This morning something stupid happened, and it doesn’t matter what or why or whatever.
I have some great friends who assisted me today and I just wanted to say thank you. You all are the reason I am going to get out of bed at some point and go to Zumba tonight to dance off the blues (and that delicious Super Bowl food from last night, YAY RAVENS). A special thanks to Simon and Scott and a special thank you to Madame Weebles who said a lot of VERY kind and wonderful things including that if she were a guy she would be banging me senseless right now. Muah! Most of all, thank you to Dina, who has always been there for me when I have a moment of weakness.
Cue Independent Women by Destiny’s Child:
Next stop? I’m not sure. I have a free flight to anywhere that American Airlines flies. I chose Miami last time and this time I might go for Vegas. Where would you go?
I love reading creative posts and catching a glimpse of what’s inside the imaginations of other bloggers. My imagination gets wild and crazy and I can think of a few childhood experiences that certainly played a major role in that development.
One example is my love for the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story.
Cue majestic music, bitches:
When I was a kid, I made my parents rent that movie every weekend for approximately two years. Something about it truly grabbed my imagination and expanded La La Land into a vast empire where I am still a beautiful empress with a British accent. I also blame it for giving me imaginary friends (a mermaid and a turtle) that lived in the sewer.*
At night I made up related stories while curled up on the floor in my Care Bears sleeping bag. In my head, I WAS The Childlike Empress and I lived in an ivory tower made of glorious light. I imagined (still imagine, just kidding, kind of) someday walking down the aisle wearing her headpiece:
But with real pearls. Image from Etsy.
Except back then I was jonesin’ for some Atreyu:
Atreyu sporting the Auryn. Image from Google.
Is there something from your childhood that you associate with the development of your imagination? Do you still make up stories in your head as you fall asleep? Have you ever put someone’s baby on a dog and pretended he was riding Falcor? No? Oh. I guess I haven’t either, then. That would be a weird thing to do.
Also, this is the song from the movie. Look at this guy. Just look at him…and there upon a rainbow is the answer to a never-ending story.
______________
* My imaginary friends and I are no longer in contact.
This will make no sense without reading part uno here.*
La La grabs my hand and we enter the big orange ball. With my other hand I shield my eyes against the bright orange light that flashes at us as we walk through the door.
Before us is a long hallway with magnets covering the walls from floor to ceiling.
“I need an Orlando magnet,” La La says to me and smiles.
“Ok,” I reply. “But what about the meeting?”
“We are in it,” La La responds as she leads me down the hallway.
We look at the miles and miles of magnets. They have every city, every country, every state, except Orlando.
“What the hell?!” I ask stunned.
“Maybe through this door,” La La says. A million different types of citrus fruits come tumbling out. I grab La La and press her against the wall, shielding her with my body.
We look at each other and kiss.***
“That was nice,” La La says, smiling.
“Yes…” I start to say, but suddenly we are interrupted by a voice calling through the door.
“Bruschetta! Bruschetta!” Free Bruschetta!”
I steal another quick kiss and we both turn to look through the open door. Inside we see what looks like a grocery store, except all the produce twinkles with a golden hue. There are tables after tables of vendor type looking people with food samples in front of them. The closest table has piles and piles of the best looking Bruschetta that I have ever seen.
I link La La’s arm with mine,
“Let’s go. Free Bruschetta, baby!”
As we enter through the door, a man stops us on the other side.
‘Hello,” the man says. “My name is Justin. I make the most beautiful, delicious wine ever. You may not enter without a coupon.’
‘Is it better than a Malbec? I seriously doubt it is. Nothing is,” La La says, challenges Justin.
Justin looks like he suddenly smelled a dinosaur fart.
“Don’t. You. Ever. Say. That. Again!” he says. “Follow me, I will give you a taste!”
“So much for the coupon,” I whisper in La La’s ear. She smiles.
We follow Justin through the winding rows of vendors and their free samples. I see ice cream, crab salad, stuffed fig leaves, gnocchi…and I grab them all. La La gives me a funny look.
“Dinner later,” I say and shrug as much as I can with an arm full of free samples.
Justin stops at the longest table I have ever seen. Black wine bottles are stacked on the table and on each bottle is a handwritten label that says “Justin. The Best Wine. Ever. Bitches.”
