Christmas Tree Farm

I never realize how intensely LA has taken over my brain until I leave for long enough.

The Midwest is such a jovial schlubby little hamlet. I love how people rib each other about everything. On Christmas Eve Eve I approach one of Puhg's uncles. He's in a recliner in the middle of the room, children bouncing all around, cookies being consumed at lightening speed. I ask him, "Do you know where our suitcases ended up?" He says, "Yes," and then pauses for a long time--before a mischievous little grin creeps across his face! The next morning I feel guilty I don't want the cheesy potatoes and ditch everyone for a fancy latte. I sip it, trotting through the suburban forest.

All I want for Christmas is to have dinner at my favorite high school pizza spot. My sister and mom indulge my request. The meal is not overrated, a teenage dream, and probably $30 for the three of us! We go to the fancy grocery to buy "snacks" to watch the filmed Waitress musical. Pookie sneaks an entire cake into the theatre. There are walks to the river and gingerbread folk to decorate, living room couches piled with wrapping junk and old ornaments to tap. A Santa garland from my childhood on the banister going up the stairs.

In farmland my dad always knows someone. In the grocery store parking lot, at the coffee shop where I toil over my final deadline of 2023, at the lodge, near the fireplace. I sit there journaling about my next play, into the night, wool socks on.Two ladies with crooked teeth greet me at the resale shop on main street. (Or, "a" main street.) They ask where I'm from and then frown. "I would not like living in a big city!" they assure me. People aren't shy about their preconceived notions where French names are butchered. We sit in the bakery, we sit at Cracker Barrel, we sit at Baskin Robbins, we sit at lunch I think at the very same table we had to evacuate during a tornado in 2017. The winter is more than mild but I have to wear my gloves.

On Christmas Eve there are coolers on the porch and only dips with meat and all eight adult siblings peer into the Fannie May box, detectives on the hunt for caramel. God help who gets the lemon creme. The teen girls always find me. One a class president who shows me her collection of homemade cards, the other a crackly drama queen who tells me about torturing the boy she likes. She has 18K TikTok followers for making Hunger Games edits.

The bathroom is marble and the fireplace is fake. We walk around the Macy's windows. No bustle at all, just pods of unhoused families. The plane is full, and everyone working at the airport is miserable.

Buzzing About Tuesday

So many surprises Tuesday. Rushed out to Starbucks in the morning, for example, and ran into this girl M______. We did an improv show together almost exactly a year ago and followed each other on Instagram. She's always doing such artsy things, like indie shoots in Panama. We congratulated each other on our years and then she whispered low, "I am so sick of my survival job though." She still has to nanny. Despite being an esteemed writer. I recently found out Alexander Payne sold a script after grad school (unproduced, I think) for 60K and lived on that for four years. No disrespect to Alexander. I do enjoy his work.

I had a Zoom with Toy Conglomerate to kick of my 17th series. My survival job--but I do enjoy the work.

This musician I collaborate with texted me. The video we wrote for A___ M____ needs some exterior shots--am I available? We live in the same neighborhood, so I threw on jean shorts, braided my hair, and dashed out. I zipped by a Chicago improviser at a cafe on the way. "What's up!" I shouted before filming this guy scream emo lyrics on a residential street as I walked backwards--a very poor man's tracking shot. A professional, as soon as we got five takes, he was gone. Delivered the finals by 4 PM.

C____ came over to pick up our vacuum--Puhg doesn't need it anymore. I emerged from my work cave to gossip, then back in, then back out to meet a stranger buying our lamp outside. She handed me a ten and mumbled something about her roommate liking black and white, left in a flurry.

I was fully prepared to record with AP and MR the next day, so I made a pan of toffee. Taylor Swift's movie dropped. I downloaded it at 11, watched THE extended song. The moment she pointed at me in the crowd was in the cut! Forever immortalized!

golden age of something good and right and real

Woke up in a grouchy mood about something that happened yesterday. Someone needling me, my inability to stonewall. I'll stonewall more in 2024, I think, I journal.

Did a 1989 dance workout in the living room, showered with my purple shampoo and a rusty razor, listening to "State of Grace." Had my little veggie bacon, decided on purple yoga pants and my pink sweatshirt, walked to Starbucks. My favorite barista quit and the new one has to ask a couple questions about my order. I sit outside in an egg chair with my holiday drink and text Puhg I need to let it go.

I don't want to be a grouch. I will live fewer than 30-thousand days. Lately I've also been considering how when I let people get to me they absorb so much of my focus and energy. What if people who try to stir me are lonely and need to be important for a brief moment. When I ruminate on it all, I'm only giving them more and more significance in my life. I rip it away.

