My Future BF

Perhaps one of the hardest parts of getting used to singledom (once again) is sleeping alone at night.  Sure, at first it's nice to spread your wings or slowly spin clockwise over the course of eight hours or roll from side to side like a steam roller without fear of knocking someone off the bed or getting an elbow to the eye.  And, sure, it's nice not to be awakened by snoring or the sharp grinding of teeth or farting.  However, a few months down the line you begin to realize that, hey, you really only sleep on one side of the bed anyway and, hey, the teeth grinding was like white noise lulling you to sleep at night and, hey, you miss that manly arm snuggled around you as you sleep, hugging you safe and sound.  So what's a newly single girl to do?  Live with it?  Cry about it?  Pay her gay male friends to cuddle up?  Place an add in the Penny Saver?  Craigslist?  Heavens no.  None of those things.

Japan, the country that first brought the world used schoolgirl panty vending machines, now introduces THE MAN PILLOW.  Why I didn't come up with this in between my last two boyfriends god only knows.  It's sheer brilliance stuffed between a faux work shirt.  A woman named Suzuki in USA Today sums up its appeal ever so eloquently: "It doesn't squirm or thrash in the night, and you know it'll be there in the morning." If that isn't worth $80, I don't know what is.  Not to mention it comes in three colors and its manufacturer, Kameo, will soon offer both muscular pillows for women who prefer their pillow well-built and slender models for those who desire a "more sensitive, vulnerable partner."

Miss Manners

I may not be the most well mannered girl in the world (yes, my burps have been known to shake a house or two), but in public I try to be as polite and well behaved as possible.  Yet, lately I've been hit with a barrage of rude, ill mannered Americans, leaving me scratching my head as to what in the world has happened to our society.  And I'm not just talking about our behavior but our appearance, as well.  When did it become okay to wear leggings as pants, for example?  I understand the necessity for them in the winter under dresses or over-sized sweaters (although I thought we'd left that particular craze back in the 80s) but with a waist length t-shirt?  Come on!  My face literally crinkles up like I've bitten into a bitter lemon every time I see a girl trying to pull this off like it's some hot new trend.  Just because Sienna Miller did it back in the early 2000s doesn't make it okay.  Camel toes simply aren't proper, and I certainly don't want to see every lump and bump of your lower half as contoured by a thin sheath of spandex.  The airport this holiday was full of them, as were shopping malls, Starbucks and even (gulp) restaurants.  I've got my own lumps and bumps to think about without the lasting image of yours engraved in my mind for heaven's sake!  I put it right there with wearing Crocs outside the house if you're neither gardening, camping or going for a walk in the woods.  I watch old movies or look through photographs of my grandparents and long for a time when nearly all Americans actually cared about their appearance.  Didn't matter if you were poor or rich, hot or busted; you put your best self forward, and in doing so, made the world a little more beautiful.  I used to be one to go straight from the gym to run errands, sweaty shirt and all, but no longer.  So, yes, I practice what I preach.

Then there's the general rude factor, as best exemplified in two recent movie theater experiences.   The first was at the Crest Theater during a screening of "A Christmas Story," which two tween girls talked through the entire time.  "Like, what is that thing?  A leg?  Why is it glowing?  Dumb."... "Oh my god, what does that ginger head keep laughing like that?  So annoying.  Dumb.  And he's ugly."... "Are those robbers real?  Why are they moving so fast?  Stupid.  Hehehehe.  He put a cap in his a**.  Sweet."  These are direct quotes.  My mother, who has even less patience for bad manners than I do, actually moved seats, leaving me to suffer alone.  Then during "The King's Speech" at the Tower Theater there were two ladies having a heated argument through the first quarter of the movie.  On and on and on they went after numerous 'shushes' and an employee intervening twice.  The King may have been struggling to find his voice, but they sure the hell weren't.  And then amongst this vocal squabble the woman two seats in front of me got a phone call and actually had the gall to answer it and start a conversation!  Five minutes later someone finally walked over to her and told her to cut it out (only the rated R version of this line.)  Meanwhile, the argument between the two women got to the point where I couldn't even focus on dialogue, whole scenes flying by like a silent film.  Finally, the employee came back and asked them to leave.  And as they began to file down the stairs, you know what I did?  I said 'to hell with manners' and began a slow clap.  Yes, just like the dramatic slow clap found in countless movies.  My mom picked up my trail and in a matter of seconds I had gotten the entire theater to clap them off stage and out the door.  Does this make me ill mannered, myself?  No.  Sometimes, my friends, you simply have to fight fire with fire.  (But never, please never, spandex with spandex.)

