Uprooted

Here’s the thing about social media and the world today. It’s easy to write when everything is good—to post a selfie when you just got your hair did and are looking fine; to humble-brag about your latest accomplishment; to post about big (positive, of course) life changes like a new job, relationship, or move.

We’re all a lot less likely to log in and share when things aren’t so good.

So this is my effort at accountability and keeping it real. I stopped posting a few months ago because, frankly, this has pretty much been the worst summer of my life. It’s been one disaster after another, all of which started rolling in like crashing waves in quick succession right as I moved to L.A.: relationship crises, legal trouble, financial hardships, friendship breakdowns, even a surprise jaw reconstruction.

I definitely have as much of an emo tendency as anyone else, but I think it’s fair to say that, for the most part, I have a fairly positive outlook on life. I know who I am, I dream big and work hard, and I value love above all else.

But I have reached the end of my rope in a way that I never have before and am having a hard time getting in touch with all of those aforementioned things. Emotionally, mentally, and literally in the physical sense, my existence feels like it’s bone rubbing on bone without any ligaments to cushion the harshness. I am tapped out in every sense and to a level that I never have been before. I don’t know what end is up.

Especially as summer dwindles into autumn—my most favoritest time of the year—I miss my beloved Boston and wonder what (and why) I gave [it] up. I spend way too much time dreaming of apple and cinnamon and pumpkin and cozy sweaters and newly-freed boots and crisp air and that specific way the sunlight filters through fire-hued leaves. I miss the city that always felt like a friendly face even in my loneliest moments. I wish I could run back. If I could go tomorrow, the truth is that I probably would.

But I can’t.

There’s that seed of me that still feels like me way deep down. And that part of me knows there’s no running. Fleeing back to Boston won’t undo everything that’s been done. And maybe this is all part of the transition—it’s about more than just refinishing furniture and discovering new places. Maybe there are reasons yet to unfold that require me to find my footing anew … even if I want to kick and scream the whole way through.

I will say one thing about this season-less place: Today after a meeting in Santa Monica just a couple of blocks up from the ocean, I walked down to the beach for a quick reprieve. Save for the lowering sun which glinted against the water, it was just one huge expanse of blue, with the ocean reaching as far as the eye could see, to the point where it was almost impossible to tell where the water ended and the sky began. I took my shoes off and I walked to the water, letting the tide rise in up to my knees and my toes sink into the sand. And in those few moments, I thought: There’s something to this place.

After several days spent carefully stalking Pinterest, yesterday I set out to Home Depot to arm myself with the necessary supplies to “shabby chic out” an oak table A. and I brought out to California with us. Never once have I ever done any sort of DIY work like this. I am also obsessed with researching and planting flowerbeds and vegetables. Who am I?

As I was inhaling paint fumes whilst putting the third coat of primer on my newly-white oak table and laughing as my friend N. talked shit to me, it all of a sudden hit me why I have suddenly turned into a shabby-chic-ing, flowerbed-planting type of person: Because it feels like A. and I are actually putting together a home. Not just like we moved in together, but like we’re in the process of building something that’s going to last. I’ve lived with a couple of people before, but I have never felt this particular feeling. And I think this makes me want to put more effort and thought into everything in and about our home. It’s a good feeling.

After getting completely stoned on primer and cover stain, N. and I set out for a sunset stroll around the Lake Hollywood Reservoir. I was happy to take a L.A. veteran somewhere she’d never seen before. That’s the beauty of having a newbie in town, right? They drag you to places, long after you’ve settled into your routine. Our timing was quite accidentally perfect. We hit the reservoir right as the sun was starting to set and the sky was all pink and colorful. The Hollywood sign was hovering over us. It was the best 3.5 miles you could ask for to end the weekend.

Remind me why I didn’t want to move here again?

So ... I’ve officially gone L.A. 