Justin pours two tiny thimble samples of wine and hands them to us. I drink mine.
“Really good!” I say.
La La grabs the bottle from Justin and starts to chug.
“Hey!” Justin cries.
“It’s ok, ” I say. “Just better let her do what she wants.”
“Buy my wine,” Justin says. “Justify me!”
“Ok, dude,” I say, grabbing a bottle. “You’re justified!”
The Market starts to shake like there’s an earthquake. The vendor tables overturn, otters and cats run for cover in the bushes, and a lady with a laptop screams, “My Farmville! My Farmville! Someone save my Farmville!”
“What does that mean?” I ask La La.
“Come on!” La La screams and leads us through an open door to the side of the market.
We run through the door and La La shuts it. Suddenly we are in the middle of an airport. No one else is in the airport except one older Homeland Security Guard. He points to a table set up in the middle of the waiting area. I look down in my arms. All I have left from the market is a wedge of brie, a loaf of french bread, a smoked Gouda pasta salad, and the bottle of Justin. La La sits down at the table which now has wine glasses and plates. I sit down too. The band Crystal Fighters appear and start playing some songs.
The Homeland Security Guard says, “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I ask.
“Time to go,” he says and points to an airplane.
I grab La La’s hand and we get on the airplane. The Crystal Fighters fight over our left over Gouda pasta salad and an old cleaning woman sweeps up the crumbs from the French Bread with a vacuum.
*However it is a dream**, so it may not make any sense any way
**Or is it?
***It’s my dream, dammit! I’ll kiss her if I want!
Hey! You know me, I hope. It’s Chris. Sorry I haven’t been here in a while. La La has kept my side of the blog tidy and free of cobwebs, though. Thanks, baby! Anyway, I just wanted to share this dream I had the other night:
So it starts with me picking up La La for a “meeting.” I didn’t know what the meeting was about or where, but I knew I was supposed to pick her up and the universe demanded us to be there.
We can’t argue with the universe, right?
So I hop in my dad van and drive to her house…only it’s not her normal house, it looks like an Aztec pyramid! It’s yellow and big, and along the front are stairs so you can climb to the top.*
I sit and stare at it for a minute. Is this the right address?
It has to be, all the other houses look like what I remember, just now La La lives in a big, yellow Aztec pyramid. She comes out and gets in the van.
“Um, where did the pyramid come from?” I ask.
“I’ve always lived in it, silly!” she replies.
“No, no you haven’t….” I start to say, but suddenly her neighbors spill out of the house next door. They are screaming things like:
“I don’t care if you gang banged everybody on the block, you’re not gang banging tonight!”
“I’ll gang bang tonight if I want! You don’t own me! I’ll gang bang you!”
“You are not gang banging me! I’ll gang bang you and your sister!”
“My sister ain’t no gang banger! Do you want me to gang bang you?”
And it went on like that for a while. Also, the entire time they were arguing**, they were laying out cardboard boxes on their sides with blankets inside of them.
“What are those for?” I asked La La.
“I don’t know,” she replied and smiled. “They do that every Wednesday. It’s sweet!”
“What?” I ask, but then the next thing I know I was driving down the road***.
“Hey!” La La suddenly says alarmed. “There is someone following the car! On foot!”
Sure enough, in my rear view mirror is a man running after us wearing a ball cap and an apron. He is holding a plastic bag with one hand and waving at us frantically with the other. I also notice three other men dressed like him, frantically wiping the road down where he had been. They all looked extremely worried and determined.
“Should I stop?” I ask La La.
“Yes! Always stop for someone wearing an apron!” La La says, grabbing the wheel.
“What?” I ask again.
We stop and the man catches up to us. He is out of breath. He hands La La the bag and leaves.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Two Jimmy Johns subs. A veggie for me and a roast beef for you, two bags of skinny chips, and two root beers!”
Up ahead a big orange ball appears.
La La puts down her sandwich and says,
“That’s it. I think that’s where we are supposed to go.”
I pull into the parking lot of the orange ball and both La La and I sit for a minute and stare at it. It’s mesmerizing! On the front are some blurry words.
“I think that one word says ‘Gifts’,” I whisper to her.
She whispers back, ” I think the other one says ‘Fruit.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know!”
