Laurie Perry's Blog, page 17

Spring in the city of angels

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Winner, some chitchat, new book club, cat picture

And the winner of yesterday's giveaway of Knitting Plus: Mastering Fit + Plus-Size Style + 15 Projects by Lisa Shroyer is... DAH DAH DUM! Marjorie at 11:49:44. Check your email. Yay! Book giveaways are fun. Thanks again to Jaime Guthals at Interweave who always sends such unusual and beautiful books to share.

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Reader Catherine in Australia wrote:

Hi Laurie,
I really hope that things are settling down again and life is getting better for you (and the kitties too). This is probably the last thing on your mind right now, but I was wondering if you have any plans to continue with the book club? I have almost no chance of getting to an actual bookclub (due to 3 kids, part-time work, no babysitter etc) so I loved the idea of the virtual bookclub. I also have very
limited reading time (like 15 minutes after the kids are in bed if I am lucky!) and I like to get a head start on my reading to catch up with everyone else, so I wondered if you might have any books in mind for the club.
Lots of goodwill and best wishes,
Catherine

This was perfect timing! I was just unpacking a box yesterday and found my high-school copy of The Great Gatsby and I almost abandoned my already marginal attempts at unpacking to go sit in a corner and read about old Tom and Daisy Buchanan. So that's it, it's official:

Book Club for May: The Great Gatsby

(paperback version | kindle version)

Let's meet back here to chitchat and discuss The Great Gatsby on Monday, May 23, 2011.

The "bookclub" is really just an online read-along and anyone who feels like participating can check out the book during the month and then make a date to come back here and comment on the book and read what others think about it. (Yes, comments will be open that day. Har har.) It's by far the best book club I've ever been to because there's no obligation, you don't have to drive anywhere, and you can drink and eat anything you want while reading and writing comments. And if I manage to get some de-stashing back in gear I will send one lucky commenter home with some yarn or a book or some jeggings.

Just kidding. Like I would part with some jeggings.

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OR you could read my manifesto. You're in it.

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Recently reader Bonnie asked me on Twitter:

What are the best positive, empowering, self-helpiest books you can recommend?

That would be a mighty long list. I read self-help for many reasons, including I SO CRAZY. For many years I read helpy books when I wasn't going to a shrink, books were my therapy-by-proxy. Now that I am seeing a professional I don't read as much self-help. Mostly I read Entertainment Weekly and Ready Made and odd collections of essays by writers from the 1960s.

But the self-help books I keep on my shelves are the ones I recommend:

• The Four Agreements - A short book, with concise writing (I get irritated at self-help that's formatted like a legal textbook.) You can breeze through this in an afternoon but the lessons will stick with you.

• The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice - You can't get any better than this Gary Zukav book.

A New Earth Before Oprah picked this book for her book club I had flipped through a few pages and put it down, too much work. I think the sentence structure makes the reading more dense than it needs to be. Having said that, I re-picked it up for her book club and reading this book from the beginning to the end made me feel like a new version of myself. There is a passage in this book about sinking below thought vs. rising above your thoughts and that section alone probably changed my life.

• The Book of Awakening - I don't want to oversell this book, because I think it either hits with you or it doesn't. The format itself is one of my favorites, I love a good daybook. Remember when the world was on fire with Sarah Ban Breathnach's daybook Simple Abundance? I love this format and I think Mark Nepo is brilliant and writes lovely paragraphs. I keep it in the bathroom. Is that wrong?

• The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Gotta have some Deepak on the list. This is my favorite of his books. The idea that money must flow in and out changed my thinking about money completely.

• Bridge to Terabithia - I know this isn't self-help. But this little piece of perfect makes me think about life in a new way each time I read it.

• Ditto A Wrinkle in Time

That's my short list. Many self-help books directed at women involve self-esteem or finding a man. I don't read those books. I've always been mystified by the cult of self-esteem when (to me) self-mastery is such a better quality to cultivate. And when it comes to bagging a man, I'm waiting for the Laurie's Guide To Marrying Al Gore paperback.

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I fit in this handy carrying case so obviously, I am your new laptop.