Yesterday, I had pretty much the most stereotypical “L.A. Day” you could ever hope to have. My foray into being a native began with my afternoon jaunt to Beverly Hills, where I went to get laser hair removal. (Don’t judge. If you were a dark-haired chick who spent 95% of her time wearing sundresses and cut-offs, you would have been stoked about the $275 for a year of laser hair removal deal on Lifebooker too. And, on that subject, yay Lifebooker!)

I was a few minutes late for my appointment because parking was a beast. I ended up having to wind all the way up to the tip-top of the parking garage next to the office, where I happily squealed my car into the last spot available. Which struck me as a bit odd since it was sort of an off time of the day. After my appointment, I got on the elevator to return to my car and the lady in the elevator with me was like, “What’s going on here today? Did you see all the paparazzi?” I did not, in fact, notice the paparazzi at all, but I’m still gonna go ahead and count that as my first run-in with the paps. Even though I didn’t technically run into them at all. Details. 

I continued my Girl Gone L.A. day by attending a service at Agape last night. In case you’re not familiar with it, Agape is the home “church” of Reverend Michael Beckwith, one of the main players in The Secret. Feel free to make fun of The Secret (I do), but that book still revolutionized my life when it came out. And in case you’re not familiar with me, any variety of church is the last place you would normally ever expect to find me. The jury is still out on it, but the experience was interesting--a very unique mixture of Baptist and hippie, with references to the buddha, Christ, and The Universe all thrown into a single sentence more than once. This huge choir with a full band (even including a horn section) played four songs before the service even began. 

For both A. and me, this is the first week back to real life. He just started production rehearsals working as a stage manager for a major-label band, who he’ll go on tour with as of this Friday. It’s pretty wonderful to literally watch all of his dreams coming true, and all of the hard work he’s put in for years and years finally paying off because at long last he’s in the place he needs to be to make shit happen--L.A.

As for me, I feel like I need a good dose of WD-40 in both my brain and my body. Back in Boston, I taught yoga. I haven’t taught (much less practiced) in about three months. I began beginning my day with a home practice this week, only to find that I literally can’t even touch my toes without bending my knees. I understand that the very essence of yoga is not getting wrapped up in things like this, but it’s still hard not to feel discouraged when I can’t even lower my heels to the ground in downward dog.

Much the same phenomenon is has happened in my brain, which seems to have atrophied in the process of moving. I was lucky enough to be able to take the past month off from writing while we made the actual move out here. This week things started up full throttle again, with three manuscripts in various states of production in front of me and another to be started (if I can ever track down the author, but that’s another story). My brain hurts from the focus of it, and the words are coming out clunky and unpolished. After all these years of writing and editing, it’s amazing how slow the machine is to creak into action again.

Especially with real life underway again, there are also the adjustments of living with someone on a day-to-day basis. To be clear, I love the fact that I get to wake up and go to sleep next to the person I love most in the world. There’s no one I’d rather hang out with or come home to than A. But, having said that, I seem to have fallen into “housewife” mode, doing all the cleaning and errand running, only to immediately find clutter and dirty dishes laying around everywhere the second I turn my head. I know A. isn’t even aware of this, and it’s just the matter of a simple discussion. As someone who works from home and requires order to do so, it’s just all a bit of an adjustment.

I mean, does anyone suck more at blogging than I do? It’s hilarious to me that in blogs of yore where I was just incessantly navel-gazing, I found the time to blog three times a day. When there are actually things to write about, it’s radio silence.

But, I guess that’s the point. The days have been so jam-packed with setting up a new life, and it’s taken several weeks to recalibrate to life on the Left Coast. We landed here on May 4 and today—more than three weeks later—is the first day I’ve managed to sit down and have anything remotely resembling an actual functioning life. It’s been a flurry of pod-unpacking, IKEA trips, furniture deliveries, countless walks up to The Grove for fruity treats (the fruit in California—gah!), and visits from friends and family.

