Sometimes you just need to hide behind the refrigerator

So things have been pretty crazy for us the last few weeks. My leadership program at Landmark is wrapping up, and there are still some things that I need to do to complete it in the next three weeks. J and I have both been running around like headless chickens, which hasn't made for lots of bonding. On Friday everything came bubbling over in a giant volcano explosion of sadness, loneliness, and miscommunications. After the explosion, we cleaned up the rubble and started putting everything back together, and things calmed down.

But then, Friday night, something happened with the cats. I still don't know what started it, or even what the exact circumstances were, but the cats went crazy. Somebody's foot got stuck in a bag or something, and it was just complete madness for about two minutes. We went back to sleep, but then the next day we realized that one of the cats had been stuck behind the refrigerator all night. Today we realized another one hadn't been around in a while, and he turned out to be hiding behind the bathtub. He came out for a little bit, but decided to go back to the safety of the back of the tub. I understood. Sometimes we just need a time out.

I'm going to take my own time out this weekend. I'm on a work trip right now, which I have to get through - one day at a time - but this weekend is going to be a complete Girly Weekend. Me and the cats are going to rebond. I'm going to read all the library books that I've kept out late, and are now overdue (but I won't return them without reading them first, otherwise what is the point of the fines?). We're going to paint our toenails (well, I am anyway) and watch girl-movies and eat a lot of popcorn. And we'll sleep. We'll all pile on the bed, me and the cats, and we will sleep for hours. It will be sublime.

It's Tuesday and I'm having a good, productive day. I need to start every morning with yoga. Seriously. 15 minutes of calm breathing and stretching and meditating has such an awesome effect on my day. Note to self: start every day with yoga.

Fun Event for the Day: got to see my old neighbor from downtown LA. Last week we had a really bad lightening strike, and our modem got fried. Which sucked. It was even plugged into a surge protector. From now on, at the first sign of lightening, I'm turning off the power of everything. Anyway, Verizon sent us a new modem, but we hadn't updated our address since buying our house 2 years ago. So the modem went to the old place on Marview. Nate and Lucia were kind enough to grab it and let us know, and I got to go to Caltech to meet up with Nate this afternoon and get said modem. I've never been on the caltech campus before. Standing outside the department of astrophysics, I was a little intimidated. The brain power in that building is pretty awesome.

The Downside - I got stuck in killer traffic on the 210 from Pasadena at 5pm. That sucked. But I had just downloaded a bunch of Lady Gaga songs, so I pretended the car was a club, and I rocked out. Then I called J and gave him precise instructions on how to make the tilapia, salad, and my brown rice (white for him - he's too skinny to care about carbs) so I came home to a healthy yummy dinner. I need to place orders for dinner more often.

I'm pretty tired and wanted to just take a bath and go to bed, but I forced myself to do the elliptical, and now I'm working on my book for half an hour. THEN bath and Anne Lamott.

Ahhh...I love good productive days like this. Must remember to start tomorrow with yoga too.

The Ones Who Got Away

It's Valentine's Weekend, and I'm so lucky and blessed to have a wonderful hubby, who even gave up watching the Daytona 500 live yesterday so as to go to The Vagina Monologues in North Hollywood with me. He's the best match for me that I could ever imagine, and I'm so lucky that I found him when I did.

But in the spirit of excavations, I'm thinking about The Ones Who Got Away. Chances are pretty good that I'm probably not going to fall in romantic love again. And part of me misses the exhilaration of meeting someone new, wondering whether they like you, whether they'll call, dishing about them with girlfriends, and all of that. On the plus side, I'm still a horrendous flirt. I flirt with walls, cats, computers and plants. Everything. But it's not the same when you know there's no chance that you'll get asked out after flirting.

Anyway, there are a couple of people who should be granted Honorable Mentions for Almost Getting Me. Obviously there was the inestimable G, who dominated my first blog and my life from 2000-2004 or 5. I lose track of when I actually officially got over him. As recently as October when I was in Soho having fun with Sandor and Mark Pollard, I thought how weird it was that I first came to London because I was chasing a guy, and I felt a little hollow for a second. And the book I'm writing now deals with a girl who can't get over the ghosts of past loves.

But the thing about G, when it comes right down to it, wasn't so much him. In a lot of ways he was a charming as*hole. Nah, that's too harsh. With hindsight I can see that he was a decent average guy, but there was nothing really about him deserving of the kind of devotion I gave him. It was really the idea of him that I was so in love with. And that idea was worthy of my heart. I just couldn't separate out the man from the ideal.

And besides, he didn't love me back, which really kind of settled the whole thing.

There was somebody else in London. We ate Indian food and drank pints of carling, and he told me I was irresistible. I'd never been told I was irresistible before. That's a seriously good word to use on a 24 year old. But he was taken, and I was in my Anais Nin phase and I thought it was romantic to think of him as my Henry Miller.

Stone-man T was 2004. His dog had more personality than he did. That's mean. I don't really mean that. Well. Maybe I do. That dog was seriously personable. And she didn't bark! Ever! And that was the year I got my cat Wrigley, and Wrigley thought the dog was her mom, and they snuggled together a lot, and man, it was cute. T liked to take the dog for walks. And we both liked travel centers. Man, I love a good Flying J or TA or Pilot. I can spend hours in those places. So our relationship was based on mutual admiration of his dog, and a shared love of truck stops. And that about sums that up.

Another Honorable Mention should go to M, who was my College Boyfriend. He was a good guy and I wish him well, but man, was I happy when I became single again after dating him until I was 23. He helped me move into my apartment in Koreatown, which was just about my favorite apartment I had. That was 1999. I was broke, but it was such a great little studio with a fold-in-the-wall bed. I loved that place. And, more importantly, I loved who I was in it.

So that's my Ode to Those Who Got Away. And man, am I happy I have a great husband. Just thinking about all these jokers again has made me rethink the Missing Dating concept!