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Free Book Monday: "Knitting Plus" by Lisa Shroyer

To start this week off right, today I'll be giving away one free copy of Knitting Plus: Mastering Fit + Plus-Size Style + 15 Projects by Lisa Shroyer. Thanks to the always charming Jaime Guthals at Interweave for sending me this copy to give to one lucky reader.

From the publisher's description: "Knitting Plus is the must-have manual for plus-sized sweater construction and knitwear design. With this helpful guide, you'll learn how to design wearable, tailor-made sweaters. Explore basic pullover and cardigan sweater construction styles from raglans and set-in sleeves to drop shoulders, seamless yokes, and dolmans. Knitting Plus explains each specific sweater element and then offers key tips for plus-sized knitting. Included throughout are simple versions of each construction type as easy-to-reference templates so you can quickly adapt and alter each sweater for a custom fit. Each pattern offers a broad range of sizes and instructions for bust sizes from about 44 to 56 inches. Packed with design information and ready-to- knit patterns, Knitting Plus is your go-to technique and design reference for customizing patterns to fit all sizes."

Plus-sized knitting books are surprisingly rare in the knit book world. I looked through this one and it features a nice mix of simple patterns and more complicated lace and cable patterns. The Fair Isle sweater alone is a work of art. Instead of banding the pattern horizontally the designer (Nancy Shroyer) created vertical bands and it's one of the most flattering sweaters in this style I've seen:

To enter to win this book, simply leave a comment on today's entry by clicking the comment link below. You don't have to compose a manifesto, it's ok to just write "book entry."

Picky Stuff: You must leave a valid email address to be eligible. If you prefer that your email address is mysterious and hidden, you need to enter some website address in the "URL" field just below the email address field. For example, you can just cut/paste http://www.crazyauntpurl.com and it is magic. Technology!

Good luck!

Breakfast at Sweetsalt

My friend Christine invited me to breakfast yesterday, we went to a cute little sandwich shop in Toluca Lake called Sweetsalt, opened by Top Chef contestant (Season five) Alex Eusebio. I don't watch Top Chef but that detail seems important to the story for those of you who do. Everything on the menu looked like it was ten bucks or less and the food is outstanding.

Photo above has a weird angle to it. There was actually a girl sitting out front just below this sign. There is a cute patio area for dining outside and she was eating a salad at one of the outdoor tables. I was trying to avoid getting her in the picture because I didn't want to seem like I was taking a picture of her all creepylike.

The sandwich shop carries Zapp's potato chips! Zapp's are from Louisiana and are not easy to find here in Los Angeles. I got ridiculously excited about the potato chips.

Christine and I both had the turkey and avocado sandwich with applewood smoked bacon. DELICIOUS. I recommend.

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Wagon Wheel, and other songs

An accident, really, I was trying to text someone and I hit the wrong button and before long I was playing country music on my phone.

First night since I moved in that I didn't actively hate this apartment. Something about drinking too much and listening to some good songs. I like when Randy Travis says he's been diggin' up bones, or when Travis Tritt sings "Chances Are" (though the new version by Garrett Hedlund is better, I think.)

This place is just like that crappy apartment I had when I first moved to the city, a hundred years ago back when I was working at the newspaper and struggling to get by and something about the country songs made me remember it in a rearview mirror kind of way. Like nothing is really as bad as it seems. Like one day this will be a good song, except I can't carry a tune in a bucket.

I love country music. And I love being one of three people in all of Los Angeles who loves country music. You can't feel bad when you're twanging. Until I turned fourteen years old I believed that George Jones was related to me. All my uncles would quote him, and we listened to him all the time, and I was just a kid anyway, so what did I know? I thought George was some cousin or something, one of those family members we talked about but didn't trot out at family reunions. I mean, hell, he stopped loving her today.

So I was just laying there on the bed, it's hot outside so I had the window open a crack and you can hear the sirens and traffic. I'm trying to send a text and I hit the wrong button and now my phone is playing, "One day I ventured in love, never once suspecting what the final results would be..." and before long I've gone through Freddy Fender, Merle Haggard, Randy Travis. And George Strait is singing, "I'm carrying your love with me..."