Here is the truth: I was none too stoked about the prospect of living in L.A. I moved because my boyfriend needs to be here for work. I love him and he is home, so if this is where he’s gotta be, I’m damn well going along for the ride. I’m lucky enough that my freelance lifestyle allows me to pick up and move wherever the wind takes me, so L.A. is where the breeze was a-blowing.

As a Nor-Cal native, it was instilled in me to rebel against all things So-Cal. So, I sort of just assumed it was lame down here. Well, let me tell you—I know it’s early days still, but I have been served with a big lesson in not judging what you don’t know in the past few weeks.

First of all, I didn’t realize until we made our great escape exactly how much the past Boston winter did me in. And this is coming from someone who likes snow and winter. But this one was just too much. A. and I have essentially been like freed POWs since moving to L.A. Being outside, walking around, getting Vitamin D, and ingesting tons of fresh fruit has done wonders for the both of us, both physically and mentally. And, lemme tell you, for living in a city that is allegedly a “driving city,” we’ve been walking our asses off since we got here. Living by The Grove, everything we need—literally everything, including a kitty hotel that defies all previous definitions of “awesome”—is within walking distance. And, I gotta say, for as much as Boston is a “walking city,” there was no walking to be done this never-ending winter (or driving, or T-taking, for that matter). Now, having said that, let me clarify that I am not and never will be a Boston Hater. I love that damn town. It is to say that while I thought this move was for A., I’ve come to understand that I was needing a change too—it just wasn’t a conscious realization for me before we got here.

I love Boston and know it like the back of my hand. I spent the first several days here overwhelmed by the fact that I didn’t know where anything was. Simple things like grocery shopping seemed like daunting tasks. But, slowly, the city is starting to unravel itself. In the past few days, I’ve been able to drive free of GPS, which feels like a major accomplishment. After a couple of days, it struck me that I would never know all of L.A. like I did Boston—it’s simply too vast. But the upside of that is that there’s so much to discover. And, right now, I’m allowing myself to live like a tourist and enjoy all that there is to offer. So far, that has included poking around:

Paramount Studios (where my mom and I got to sit on Forrest Gump’s bench)

Soaking in the freak show that is Venice Beach

Looking back over the twinkling lights of L.A. from Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Bowl overlook on Mulholland Drive

Eating my way through The Grove

Checking out the Hollywood sign

Welp, this might be just about the most quickly-abandoned blog project ever. I had no idea how appropriately I was titling this here web page when I launched it a couple of months ago because, even before the actual move to L.A., I’m not sure that my life has ever been as uprooted as it is right now. It’s strange living in Limbo Land for an extended period of time ... and it’s especially strange (and, admittedly, trying) for someone like me, who is a creature of habit, loves my nest, and, also, works from home.

On the one hand, after only six weeks of living with A., it’s almost impossible to imagine that we ever didn’t. I love coming home to find all of the creatures I adore most in this world in one place. But, on the other hand, everything has been in a constant state of upheaval. The pods with all of our stuff left for the west coast a couple of weeks ago. I downgraded from the huge suitcase I was living out of when I first arrived at A.’s house in March to a carry-on when the pods left and have been living out of that ever since. Our cars headed westward atop a shiny red big rig a few days ago. We are, literally, living in chaos. One foot in one life, the other foot in another.

On top of that, because this relationship is so relatively new, there have been lots of family meetings prior to the move. Meeting the “in-laws” is always a big event, but it is especially so under these circumstances. “Hi, nice to meet you. Your son and I are moving 3,000 miles away.” 

This is not to say that any of this is bad, but it has been exhausting and the buzz of stress has been constant. Life goes on and so we’ve both still been working our freelance gigs out of this home that is in the midst of disassembly while orchestrating a cross-country move. 

The good news is that because of my need to nest and have normalcy, I am finding myself counting down every second, anxious to get to L.A. This is saying a lot for someone who adores Boston as much as I do ... and who has spent her entire life scoffing at L.A. Rather than feeling ripped away from this town I so love, I’m ready for the next adventure.