Focused, I get going on my pitch revisions. I become a machine for an hour, fingers flying on the keys as all my ideas finally exit in a straight line of text. I haven't been able to crack this one for a month. At 10:15 I pack up and rush home to Zoom with AP & co about the newest pod edits. I can tell everyone is tired, but the episodes are in great shape, I think.

At 1 I make my faux chicken broccoli bowl. I know I have to go back to the pitch, but it intimidates me. I watch part of a bootleg video of the Red Tour. I have come to have such high standards of Taylor Swift. She's absolutely magnetic at that concert from 2012, but her dancing is stunted and awkward, she slides up and down notes. It's as though she's been ruthlessly improving for ten years.

Ideally I hope to end my writing at 4 so I can take a walk before my Zoom with S___. But no, I get caught on a few details and finish right at 4:55, attach the doc to my exec before I can second guess. I catch up with my old friend--we're trying to do a call every two months. It's so nice to get a glimpse into her life. At 7 I toss on slacks and my pink collared shirt, run over to Little Doms to meet Lo. We gab for two hours. We don't finish the appetizer bread, so I pick up the loaf and carry it home. Puhg drives her home, and only after she exits the car do I realize I had a note in my phone of topics I forgot address.

I sit on the balcony listening to Folklore, and then I decide to dance to a couple songs since I never did get that walk in. I've realized this year I need to do cardio twice a day to not feel nuts. Around 10:50 I have the leftover bread with goat cheese and a honey crisp apple while Puhg and I watch an episode of Survivor Cambodia. Sweet Potato wakes up and zips all over tarnation.

AWRGFTGAR -- Nov 2, 2023

7:30 balcony journaling

8:00 Taylor Swift dance workout

8:30 getting ready and bothering the ham and chattering around the house

9:30 out the dang door to the swanky coffee shop

10:00 revising my play over a hot cinnamon roll, sending emails of interest

11:00 M____'s office for a meeting with the exec for my new show and a potential showrunner, she is excellent, we ask her to come onboard

12:30 call with Cowsk about the podcast

1:00 home for a broccoli bowl with Puhg on the patio

2:00 rehearsal for B___'s solo show, I sit in the dark corner and take dramaturg notes

4:30 rush home to review notes from the day, shove in a couple emails

5:00 zoom with the EP of our musical comedy movie and discuss who to approach as the lead, laugh at how cruel Hollywood is ("well she has an Oscar, but would she get us buzz?")

6:00 cram crackers and cheese in my mouth

6:20 walk around the neighborhood on the phone with my sister

7:00 rush around closing up and getting dressed

7:30 arrive at the clown theatre to see a puppet musical by a young writer I know--it's so great, I am so happy for her

10:00 Marco Polo Lavender in the car, then scream 1989 all the way home

10:30 greet Puhg and the ham, make vegan buffalo wings with ranch and eat them in bed talking about everything and nothing until I fall asleep just before midnight

cross-legged in the dim light

I have the proof time is not linear. I discovered it it two months ago, that weekend on the windy bluff over Lake Michigan. Sleeping in a bunk next to the camp diva and across from a captain I considered an adult, even though she's only two years older than me, diagonal from a duo I'd never guess would have formed the most lasting friendship, huh.

The worst way to wake up, then and now, is metal clinks and the faint pawing for swimsuits. I couldn't believe I was hearing it in my 30s. "What are you doing?" I groggily begged from under my blanket. "Dipping!" the gung-ho crew cheered. I didn't think we were going to do the old thing--wrap in towels and run down the beach steps and jump in. But turns out people were, and I am people.

I have four or five thousand takeaways from the precious days, but if I had to chose one I might say caring is contagious. Like on Friday night when the evening activity was bombardment and yes, I got dressed in yellow, and yes, I laced up my sneakers, but I did not expect to try. Only when you're split into your ride or die teams and on the courts with aggressive sisters from every generation, what choice do you have? Or like when we had to make up intro chants and council fire. I surveyed all the clumps, every face  serious, every brow furrowed. Every person on the dinky talent show stage giving everything. Anyone invited to the Mafia circle buzzed with glee. No one didn't try.

Re; generations, if I were afforded two takeaways I might say generations of women are just important. They just are. I need to see women older than me having fun. I need to hear women younger than me. I need to be who I am. All of us need each other, by the way.