And after a while nothing seemed that bad. Not even this apartment.

I'm practically related to old George Jones anyway. Now I just got to find a way to work in mama, and a train, and an old dog and we got us a SONG. A surefire HIT. AMEN.

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An L.A. day

10:05 a.m.

It sounds like someone is walking on the roof.

This apartment is on the top floor of a three-floor walkup, so there aren't any upstairs neighbors. All that's above my unit is the flat tar-and-paper roof. I can tell the roof has leaked before because of the patch job in the acoustic ceiling. The swirly popcorn paint treatment was popular 30 years ago when this building was last fashionable.

The first time I heard someone walking on the roof I assumed it was a repairman, perhaps a satellite TV installer. The footsteps seem to happen every day, though. Now I think maybe there is a homeless encampment on the top of the building.

There are stairs that go up to the roof but I haven't gone up there to look. I probably won't. It's hot outside, and I don't really care if someone is living on the roof.

11:15 a.m.

I'm driving in to see my therapist, which already sounds like the beginning to a bad 1980s novel set in Los Angeles, and I'm early so I can stop by the post office.

Traffic begins to slow, then crawl, then stop altogether and so I unlatch my seatbelt and lean over the passenger seat and zip down the other window on my Jeep. It's getting really warm outside.

Police helicopters are hovering overhead. I switch stations on the radio and when the traffic report comes on the woman's voice on the radio says all the exits are blocked nearby because police are searching for a murder suspect on Laurel Canyon Boulevard at Ventura.

"Damn it," I think. "That's where the post office is."

Then: "And a murder suspect is running loose, so there's that."

1:22 p.m.

At Rite-Aid there's a guy who sits outside with a can and asks for donations for some charity, or maybe the donations are for him, I can't tell.

He's talking to a big guy with red hair, the big guy is wearing a Spongebob Squarepants T-shirt and dirty khaki shorts.

"How much can you clear in a day here, bro?" asks the big guy.

"I do all right," says the man holding the donations can. "My sister is out there at the Whole Foods, she cleans up."

3:40 p.m.

I'm in traffic again, this time on side streets, and now it's hot. The sun is just baking. We crawl single-file past a line of black and white police cars, everyone is stopping to look. The cops have either pulled people over or parked in between the cars on the street, I can't tell which. There are several young people in handcuffs, a few are girls who look barely old enough to be in high school. People at the Starbucks on the corner drink coffee and watch. People in their cars drive by so slowly they're hardly moving and they watch.

A guy with a camera is walking up the sidewalk toward the police cars, right beside him is a guy holding one of those microphones you see on location shoots.

The windows are zipped out of my Jeep and I'm stuck in this traffic. I'm just a few feet away and when one of the young girls in handcuffs sees the guy with the camera. I can hear her say, "Are we going to be on TV? That's so COOL!"

On the radio the traffic report starts. Apparently the exits have reopened near Laurel Canyon, they caught the murder suspect.

The light turns red, then green again and eventually traffic starts to move. One last look over my shoulder, the girl in handcuffs is smiling at the camera.

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Hey, let me help you with that!

It's hard work, but someone has to do it.

This Is How We Do It

A few nights and wines ago I made a sweeping proclamation that I would reduce my stuff by one half. Ah, my friends, that is one lofty goal. When I get in a frame of mind I'm like Scarlett in the dramatic potato-eating scene. I love to do things all dramatical and AS GOD IS MY WITNESS! Then of course I wake up the next morning and have a cup of coffee and think, "What? Really? Do I have to wear this dress made of curtains to the grocery store?"

In this case I feel very happy about the proclamation because it feels right. The elusive and delicious feeling of control is there, of course, but beneath it all is the sense that I'm freeing myself. And wasn't that my (possibly ill-fated) New Year's Resolution, anyway? "Lighten up!" I said. I meant it jauntily but apparently the entity in control of Resolution Enforcement is wicked literal.