It’s been an “adventure” for the past few days. On Wednesday night (of course, after hours), one of A’s cats started throwing up blood and we ended up in the emergency animal hospital. Not scary at all.

Early the next morning, we set off to unload everything out of my Allston apartment. I thought it would take a couple of hours. Um, no. It took four hours and my stuff filled up the entire truck, much to Aaron’s dismay. Not to mention Murphy’s Law bit us in the ass and it started downpouring, both as we loaded cardboard boxes into the truck and as we drove that full truck down Storrow Drive ... during rush hour. This was only to arrive at the uHaul storage unit where we got to unload everything and repack it into the storage unit. 

We got home frustrated, only to find Aaron’s other cat sick. It was scary, but a good way to put the frustrations of the day and what was really important into perspective. 

On Friday, I decided it was time to treat myself (and my back, which was whacked out by the move) to a massage and some time at the spa. It was the most luxurious massage and spa day I’ve ever had. I felt renewed but got home only to find that A’s other cat was throwing up blood. A wasn’t home, so around 11:00 p.m. I loaded the poor little guy into his crate and it was back to the animal hospital again. I think because I flipped so quickly from Relaxed Mode to Panic Mode, my back basically froze into a rigid board. I still feel like my shoulders are glued up to my ears. 

Moving. It’s a hoot.

Well, we are officially five days into cohabitation with two people and four cats. So far, everyone is alive. The first couple of days were filled with a lot of hissing and screeching (on the part of the cats, that is), but everyone seems to be settling in to a sort of acceptance ... grudging as it may be for Atticus and Mick, in particular. (Note the lump in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture. That’s Radley--he’s shy.)

I spent so much time at A’s house before moving in--not to mention the fact that this leg of the move is temporary--that I didn’t think it would feel like a big deal. It’s not that it feels like a big deal per se, but it does feel different than it did before. In a good way.

It’s a challenge for me to live out of a suitcase. I like everything to be in its place, which is just sort of inherently not the case right now out here in Limbo Land, where we have one foot in Boston and the other in L.A. And it’s a compromise with two freelancers living under one roof, one of which requires loud music to work and the other of which requires silence to work. But that’s what god made coffee shops for, right? 

I’ve been strategizing this morning for a while now. My mission: To move my two cats from the apartment they’ve lived in since they were two years old to my boyfriends house, where they will now be cohabitating with his two cats. Can you say Crazy Cat House? Um, yeah.

Cat crates are my mortal enemy. I may or may not have cried before while trying to get Atticus and Radley into them. It’s a bad combination of me being overly-sympathetic with them and their sharp claws. So this time I had a plan: For the past week-and-a-half, I’ve been feeding them breakfast in their cat crates, plotting to get them nice and comfortable in there in preparation for D-Day, when I would shut the door behind their unsuspecting little tails.

According to plan, Radley (who has a big heart that compensates for his not-so-big brain) put himself right in the crate. Atticus (who has a very big brain in a tiny, little body) did not get in the crate today like she has every other morning. She’s a suspicious little bugger. I paced around for a while before realizing I was going to miss out on my chance to trap Radley. I closed the door behind him, then went to lure Atticus into hers. It took a while, but mission accomplished!

Then it was time to haul the crates full of screaming cats over the icy tundra that is Boston to my car. Fun times. More yowling on the drive to my boyfriend’s. The rest of the day has been primarily a series of looking over cats alternately hiding in closets and hissing at each other. 

Ah, the romance of moving in together. 

Just seventeen more minutes until we have all officially survived our first day under one roof unscathed. Well, with the notable exception of my nervous system. 

This is my last sleep in the apartment I’ve lived in for the past six-and-a-half years. Every night, I’ve drifted off to sleep looking at this sign. I guess it worked. Good night, Allston.

I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about Boston the past few weeks, but the truth of the matter is, I love this fucking city. Mainly because it’s insane. Case in point: Only in Boston could there be a celebration over breaking the all-time snow fall record. 

