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Monthly Archive for May, 2009

How being infertile has made me a bad puppy parent

Published on May 29, 2009 in Childless Not By Choice and Psychology. 68 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .
On Wednesday Lily had an appointment to be spayed. Spaying, as you know, is the doggy term for the removal of the ovaries and uterus. When the same surgery is done on humans it’s called a hysterectomy.

Spaying sounds like something simple and easy, like something done at California Mystic Tans. Hysterectomies sounds traumatic and serious and are considered physically and emotionally significant. From what I hear, a hysterectomy hurts as if you’ve had major internal organs removed. Why? Because it is major surgery in which major internal organs have been removed.

Many vets claim that dogs feel no pain after the procedure. This, I think, is the same kind of logic involved in saying baby boys don’t feel pain during circumcision, i.e. if you aren’t able to say you are in pain then you don’t feel pain.

I had read in all the puppy books how important it is to have your dog spayed and how it lowers the risk of cancer and that there were other health benefits. I wanted to be a responsible pet parent so I made the appointment. But when Wednesday morning came I freaked out. As a woman who has spent 100K on trying to conceive, and who failed to do so, the idea of making Lily infertile is emotionally loaded for me. I just couldn’t go through with it so I had He-weasel cancel the appointment. I just couldn’t bare to make my furry baby infertile.

I do realize I am anthropomorphising her and that my own traumas and yet unresolved grief may be impairing my ability to make the best choice for her. I certainly don’t want my baby girl to develop breast cancer or uterine cancer. But, the idea of me deciding for her—for me to take away her ability to conceive—is more than I feel capable of. Just typing that last sentence makes me cry. That said, I have no plans of breeding Lily.

I spent a good part of my session with Igor discussing my feelings about this, when I wasn’t talking about my L.A.hate ( yep, mother is topic #1 and L.A. hate is consistently topic #2). Igor suggested I talk to my vet to see what she had to say about the risks and to do some independent research in order to come to the best decision for Lily and me.

When I got home from Igor I did a little Googling and I found it impossible to find anyone who seemed to be against spaying. It seems that preventing unwanted puppies seems a major motivation for spaying. I, as an overprotective puppy parent, would never let her near another dog when she is at risk of pregnancy. The secondary concern for unaltered dogs seems to be the cancer prevention issue. However, Lily might not have the genetics that put her at risk for breast cancer. I am contacting the breeder to see if there is any history of breast cancer in her family. The third issue people use to dissuade from not spaying is the mess and nuisance that comes with a dog in heat. All of these reasons are valid and I get why it is important but there is another part of me that doesn’t. I know it is illogical but my reluctance is not about logic. It is about something else entirely.

What I want is for this to be done and over and for me not to know about it. I want to be under the illusion she still has her uterus and ovaries and that she could conceive if we wanted to breed her, even though we don’t. I don’t want to have to make this decision and yet I know by not deciding I am deciding. Lily’s clock is ticking. She is six months and three and a half weeks old. The best time to spay is prior to her first menstruation to get the most anti-cancer benefit and we are getting very close to the time when I might have to buy her doggy diapers. I made an appointment for Tuesday and yet I don’t want to take her. Do you want to take her and then bring her back to me in a week and not tell me what happened? That would be swell.

Below, on a less serious note is a video of Lily versus an orange. Guess who won?

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I dropped a maxi pad at Coffee Bean and changed a life

Published on May 28, 2009 in Belette's Favorites and Quotidien. 90 Comments Tags: , .


I wasn’t planning on posting a post today as it’s Thursday and it is the day I see Igor. It is usually more than I can manage. However, I had something I had to tell you. I dropped a maxi pad at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I know. Horrifying.

Here’s how it happened, I was standing in line and I pulled out my wallet and as I was distracted figuring out what size chai latte to get so I didn’t notice that my “wrapped for my protection” winged maxi pad had made aviation history and flown out of my handbag and onto the floor. I paid, waited and I got my latte. I walked towards the door and that is when I saw it. I looked down and saw it and I thought to myself, “oh, some poor gal lost her maxi pad.” As soon as I had the thought I recognized the sanitary covering to the pad. Shit. It was my pad. I was the poor gal. I walked right past it. I couldn’t claim it. There were people standing right by it. Girls in pink flip-flops with French pedicured toes and a guy in work boots and a couple in sport sandals. Their feet were just inches away from it. I pretended not to see it. I just kept on walking as casually as I could until I was far-far-far away from my maxi-pad.

