Video - I'm a Bad Writer.

Professor Future Wife hates everything I do. I've never been so intimidated by a professor in my life. Either I'm totally psyching myself out or I'm just a terrible writer and every other instructor has pitied me. Again, it's Flash. Sorry, iPhones.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I've noticed recently, pretty much since I started this blog, that I've been quite the grumpy old man about everything. If you only read what I write here and knew nothing else about me, you might think that I'm some raging bitch who hates everything and everyone. I promise that is not true. For the sake of balance, I decided to write a blog about things that I love.

-I love small acts of old-fashioned gentlemanery (not a real word). Including, but not limited to:
     -When a man holds the door open for a lady and puts his hand on the small of her back as she's walking through.
     -Walking around and opening the car door for a lady. Like the above example, a respect thing, in my eyes.
     -Pulling out chairs at restaurants.
     -Opening jars.
     -Buttoning the last button/zipping up that last section of dress in the back.
This might seem like I'm trying to set the feminist movement back 40 years. Don't worry, I'm plenty stubborn and independent in a million other ways that make up for me melting over this short list. Besides, why am I trying to apologize for something I like? It's my blog.

-I love Long Beach. From the 1920s-era preserved parts, to the gay bars, to the scary ghetto parts, to the hippie parts; from downtown, to Belmont Shore/2nd Street, etc. It's always been a happy/peaceful place for me, and I don't know why. I think I might be a city mouse underneath it all. My favorite building is the Villa Riviera on the corner of Ocean and Shoreline. I think this might be a result of it looking like a building out of Ghostbusters and "looks like something out of Ghostbusters" pretty much ensures that I will love something. I don't know that Long Beach is my all-time favorite city, but it's one of them.

-I have never had a favorite clothing store before. Most of my clothes shopping is done on an extreme budget and at the last minute, so I have never really gotten too attached to any one location. Until now, that is. In Old Towne Orange exists the most darling little clothing store, and I feel like every girl should know about it.
Spotted Moth  has been my go-to shop for about 9 months now. It's small, simply (but sweetly) decorated, and every single female that works there is adorable both in personality and attire. They have a pretty decent selection in person and also have an extensive amount of merchandise online. I just can't get enough.

-My favorite time of day is in the late afternoon when the sun is at an angle that makes everything look gold. It's not sunset yet, but you can tell the day is starting to end. I think in the fall this is at about 4:30pm, I'll have to pay closer attention to the clock.

-I love when babies belly laugh.

-I love how music can break all language barriers. I've been in a handful of situations in my life where the only time everyone could communicate was when a song that we all knew was playing. Thank you, Beyonce.

-I love the feeling I get immediately after purchasing a plane ticket. Excitement, nervousness, and a tiny bit of buyer's remorse every time. It's a small high.

-I love having to work for something. I'm not saying it has to be a challenge for me to appreciate it (maybe I am), but an A for something that was cake or a raise I haven't necessarily earned or people appreciating a piece I've half-assed does not feel as good as getting those things when I've broken a sweat for it.

-My friends. 

-Secrets that don't hurt anyone. There is something magical about sharing something with only one other living soul. The two of you own that, together. Whether it be a confession, or a moment, or a feeling, or an embarrassment.... it's beautiful to me. 

-My siblings. I have 2 sisters and one brother. One sister and I fight almost nonstop, but I love her regardless and couldn't do life without her. And my other sister and brother have always been there for me, even when I've been a class A shithead. I'm really lucky and I know it.

-I. Love. Craft. Beer. I have a theory that if I didn't love craft beer so much, I might actually be a rather thin person. I'm afraid I will never know. One beer after a long, hot day is just...so nice. Of course, it might be one 22 ounce beer....

-The potential that people have to be great is one of my favorite things about being alive. I couldn't decide whether my (sometimes blind) love and hope for humans was a blessing or a curse, but (today) I'm choosing to view it as a blessing. Although I come off as a pessimist often, underneath it all, I always hold on to the belief that the terrible things people do (including my own terrible things) are not that person's true nature. I give a lot of chances, because I need a lot of chances.