Walk This Way: Dabbling in Mall Walking

Although I'm a mere 29-years-old, yesterday I joined the ranks of senior citizens everywhere by undertaking my first Mall Walking session.  Yes, you heard me right.  Mall Walking.  Mall Walking is a physical activity where people walk back and forth through the long corridors of shopping malls to get exercise.  Malls actually open earlier than the stores within them just to welcome mall walkers into their confines.  I honestly always thought this was some kind of a joke.  Do people really do that?  And who the hell are these people?  Well, apparently, I'm one of 'these people', if one mall walk does a mall walker make.

To train for our 1,000 mile hike along the Camino de Santiago, mom and I have been adding long walks into our workout repertoire.  They range from about 10 to 13 miles and take us to the far corner of Sacramento - along railroad tracks, over levees, across bridges, through parks, down the cobblestone streets of Old Sac and past endless streets of houses, from cozy craftsman cottages to artsy urban lofts to regal Victorians.  However, now that the rains have come, our schedule has been a bit thrown off.  Now before you judge, it's not that mom and I haven't walked in the rain before.  I spent a great deal of the Coast-to-Coast hike across England eating rain-soaked sandwiches in the moors with muddy gators strapped around my ankles.  I know rain.  We have met.  Yet, that doesn't mean I would volunteer to walk through it if I didn't have to.  Which is why yesterday, when mom suggested we try mall walking for the first time, I thought, 'Why the heck not?  Count me in.'  

When we arrived at Arden Fair at 7am, the mall had already been open to mall walkers for an hour.  Yup, 6am!  Guess those must be the Extreme Walkers.  Just opening the doors to the mall when all the stores, themselves, were closed sent a thrill of excitement through me... like the time a group of friends and I spent the night in the Psychology Building of Sac State after breaking into the swimming pool... but that's another story.

When we got inside, I expected to see a flurry of canes and metal walkers with halved tennis balls on the bottom of the legs, but actually, these blue hairs are pretty spritely and swift.  One woman had this whole zigzag technique, weaving in and out of the kiosks that dot the aisles of the mall.  She looked like a human pin ball, only one wearing an extremely tacky Christmas sweater.  I will say, however, that mom and I were definitely walking the fastest.  If the other walkers were vehicles on a highway, we were race cars at the Indy 500.  The best part of the whole deal is the window shopping.  Man, there is this jacket at Forever 21 that would look great with my NYE dress...  Once the stores actually opened, we couldn't help but pop inside to check out sales.  There's nothing like shopping when the clothes are still organized and folded, the employees are still cheerful and there's no one else around.  It's what I imagine heaven to look like should it exist - my experience at the same mall only days ago as I struggled for half an hour to get out of a parking lot filled with crazed holiday shoppers being my image of the fiery depths of hell... should it exist.

The only downfall to mall walking - the Food Court.  Cinnabon and its magical cinnamon/sugar aroma nearly undid my entire 5-mile walk.  I resisted though.  Mom almost got sucked into the Pretzel Shop, herself, until we saw the employee sneeze, covering her mouth but not her nose, which hovered over a vat of bubbling butter.  Starbucks did get us, though, but when you're mall walking like a bat out of hell, you need some fuel, dang it!  All-in-all, a good rain-free time.  Think I'll wait until after the holidays though to go back and get that jacket...  I'll leave you with my favorite quotes from Wikipedia's 'Mall Walking' entry...