What else? Canoeing through the silver tube for the last time ever. It makes me want to cry if I think about it too much, so I can't. I forgot my glasses before the talent show. I did as a teen too. My same legs ran from the top of the hill down the wood chip grove to grab them. Singing on the bus. Singing on the deck. Looking out over the long road from the meadow, after we zip lined but before we hid under the evergreens.

Fine! If I were afforded three takeaways, I might also add nothing last forever besides everything you've ever thought about. ____ gives me a petoskey stone, my first, and says her truth. Like the first star did at midnight. Like the most annoying girl did too, what, twenty years ago? And I see you still, when I look out to the manitous from the perch. Like a projector plays you walking by. And if no one else comes to the show,  I'll be an audience of one, until the erosion is too quick to contain and every cabin sinks into the water.

So Hollywood

 I've been desperate to blog lately, but I just don't have the time. Life for these past six months has simply never let up. I feel like I'm constantly sprinting--zooming through outrageous days at a breakneck speed.

There have been so many moments that fluttered around my head as I was slipping to sleep. "I should write today down," I barely conjure as my head crashes into the pillow. I want to set in stone that Friday I got super sweaty at a guild silent disco, sped home for a shower, attended a fancy girl lunch, blazed through work emails, sat in the hamster playpen at night. Or the day I met with a blind advocacy group at 8:30 AM to develop the new Blind B_rbie and zipped to the picket line and ran into friends and decorated cookies for AP's birthday and motored across town for a listening party and made it to heartbreak dinner with my friend getting divorced and walked home eating pizza from the to-go box, singing Reputation on the empty sidewalk. And I still want to write about my camp reunion and I still want to write about Japan and I still want to write about so so many things.

But for this particular post, what I want to write about is the most Hollywood moment. Two weeks ago I went to my friend's bachelorette party. There was drag brunch and a warm patio and activities and dancing and banners. We played a game called "dirty minds." We got a list of clues that could be construed as sexy, but we were supposed to think of an answer that was bland instead. This game was my jam. The group happened to be very industry-heavy. When the host announced I had won an exec across the circle shouted, "That's not fair! She's a writer! She's supposed to be on strike!" The agent chimed in, "Fine, she can win, but I get ten percent of her points." I thumbed over to my actual manager and said, "Actually, she does."

When the morning came, we were cleaning incense off your vinyl shelf 'cos we lost track of time again.

Her Little Diane Keaton Hat

 There was an 80something woman behind me at this coffee shop. She was drinking an orange juice and wearing a pale blue button-up, circular glasses, and a Diane Keaton hat. I adored the whole image. I love seeing women enjoying themselves alone. "I won't bother her, but when she gets up to leave, I will pay her a compliment," I thought. I started into my B_rbie revisions and got tunnel vision, like I so often do. Just popped my head up for air, and the woman is gone. I'm sending her the message telepathically. I wish I hasn't missed my chance.

Last month I was here writing, morning after the Taylor Swift concert. I was wearing my t-shirt, a proud ambassador for the greatest cultural event of my lifetime. A man, 70s, approached me asking if I went to the concert. I said I did, and he decided to spend several minutes telling me she bought a house in his area on the east coast. Of course I know this. I would wager there's not a single thing that man could say about Taylor Swift I didn't already know. And I felt myself getting angry. Why did he assume he could teach me when I was the one in the literal t-shirt of our subject? He made a jab at her dating history, and I had to ask myself if it was worth spending five more minutes of my life educating a stranger who did not respect me. (Decided, no.) He then wanted to talk about Lizzo's assault allegations, which also bothered me. I said the situation seemed very complicated. He scoffed that she is an abuser. And maybe she is. But my generation is far more comfortable with complexity, and sometimes that's wrongfully considered as ignorance. In actuality, I care so so much. So much more than that man. I care so deeply that these issues rattle me to my core. I spend lots of time sussing through the difficult webs, questioning the narratives and where they're from and who would want them projected and when and why.

I try to see it differently in hindsight. At least that man knows who Lizzo is. Maybe that's what it was all about. Him presenting to me, "I know your world too!"

Last night I had a brand new experience. I went to a friend's comedy show expecting it to be a semi-sparse attendance of pals. But when Puhg and I got to the lobby, we found ourselves in a huge crowd of buzzing 20somethings. Fans, it turns out, of my contemporaries. I was happy to see it and also have never felt more ancient. I'm jealous of how the world treats Gen Z. I felt so hated for my entire post-college decade. The butt of endless jokes and poor and desperately smiling through it all. Don't complain or you'll be made fun of, you'll seem like "bad energy," you may even be let go--you are expendable beyond your wildest dreams. I still feel that way. Millennials are losers with too much debt and too few houses. Be careful!