i've made a huge mistake

better outside than inside

      I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.  Taking the 520 bridge instead of I-90.  Wearing only a sweater and not a coat.  Charging everything to my credit card instead of ordering another debit card, and hundreds of other similar mistakes made as a child all of which could easily be fixed without causing any major implications.  As I got older the mistakes I made became more serious and carried much more weight.

We rolled into Hollywood in our 17 foot U-Haul at approximately 4:30 pm, taking the Gower street exit off the 101 freeway, turning right onto Franklin Avenue and another right onto Tamarind Avenue.  Then there we were, this cream colored dirty stucco building with pink railings on the balconies.  From the street I could see into our apartment on the third floor and the sight was not promising.  I could just make out people moving around, and a second later a crash and the sound of glass breaking.  Jaime and I turned and looked at each other our eyes saying, “I hope that’s not our apartment.”  I convinced myself that it’s wasn’t our apartment, it was another apartment.  The reality was that I knew that that breath shortening sound of shattering glass came directly from our apartment and the look that Jaime and I exchanged was actually saying “what have we got ourselves into?”

We walked up to the secure front door entrance which was wide open and made our way up the three flights of stairs to our unit.  One word you might use to describe this building was... dilapidated or you might have described it as a crack house.  The craigslist listing chose to use, “Art deco” and “the kind of place Quentin Tarantino might have lived” (I still don’t know what that means.)  The open air courtyard of the building contained a long rectangular planter box with six dead plants, and a 15X15 foot dirt patch.  On the wall of the first floor landing you could find the word “FUCK” written on the wall in what looked like feces.

When we got up to the third floor and walked through the open door my immediate reaction was to panic.  In fact over and over in my head I kept saying “Oh shit this was a huge mistake, oh shit this was a huge mistake, oh shit this was a huge mistake.”  To start with there were about a dozen people in the apartment busily trying to finish it despite the fact that it was supposed to be completed fifteen days before.  They were putting up light fixtures (the first one came crashing down minutes earlier), mopping the floors and there was a plumber working like mad to get the shower finished which as it turns out wouldn’t be ready for another day.  

What got me most panicked was that I realized in the month that we’d been in Seattle preparing I begun to imagine the apartment quite differently.  In my mind I put windows where there were no windows, extended the length of walls and most of all completely overestimated the square footage of the apartment.  It could not have totaled more than 500 square feet but I was imagining something more like 700 and standing in the middle of the living room/dining room/kitchen all I could think about was the 17 foot U-Haul outside bursting at the seems.

I’ve tried thinking of an appropriate analogy to properly explain why this felt like such an utter disaster however I’m not sure that there is another feeling like this, so let me tell you exactly how it felt.  We were 24 year old kids without jobs and limited funds, only two friends who were out of town at the moment and no family to lean on.  The apartment was almost half the size I had imagined and I had enough furniture and boxes in the truck to make this apartment unlivable.  The only thing that kept me from running down the stairs and getting in the truck and driving home was that when I looked at Jaime she didn’t seem nearly as afraid as I was... she was but she wasn’t showing it.

After the walkthrough where we pointed out the unfinished kitchen counter tops, the sliding door which didn’t lock, the cracked windows and the obviously rushed paint job where they painted right over everything, including a mosquito hawk on the wall in the kitchen.  Jaime and I had nothing left to do but pull the U-Haul around back and unload what now felt like 17 feet of garbage.  This was easier said than done as the truck could barely squeeze through the driveway and into the rear parking lot.  I’m a terrible driver so I left this up to Jaime to do and as it turns out I’m also terrible at directing drivers because turning the corner into the parking lot she took out an overhanging corner of the building which rained concrete and stucco down on top of the truck.

We began unloading the U-Haul and it was only fitting that our apartment was furthest from the parking lot so everything had to be carried all the way across the courtyard then up three flights of stairs.  By 7:00 we were less than a third of a way through and were about to die, in my mind the mantra of “I’ve made a huge mistake” was not helping me get the furniture up the stairs.  With every step I was becoming more and more convinced that living in LA was going to be horrible. 

As if he could feel my hopelessness our next door neighbor appeared and offered his assistance, I don’t think he spoke much english and he said almost nothing to us the entire time he help us move.  I was embarrassed at how much junk we had and constructed all of these thoughts that must have been running through his head as he looked at these two stupid kids with way to much stuff.  By 10:00 my legs and my embarrassment couldn’t take it anymore and we thanked him for his help and told him that we would finish the last bit in the morning.  

Without eating dinner we flopped the mattress onto the floor of the bedroom and lay there.  I felt like I had been in a brawl where everyone else had clubs and knives and I had only fists, every inch of my body ached, I felt swollen.  I was the definition of exhausted and yet I couldn’t go to sleep because my mind was running on overdrive.

