my rite to party

the morning before I left idaho to return home to LA, I was enjoying a delicious breakfast prepared by my lovely sister and her lovely boyfriend. halfway through the meal, my lovely mother quickly got up from the table and returned holding one bright pink birthday candle. she lit the candle and stuck it into a rosemary breakfast potato sitting on my half-finished plate. my family sang me happy birthday while we all laughed at this loving gesture. I made a wish and blew out the candle exactly one week before my birthday.

tomorrow is the last day of my 28th year. it feels monumental. many a birthdays have passed without me giving them much thought. but this one is different. this is the kind where I feel impelled to shave my head or climb a mountain or buy a really nice bottle of whiskey aged exactly as many years as me. I find myself craving a campfire wreathed in the smiles of my loved ones. an island getaway. a big dance party where everyone dresses up as their hero. a poolside lounge at a desert nudist colony. shit, I don't know? something special. I think the point is my desire for the ritual. fighting for my rite of passage to party. a ceremony of sorts to celebrate who I've become, because quite frankly, for the first time in a long time, I am really proud of me. I've worked hard for that feeling and I want to embrace it while it's here, sing it a song, take a picture of it to hang on my wall. I'm not sure yet what exactly I am going to do on the 30th, but something tells me it is only the beginning of what is going to be a celebratory year (and life to come). 

we all daho

sometimes you sit on a boat, budweiser tallboy in hand, laughing with your family, watching the sunset and you think to yourself, "boy howdy, I am lucky." then you remember luck has nothing to do with it. you deserve all the blessed moments you receive.

babies are cute

meet alistair wesley mcintire. he is a true delight. I had the privilege of kickin' it with him and his awesome mama michele while I was in idaho. in case you forgot, allow me to remind you, babies are cute. they are also incredibly wise -- they haven't forgotten yet what it's all about. eating, sleeping, pooping, laughing, loving, living -- the rest is just excess. do yourself a favor, spend some time with a baby and remind yourself of that fact.

desert dance party

sometimes you just need to drive out into the desert and dance. sometimes your friends, who don't live in the same town, drive out to meet you. sometimes you climb a mountain to watch the sunset together. sometimes you stay up late together in strange motel rooms drinking whiskey and talking about life and love and loss while eating potato chips and tootsie rolls. sometimes you take a walk in the dark together. sometimes you make each other laugh, really hard. sometimes you wish they didn't live so far away. sometimes you build an imaginary jet in your head, put all your loved ones in it and fly them to your side. sometimes you are perfectly content to look at pictures of them by your side. they make you laugh even from afar.

snot is slippery

I just ate shit. not literally. I mean to say, I fell. or rather, I slipped. upon inspection, I appear to have slipped on dog snot. wish it had been a banana peel. I'm always wishing for the real life experience of cartoon comedy. but alas, it was only a tiny globule of mucus that turned the otherwise safe terrain into a treacherous path. I made a GRAND entrance into the cafe. an accidental performance piece. I think everyone was expecting me to be extremely embarrassed about it, I mean, it was possessing of all the qualities that would make it so -- über hip coffee shop full of über hip people sitting quietly enjoying 6 dollar cups of coffee while staring at macbooks . . . and then enters in the girl on invisible roller skates. bags flying limps splayed. it was hilarious really. everyone was more embarrassed for me, than I was for myself. people sat stunned, silently waiting to see if the earth was going to slip out of orbit, if I was going to turn into a tomato face and run off never to return. but then I just got up, brushed myself off and laughed. here's the problem with "playing it cool" -- it means you're playing. you're not actually cool. to me, coolness lies in ones ability to be the real deal. the bumbling idiot who makes no apologies for their truth. I was super cool in my uncoolness this morning. for this I am proud of myself. the baristas were proud of me too. they told me that I fell very gracefully and gave me my coffee for free. I'm half tempted to slip on snot everyday.