The City of Champions rises up again!

This weekend, I made the very mature move of, as I like to call it, “taking to my bed.” I’ve been feeling the stress creeping up on me for several days now, and on Friday it just exploded. It was one of those days where everything was difficult and a slog, at a time where I already felt completely tapped out. I came over to A’s house at the end of the night and, not surprisingly, he’s stressed out too. For as supportive as we generally are of each other, it can be hard to act as a support system to someone else when it’s taking everything you have to work through your own stress. So, we got in a fight. I laid in bed wide awake for most of the night, only to get up at 5:45 a.m. the next day and commence working outside in the freezing rain.

So I did what any mature person would do in response to this: When I got off work at noon, I went home, shut my blinds, crawled into bed, and watched the entire series of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (which, btw, has one of the greatest opening credit sequences ever). There is some hypocrisy in this. As a yoga teacher, I spend a lot of time talking to people about productive ways of managing their stress. I can’t say that shutting out the world and shotgunning Kimmy Schmidt is a solution that I generally prescribe to most of them. 

I’ve moved across the country a couple of times before. Generally when I move, I move like a crackhead. I decide that I’m leaving and two weeks later, I’m gone. With this two-month lead-up to our L.A. move, I now understand why my crackhead methodology was the easier way. It doesn’t give you the time to ponder, to wonder, to sit there in the details and the chaos that moving inherently breeds. 

Also, I’ve been single for a long time now, which has afforded me the opportunity to lead a pretty selfish life. Things aren’t like that anymore--which, of course, in most ways is a wonderful thing, but it also takes some getting used to. And this move has been a real test of that for A and me. I do believe we’ll be even stronger for it in the end when all is said and done. But it’s still a learning curve--especially on days like this Friday.

At the end of our fight this weekend, A said to me, “I think this is what adult love looks like.”

News flash, people: Packing sucks.

And I have mastered new and glorious ways to make it really suck because it brings out my inner procrastinator. I sit around and dread it to the point of incapacitation, essentially drawing out the process waaaaaaaaaay longer than it needs to go.

I’m also a bit of a pack-rat. Not in a hoarding way, but I get emotionally attached to little things, and end up dragging them along with me from place to place until the end of time. It is my fondest dream to be a truly clutter-free, streamlined person.

Last night I opened up a bag of old emails and cards that I hadn’t so much as touched in the entire six-and-a-half years I’ve lived here. I sifted through it and saw a couple remnants of an ex-boyfriend. I really should just toss this, I thought.

But then I thought better of it … and thank god I did.

I found an all-caps typewritten letter filled with egregious spellings that my grandma had sent to me in 2002, shortly before she died. It consisted of a single paragraph that really didn’t say much of anything. But she was 97-years-old at the time and the proud owner of a new (her first!) computer. My family jimmy-rigged the keyboard so that it was hung on the wall behind her desk. She would take a pencil and jab away at the keys, slowly and arduously, one letter at a time. At the bottom of the letter, my dad had written: I promised Grandma that I would forward this to you. It took her a week to accomplish.

My heart swelled two sizes.

I dug a little bit more and unearthed a picture frame, displaying a picture of the aforementioned ex. I started to toss it out then thought better of it and, for some reason, opened up the frame. There was another picture behind the photo of my ex—one of my brother, who passed away five years ago. I had no recollection of the picture at all, but it was the perfect summation of Nick in a nutshell.

My heart exploded.

Today I am grateful for little treasures … and for the clutter in which they are buried. Turns out being a pack-rat isn’t so bad after all.

Mother Nature has done me a huge solid this winter. Even though I was actually raised in California (Sacramento, to be exact), I’ve lived in Boston for most of the intervening years since I first moved here at age seventeenin 1995. It is a quirky, smart-ass, proud, beautiful little town, and I adore it. Boston has felt like home in a way that California never did. Which is to say that, in a vacuum, there’s not much likelihood that I would leave Boston—and I certainly wouldn’t leave it to move to California. And I definitely wouldn’t leave it to move to L.A., the most California of all California places.