I wanted to get rid of that U-haul, I wanted to get this apartment unpacked, I wanted to have a job.  At that moment all I could imagine was how hard and awful LA was going to be.  What I couldn’t imagine was all the great times we would have there, all the friends we would make, all the places we would visit, all the things we would do.  It was in that apartment that we would decide to get married and that we would get our first dog.  We would adopt a second cat and then have to put that cat to sleep then adopt another.  We would become adults in this apartment and eventually have to leave it under threat of eviction.   That was all a long ways down the road and finally I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning we would unload the last boxes from the truck and I would finally be rid of that 17 foot albatross.  By Thursday we would have the apartment unpacked and everything in its place and that negative voice in my head which kept telling me that I’d made a huge mistake would be silenced.  Sure there would be times when I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of Los Angeles and sure it was going to be tough but those would be mixed with all the truly wonderful experiences we would have. 

If nothing else we were just beginning this fucking adventure.

you’re never lonely when brad pitt’s around.

this is comforting 

When you live in Los Angeles if you see someone that you think might be famous they probably are.  It took me about two and a half years for me to get used to that.  When you live in Seattle if you think you see someone famous, they’re not, unless that person is a TV news anchor.  It has been an adjustment period to suddenly find yourself in the middle of a room full of strangers with whom you have no connection.

Every time I would meet someone who was visiting Los Angeles they would lean in to me and say some along the lines of “I’ve been here for 5 days and I still haven’t seen any celebrities yet.”  They would stagger up and down the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt Damon standing right next to his star, they would hang out near the entrance to the Chateau Marmot or the lobby of Capital Records or front gates of Paramount studios without spotting even a single celebrity not even Andy Dick.  The trick if you really want to see a celebrity in Los Angeles is to think mundane.  In three years I never saw a celebrity in an obvious place, they all caught me by surprise because of how normal the situations were.  Lawrence Fishburne standing next to me a the used bookstore, John Hamm driving his car past my street corner, Patton Oswald pushing a stroller on my sidewalk, Judd Apatow asking me for assistance at Borders Bookstore.

The minute you stop thinking about them they magically appear.  My wife and I once saw Lindsey Lohan at a Gelson’s grocery store across the street from our apartment, Michael Cera while we were walking home from Albertsons, one of the hobbits at that same Albertsons.  None of these were star studded events, never did I imagine that while I was looking for Orange Juice Buster from Arrested Development also be looking for Orange Juice as well or even that I would walk in front of Harrison Ford in his car at a stop sign.  It’s not just knowing that anytime you go anywhere in Los Angeles you could cross paths with someone famous, they also had this effect on me where once I found myself in their presence I started to feel truly alive.  I’m not sure if I can completely explain their powers but I could feel the blood flowing through my veins.

Of all my celebrity sightings the one which seemed most surreal was the time my wife and I saw Brad Pitt at a well known restaurant in West Hollywood.  The best way to describe this place was well... it’s on Santa Monica boulevard in West Hollywood, the ambiance is dark, the chair cushions and couches were the color of dried blood and I’m sure this floor had seen the vomit of more than a hand full of OD(ing) rockstars.  It was a Thursday evening and we were with our softball team, it was the last game of the season and we were celebrating our second glorious win.  The restaurant had a private room just off from the entrance where we all gathered in our sweaty dirt covered shorts and softball shirts.  I’d fallen into third base and had a terrific raspberry on my left arm.  We were enjoying some drinks that cost enough to feed an entire village in Ethiopia when a small entourage of people walked in and then shuffled into our room, they stood around for about a minute before Jaime looked up and without taking a breath blurted out “Oh shit! It’s Brad Pitt.”  It was loud enough he definitely heard us and a moment later he and his entourage shuffled back out of our room and into a secluded booth at the far end of the restaurant.

What?  Maybe you were expecting that he sat down with our team and bought us all a round of beers to congratulate us on our victory.  He slapped me playfully on the back laughing hysterically at my jokes and made a toast every time a new round was brought out.  No.  “Oh shit!  It’s Brad Pitt.”  That’s it and he was gone but I felt like Jesus was nearby.  I was now in a kind of  celebrity sphere where I was protected and nothing bad could happen.  Even though I knew non of that was true.

I’m embarrassed to admit this because I’m no celebrity whore.  I never went looking for them, in fact most the time Jaime would notice them first or would have to point them out to me.  “That was Emma Roberts” she would whisper to me as we passed by Little Dom’s (which by the way if you are looking for your Los Angeles celebrity sighting, Little Dom’s Italian restaurant on Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz always has a celebrity sitting outside.)  But there is something, a feeling that I can’t fully explain or completely identify that when in the presence of a celebrity of any kind I suddenly felt less lonely more like I was in the presence of a family member or an old friend.  Had Sarah Palin walked into my favorite restaurant and taken a table next to me all the supreme hatred I have for that woman would have melted away like an ice sculpture and left me only with a feeling of familiar comfort.  Once she was safely away from our vicinity I would carry on loathing her pathetic celebrity.

