lextopia

Love will push through winter like first buds in spring through an exhausted soil. Remnants of leaves hang on in their dried weightlessness hoping for one more chance to not be raked away. The truth is in the loud and easy calls of the birds so comfortable in this urban area that I wonder if there were always houses here. Structures. The sounds of nature today consist as much of childrens’ voices, lawnmowers and the din of cars as they do the wind in the grasses, bird whistles and the deafening silence of stones.

I will be carried away in this soft wind by my busy mind, so agitated by the slowness of a Sunday. I’ll pick up on smells and think of movement when what I should do is stay and read just one more story…

I can’t say whether I’m afraid of death or not. Until it’s at our doorstep, who could? What I can tell you is that in this place of stillness and peace I feel the presence of love and life and happiness and gratefulness and hilarity and joy and the knowledge that death is real because I was there. I held her hand the day before she died and continue to bear witness by being her mirror. The new entertainment will be the standing still, and for that I need no one’s permission.

This was the work of the Lord from this morning. I knew about the big storm coming tomorrow so I wanted to clear the driveway so it wasn’t deathtrap, but also wanted to clear the garage so I could stick my car in there. The ole’ girl (the car) is eleven years old and is the only car I’ve got, so I wanna baby it…

Anyway, I was doing a yeoman’s job of cracking and sort of “pushing” the ice and snow with… ahem… my pitchfork, when Along Came Tony The Nosey Neighbor. Tony is a perfectly nice guy, but he’s a realtor, and there’s this thing about him that just makes you think you need to always face him and keep your back towards the door. Seriously. People say hello to him and everything, but he always wants to see inside the house or the workroom, AND I DON’T WANT HIM TO!!!! I also find myself lying to him about what I do and what the workroom is for. I say I work for AOL, but not as a filmmaker, and I say the workspace in the studio is just my office.

*shudder* Dude creeps me out…

Anyway, as odd as he is, Tony helped A TON. He brought his shovel and shoved all the ice I broke up, and then helped me get this huge, gorgeous (FREE!) desk from the garage into the workroom. Sadly, that was when he saw my studio ^%$%$@$#!%$#$#%^. Still, no harm was done except to my crawling skin…

Tomorrow we get snow. Real snow. Storm, storm, storm until Saturday. It’s funny to think of Vince & Irene in this weather – they wouldn’t even blink. They would have stocked up on essentials like we did out here, but they wouldn’t be freaking out like a lot of folks are out here. The lines at Trader Joe’s were average, but the lines at the liquor store… good god…

Good to know where Bostonians’ priorities are.

The film is DONE. It’s amazing. DJ & Christy saw the latest version this morning and cried. They love it. They’re coming this week to finalize stuff and then we’re dropping in the mail to the Rochester Film Fest! I think that’s the one… Anyway, I look forward to sleeping again. It’s been a month.

Next steps are to get Molly unpacked and sift through all our combined stuff to see what I can use for the house. I’m excited as Molly has a keen eye for decoration and knows how important efficiency is for me.

So, things are happening. It’s the next phase “in all this.” I’ll be able to write more once I’ve gotten a few days of sleep.

In other news Molly and Mali’s pictionary party was last night at Cloud Club – tons of fun! It’s great to have Molly out here and bonding with kick-ass musicians in this cool, new scene. One guy makes his own beer and had some at the party – it was amazing!!! Anyway, more later.

The financial, real estate and labor markets have made day-to-day living a constant stress. I watch every penny now, and have to pay my plumber in installments. Who knew I could live on so little.

That said, I took care of some things that needed desperate attention, I moved the donated wood from the center of the workroom floor to the side so folks can sit in front of the woodstove, I finally got incense to get the funky smell out of the bedroom, I’m back in shape, and I got a haircut. Finally I have the haircut I’ve always wanted. Simple, stylish, and “wash-n-wear.” Now I can go out in public and not look like I’ve been living on a desert island for four months. I also came back from a terrific weekend on the Vineyard where I bought some lovely, small things for the house that really elevate the look and feel and efficiency of the place. I’m talking over-the-door hooks for towels and a bathrobe, and a few pretty wall hangings. This may not sound terribly exciting or like it would make such a huge difference, but it does. The hooks in the bedroom helped me to see that I needed to switch vanity tables. I replaced Nona’s brown table with my old country table from the NY Opera. Nona’s table is back in the guest room where it fits with the dark wood shelf in there. So, the house, and I are coming together slowly…

PMS. Next, I’m debuting a new tag, “PMS.” This is important stuff so listen-up… Since my 20s I’ve been having nigh sweats before my period. For years I thought it was no big deal, thought it was just a normal symptom. Well, when I got into my early 30s my period started to change. I was getting worse.I’d never really had cramps to speak of, but now here they were — the debilitating death cramps I’d heard about forever from my friends. Why was this happening to me? As the daughter of a doctor I figured it was the body’ natural course and just let it go. Then, in my mid-30s I started having “mood swings.” That’s in quotes because what happened every other month was more than just a mood swing. I became anxious and paranoid, and as the years wore on, the anxiety and paranoia became severe to the point where I destroyed relationships.

When I moved to CA and Molly and I started having problems, I wrote it off to external factors until a few things happened that couldn’t be explained any other way than having been a result of bad PMS. My paranoia exhibits itself by making me think things are happening which are actually NOT happening. I was accusing Molly of doing and feeling things that weren’t happening. I drove her crazy, almost literally.