At the doors of the orange ball is a long thin something, painted white, and wearing a rainbow-colored wig. We get out of the van and approach. It looks like one of those inflatable things that wave in the breeze outside of a car dealership, except this one has a white face. La La reaches up and pulls off the wig. Underneath the wig is a penis, and then suddenly, out of the blue, the whole thing catches on fire!
La La grabs my hand and says,
“Quick! I need a magnet!”
To Be Continued…
* And a fountain!
**I’m not really sure if they were truly mad at each other or it was some pre-sex ritual thing that gang bangers do….
***It is a dream, after all. Dreams are full of random cut scenes.
The following haiku was inspired on a recent flight when the woman sitting next to me gave the flight attendant the finger:
Stay Wild
ripped jeans, snake-skin heels,
rocking that Joan Jett mullet.
doesn’t. give. a. fuck.
And now I shall present my SkyMall favorites from this particular trip (it changes every time):
From the creators of vajazzles and pejazzles, BootDazzles!…but this time with feathers.
Here’s a little something for all those folks planning to be alone for the rest of their lives.
Finally, my favorite of all the SkyMall gems–Hiccup Stick. It’s a stick. For hiccups.
OR just hold your breath.
Here is a video of testimonials for Hiccup Stick. Ladies and gentleman, I invite you to please keep in mind that it is a friggin’ STICK.
So what you’re saying is that I could go into my backyard RIGHT NOW and collect some sticks and sell each for $6.99 because of the hiccups? You’re joking. I’m wasting my life here, trying to make something of myself. Screw writing. Hiccup Stick, I am your new competitor. People, I will hunt you if you choose Hiccup Stick over my stick. I will sell my personal stick to you for one dollar cheaper, deliver it in my bathing suit to your front door and if you’re hot, for $4.00 extra I will give you a kiss on the cheek. Bonus feature? My stick was created by THE LORD GOD OUR SAVIOR. Just imagine, the Holy Trinity up in your mouth, helping you get rid of the hiccups.
On August 3, 2011, Dane and I went to the beach and it was a lot of fucking fun (he hated it when I said ‘fuck’ because a “little lady in pearls shouldn’t have such a dirty little sailor mouth”).
Fuckity, fuck fuck fuck. I say it all the time now to see if he will come haunt-scold me just so we can hang out for a little bit. So far, I have had zero luck with this plan, but I do get to say ‘fuck’ a lot, so, I have that going for me.
One hour after I took this photo, we got in the water and a wave knocked me off my ass and took me down. Dane said I disappeared for a minute and when he saw me, I was rolling up the beach with seaweed in my hair and my boobs hanging out. Both of them. And what did he do? He pointed and laughed, drawing attention of other people who then all saw my heaving, washed-up bosom covered in sand. If ever there was a hearty laugh that came out of that man, it was on that day.
That night, we played Pirate themed mini golf and he said he “tried” letting me win because of the whole wave incident, but I was just that terrible at mini golf. Whatever, I was just having an off day. Afterward, we went out for dinner and drinks and I had the best scallops I have ever had in my life.
Then we got more drinks and I did the Carmen Electra Booty Shake for a group of people and then I danced to classic rock with old white trash guys while Dane laughed and then I had “just one more” and he ended up having to carry me to the car.
I guess I am telling you this because August 3, 2011 was the beginning of a great week with my best friend. It was certainly better than what I’m doing now, which is sitting on my couch with ice on my ankle because I fell under a streetlight while running last night and my shorts half fell off, revealing a single butt cheek, and then two guys laughed at me. I cried and limped myself a mile back to an empty house.
I must admit, there are few things after a good cry that are better than ice cream.
Anyway, that’s what I was doing a year ago. If you love someone, hug that person nice and tight and have a good weekend. (Dane, if you’re reading this, I don’t want to be haunt-scolded for saying ‘fuck’. You know ghosts terrify me. Miss you.)
Miami’s bars close at 5 am, making everything that happens there feel like a drunken time warp. Let’s flash back to last Tuesday, shall we?
My friend Karolina and I went out at 11 pm and had drinks with her boyfriend Mike and their friends. There, I met a gorgeous 22-year-old model who told me about all the crazy places he has woken up and asked if I wanted to wake up somewhere crazy (I said no…we all know it would have been a dungeon in some creepy basement somewhere).