1. "Mall walking in the United States is especially popular amongst senior citizens."
2. "Mall walkers tend to be a crowd requiring little supervision."
3. "After walking, mall walkers may well stay on and shop the stores or patronize the mall's food court."

Camino Mission Statement

It took me far too long, but finally, a few weeks ago I finished my pitch for the Camino Gypsy Chronicles.  Whether my travel blog gets picked up by the big leagues, or I end up hashing it out on this very site, it feels good to have some focus in my journey.  Granted, most things in life refuse to be put in boxes, but I've always found that good writing requires good editing.  A box isn't always a bad thing.  I mean, who wants to read stream of consciousness literature?  Or listen to a friend's insanely long, nonsensical dream from last night?  So in an attempt to not make my future blog of my Camino adventure a daily log of verbal diarrhea, I've crafted a mission statement as a self editor.  Here goes...

_________________________________________________________

On April 8^th, 2011, my mother and I will set off on a three-month adventure that could kill us.  An adventure we will undertake by foot, hiking 963 miles on the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago (or Way of St. James) from Arles, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  Scarier than any of the obvious perils of the journey - plummeting down the Pyrenees, bands of roving thieves, starving to death because of an ill-timed Spanish "siesta", refugio Staph infections, a misspoken word of French, my mom or I suffocating the other with a pillow in the night - is the fear of the unknown.  The blog I'm proposing, Camino Gypsy Chronicles, will be a story about that fear: facing up to it, battling it, kicking it with the heel of your hiking boot and hopefully, in the end, conquering it.

Facing the unknown each and every morning is one of life's most frightening truths.  When you exist mile-by-mile, footstep-by-footstep in a place far from home this fear becomes more acute and the question marks more defined. Is my body physically prepared?  Will I get blisters and be unable to walk?  Will we be able to find food each night?  A place to sleep?  Will we get sick on the trail?  Lost?  Do I have enough courage?  An open mind?  A strong stomach?  Will my 63-year-old mother and my 29-year old self be able to get along for an unadulterated 88 days?  Will we fight over directions, time schedules, religion, who gets the first shower after a hard day's hike, the last bar of dark chocolate?  Will the language barrier be too great even with my mother's knowledge of French and Spanish?  Removed from normal routine and alone with my thoughts through vast springtime landscapes, will what I discover about myself scare me to death?  Will I be able to get by without the comforts of home - my bed, TV, friends, cat, beauty products, car, Trader Joes?  Will the life I know be waiting for me when I return? Can I, should I and will I do this?!

Just as in everyday life, I don't have the answers.  I can read as many books and peruse as many websites on the Camino as humanly possible, stock up on all the essentials at REI, put umpteenth miles under my belt in training, make all the reservations I can in advance and recite positive affirmations until I'm blue in the face, but what makes a vacation a true adventure will always be the mysterious, frightful and magnificant element of the unknown.  The Camino Gypsy Chronicles will be a blog for anyone living in fear.  For those who let it hold them back from walking into the great unknown.  I wish to share this crazy journey of mine because maybe, just maybe, my quest to conquer my fears will inspire others to conquer their own.

December's Television Challenge

I have always had a love affair with television.  When I was young, my parents allotted me a fixed number of viewing hours a week.  Usually, I'd try to save up my time for Saturday morning cartoons or Mousercise (if you've never Mousercised, you've never lived), but the trick was learning to love what my parents watched.  Parent shows meant extra hours of tube.  What were they going to do... force me to stay in my room every time they turned on the TV?  So began my friendship with Crockett & Tubs and Captain Jean-Luc Picard.  Not only did I have "Star Trek" trading cards (I may never get a date again after writing this...) but I had "I Love Lucy" ones, as well.  She was my queen.  My idol.  If I could grow up to be Lucille Ball, I would have won the life lottery.  I dreamt of making audiences laugh by stuffing too many chocolates in my mouth or drinking copious amounts of Vita-Meta-Vegamin.  I even named my first cat Lucy.