I fantasized that eventually a customer would complain about the sanitary pad on the floor. Jake, the barrista, would have to go over and pick it up and throw it away between making a decaf cappuccino and an ice blended mocha. It wouldn’t be until much later that he would decide, when recounting the horrible story to his friends over beers of his maxi-pad moment, that his parents were right and that he should go to grad school and get serious about his life and quit the band and give two weeks notice to the Barrista in Chief.

My shame and humiliation has made a difference in someones life. Because of me Jake will have a real job and never-ever-ever have to pick up a maxi pad again. Well sure, once Jake graduates and marries he will have to make maxi pad, tampon and brownie runs for his wife and he will find himself in the aisle of the grocery store that he never before visited and when he does he will think of the maxi pad moment that changed his life forever.

Please make me feel even better by telling me a humiliating moment you have had. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.

Dave Eggers is my more talented and successful twin

Published on May 27, 2009 in Meaning Making, Psychology and Writing in Valencia. 47 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Heinz Kohut, the creator of Self Psychology, created the concept of twinship or twinning transference. “According to Kohut it is a form of narcissistic transference as expressing the self’s need to rely on another as a narcissistic function possessing characteristics like herself.” In less Kohutian and more Belettian like terms it goes like this : “I look for ways that you and I are exactly alike in order to feel better about myself.”

Fortunately Kohut came up with other kinds of transference because there is something about a twinship transference that can feel a little forced: “OMG, you like animals and I like animals. You like to read and I like to read; you like coffee and I like coffee, etc. We are sooooo much alike.” Yes, I suppose if pressed we could find a way to create a twinship transference with almost anyone if we worked hard at it enough and it met some narcissistic need. But there is often so much stretching involved in creating a twinship transference that one needs a good deal of Advil afterwards to deal with the muscle pain.

That said, it seems that I have a twinship transference with author David Eggers that I think is more of a simple stretch, the kind that seniors do in a “Sit an be fit” class.

Here I go:

  • Dave Eggers is from Lake Forest. I lived in Lake Forest/ Bluff.
  • Dave started a foundation for children called 826 Valencia and I live in Valencia.
  • He writes memoir and I write memoir.
  • Dave edits and publishes McSweeney’s and I buy McSweeney’s.
  • He wrote “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius“( my favorite title of all time and one of my favorite books) and I am writing a book that breaks my heart and seems to be lacking in genius.
  • Dave wrote his book from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. I write mine, when I write it, from noon to 5 p.m.
  • If people Google writing and Valencia they will either end up my blog or on Egger’s 826 Valencia. Yes, that is me at the bottom of the page. But, hey, I am there.

I have no desire to meet Eggers or tell him how much I love his book (and I do) or even to some how to try and weasel and get him to read my writing. No, my crazy is more this flavor: If I have all this in common with Dave, does it thereby mean that I too will have a memoir about my heartbreaking life published to great critical acclaim? Okay, that last part is really embarrassing but if I have any hope of being like Dave I have to tell the truth even when it is embarrassing. Eggers says “We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. ” If Dave can have the courage to admit to auditioning for the Real World then I can cop to my delusional hopes of great literary success.

So often people tell me I am brave to talk about the things I do on my blog and I never really understand why you think so. I am writing under a pseudonym and there are no pictures or anything on the blog that reveal who I am as an outer person. All I reveal is the inside and somehow writing about those things makes me feel less alone. Or as Dave says it:

“Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one’s past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way – not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I’ve-seen
/lessons-I’ve-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers.”

Unlike Dave, my parent’s did not die and I had no young brother to take care of and I did not move to San Francisco and start a literary magazine, but there is so much in “A Heartbreaking work of staggering genius” that I relate to. You know they say that twins have an almost psychic connection, well there are a few paragraphs in his book that feel like they are words I have written or at least thought. Writing this post I found this quote by Eggers that explains perfectly why I write what I write on this blog:

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last few difficult days, and every person who has entered my path during these awful morning hours, because to do anything less would be something less than human. I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Besides sharing all this in common with Dave, he also likes Chris Elliott and moleskin notebooks and wears jeans and I do too. See how much we have in common?

Picture of “Identical Twins, Rosele, New Jersey, 1967″ by Diane Arbus

House #1

Published on May 25, 2009 in Lily, On Home and Quotidien. 53 Comments Tags: , , , , .