Being from California originally, I’ve always historically geeked out over snow and winter. I love it. Even when everyone else here bitches and moans, I continue to love it. It wasn’t until last year (nearly 20 years after I first arrived here) that I first started to feel a bit nonsensically embittered at the snow. Following that up with this year kind of did me in. I’m not saying that this winter was enough to make me move, but since I am moving, the snow (or, more accurately, the fall-out from the snow) definitely helped give me that little push out of Massachusetts and in to the world.

I’ve seen plenty of storms here disrupt life. I’ve seen the city shut down in the wake of the the Boston Marathon Bombing. But I’ve never seen Boston collapse as much as it did under the weight of the snow this year. I think that’s the thing, more than the snow itself. It’s one thing when the city shuts down on the day of a storm (and maybe the day after) like in a usual winter—but this year, it just felt like Boston would never open for business again post-storm.  It’s hard to explain if you’re not here to experience it, trying to live your life in the midst of a snowy minefield.

Boston notoriously does not have enough parking under the best of circumstances. I would say our spaces have gone down by about 50 percent from that because there’s nowhere to put the damn snow.There are just heaping mounds of it everywhere—I’m talking, like, 4-foot drifts. If you exert the energy to dig your car out and move it, you may very well never find a space again.

BUT that’s easier said than done because the T took such a hit that it wasn’t really a viable transportation source for several days this winter because the snow broke it. Yes, broke it.

Walking (my preferred method of transportation) wasn’t much of an option either because of said snow drifts and ice and a general lack of space to maneuver.

The snow started at the end of January and even in March everything is still a mess. There are pot holes all over from the salt on the road (I’m talking deep fuck-up-your-car pot holes). Most roads are down a lane or two because of the damn snow drifts (I’ve had to reverse my way out of a street several times when another car has come and there wasn’t room to pass). It’s a gamble to pull out into an intersection in many cases because the snow is piled up so high on either side, that you’re essentially making a blind turn in to traffic.

Getting anywhere and doing anything basically just feels pretty arduous at this point. And that’s been the case for several months, so I think a lot of us are just generally tired and grumpy … which, admittedly, doesn’t help anyone’s cause.

For some reason, yesterday was the day where I felt like I hit my wall. I was driving around town running errands. My last stop was the grocery store. I turned off of Comm. Ave., on to the street that would take me to the store, only to come to a grinding halt because … well, really, I don’t know why. Cars were just stopped for no reason, which happens with great frequency now because there’s not really anywhere to pull over. As I was stopped for no apparent reason for several minutes (of course, with no way to maneuver my way around it … just stuck. Again.), a livery SUV next to me threw his door open and in to my car with enough force to actually rock the car. And the dude just kept on walking. Didn’t even look back. Is this the end of the world? No. But did it throw me over the edge? Yes. I’m just straight up exhausted from basic tasks turning into an odyssey and not having enough space to move.

So, luckily, soon I’ll be in L.A. where traffic is free-flowing, and I don’t have to worry about this driving hassle anymore. Right?

If you had told me six months ago that I would be moving to L.A. with my boyfriend, I would’ve laughed in your face. First of all, I didn’t have a boyfriend six months ago. Second of all, if you would’ve asked me to list the least likely place I would ever live, L.A. would’ve come in at number one. No doubt about it. And, third of all, I love Boston and my life here. There was really no need to change anything.

But, you know, life’s funny like that. You’re sitting around, not really thinking too much about the status quo and then BOOM! Right when you’re not looking, everything changes and life flips itself inside out and upside down. Sometimes those changes feel good, and sometimes not so much. Luckily for me, this last round of changes (dating back to when I met A. through a mutual friend last September and the intervening time since then during which we decided to pack it in for L.A.) has been wonderful. In fact, I would go so far as to say that life has never been better. So why not throw everything up in the air and see where it lands … right?