Now that I am back in Seattle there is a noticeable element of surprise missing in my life.  I stroll up and down the aisles of Trader Joe’s, wander out to the street to retrieve my mail or sit at a table in a restaurant with my wife and I can look at all the faces around me and no one is familiar in a famous celebrity way no one will enter the frame of my personal movie and place the bubble around me.  For now I will simply have to find the company of compete strangers satisfying and surprising enough to keep making me feel alive.

1,100 miles

last signs of beauty until you drive out of LA

It’s 1,100 miles from Seattle to Los Angeles and the directions are fairly simple.

-Get on 1-5 drive south for 1,100 miles

-Take Los Feliz blvd exit.

These deceptively simply directions can make the trip look shorter than feel longer.

The day after we returned from Los Angeles with a new lease I celebrated my 24th birthday.  Looking back on it now I can’t believe that my parents didn’t try to stop us from going.  At the time 24 seemed incredibly old I thought that having lived on my own for the last three years that I was prepared to live 1,100 miles from all my family and take on any of the challenges life could throw at me.  The 27 year old me could tell some stories that would scare the shit out of me.

The count down was on, we had one month to get our affairs in order before we left Washington what we thought was for good. I began taking boxes home from work and we started packing up our life which was akin to weeding a garden which had been growing untamed for three years.  Those weeds had grown deep roots and we had had to dig deep to get them up, then instead of throwing those weeds in the compost we packed them up into boxes.  A lot of boxes.

I have a problem with keeping things, I wouldn’t call myself a hoarder but I’m definitely one step below, I keep meaningful receipts, tickets to old baseball games and theater performances, bags from items I have bought as well as their tags.  Theses things all got packed up into boxes along with two full sets of silverware, three electric shavers, five boxes labeled keepsakes, and two boxes of unbuilt IKEA furniture.  When all was said and done we packed a 17 foot U-Haul to the brim and still managed to fill our car.  We even had a garage sale and were still over flowing with stuff.

Days away from our moving date and we were mostly packed.  Halloween was on Monday (our moving day) the Saturday before was my older brothers wedding.  It was enjoyable and afforded us the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to family before we were headed out.  I expected the goodbyes to feel bittersweet but they didn’t, they mostly just mad me excited for the future.  I know Jaime and I didn’t share the same feelings about this as me, I knew that as excited as she was to finally be leaving it was hard for her and I was anticipating many nights in LA where she would lay in bed with debilitating grief for her distant friends and family.

The night before we moved we slept in my parents basement on their fold out couch, a 17 foot U-Haul with a dolly hitched to the back and our car strapped in sat outside on the street containing every thing we owned.  The following morning we woke up at 5am, it was still dark outside and we forced a sedative down our cats throat.  We said goodbye to our parents and loaded up into the cab of the truck and as we started down I-5 the tears started for Jaime, big wet sad tears like little children cry when they are genuinely sad.

Then somewhere around Enchanted Village (about 15 miles down the road) our cat lost her fucking mind.  She whaled as if she was being jabbed with a hot poker and clawed at her carrier door so hard I thought she might rip her claws out.  We stopped the car to try and settle her down but she wouldn’t.  I couldn’t get her to relax or at the very least to be quiet, in turn I didn’t know what to do... we’d been away from home for 20 minutes and I already didn’t know what to do.  It hit me like an incoming tidal wave that I was jobless and homeless and all I wanted in that moment was to turn the truck around and unpack everything back into our apartment.  But somehow, don’t ask me how because I really don’t know the cat calmed down and we were able to get her into her carried, soon I calmed down too.

* * *

If you’ve made the drive from Seattle to LA there are three landscapes you experience.  The first is Washington/Oregon, full of small run down towns resting at the edge of an evergreen filled forrest, blue-green rivers slicing through them like they were cut by an unsteady knife.  The drive is easy the views are enjoyable and things seem to move by quickly, before I knew it we were stopping for lunch at a Taco Time in Eugene Oregon (those of you from Washington should note that the Taco Times in Oregon are not the same).

The second landscape begins in southern Oregon and continues down through the Siskiyous in northern California.  Giant snow capped mountains, rolling hills of fir trees.  Deep fjords with black glassy water and Mt. Shasta sitting like a big grandmother looking over her grandchildren.  This part of the drive you don’t want to end, there is so much to look at and be in awe of it takes everything inside me not to stop the car there and say, “I’ve gone far enough.”

