Nanny For Hire

"I would really love it if my $2.00 wine had a nice twist top."

"I just want to babysit these strapping young men...teens."

"Infant CPR?! How many parents know infant CPR? I swallowed a nickel when I was little and my mom called the hospital."

- Liz, while searching for nanny jobs online.

Send in the Crow

Oh, Sunday.

Imagine the most peaceful morning scenario there ever was. Sun streaming in through the window, mourning doves cooing gently, a light breeze wafting through the lemon tree and me, miraculously still asleep at 8 AM.

I open my eyes and roll over to face the window, squinting in preparation for the sunlight, which, through my failing eyes, I see is obstructed by a dark shape perched on my windowsill. I throw on my glasses to fully diagnose the situation, but before I can, the shape makes a sound that I have never heard outside of JURASSIC PARK.

My mind and lens prescription come together in time to recognize that this is a crow, a massive crow in my window, barking at me through the screen like a damn pterodactyl. Unsure as to what would happen next, I literally stood up and begged, "Please do not bust through the screen." The crow gave me the stinkeye and yelled again before flapping off to assuredly go terrorize someone else.

I don't THINK I dreamed this, but it's hard to tell.

Watching Harry Potter with a Plebian

INT. APARTMENT - NIGHT

One Saturday evening, LIZ (23) comes home from work to find a lethargic, sunstroked DANIELLE (23) watching the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Liz, having virtually no interest or knowledge in the Harry Potter series, makes a feeble attempt to engage and participate.

DANIELLE

...So now they're trying to suck out

his soul. It's a fate worse than death,

because then you're just existing

without a soul.

LIZ

It's not THAT bad. I see it all the

time in the Valley, and those people

manage.

On the screen, we see Harry's shimmering, silver stag Patronus glowing as he casts it to fend off the soul sucking Dementors.

LIZ

Oh, that's the soul reindeer?

DANIELLE

No. I wish you could hear how ridiculous

you sound right now. That is Harry's

STAG PATRONUS. He's casting it from

THE FUTURE.

On the screen, we see Hermione perform the "Bombarda" spell, where she busts open the door of a jail cell with magic.

LIZ

I don't understand why they even

bother locking the doors in magic land

if they can just bust them open like

that. Why didn't he [Sirius Black]

do that to begin with?

DANIELLE

Well I'm sure they would

have confiscated his wand.

ACK.

I don't know how, of all the Audrey Hepburn movies one's life can resemble, mine seems to be My Fair Lady. Go figure. But Eliza Doolittle says that there can't be any feeling between the likes of me and the likes of you. She says it in proper English and je pense que she is right.

Last weekend was Nantucket Independence Day and for the love of Pete, it is so beautiful there. It's like, shut down

your Blackberry and read books instead of scripts good. I never thought I'd be the sort to be tempted by reclusive, year round isolation living on a tiny island, but that was all before I lived here for a year and realized, immediately upon [finally] landing on that precious little island, how simple things can be. Effortless, even. You literally breathe easier. If and when I'm done with L.A., I will need at least a year of reclusive isolation out there to recover from whatever it is that is killing me here. Perhaps I will write a book there, or raise some sheep and tend to them. Or waitress and make a billion dollars.

The following is a conversation I had with Adrienne:

Me: I bought some white Converse.

Adrienne: WHITE? Why would you buy white and not black?

Me: Because white makes me feel like a baseball player.

Adrienne: I don't know. Once you go black, you can't go...

Me: ADRIENNE!

Adrienne: What?! I will ONLY buy black Converse.

Belgians.

Really now. I know I've mentioned this before, but on the list of Things I Truly Love, after, you know, my friends and family etc. etc., The Sound of Music could very well take third.

Apparently this is the Belgian equivalent to being Punk'd. 

Ambush beautiful musical numbers in public places.

Allons y!

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy.

Happy is dangerous. Happy raises the bar. Happy sets a person up for disappointment and loss. Happy causes them to live in complete fear of the day when happy disappears, leaving them with nothing but the knowledge that what used to be was so much better than what is. No, it's much easier to be contentedly miserable because, hey, at least it can't get any worse!

I'd rather be dangerously happy than certainly miserable. I don't see why anyone would disagree, but you'd be surprised how in the minority I seem to be on this one.

I wonder where my blog stamina went. I'm going to work my way back to where I used to be. Sort of like running. My apartment is two blocks away from one end of the street and about eight away from the other; and in two separate conversations with two people who have come to know me fairly well, when I mentioned I was able to make it to the end of the street without breaking my stride, each of them asked which end of the street I was referring to.

The far away end, for crying out loud. The far away end. 

I'm supposed to be Swiffering my room right now. Supposed to be. I bought new Swiffer things and everything, because earlier this week I murdered a sizable insect who scurried across the floor as if from nowhere and caused me to panic, because with my luck, it was assuredly the most fertile and prosperous bug on earth.

There is also a chance I could have caught a tapeworm from Maurice le chien, on the off chance he had a flea that somehow made its way into my mouth. I really hope that didn't happen.

Type Stereo.

I used to wonder why everyone in L.A. was in therapy. "Buck up, dudes," I used to think. "Just go buy a dress/DVD/series of pharmacy phancy hair care products to make yourselves feel better."

Because that's what's I do. I've heard of wives whose husbands gave them a piece of jewelry to try and redeem themselves every time they were unfaithful , and how, as a result, each bijoux had a name. I have quite a few named dresses hanging in my closet, which, I will admit, is a little weird. It's easier to wrap your mind around a ring named Deborah than a fun little swingy dress named I Hate You So Much, but whatever. The point is, it helps. And I used to think that I had all the answers and that I was so smart for finding a way to avoid uncomfortable couch time with a random stranger who's paid to care.

But, lo and behold, at this rate it's probably cheaper to just shrink it up. Disappointment in L.A. flies fast and loose and is, as a result, plus cher. 

It starts off well enough. I'm all, "I'm so angry I could punch a wall, so I'm just going to go inflict the equivalent amount of physical pain on myself: running." So I put on my stretch pants , which make me feel like a total athlete ballerina when I wear them, and set off like a CHAMP, fueled by rage. 

The problem is, now I live in an area chock full o' retail, as opposed to my previous locale, which was chock full o' wig shops that were less wig shop, more front for a drug/prostitution ring. So I run for 5 minutes, land at the mall. Oh, well.

It's my own fault.