Hopefully this balances the mood here. I'm not solely a cynical, overreacting, eye-rolling, f-bomb-dropping she-devil. I mean, I still am that, but not all the time.

Video - An Irrational Fear and an Even More Irrational Way of Handling It

This is my first ever video blog. I decided to do a video because I couldn't properly describe exactly what I did without showing it. This really happened this morning, in broad daylight, in my sister's front yard.
A few things:
-This was the first and only take.
-Yes, my sunglasses broke when I threw them off.
-When the actual event took place I also threw my phone, but I didn't want to risk breaking it since (miraculously) it didn't break outside.
-I don't really whistle when I'm watering plants, it just seemed like the right thing to do.
-If you look in the background you can see Sebastian totally unimpressed with me.
-Obviously, I'm not a video person, or acting person, or even a person who is capable of not being shifty-eyed when recording herself alone.

So, here I am....awkwardly telling a story of me being awkward....

Sorry, it's flash, so you can't watch it on an iPhone.
Xx

*Update* on Two Tone

I don't know how I did it, but my arms actually managed to get darker over the last week after I have been slathering obscene amounts of skin lightening cream and sunscreen on them. Only I would be able to pull this off:

Maybe it's hopeless and I should just invest in some fake tanner for the other 90% of my body.

You Are a Bad Driver

In an earlier post I estimated that I drove 1200 miles a month. Once I thought about it, I realized that I fill up my tank 2 times a week, I get about 275 miles a tank, and that's 2200 miles a month(!). All the driving over the last couple years has forced me to come to terms with a cold, hard fact: nobody knows how to f***ing drive.

This might be the product of a bad morning of driving (one hour and 45 minutes to get from Long Beach to Mission Viejo, ahhhh!), but these are things that people do on the road that are ruining my life and destroying my faith in humanity:

-Not using blinkers. Really? Is it that hard? I understand on older cars (since up until 2 years ago, every car I owned was practically the same age as me) that there might be a bulb burnt out or whatever, but when a brand new Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, etc. doesn't use them something in me snaps. Is it that hard to raise your hand the 6-8 inches required to signal your lane change or turn? Why were you even born?

-People who speed up to get in front of me and then go slower than I was once they get there. If I have to tap on the brakes and make the cruise control cancel, there will be Hell to pay. Also, people who only speed up when I'm trying to get around them, why are you terrible?

-People who hold their cell phone away from their face and act like that means they aren't talking on their phones while driving. The whole point is that you have both hands to operate your vehicle, just because your phone isn't touching your face doesn't mean you're a more aware driver now.

-People who don't understand how a two-lane highway works. This one is huge, HUGE! How did people even pass driver's exams without learning this?! The right lane is for driving in, the left lane is for passing people. Do not get in the left lane and set your cruise control for 58 mph. Likewise, do not drive like a maniac in the right lane, get right behind me when I'm already going 80, and ride my ass because you feel like driving 90 mph on the toll road. Furthermore, do not give a face of shock and surprise when you do this and I give you the finger.

-Lookie-loos. A fender-bender, a dude changing his tire, someone being pulled over... really not cause for slowing down to a crawl to see. Stop doing this. Everyone. Mind your own beeswax.

I'm sure I can and will think of at least 10 other things that other motorists do that turn me into a fire-breathing, profanity-using, finger-giving monster, and I'll add them when I do, but for now that's it. Just stop doing these things for the love of everything that is good.

<3Abby

Dreamy Songs.

True Story

:)

Thought Log

Michael's should sell wine. Or as Ally called it, "craft juice".

No car ride is as quickly/efficiently maneuvered as the drive home after working 13 hours.

A great name for a bulldog would be "Michael Bull-ble".

4 year old Nanny Kid looked up at me while playing with his toys and said, "This is the life!", and I laughed forever. But he's right.

We're not true friends until I have a nickname for you. Or at least a pet name.