We stopped right in the middle of this for the night in Redding California, a city which as far as I can tell contains a Motel 6 and a Super 8.  I’ve stayed in both and on this particular occasion we stayed in the Super 8.  Laying on that bed in the room watching Mythbusters for the first time, all the fear from earlier was far behind me and for a brief evening I didn’t have any worries or fears or stresses about anything.  Navigating a new city, finding a job and balancing a very tight budget would all come later but for me on that evening I watched superhero myths get busted in a giddy excited state.

The third landscape is mind numbing in its simplicity.  Mile after mile after mile after mile of brown flat nothing.  One could become a connoisseur of these little truck stop towns and billboards urging you to “stop at Auntie Ethels, Next two exits.”

The blandness of this drive stretches time out, sign post seem to go backwards and you feel like you’ll never get to your destination.  This doesn’t change until the Golden State Freeway splits off and you take the Hollywood freeway all the way right into the heart of LA LA land.  Right into the heart of our new home.  1,100 miles later we pull up in front of our building.

even the best laid plans

don't crush the mouse

They say, “even the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”  Actually I don’t know anyone who says or has ever said that quote but someone did at one point and they were absolutely right.

We’re now three days into 2011 and I can safely say that if you asked me just six months ago if I would be anywhere near where I am now I would have laughed in your face and called you a liar.  On new years eve my wife asked me what kind of a year 2010 was and just like every year I can’t really say that it was terrible or great what I could say was that 2010 was a year of change.

2010 was the year that my wife decided that she didn’t want to be a film actress after all.

2010 was the year that we both moved from Los Angeles to Seattle.

2010 was the year that I started eating only locally grown produce from farmers markets and organic grass fed beef.

2010 was the year All State Insurance sued me for more money than I’ve ever made in a year.

2010 was the year that New York seemed less and less like what we really wanted.

2010 was the year I didn’t drink a Dr. Pepper a day.

When we decided to move back to Seattle the plan was to come home for six to ten months and save up as much money as possible and then move to New York.  I’ll admit this was a lofty goal and I had my doubts about it from the beginning but like everything I do in life I figured we would take things one step at a time, keep our attachments low and in about 10 months we would be in a position to reevaluate New York.

Immediately I began to see this plan go astray.  We left our jobs when we moved back to Seattle which was made easier to deal with since we would be living with my parents for the first two to four months and we would need only to have enough money in our account to cover bills.  However without any income coming in money began to run out fast.  Jaime had hoped to be working by our second week in Seattle and not surprisingly work was a little harder to come by than we thought.

My goal had been to find a part-time job without much commitment spending the rest of my free time writing and let Jaime find a well paying job to pick up that slack.  We wouldn’t be paying nearly $1,4000.00 in rent and our car insurance would be going down about $100 which would help us out greatly.  At the end of our second week of unemployment I began to fear that this would take much longer than expected.  At first I was rather picky in my job search looking only for those that fit my plans perfectly but passing the two week mark I began applying for any job that had an opening.

My first interview was for a dispatcher at an exterminator in Kirkland which I knew immediately upon entering I didn’t want to work for and that they weren’t going to want me, but because I was desperate I had to interview and pretend that I would be a good fit for them.  I had to laugh at his jokes about Jerry Brown being reelected as Governor of California and his crack about how I was Clark Kent, simply because I wear dark rimmed glasses (I look nothing like Clark Kent, though I did for a time live in Kent).

They said I would hear from them in a week but I went back to Craigslist and in a fever applied to ever more jobs, ones that I would hate and ones that I was over qualified for and others that I was under qualified for.  Jaime followed a similar path as myself applying for nearly anything just to get a little cash flow going.  Our bank account was nearly bone dry and at the end of November most of the bills were going to go unpaid.  This wasn’t something new for us, we’d been in this position a number of times in the three years we lived in LA but I was beginning to find this game rather old.

The week before Thanksgiving I was thinking that I could have a successful career selling old records from the 1940’s on Ebay when I got a call for an interview at a well known Heating and Air Conditioning company for a position as a general office clerk.  I interviewed on Thursday and two hours after we were finished I got a phone call that I would be starting the following day.  It was a great company that paid nearly double what I was making in LA.  The following Monday Jaime went in for an interview and by Tuesday she had a well paying job for a company that she loved and wanted to grow with.

By Thanksgiving things had turned around and Jaime was apartment shopping.  Our original plan was to find something cheap, possibly something with a short lease, something that we didn’t love so that we could easily cut ties with it.  It was not surprising to me when she found something immediately that she loved, it was a duplex just down the hill from my parents with two bedrooms and a back yard for our dog.  Just like with job interviews, you can usually tell within the first ten minutes of meeting the landlord whether they want to rent to you or not.  I knew instantly that he wanted us.

So here I am sitting in this house typing about how all our plans have unraveled right before my very eyes.  Thats not to say that they’re impossible or that we still won’t find ourselves living in New York but as of today as I write this the thought of moving to another city and finding new jobs and settling in only to move back to Seattle again is just exhausting.