We only have gone out with the realtor once and I will admit to feeling excited when we left to look. But, by the time we had walked up to the door of the first house we looked at I lost that feeling and instead felt dread and panic and had racing thoughts of banks, loan applications, movers, packing, mess, dealing with the change of address at the post office, getting a new phone number, and the neighbors and what if we didn’t like them and what if they were loud, noisy, obnoxious, and nosy. What if we bought the house and He-weasel lost his job or the economy got worse and the prices of houses dropped and what if….

The realtor interrupted my racing train of thought with a somewhat racist comment about the ethnic makeup of Glendale that made me sure that this woman would not be our agent after today. She handed me a brochure to read about the house as we waited for the other realtor to arrive. I scanned the brochure reading the overemphasized details of the house and noticing how much of the hype did not live up to the reality and how few of the houses deficits had made it to the brochure.

I loved this house when I saw it on-line. I loved its clean lines and minimalism; it’s stark beauty, large windows and city views made me feel like I might be living in an Ed Rusha painting. The neighborhood is everything Valencia is not. Trees, hills, gardens of diversity, each house looks different from the next and narrow streets that require an awareness of others.But when we pulled up the long driveway to the house we saw that we would be sharing a driveway with a house that has three cars, a truck and a RV. From a quick scan of the house that went with these cars I could just feel that these neighbors would inspire long and scathing blog posts.

Then there was the matter of the yard. To call it a yard is to call my 750 square foot condo a sprawling and spacious villa. This “yard” had long ago been left untended. It seemed to be waiting for the trash man to pick it up and take it away with the trash bins that sit on its periphery. We discovered that the property of this house extended into an unusable and inaccessible canyon. We would, if we were to buy this house, own a half an acre of canyon. Instead of canyon I saw “death trap”, “law suit” and “danger-danger-danger/death trap for Lily”.

Once inside it was all lovely and modern and sleek and filed with furniture that matched that aesthetic. I wondered how my Pottery Barn/Crate and Barell pieces would look in this ultra-modern home. But the spell of the light, the shadows and the space took over and I even forgot about the RV and the canyon and the danger. The bedroom had the kind of view that would inspire a postcard of “A California city view at sunset”. However, from the huge window I could see the front door of the house across the street. In a Freudian slip of the tongue I asked my realtor “How do they do it without curtains?” I didn’t mean “do-it”, I meant how do they stand it, and yet on some level I did wonder about the “doing-it”. My 60-something Chico wearing realtor who was wearing mascara on her lower lashes( for reasons unclear the clumped mascara really irritated me) seemed a little shocked by my question. She tripped on her tongue to tell me that they had just painted and that is why there were no curtains.

He-weasel scanned the house and showed me how we could add another bedroom and bathroom. I oohed and aahed over the width of the kitchen( HUGE). Really, I could hold a ballet class in the kitchen if I could teach ballet. “Ladies, hands on the counter top. Now, feet in first position and arms extended in port de bras. Arms reaching towards the dishwasher. ” He-weasel was not imagining Tchaikovsky playing and pirouettes being performed as dinner was prepared. He instead focused on the Ikea cabinets and that they were particle board and how they would have to be replaced. He, I am afraid, is a bit of a cabinet snob. No particle board for my Woozle.

As I walked through the house and I saw the bed, the records, the books of the people who lived in the Glendale modern house I wondered what they had dreamed of when they moved in and if their dreams had come true. I imagined two people who lived in Glendale and wished instead they were in the Hollywood Hills. I felt a low hanging cloud of dissatisfaction in this house and it was noticeable as the smell of a house filled with wet dogs.

Even though the house was light and open and spacious I felt a depression—not a wet and emotive depression but rather a dry and brittle depression that required a cautious quietness and a carefulness of step. It felt as if the openness of the house was too much and that the inhabitants had to get out of the house to feel their feelings. The people who lived in this house were characters in a Raymond Carver story. They dressed minimally. They ate minimally. They spoke minimally, counting each word as if on a strict verbal budget. They even breathed minimally. I could feel that no one had exhaled deeply in this house for years. The people saved their breathing for once they drove down the hill. They wanted a house more generous with room—more room for cars, more flowers, more friends and more words.

When we drove away from the house I found myself telling He-weasel that I loved this house and only if it was on a larger piece of land and there were fences and if they weren’t charging so much for it that then this might be our house. Only I knew and didn’t want to admit that I would have to take more Vitamin W to live there.

I heard He-weasel talk about the problems with the house and how it wasn’t safe for Lily but I was only half listening. I was, as he talked about the size of the garage, imaging waking up in that bed and looking out that view and walking into that kitchen and drinking coffee at their dining room table. I imagined the blog posts I would write in this house. The post would be short, laconic, light and yet with an underlying despair. Only something about the house wouldn’t allow me to tell you that. So instead of writing I would sit and watch the cursor patiently flash.

