Archive for July, 2006
I am back to reality after a glorious weekend away in Ojai. For those of you not from Southern California, Ojai is a little town about an hour or so north of L.A. There’s not much there other than beautiful scenery, an incredible spa resort, and some damn fine restaurants. Without much advance planning, Brian and I managed to have one incredible meal after another just by popping into places that looked good. I’d say at least three of the restaurants we ate at have their own farm or vegetable garden on their grounds, so everything was unbelievably fresh. My favorite moment was during lunch at Shangri-La - after I ordered a caprese salad, the chef walked my dish out to me and told me the life story of the amazing tomato I was about to eat. He then proceeded to explain that he had another even more beautiful tomato in the kitchen that he couldn’t bring himself to cut which he had begun referring to as his “girlfriend.” It was hysterical, and it was a really damn good tomato.
As you can probably tell, we spent a great deal of our time in Ojai eating. Since I’m not much for the hiking or bike riding these days in my pregnant state, what else was there to do? When we weren’t stuffing our faces, we hung out by the pool at our adorable inn, The Blue Iguana. We had a great little room, so hanging out there and reading wasn’t a bad option either. All in all, the whole weekend was great. One of the things I love about where I live is that you can drive just an hour away and still feel like you’re getting away from everything. I only took one picture the whole time (bad blogger), and this is it:
Good work, right?
Now, we’re back to reality. Lucy and I got up at 6:00 this morning to accompany Brian to the Rose Bowl as he gets back in shape to start training for next year’s L.A. Marathon. Go Bri! Our very good friend Charlie is here visiting this week from Sweden so we’ve been bonding over the Price is Right every morning (we actually went to a taping last week!). Even more friends are coming in this weekend for my baby shower, which should be a lot of fun. And horror of all horrors, I have to start working again this week. Ouch. I was just getting used to this life of luxury.
*see what I did there? “post” and “post”, get it?? this is true wit, people.
July 31st, 2006
Project Runway is pretty much my favorite reality show on TV right now. And they scored huge points with me after last night’s episode. Dog models! Sure, it was predictable and a little hokey but I am such a sucker for dogs in clothes that it completely won me over. My favorite designers on the show so far are Uli and Alison. Laura bugs the crap out of me and her anti-dog status last night didn’t help (you have five kids and you won’t touch a dog for fear of getting your perfectly manicured nails dirty? get over it). I’m not exactly a fan of the teacup poodles and other mini-doglets, but they’re still pups so I love them all. Of course, we’ve had our own experience here at home with dog modelling:
So Heidi Klum, the next time you do a doggy fashion episode give us a call. You need some more variety in your models. She’ll go nude if you ask nicely.
In other news, the heat is still killing us over here in L.A. Last night I stupidly turned our air conditioning off at 7:30 thinking we might finally get a cool evening. Instead, our thermostat stuck right at 83 for the rest of the night. Effing humidity. It was gross and I’m getting a little sick of it, quite frankly. Don’t we live in the desert? This weekend Brian and I are heading up to Ojai where I’m hoping it will be a little better. At least we’ll have a pool at our hotel and we can get to the beach quickly if need be. This could be our last official vacation together before the baby comes so it better be a good one. Since I can’t have any cocktails by the pool, I’ll settle for non-stop milkshakes. Can that be arranged?
July 27th, 2006
You Are Los Angeles
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Young and fun, you always know where the best parties are.And while you tend to keep things carefree and casual…You certainly can glam it up when you need to.
Famous people from Los Angeles: Tyra Banks, Jake Gyllenhall, Freddie Prinze Jr.
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Good thing I didn’t get that job in Denver, I guess.
July 23rd, 2006
Today I am dedicating this post to wishing my husband Brian a very happy birthday! His big day was actually yesterday but my blog was down almost the whole day and I couldn’t get this post up. grrrr…..
Yesterday morning started out in grand style, with us realizing at 7:30 in the morning that we had NO WATER in our house, ANYWHERE. Disaster. There is nothing better than a plumbing problem to start your day. Luckily, we got our plumber over here and he had it figured out by about 1:00 (I love you, Vic the plumber!) but by that time Brian had decided to work from home and he spent most of the day on conference calls with the folks at his office. Fun. Then we went to our 2 1/2 hour childbirth class at night. More fun. More hee-hee-hoo-hoo than you could ever ask for. Happy birthday, indeed! So, I’m hoping tonight will end up feeling like more of a birthday for him. We’re going to our favorite local bar, The Wild Hare with some friends to celebrate. They have great fries so I won’t be too bored while everyone else is getting drunk.
Other than that, the summer has been progressing sweatily. It has been over 90 degrees here very day since we got back into town with a couple of days at 100. The worst part is that becasue it has been muggy and humid (don’t we live in the desert?) it hasn’t been cooling off at night which is no fun for this pregnant lady. This weekend, we filled up the kiddie pool for Lucy and some friends of hers: 
They seemed to enjoy it. If the water hadn’t turned muddy brown within ten seconds of them leaping in and out of it, I might have considered getting in myself. Dirty dogs.
July 19th, 2006
It’s exactly 5:30 in the morning in soon to be sweltering Los Angeles and for the third night/morning in a row I am awake at this hour for no good reason. No reason, of course, other than the constant need to pee and the kid in my body kicking the crap out of me. As of this week I am officially in the third trimester of my pregnancy. This week also marks the first week that I have had more than two days in a row off since I got pregnant in January. It has been amazing. Yesterday, I took Lucy to the dog park, watched almost the entire first season of Project Runway, had lunch with a friend, had dinner with another friend and then collapsed at 10:30. Unfortunately, my body seems to equate not working with not deserving to sleep through the night so here I am at 5:30 for the third day in a row. I’m hoping this doesn’t become a habit.
This summer hasn’t been so bad so far. We made it through Sequoia relatively unscathed-I only had one meltdown in two weeks of 10-13 hour days and that once again had to do with sleeping through the night. But really, one breakdown in 2 hideously busy weeks? It must have been all the late night pizza.
In a sort of unspoken pact, Brian and I have been trying to do a few things now that we probably won’t be able to do once we have the baby. It ranges from the mundane (hiring a new gardener, looking into daycare) to the ridiculous (Brian and Charlie’s 13 hour trip to Disneyland). Probably the best thing we did since coming back from Sequoia was go to the Dodger game on the 4th of July. 
I insisted on getting better seats than our usual nosebleeders and they were well worth the extra cash. We sat at field level and had a couple of foul balls come awfully close to us (the guys stood up and tried to catch them while I quietly cowered in my seat with my ice cream). After the game, we were all allowed to spill onto the field and sit to watch the fireworks. It was pretty great, even though I was occasionally perturbed by the possibility that I was sitting in a pile of some outfielder’s spit. Aside from that, a very pleasant evening.
I’m starting to look at this summer as my last blast before parenthood. Not that I’m going to mourn my independent life (or maybe I will), but I figure I should do as much as I can in these last few months before my life changes forever. Since I can’t climb Mt. Everest or run a marathon, I may have to settle for lots of shopping, pedicures and a weekend away here and there. I can probably handle that.
July 13th, 2006