Today, I cringe when I hear people say "Oh, I don't watch TV" with their noses turned up as if simply saying those two letters is beneath them.  Even worse are the "I don't even own a TV"ers.  If you can't afford a set, that's one thing, but normally that line gets tossed around at hipster dinner parties as people try to impress one another with their non-conformity.  In my opinion, television writing has hit its peak.  "Mad Men," "Justified," "30 Rock," "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," "Modern Family," "The Walking Dead," "Boardwalk Empire," "The League," "Eastbound & Down"... the list of incredible writing, acting and directing seems endless.  Sure, there's a load of crap out there, as well, but there's a load of crap in any art form.  Even I have been known to watch a reality show or two (ahem, "Top Chef"), so I try to withhold judgment.

But while I love the medium... and my new Sony Bravia... I have to admit it's become a bit of a crutch.  When you write for a living sixteen hours a day, nearly every day, the last thing you want to do is tackle your own writing when you have an hour or two off or, heaven forbid, pick up a book and ingest more words.  What I want is a stiff drink and back-to-back episodes of "Psych."  Yet, I need to enrich my own body of work.  I need to read the lonely unread books staring sadly from my shelf.  I have music I haven't listened to.  Letters I haven't written.  People I should make plans with.  Movies I should go see (at the theater, not on On Demand!)  Blog entries and scripts and short stories that are calling my name in the night, wondering why I've deserted them... why I've abandoned the characters I love so much.  This doesn't make me lazy.  It doesn't make me a bad person.  What it does is make me numb.  My love affair has turned into a drug... a very delicious drug... but a habit none-the-less.

I'm not going to do anything drastic.  You won't find me selling my Bravia on Craigslist anytime soon or giving up TV all together, like the friend who inspired this challenge in the first place.  What I will be doing for the entire month of December, and would like to challenge my fellow TV addicts to do, is to limit myself to two hours of TV a day, including movies both at home and in the theater.  To many of you that may seem like more than enough time, but when you add up the "Today Show" I flip on while answering emails and making my breakfast in the morning, the hour I watch at lunch so I can totally shut down my brain, the fifteen minutes breaks I take in between drafts to clear my head and the couple of hours I watch at night to relax before bed, its adds up faster than you can say 'dependency.'  And I know I'm not the only one.

Tomorrow morning it begins.  If there's anything I love in life it's a challenge, no matter how small.  And damn it, if I can climb Mt. Whitney in a day (self promoting plug), then I can control my TV watching.  If you decide to take this challenge with me, write a comment.  That way, we can feel like we're in this together.  Strength in numbers, friend.  Strength in numbers.  Come January 1st we can celebrate over tea and Tolstoy... or we can watch a "Gossip Girl" marathon instead.

Oh The Possibility...

I was watching some god-awful romantic comedy the other day (really none can compare to "When Harry Met Sally") and started thinking about possibility.  You know 'possibility'... that overwhelming feeling you get when you meet someone new and begin to image all the wonderful things they might be.  Sure, we make assumptions on them based on the way they look or what they do for a living, but there is still this fantastic, vast abyss of mystery we can't wait to plunge into.  Once you become better acquainted, however, 'possibility', that ephemeral little minx, begins to fade away.  It's inevitable.  A part of nature.  Unless the person you're seeing keeps their cards close to their chest the rest of their life, you can pretty much bet what flavor of ice cream they'll pick or that they volunteer at a homeless shelter every Thanksgiving or that camping isn't an option for a vacation or that they prefer vinyl over CDs.  Possibility is replaced by actuality. 