Quackadoodledoo

Published on May 22, 2009 in Childless Not By Choice and Quotidien. 64 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Monday I went to see a M.D. that was recommended to me. This is the kind of doctor that you need to have the name of someone who referred you in order to make an appointment, as I feel pretty sure that the doctor is living in fear of the Food and Drug Administration making a run on the joint. He is an endocrinologist who has a patient load of L.A. ladies who lunch too much and are getting ready for Bas Mitzvahs, weddings and high school reunions and want to have lost the weight by yesterday. I was hoping he would help me lose the 25 pounds that I can’t seem to lose on my own (you see my diet of wine, cookies, cheese and “Taco Tuesday” has not worked out as planned) in a reasonably healthy manner, but I was not above trying Phentermine if he thought it was a good idea. No special occasion motivated my visit other than the joy of looking good in a sun dress.

As soon as I arrived I found myself collecting concerns:

Concern #1 came when I saw that his In-style Magazine was from August 2006. The big news is in this cutting edge magazine is that the “Sex in the City” gals will indeed reunite for a film. Really, who keeps a magazine that long? It made me wonder if he doesn’t keep his magazines current does that also mean he isn’t up to date on current medical research. Is he reading JAMA from 1998 or the New England Journal of Medicines from when it was a colony? It might be faulty logic but it did shake me.

Concern #2 Before I met the doctor I heard his booming voice coming through two walls. He is a loud talker, so loud that I heard every word he said to the woman in exam room two while I waited to be seen. It turns out her labs are normal and, no, he doesn’t think she needs to come back until after her Caribbean cruise.

Concern #3 The nurse looked wild eyed when she looked at my EKG. She assured me it was normal, only she said it in extremely broken English—or at least that is what I hope she said. Once she tried to calm me she ran out of the room and interrupted the doctor who was in the middle of sharing his vacation plans in room #2. I heard him tell the inaudible nurse that I was fine, it was just the machine that was broken and not me. I was grateful at that moment for his megaphone mouth and the happy news about my heart.

Concern #4 When he finally came in I wished he hadn’t. Not only was he loud, he also had no sense of personal space. He was in my face. I could smell his breath ( fortunately I smelled nothing that made me more concerned). There were even a few occasions when I was hit by spittle that escaped when he used words that started with the letters ‘p’, ‘s’ and ‘t’.

He was like a character out of a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry and Kramer went to a screaming in your face doctor. In my imaginary episode Kramer talked Jerry into going to the doctor’s office with him for some reason I am not creative enough to think of. Dr. In-your-face came in and introduced himself to Jerry and Kramer and got in their faces. The doctor was almost kissing Kramer as he undertook the exam. Kramer kept backing up trying to get away from Dr. In-your-face until he fell out of the window, breaking bones and ending up in the hospital. Dr. In-your-face came to visit Kramer in his hospital room and couldn’t move away from the doctor as he was trapped in traction. George, Jerry and Elaine looked on in horror.

Concern #5 Dr. Loud-in-your-face felt the need to use medical terminology and then break it down for me. I assured him I was an educated person who did very well on the verbal portion of the GRE and that I knew big words like “metabolism”.

Concern #6 “Will you do what I tell you?” He spat at me and stared at me indignantly as if I was a small child he had asked to clean its room. I could see up his nasal vestibule( see, I know fancy medical terminology) as he waited for my answer. I answered yes as I figured that the quicker I told him what he wanted to hear the quicker I could get out of his office.

Concern #7 He asked about my IVFs and asked if I had given up on trying to have a baby. Then he screamed in my face, “Adoption?” “No”, I explained how bad our attempt at adoption had gone, “we aren’t trying that again.” “How about a beautiful Chinese baby girl?”, he asked. “Huh?” I was shocked to hear those words come out of his fat face that was closer to me than He-weasel’s usually is. It was not what he said but how he said it that made me aware that his offer was filled with unethical and possibly illegal innuendo. “No. I am not interested.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yeah…I’m sure.”

My mind reeled. Was this guy saying that he could get me a baby? What exactly was he offering? This gave me something to think about as he explained in excruciating detail how weight loss happens by doing complex math formulas on post-it notes that he punctuated with smiley faces. You see, it seems that “less calories in and more calories burned = weight loss”. Shocking news, huh? I thought of scenarios that seemed both unethical and illegal as he tried to sell me some of his meal replacement shakes. I said no to the “chocolate flavored diet shake” as firmly as I did to his baby suggestion.