Any professor who writes an article on why student-faculty consensual relationships shouldn't be banned definitely wants to bang, like, all their students.

Im not saying that Obama is the best president we have ever had, but if Mitt Romney wins I will eat my own face.

You know what's just as bad, maybe worse, than lying about how you feel? Lying about how you felt. People change what they felt in a past moment to suit their present situation. "Well, I thought it was love, but I was just drunk/lonely." or "I didn't really want x (whatever goal) that bad." or "This is what I really was supposed to be doing with my life all along." or "I didn't care much for him/her at the time, but I was just proud and couldn't realize my true emotions." Self preservation is a deceitful bitch.

Going to a formal event Saturday. Looking for a dress that hides all of my body. And also most of my face.

I have to stop shutting my eyes "just for a second, just to rest them" while driving.

Speaking of eyes, I have to stop trying to shoot knives out of mine at people who annoy me; I actually think someone figured out what I was doing today.

Seriously, folks, I will eat my face. Bath salts style.

Two Tone

Due to a mixture of my heritage and location, I tend to tan quicker/darker than the average bear. I hate my legs and rarely get in a bikini, so during the summer my arms become 10 shades darker than the rest of my body.

I don't ask for much in life, but having arms that match the rest of me is something I (selfishly) desire. I decided to try out some "skin lightening cream" from the ethnic skin care aisle of the drug store. I'm not entirely sure it's FDA approved and it may be one of those "Well, it's only legal in Mexico" things, like The Cornballer. Sadly, that makes me more confident in its results. I'm hoping in 4-6 weeks I will be one color. Or at least 2 very similar colors.

The Summer in Songs

This summer was... interesting. According to my iPod, these are my "most listened to" songs. I don't know how to make a fancy playlist, so here's a s*** ton of YouTube videos.  

Father Figure

If you know me, you know that my father and I have a .... complicated relationship. If you don't know me, I'll give you the bottom line: We are exactly alike in some areas and completely different in other areas and it makes for a bumpy ride 100% of the time. Up until very recently, I went 2 years without communicating with him. We both had our reasons (we always do, otherwise that would just be silly), but he reached out and I feel like I need a Dad. I mean, I think everyone does whether they want to admit it or not. Dads are important.
To fill you in on who he is a bit... He is the smartest man I know. His IQ is off the charts. He was born in New York in the 1940s and lived there until his late 30s. He is Italian. Is almost done with his PhD. Very tall. Loud (although, I think Italian and loud are synonymous). I can thank him for giving me my impatience, stubbornness, passion, height, nose, anxiety about being places on time, low-tolerance for bullshit, giant feet, perfectionism, and inability to quietly have a heated conversation.
He is not perfect. Neither am I. Although there are parts of our story that I feel he could have handled differently, I know that I too have been a major source of grief, disappointment and flat-out losing-of-his-shit.
I knew it was time to reconnect with him. Every time I see a man of about 70, I think of him. My heart gets a pang. I wish that things were different. I want to change them, but don't know how. I miss having a dad. I need that voice of reason. I need someone who changed my diapers and bandaged my skinned knees to tell me how to figure all this shit out.
Recently reconnecting with him and thinking about our dynamic led me to reminisce about some of my favorite/funniest memories of him, which is why I'm writing this, to share with you.

The very first thing I can remember of him, is me jumping on his bed, still in diapers, in a Popples nightgown and him screaming, "GODDAMMIT, ABBY. It is 9:30 at night!" You would think this would be a sad/scary memory, but it makes me laugh out loud when I think of it.
Shortly thereafter, I remember him fast forwarding through the scene in The Neverending Story where the horse starts to sink in the quicksand, because I would immediately lose my mind and hysterically/inconsolably scream cry until it was over. I loved that movie, and to save us all the heartache, he knew exactly when to speed through and when to resume so that I could still enjoy it.