Sometimes this actuality is better than you could have imagined.  I believe some call this "true love."  Other times, actuality is just good enough... hell, no one is perfect, right?  And most of the time it sends you packing for the hills.  As in my experience, you learn that Mr. Possibility sitting across from you at the restaurant table is an aspiring actor, a psychopath, a name-dropper, definitely batting for the other team (this has happened to me twice.  One of the guys came out, eventually.  The other I ran into at the West Hollywood 24 Hour Fitness... enough said), is a Republican, smokes two packs a day, doesn't like movies, kisses like he's trying to eat your face, is a complete stoner, a cheapskate, a stalker who throws rocks at your dorm windows while screaming your name, lazy, waaaay too young, a former professional juggler, drinks too much, snores or even worse sleep walks, never learned that you have to wash your sheets (yup, I'm serious), has a kid and an ex-wife named Candy, or a girlfriend he decided not to tell you about, has a Tweety Bird tattoo, hates cats, lives in a pigsty, thinks reading books is too much of an intellectual endeavor, has a gambling problem, and so on and so on and so on.  But even with our long list of terrible past actualities, we keep coming back for one more hit of that possibility drug.  Why?  Because maybe, just maybe, this time truth will triumph over mystery.

8 Months And Counting...

Eight months from now I will have ventured into a new realm of life.  My thirties.  Duh-duh-duh...  But this is not a rant about fearing the future.  It's a rhapsody about enjoying my twenties until July 14 2011.  And how will I enjoy this fountain of youth to the thirst-quenching, pore-plumping, metabolism-boosting, delicious last drop?  What it really boils down to is reminding people, and myself for that matter, over and over and over again that I'm not thirty. 

Lately I have taken it upon myself to drop the terms "20 something," "twenties," "29" and the not quite as cheerful "late twenties" into casual speech.  For example, to the woman who carded me at the wine bar, "My i.d.?  Yes, I have it, one second...  Here it is, 29."  I grinned, showing off my lack of crows feet and smile lines.  Then to the guy hitting on me at the car wash who asked what college I was attending (bless his poorly mistaken heart) to which I answered, "Already graduated."  "Oh?" he asked.  "But you look so young!"  "Still in my twenties," I reply confidently.  To the producer on the conference call who wonders, "Do you have kids?"  "No.  I'm only in my late twenties," as if I don't know a soul in their late twenties who has kids.  Of course, one look at my Facebook friends list with nearly every profile picture now featuring babies and toddlers, and you'd call my bluff.  Then there's the article in Elle Magazine with wardrobe tips for women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, that asked, "What age do you fall under?" to which I responded giddily, "20 somethings!" even though the skirts were too short and the tops too tiny and the girls looked like they could be my little sisters.

Now these answers all had some kind of merit.  They weren't out of left field entirely.  But as the big day draws nearer I think it's time to get a bit more brazen.  I may, for instance, start saying my age along with my name when introduced to people: "Theresa.  29.  Nice to meet you."  Or in restaurants when the waiter asks if I want a second glass of wine, I'll say, "Of course!  I'm in my twenties!  I don't go to bed until the sun rises!"  So what if I end up crashing at 10pm and have a hangover the next day from only two glasses of Pinot... it's the declaration that counts.  To the creepy guys who ogle me when I'm out walking I'll cry, "Go ahead!  Take a good long look at the 20-something ass!"  Or to the person at the movie theater box office, "One senior ticket for my mom and, well, I'm only in my late twenties, so the standard  adult ticket for me, thanks."

Yes, I'm really going to enjoy those beautiful, youthful syllables while I can.  "Twen-ty"...  How they roll off the tongue so sweetly, speaking to me of late nights and dive bars and cheap liquor and empty bank accounts and bad dates and failed relationships and entry level jobs and vulnerability and low self-esteem and crowded apartments and... hmm, hold that thought... all off a sudden "Twen-ty" isn't sounding like such a great moniker.  Maybe I shouldn't throw it around town like confetti, after all.  Maybe, just maybe, I should start to say, when introduced to new people, "Theresa.  Almost 30.  Nice to meet you."