I left with a diet plan, a bottle full of polka dotted pills that I have since thrown away and a vision of a beautiful Chinese baby girl dancing in my head. When I got home I asked He-weasel if I had any feathers on me. He answered “No, why?”
“Because I have just seen a quack.”

I don’t think I have lost any weigh on Dr. Loud-in-your-face’s diet plan and that is probably because I am not following it. I have also not lost the image of a beautiful Chinese baby girl. And, no, I am not considering calling him back to see what exactly he was suggesting. I really don’t want to know.

2-5 of 365

Published on May 20, 2009 in 365 things that don't suck about L.A.. 74 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

(365 Things that don’t suck about L.A.)

2. Jacaranda trees

The one thing I am always on L.A. about is the lack of trees. I love trees. I need trees. Trees are something I crave like coffee and charm bracelets. Lake Bluff is a Tree City USA and L.A. is definitely not.

Sure there are trees here—some great trees: eucalyptus, scrub oaks, and even maples. There are even a few streets in L.A. which I would consider tree-lined. There just aren’t enough of them. And, I know that horticulturists would disagree with me but to my mind palm trees are not trees and there are lots of those non-trees here.

The one tree that I love in L.A. is the jacaranda. I am including pictures of a jacaranda tree in this post, but, really, a picture does not do them justice. In person these purple trees are like something out of a dream or a Kurosawa film or an Elfin landscape in one of those Lord of the whatsit movies. There is something strangely feminine, poetic and romantic about these trees—perhaps it is the fragility of the flower and the short duration of their bloom.

In California, jacarandas bloom twice a year, in fall and spring. In spring they are SoCal’s version of cherry blossom trees only they don’t seem to be as appreciated; there are no jacaranda festivals or celebrations in their honour here in L.A. They, are instead hated by many and referred to by some as the rat of trees. I think it is perhaps because there is no scent to the blooms and because they are really messy to clean up when they shed. Maybe, like all of California, the jacarandas, need some distance from them to be fully appreciated.

The old joke about L.A. is that no one is really from here, while that is not entirely true, it is true that the jacaranda is not indigenous to California. You don’t have to come to L.A. to see them. They are also found in Australia, Africa, India, Central America, Caribbean, Mexico, and, in the states can also be seen, in Arizona and Florida.

According to legend, if you have a jacaranda blossom land on you it is good luck. Note to self: must sit under a jacaranda tree. If you want to sit under a jacaranda and get some good luck try the following places, as recommended by the L.A. Times, in order to hit the Jacaranda Jackpot: the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden on UCLA’s north campus; Traxx Restaurant at Union Station; Palm Drive in Beverly Hills; Elysian Park;and Victoria Avenue in the Crenshaw District. My favorite place for jacaranda trees is Fullerton but I am sure there are many other places to take in the ultra-violet views.

3. Chicken barbecue sandwich at Busy Bee Market in San Pedro
This place is not pretty. It is a liquor store in a working class neighborhood. Don’t be fooled. If you should dare to make the trip and wait in the long-long-line you will be rewarded with a sandwich that will make you wonder what it is they are serving at Subway or Quiznos as it is clearly not a sandwich. Sicilian BBQ chicken, marinara sauce, lettuce, mayo on amazingly soft Italian bread. This sandwich requires lots of napkins and it’s best not to eat it when wearing your best white linen trousers.

4. The Wayfarers Chapel
I am not sure if I love this place but I do like it and it certainly doesn’t suck. This glass chapel is an architectural marvel and a building that requires a whole lot of Windex. The chapel is in Portuguese Bend( where Joan Didion used to live) in the Palos Verdes Peninsula, just a stones throw from the Pacific Ocean.

For an agnostic I am kind of mad for churches. I like this one for several reasons:
* It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandson, Eric Lloyd Wright.
* Eric Lloyd was Rupert Pole’s half-brother who Anais Nin lived with in L.A.
* It is a Swedenborgian Church which is a religion you don’t hear about much. Helen Keller, William Blake, Robert Frost and Johnny Appleseed were all Swedenborgians. It seems a relaxed and groovy religion as it should be, people who go to glass churches shouldn’t throw stones.
*Jayne Mansfield, Brian Wilson, and Dennis Hopper were all married at the chapel. As was somebody on the TV show The O.C. I am most impressed with Dennis Hopper. I imagine him and Peter Fonda and his bride all riding up Palos Verdes Drive East on bikes. Or was that “Easy Rider”?
*Nature seems as much apart of the church as the architecture which appeals to me on a philosophical and architectural level.
* It has spectacular ocean views and gorgeous gardens.