When I make the decision to hold on to everything (read: hoard) it comes from pure fear. I prefer making decisions that liberate me, decisions that come out of hope. Holding/hoarding is my way of digging my heels in and refusing to move one. more. inch. That isn't a strategy for right now, I really do not want to dig my heels into this part of my life, in fact I will be blissed out when this portion moves along. I'm sure there are layers below layers of this crazy onion we could unpeel all day long. But let's get back to the One-Half Proclamation!

This week I am putting the proclamation to work as I unpack. I'm keeping my ONE HALF (As God is My Witness!) in mind as I unpack and handle each item. Small decisions. One by one they will add up -- piles for the Goodwill, the local library, friends, and maybe a few items to sell, charities, folks who may enjoy this one thing.

I'm going micro, item by item. This is the perfect example:

While unpacking the kitchen boxes and I found the fondue pots. Yes, pots, plural. I have one that is so me, styled straight out of some 1960s housewife dream kitchen and I love it. But I don't think I would ever use it for fondue since it's probably made of lead and asbestos. Which is why I have another fondue pot which I have used exactly twice in ten years. I don't even like it. Or like fondue all that much, because of the possible germ transfer while sharing. No one said germaphobia was cute, OK? Don't judge.

I gave the like-new and very clean fondue pot and matching fondue forks to a good friend who adores fondue. I'm keeping the rockin' 1960s pot I love and I'm going to display it and maybe use it as a place to put my keys, or a houseplant, or whatever.

I have just successfully reduced my ownership of fondue pots by one half! This is how we do it, one fondue pot at a time. It's not daunting and dramatic when you look at it from this angle.

Here is another example:

Unpacking a box from what used to be the pantry closet, I find I have two saws. As most women do. One is a wooden-handled saw that I don't like because it's scary looking and also sort of dull and the blade is too flexible. The other saw is brand new and comes with a miter box, which crazy precise people like me LOVE in the middle of the night when we can't sleep and need to make perfectly angled corners. Also, I have not used either saw in over four years. Notice the Ikea miter box & saw combo is still in its original package. HOARD MUCH.

I am giving away the wood-handled saw to charity, thereby reducing my ownership of saws by one half.

Honestly, if a woman like me who has a backup fondue pot just in case can pare down all fondue pottage by one half, then surely I can be a beacon of hope for others with fondue pot issues or similar.

[Edited to add: No, I don't have an exact duplicate of every item. I know the universe is mad literal, but I am not. This was just an example, simplistic and flawed as it was. Though duplicates are an excellent place to start paring.]

This is how I am going to do it, not with grand, impulsive decisions made from fear but with decisions made from accurate, honest thinking. Will I need two saws? Two fondue pots? If I need one in an emergency, because Lord knows there are probably both fondue and sawing emergencies in my future, would I be able to procure a replacement in a ten-hour window? If the answer is yes, I will let go of the less enjoyed item. The answer today is yes. DONE.

Let's be clear I'm not paring down because I feel bereft. I am paring down voluntarily because I don't think I can endure another moment of heavy living.

Holding on and hoarding is my fear-life. Letting go is my hope-life. I am using this time to put the Universe on notice. I am letting go of all the crap and I am opening up to the goodness ahead. Universe, are you listening? I AM LIGHTENING UP LIKE I SAID. NOW BACK OFF.

(Wow, I got a streak of self help in me a mile wide. I'm like a platitude on CRACK.) (And I am lighter by one saw and one fondue pot with associated forks.)

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Yeah, she needs to get rid of this crap. Two red toolboxes. Way to go, human lady.

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(Today's title is from the Montell Jordan song of the same name, you see, the hood's been good to me, ever since I was a lowercase G! This is how we do it.)

Ups and Downs, and Golf

Usually I have no problem writing copious paragraphs about my emotional response to all things in life like emery boards or wasabi paste or cat litter. Emotions seem to pop into my life in fully-formed paragraphs. Except right now.

Right now I feel like a bug trapped under glass. Is that an emotion? I don't even want to say out loud (in words) what is really going on beneath the surface because that makes it real. And I have all this senseless brain chatter telling me I should be grateful and look on the bright side when what I really want to do is scream. And screaming doesn't seem very Southern or Nice.

