. I hope if they ever do Absolut Boston that it just tastes like Pabst Blue Ribbon, aka the Bathtubtini. Keep it real.

Amusement.

Earlier this week, my boss' mother called. After I put her on hold, this happened:

Boss: Who's on [line] B?

Me: Your mom.

I thought it was funny.

Every once in awhile, after a particularly unbelievable - either the figurative, simile for "good" or the literal, "I can't believe that happened" - day at work, I'll be driving away from the office at the PM version of the AM time I drove there and really see my life for what it is and I have to laugh, because I never saw it coming.

One of my favorite parts of the day happens right after I park my car in the garage, when this little garage attendant that has been dubbed "Juan Carlo" greets me from afar with either a wave, a bow, or just soft applause. Once I get within earshot, the following conversation takes place:

Juan Carlo: Good morning, Miss.

Me: Good morning!

Juan Carlo: Have a nice day!

Me: You too!

On Fridays he gives a resounding, "Happy Friday!" instead of the usual "Have a nice day." Initially I tried to strike up more of a conversation with him, but I quickly learned that his consistency has everything to do with the fact that he only seems to have a few catch phrases in English repertoire. Since I have even less in my Spanish one, I stick with the basics.

I've been contemplating some Rosetta Stone-type self-educating Spanish cds for my car, so that my traffic ridden trek over Coldwater Canyon every morning can be used to learn instead of to listen to Ryan Seacrest catch some local cheating scoundrel boyfriends on the radio while continuing to insist that he is, in fact, a hetero male.

Anyway. It's fall. School's staring, the air is crisp, the leaves are beginning to change color, the apples are ripe for the picking and soon it'll be Barbour weather.

Or so I hear. I don't go to school anymore and I live in L.A., where apparently fall is a lot like winter, which is not much different than summer, give or take a few degrees.

It's pretty good.