Nin wrote this poem about the Wayfarers chapel:

The sun was pouring into it
like a million saints’ halos
the sea was glittering
beyond the glass.
the redwood trees were beginning
to peep into the church.

The beauty of the glass expanded the spirit,
let it loose among the clouds and in nature.
What a poetic concept of a church.
Not to enclose, in dimness, in stone,
in tombs, with votive candles burning,
but to free the spirit, to follow the clouds
to glitter with the sea, to grow
from the earth richly scented.

5. Huell Howser

Now, I am real
ly serious about this one. There are somethings I will not tolerate. I cannot abide racist jokes, homophobia and, less seriously but equally adamantly, I cannot stand anyone talking smack about my Huell Howser. There are people in my life and I am not naming names and it is certainly not He-weasel, that mock Huell’s “awe shucks enthusiasm” and it makes me crazy.

If you don’t live in California you likely don’t know Huell and you are missing out. Huell is the anti-me. He loves California. He loves it so much that he has a TV series called “California’s Gold” and “Visiting with Huell Howser” that shows on local PBS stations in which he shows his love of California by finding all that make California “golden”( yikes, it hurt to write that). I watch his show not because I am eager to learn about the best of California or discover a persimmon farm run by Japanese immigrants or a belly dancing festival in Glendale or a shop in L.A. that sells highly unusual instruments, but rather to see Huell so excited about these things. I watch his shows to watch Huell’s passion. I am a sucker for passion and this is a man that oozes with it. When Joseph Campbell was talking about following your bliss he was talking about Huell and his love of the Golden state.

I have a secret fantasy of running into Huell one day and telling him how much I admire his enthusiasm and how much I missed him when I lived in Chicago and how they have a bad version of his show in Chicago with a guy in a safari hat but that show sucked—-but I fear I wouldn’t have the nerve. Huell, I hope you Google yourself and find this post because I think you are California Gold.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l99Ek4YtTuw]
Five down and 360 more things to go.

No labels, please

Published on May 18, 2009 in Meaning Making and Psychology. 82 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Years ago I had a friend who explained every thought, feeling or impulse I ever had on my ennneagram number. And, she may be right that I am “such a Four“—and that all I do, think and say is what a four would do—but I am not just a number or a diagnosis or a Myers Briggs type. No one, I feel sure, likes being summed up to a number, a label or an astrology sign.

Recently a friend from non-bloggy life boiled down my blog to a formula: “One day a week you write about a product. One day a week you write about something personal. And, one day a week you write about hating L.A.” I have to tell you that her accurate assessment made my blood boil. Something about hearing my blog formula from another (in what felt like less than complimentary tones) made me feel as if nothing new or novel can exist outside of the expected and that I am trapped in a pattern of behavior and being that are beyond my ability to control. It felt as a reductive as the enneagram assessment. Maybe my enneagram loving friend would say that my anger at being labeled and having my blog labeled is a four thing. But I bet ones, twos, threes, fives, sixes, and sevens wouldn’t like it either.

I want to prove my friend wrong and write about politics, poetry, polemics or Poland or something outside of her pre-conceived expectations—something other than my hatred for L.A., my love of J Crew charm bracelets, and my sessions with Igor but at the end of the day that is all I have. It isn’t a lot, but it is what I have, and everyone says to write what you know. Oh, and, she failed to mention the Lily category. See, I have more than three topics.

Having said all that, for the last couple of months I have been trying to label my blog. What is it, anyways? It is not a fashion blog. Gosh no. I don’t look at fashion magazines and I don’t even know what is in style. If it weren’t for Couture Carrie, WendyB, and Savvy Mode I’d never know. I am no longer a francophile blog. Yes, I am a francophile and this is a blog written by a francophile and occasionally I talk about my love of France but mostly I don’t. It is not a “writer’s blog” even though I write about writing. It is not a dog blog, or a relationship blog or even a home blog—-but I do talk about all of those things. And, it is most certainly not an infertility blog even though I have moaned about my infertility almost the whole time I have been blogging.

I suppose that what this blog, over time, has become about is me and my life. Yikes. I never meant for that to happen but it did. When I tell people that I write, outside of the blog, about my life I feel no shame. Personal essay and memoir are respected genres. But when I tell people that I blog and they ask me what it’s about I stammer and stumble and hemm and haw. It sounds terribly narcissistic to be blogging about myself and why do I assume that anyone will care about me, my therapy, or what I am thinking. I sort of endlessly assume that no one will and then I am surprised that such lovely people show up and read and comment and add so much to the conversation and to my life.