What felt like 30 minutes but was 3 hours later, Karolina and I ended up in a club on hip-hop night where we watched a dorky white guy in a business suit try to get freaky whilst sandwiched between two women. He was wearing business socks and loafers.
Upon seeing this, I promptly declared that there was no way I was going to dance. Just as I said it, mine eyes were graced with the presence of a beautiful man named Omar who had descended from the heavens above (known to most as “Jamaica”) and into the fire of my loins–and do you know what he wanted to do? Me. We danced instead…and I swooned every time he said anything. Has anyone with a smooth accent ever complimented you? Wow, I am not used to such things and I could not form a full sentence–cue the butterflies and that just-had-my-first-kiss feeling.
Karolina and I then got our Catholic school girl grind on (parents, side note, don’t send your daughter to a Catholic school for girls and expect them not to kiss each other, drink vodka at 16 and/or grind when they dance).
What felt like 20 minutes but was 2 hours later, Omar asked where my friend went. I looked around and went downstairs to the men’s bathroom, where I found her talking to a guy named Ryno, who had just given her weed.
Suddenly, it was 5:15 in the morning and we were walking down the street stoned with e-cigarettes (I don’t smoke real cigarettes or the e-cigarette variety), coconut water and Karolina’s dog, Ted. We made up an elaborate story about how Ben & Jerry’s came up with the ice cream name “Half Baked.” I then laid down in the grass, pretended to swim and laughed so hard that I cried and then I sang a song about the moon and then, magically, I woke up on Karolina’s couch without even a touch of a hangover.
I thought that perhaps the media was exaggerating how beautiful/ridiculous the people are in South Beach, but I was wrong. On my first day there, I went to the beach alone and observed gorgeous, ripped dudes in expensive sunglasses hitting on girls and strutting around talking about sports and how awesome they are at being lawyers. In the past, you would have found me disgusted, bitter and annoyed by this entire show, but I laughed and actually enjoyed it. A couple of them talked to me and I even thought some of them were hot. Yep, I said hot.
How is this possible? Well, I learned that there is a huge difference between this Lauren and past Lauren. Past Lauren was a bitter girl who thought she was ugly and didn’t deserve good things and she didn’t know what she wanted and would have accepted anything, so she attracted all the wrong situations and got confused when guys were total dicks. She felt like a victim of douchebaggery and started hating and judging all guys in general, making relationships with men frustrating for both parties.
Current Lauren loves herself and she loves men, too. I realized while in Florida, that one of the major steps it took to get here is highlighted in this article given to me by my friend’s boyfriend:
Single ladies, you need to read that article. Married people, what do you think?
I have many men in my life, in many enriching ways, who are all teaching me about myself and my needs and desires and leading me closer to the guy and relationship I want. My “gaggle” has taught me so much about men, too (they aren’t all jerks, and even the tough looking ones may be soft underneath those superman pecs).
I guess the point I am trying to make is that d-bags happen. Once you have confidence and know what you want, it’s easier to gain respect and not feel like a victim. You can even have fun and find out that some of them are admiring you and not raping you with their eyes, just as I discovered while watching and interacting with these fine, peculiar specimens as they strutted around on the beach like macho birds.
I am sitting by myself at the airport, people watching like a champ, and thinking about how funny it is that many of these people are trying so hard to hide that they are a little weird. I am happy to be a little weird. You all (creative people/bloggers) have helped me embrace this loving weirdness and I am forever grateful. Thank you. I weird you guys. ♥
I am meant to embrace it and 2012 brought me here. Right now I am a raw nerve. Maybe those of us who are coming unglued were being held together by Elmer’s School Glue and this year is putting us back together with something like Gorilla Glue (or whatever is strong–I am no glue connoisseur).
Okay….time to board a plane and get crunk. It is Monday, after all. Also, look at this funny ass cat:
Dog owner and lover. Urbanite-Suburbanite. Music addict. Editor. Explorer. Wine enthusiast (Malbec, please). Orange Crush abuser. Anglophile. People watcher. My dream job? Writer, or a Tom Jones back up singer. Well, not Tom Jones now, but Tom Jones in the early '70s...so let's go with the writing thing.