My solution is to focus solely on ridiculous things, like scouring and cleaning and bleaching grout. My mind says: "I can't control where I live, and that makes me want to sit in a corner and eat my hair, so even though this is just temporary housing I still need clean grout. AS GOD IS MY WITNESS THIS GROUT WILL BE CLEAN."

All that shelf-papering and cleaning and handwashing makes me feel the illusion of control. I like the way you scrub a thing and the stains come out. It's predictable, with an outcome you can rely upon. I need one thing to rely upon right now. I like how you can haul every single item of clothing and all linens in your possession to the laundromat and after a series of sensible, pre-determined moves (load, fill, soap, quarters, wash, unload, dryer, dryer sheet, quarters, dry, repeat) everything in your entire life made of fabric is crisp and clean and smelling like Ecover eucalyptus soap. This is what I have been doing instead of crying or hollering or even whispering the words, I just lost my home and I hate it.

On Saturday I did something that I haven't done since I was in the midst of my divorce. I know it's the stress and the lack of sleep and anxiety combined, it makes my brain short out and go haywire. I'm still ashamed of it anyway.

Saturday morning I woke up crazy early. I had an event in Orange County, in Irvine. It's quite a drive from here. I had planned to go visit my grandmother that day and since I was up so early I thought I should go before the event and we could hang out for a while in the morning.

I got up, made coffee. For breakfast I had nothing here to eat, no cereal, no apples, no oatmeal. So I made a little pot of rice on the stove and ate a bowl of brown rice, got dressed, fed the cats, grabbed my map to the Irvine location. I got in the Jeep and made it across the 101, through downtown, down the 5 all the way to Commerce when I suddenly thought about the rice.

Did I turn the stove off?

Did I?

Did I leave the pan on the burner?

Did I turn the burner off?

I know you don't know where I live now (Unspecified Location) and probably don't know where Commerce is, anyway, but to put it into perspective I drove an hour in early morning Saturday traffic (light) that was the equivalent drive from Tampa to Orlando. And then I made a U-turn in Orlando-equivalent and backtracked in medium traffic to Tampa-equivalent knowing I would have to re-drive this whole thing in very heavy traffic for HOURS.

But there was no way to avoid it. I couldn't keep going. I do at least know myself well enough to know I couldn't go to the event, participate fully, talk to strangers, sign books, visit, go see grandma, and then drive three hours back all while wondering if my temporary housing was on fire or poisoning my cats with gas fumes. I would have lost it midway through, lost it majestically.

This is what I do when my anxiety is so high that I stop functioning normally. I do things like drive all the way to COMMERCE (ORLANDO) and have to turn around and drive an hour back home. Yes the stove was off the whole time, of course, and thank God, and then I got back in the car and re-drove back to Orange County.

It's too much pressure sometimes, there's no back up, no one to check on things for me, it's all too much. Or that's what I told myself as I drove back up the 5 freeway and across downtown, across the 101, back to this place where I still don't have a mailbox key yet. Too much! Can't do it!

Of course you do it, and it's not too much, and the stove was off, the cats were fine, Commerce was lovely the second time around. I made it to Irvine and after it was done I went to visit Grandma.

I told her about all of it, the move, the boxes, the fear, the stupid stove. I told her I felt selfish and stupid to tell her all this junk when she herself was in a wheelchair, no longer living in her own home. How can I complain, bemoan?

"That's nonsense," she said. "Everyone has good times and everyone has bad times. We all just do the best we can where we are."

There's something about Grandma. She's not being trite or washing over things. She knows bad times. She isn't making light. She's just got the long lens, the 88-year-lens. She really means what she's saying and for the first time in weeks I sit beside her and I actually feel calmed, a little.

"So you're having a bad time," she said. "You will get through this, people always do. Now let's watch some golf."

We sat there for a while, and we watched some golf.

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Conversation/Window

Frankie: Glad you came out of the closet.

Bob: Yeah.

Frankie: Thought you'd lose weight in there, though.

Bob: Nah.

Frankie: I see that. Might want to cut back on the carbs, dude. For real.

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(time passes)

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Bob discovers sunlight!