I love writing and I enjoy my topics, even if there are only four of them. In time this could change and a year from now this blog could be all about the poetics and polemics of Polish potters. I doubt it, but it could happen. Change is possible even if I am a Four, Pisces, XNFJ who has temporal lobe epilepsy.

1 of 365

Published on May 14, 2009 in 365 things that don't suck about L.A.. 76 Comments Tags: , , , , .

(365 Things that don’t suck about L.A.)

A week or so ago JChevais told me about Schmutzie( thank you J!!!) and how we had some stuff in common and she was right. Please see this and this and be prepared to be amazed. I love Schmutzie’s blog and her writing and just visiting her blog for a few days and learning about her blog Grace in Small Things in which Schmutzie is “waging a battle against embitterment”. She explains her mission and how you can share in it better than I could as I am still bitter, or at least semi-sweet.

After reading a few of her Grace in Small Things posts I was inspired to stop constantly complaining about the place I live and tell you the good things in L.A, both large and small. Yes, there are good things. I am not sure I can do it but I am going to try and tell you 365 good things about L.A. This might take a while. Don’t get me wrong, I still hate this place. But I don’t hate:

# 1: The Getty

The Getty is one of the most beautiful museums in the world and if I didn’t live here this is a place I would dream of visiting. For $10 parking I can get into one of the worlds most amazing museums in the United States. Truth be told it is the building and the location and not so much the collections or the shows at the Getty that make me brave the 405 freeway.

I will admit that when the Getty shut down its Malibu museum I was not at all happy to hear about the new Getty on the hill that Richard Meier was to create. I loved the original museum which is now the Getty Villa. I was sick that I could no longer visit this museum that felt to me more like a spiritual home than a mere museum.


I didn’t want to like the Getty only I couldn’t help it. I was unable to fight its Acropolis like significance. In a city whose culture is big budget film and non-fat frozen yogurt there was no denying the impact of the collective psyche of L.A. that having a museum high on the hill that would not be ignored.

When I go to the Getty I spend more time walking the building, the staircases and the gardens than I do the galleries. It is the space, the majesty and the way that Meier’s white stoned masterpiece gives me a kind of peace I have never felt in a church.

I like to sit by the main fountain and watch foreign tourists, students with their sketch pads, senior citizens on a day tour, and couples on an artsy date. There is not only a center to this building but many centers. I feel an impulse to visit the many centers of this one building and spend significant time in each one. This is not a museum with one center—but many—and all of the centers hold. That speaks to Richard Meier’s genius.

The last time I went to the Getty was after a session with Igor. He-weasel and I played hooky and we ate cauliflower curry soup and chicken wraps and sat outside with a view that only made the soup taste better. I am going to visit the Getty a lot while we are here. Some day I when we are living in a place that I love and we are far from L.A. I want to have memories of sitting in the Getty garden.

I could go on about why I love the Getty or you could just look at my pictures.

One down and 364 to go.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg_vgminTo]

All pictures of the Getty were taken by me.

Writing as an affliction

Published on May 13, 2009 in Meaning Making and Writing in Valencia. 80 Comments Tags: , .

When I was eight, or so, I started having these episodes in which I knew I wasn’t me but I didn’t know who I was and that I felt unreal and that the world felt unreal and it was scary as hell. I asked my mother if it ever happened to her and she said it hadn’t and that was the last we spoke of it. Sometimes I would mention when I had a ‘not me’ episode and then move on. These ‘not me’ things would happen maybe four or five times a week and last a second or two and they were always a bit frightening and disorienting.

As I got older I learned that these experiences were called depersonilization and derealization and once I learned what they were I thought that it meant there was something wrong with me and that it was some kind of little swiss cheese hole in my psyche that if I worked hard enough I could fill up and stop them from happening. A decade of therapy did nothing to reduce the frequency.

Years later and several EEGs later it was determined that I had temporal lobe epilepsy. They aren’t the kind of seizure that inspires one to ask if they should put a pencil under my tongue as I flail about—no, not that kind. I have the kind of seizure that nobody but me notices, simple partial seizures. I tell you all this not to share the boring details of my brain or even to try to explain temporal lobe epilepsy but rather to tell you what the neurologist said when he saw me taking detailed notes in my journal as he explained my diagnosis.