Well, my case is as good as any to show that love really can conquer all. Instead of falling back into my wounded pride and living alone for the rest of my life I told myself that I was the problem and went out to try to get help. I found acupuncture and Chinese medicine. These worked very, very well at the start. The severe cramps went away and my moods calmed down by 75%! Then I noticed something else, though – when I drank to excess (3-4 beers per week), no amount of acupuncture or herbs would help. ALL of my symptoms would come back.

Cut to today. I’ve been reading and researching this PMS issue since I moved here. I stopped drinking but it wasn’t helping, so I found an organization online, womentowomen.org who have produced these incredible herb packets. With two weeks I started to feel better and it’s all been maintained. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I’m hoping, you know, forever.

Guinness. It’s still not as good as Mother’s Milk, or that amazing chocolate stuff we had at McMenamin’s in Oregon (thank you Matt & Katie!!!!), but it’ll do for St. Patrick’s Day while I finish up an edit. Such edits — the short ones where I do a lot of trickery — remind me of Paul Kovit, the senior editor at Oxygen. I sat behind him plenty of times asking questions about what he was doing. Through my whole life & especially this career, I’ve rebelled against the throng of people telling me I could do this, that, or the other. I got it a lot in my early TV career. Now, thankfully, having achieved a certain level of ability, that bullshit is mostly gone, but I do get flashes of that dark past when I edit. You’re never finished learning how to edit. It’s a lifetime workshop. Like I imagine Photoshop would be…

Anyway, “FOOD, Part 2″ will be up tomorrow morning on Propeller.com for those who are interested. I like this one. It’s about eating locally–or trying to anyway. I’m eager to try it myself once we land East. I’m hoping for a small plot of land and a hoe to till her by. I think I could be a good home-farmer. I’d like to try onions.

Molly’s been sick the last few days. Run down. We went to the doctor and are awaiting test results. I guess nothing is as important as when you have a loved one or child that’s sick. Everything stops. Times like these I’m so thankful for my job being “virtual” I could throw up. I sat in the hospital waiting room just noodling away on my laptop.

By the way, we got “the Nokias” on Saturday. You could run a country with this phone. I’m hoping it’ll do what I need it to do, but the attempt will be fun anyway. I’m still convinced there’s a market for video in the mobile environment, we just haven’t hit on The Idea yet.

I woke up yesterday after having barely survived another upload. Mondays will never be the same to me. For years after this series is done I’ll flinch on Monday mornings and wonder if i remembered to upload a video. Monday is Upload Day. It’s actually Sunday night, but by the time I get around to uploading, it’s early-as-hell on Monday.

Monday morning I went to bed close to 3:00am and got up just after 8:00. I was dreaming about buying batteries at Costco. Double-As. By God’s good grace all of the major components of the 2-camera kit I’m taking to India take double-A batteries. It’s such a relief not to have to stress about Cs or Ds. They represent the rough alphabet of filmmaking.

Yesterday was another great interview. Ann Gentry. Celebrity vegan chef who owns 2 restaurants here in L.A. Whatever you think about L.A., or, truly, any major city, owning a restaurant and having it be successful in such a demanding environment isn’t easy. So I respect this woman a great deal. I also think it’s amazing that she chose to go vegan. *shakes head* Maybe it’s because I was a vegan cooking slave for 6 years, but that doesn’t sound like “fun” to me. Meat sounds fun. Steak. Juicy, charcoal-grilled rare beef covered in salt and garlic powder, an ice cold amber lager on the table beside it.

“I remember a few years ago my Mom was doing the Atkins diet. When I was visiting I saw her eating bacon every day. This was a woman who was already comfortably 30 pounds overweight. I asked her what she was doing and she described the diet. I stopped her from continuing it THAT DAY.

I struggle with weight issues myself, but they’re mostly related to beer. As you know, I fucking love beer. The thing is I can’t drink it regularly. Just can’t. Or, well, I can but then I’d have to give up something else–like food. Currently I’m trying to eat waaaaaaay more fruits and veggies than anything else, but as I run and bike regularly, I’ve found that I definitely need my protein every day at lunch and dinner or I crumple like a discarded prom dress. Breakfast can be a fruit smoothie with protein powder, but lunch HAS to include a medium-sized piece of chicken or fish, and dinner and has to include the same, just a smaller piece, and both meals have to include major veggies.

I’m at a sort of constant crossroads with carbs. I LOVE them, but who doesn’t…??? The good news for me is that I don’t crave them regularly. Not even once a month (except as beer). So, god smiled on me on that score… Also, because I’m–fundamentally–a drunk, I need a little alcohol buzz every now and again just to keep me happy, so … drumroll please … I’ve started drinking WINE. Now, remember, please, that I’m a chugger. I don’t SIP anything. So this wine business is challenging me and WINNING. Because I can’t chug it or I’ll get sick (not to mention wasted) I’m forced to CHILL when I drink, and I hate that. In my dreams I’d prefer to be a hard-drinking, pub-crawling, unforgivable skirt-chasing Irish deckhand, but my waistline just simply can’t take it. The only good thing about wine is that, because I fear hangover so much, I never drink enough to actually get fucked up, so the other benefit of wine (other than the *head-shaking* social acceptability) is the assurance of waking up clear as a bell. *Whatever.*

So, anyway, carbs are an issue for me. ”