A few years later, we lived in Villa Park so I believe I was about 7 or 8, I was struggling to change the outfit of my Barbie (as I mentioned, he handed me down his zero patience for anything) and about to fall into a full-blown meltdown when he took over and tried to help me. I watched as he took the plastic limbs and attempted to bend and twist them to make her skintight minidress go on (why was I allowed to buy her all these whore clothes?), I saw the surmounting frustration in his face. Then finally, he couldn't take it anymore. "Jesus Christ, which one is this - Fat Ass Barbie?!"

My parents got divorced right before I started 3rd grade. We stayed in California a bit longer, but my mom, siblings, and I ended up moving to Kansas where my mother grew up to be closer to her family. I would visit my dad almost every summer and he would come to Kansas whenever he could to see us. On one of my summer trips to California, I think I was 12, we were driving on the freeway when a man cut us off. I yelled the first thing that came into my head: "You jerk off!". My dad pulled the car over at the next exit and had a lengthy conversation with me about what that term means and why I can't say it and how girls can't speak that way. I was embarrassed for being reprimanded and felt like I had really let him down. We re-entered the freeway. Moments later someone cut us off and my father proceeded to call them a "fuck knuckle".

In high school I decided that I wanted to live with my dad instead of my mom. I moved out here as a teenager to live with him which was probably the worst idea ever. Not because he was the worst parent (as I said, I would have handled me differently, but raising kids is HARD), but because teenage girls are literally THE WORST PEOPLE ALIVE. They hate rules, they take everything to be a personal attack on them and their life in general is the most awkward and dramatic thing going on in the world. Anyhow, I told him one day after school (junior year) how one of my instructors was pretty strict and while he explained the rules he told us to abide by them because "the rules are in place for a reason and they shouldn't be questioned." My dad nearly had a stroke when he heard this. He sat me down and explained that everything should be questioned. That what the teacher was saying was basically some Fascist bullshit and that if I felt like a rule didn't make sense, I should question it, talk about it, maybe even protest it. No one in my life had ever told me that this was okay before, that rules are sometimes made by people who don't have the best interests of everyone in mind. That it is okay to make up my own mind about things, that I SHOULD make up my own mind about things. Even though that was an exceptionally terrible time in our relationship, it was a lesson that I carry with me always.

In high school (again, teenage girl=terrible monster who can not be reasoned with), I wanted to go to some event at school or some hang out with my friends. I was in trouble for any number of reasons and was not allowed to go. I said something to the effect of "But daaaaad, it's the last one before school gets out!!!"...His response to this kind of argument was always the same (and one of my personal favorite retorts) "I don't care if it's the second coming of Christ, you're not going!".

With all of his intelligence and (what seems like) snark and attitude, he still has the ability to be a total goofball. Again, I was in high school and parents are the absolute dorkiest losers at that phase, but my dad and I were listening to "One Love" by Bob Marley and when he says "let's get together and feel alright", my dad changed the words to "Let's get together and smoke a pipe". And he pantomimed smoking out of a bong when he sang it. Maybe not the best thing to do in front of your 16 year old, but hilarious nonetheless. And also, I'm not some raging stoner who sits around all day and doesn't do anything with my life. My parents talked about drugs and joked about them and I'm still ambitious and normal....ish. (Side point.)

In an email last week, he told me that he's teaching English to any of his student's parents who want to learn. He's a teacher in New Mexico and there is a large Hispanic population there and a significant percentage of the parents do not speak English so he is trying to help them learn. Even though I have a thousand un-PC-comment memories of him, he has a heart and he believes in people and he wants to help everyone. That is something that I hope I also inherited from him through the years.

Pretty much from the time I was 17 until now, my dad and I have been on an insane roller coaster of pissing each other off, making up, and starting the cycle over again. We're both sensitive. We remind me a lot of Royal and Margot Tenembaum. I speak in absolutes of "NEVER" and "ALWAYS" and I have a tendency to swear off of people and relationships, but I hope that this time, somehow, through me being older, having married, and experienced some real-life adult shit, etc... that we will be able to appreciate each other for what we are, and maintain some sort of fondness for one another. Because I think that dads are important.