The super cute Chinese neurologist asked if I wrote a lot. Did I keep journals? Was I a list maker? Was I very interested in philosophy and the meaning of life? I was wondering if all these questions were on his list of must have qualities in a partner. I was happy to answer yes to all of his questions. Instead of asking me out Dr. McBrainy explained that those with temporal lobe seizures are prone to hypergraphia and a search for meaning( as the temporal lobe is considered the God spot of the brain).

At first, upon getting the diagnosis I was a little disappointed that Dr. McBrainy hadn’t asked me out and I was relieved to learn that there was something real that was causing my ‘not-me’ moments. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t psychological. It was real. But, then I started to feel a kind of sadness about having my 95 diaries and my play, poems, and short stories reduced to a brain problem.

It wasn’t and couldn’t be the only why. There had to be others. There was the high school teacher who told me I had a talent and there was the blank pages ability to hear my words and never judge me. There was my love of reading and of words and how books had been there for me when no one else had and how my father had wanted to be a writer and never was and reasons beyond the reach of biology.

Joan Didion, being the brilliant writer she is, has another explanation of the why of writing:

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” – Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Strangely I prefer being labeled a “lonely and resistant rearranger of things, an anxious malcontent”, and a child “afflicted at birth with some presentiment of loss” better than having my writing explained by a medical condition. The seizures, thanks to Dr. McBrainy, are gone; the writing, or the hypergraphia, remains.

Igor wants us to buy a six bedroom house. Care to move in?

Published on May 11, 2009 in Belette in Psychotherapy, On Home and Psychology. 86 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I am always mindful of how Igor will find me when I am sitting in his waiting room and waiting for him to finish whatever he does before I arrive. My usual waiting activities are: check my lip gloss; check my email; look at his ugly assortment of artwork and wonder what he was thinking; peruse his magazines and tell myself I should read one of his Time Magazines as it will make him think I am smarter but instead I pick up his August 2008 copy of Travel and Leisure that I have flipped through over 20 times. When the time is getting close for my appointment I get in place. I turn my cell phone off. I put my handbag in my right hand and I prepare to jump up on his arrival. I always hope and never manage to hop up before he enters the room. I should give up this goal but each and every session I try and fail to beat him in this one sided game that he always wins.

Last Thursday I did not do any of those things and I feel sure he noticed. When I arrived I took out the book I was reading, “On Moving” by Louise DeSalvo and I was so engrossed that I did none of my usual activities. I even forgot to turn my cell phone off and so a message came in and when Igor came in the room to invite me into his inner sanctum I was on the phone with a book on my lap and my handbag nowhere ready for easy access.

When I was seated on his big leather couch that has deteriorated from holding heavy issues, the weight of denial and decay that comes from being sat on for 30 hours a week, Igor did not ask me how I was or how the traffic was or even why I was not in my usual state of ready in his waiting room but instead he asked me what book I was reading. I told him the title and the subtitle, A Writer’s Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again, because I wanted him to know that this was not a how-to book on moving.

“Right now I am reading about Freud’s move from Vienna to London.” I told him so he didn’t think it was a book filled with charming antidotes about the moves of Danielle Steele, Dan Brown and James Patterson. The message I was trying to send was, ‘I am smart and deep. And, even Freud suffered because of his move from Vienna to London, i.e. take my suffering seriously.’

“So, are you preparing to move?” Igor asked oozing with hope.

“No.” I said firmly in a moment of momentary sadism. “Why, do you think I should?”

We quickly moved on and went through a dream about my half-brother’s half-brother. No surprise, Igor thought the dream was all about my mother. We did other work but we ended up back talking about home and my mother

“I think you need a house, a large space. A home with space is one of the best defenses against your mother, that and living.”

“Do you have a side business? Are you a realtor? Do you have a home that you think I should see?”

Igor laughed his laugh. It is a laugh filled with an accent from a country I am not even sure exists anymore and with an abandonment that comes from having enormous self-confidence and a genuine joie de vivre.

“No, but I wish I did.” More laughter.

Igor composed himself, “But you do need space”.

“How big?….six bedrooms?” I joked.

“If you can afford it.” He said completely devoid of hyperbole.

“But, we had four bedrooms, two baths, and about 2000 square feet in Chicago and that felt too much. It made the house seem empty and made the absence of a child feel even greater.”

“That,” Igor said with out a hint of irony, “was then and this is now.”

He has said this before. It is not a new theme. Igor and He-weasel both think that my living in such a small condo is not good for me. Igor argues that the nature of my relationship with my mother is not to have my own internal or external space. He-weasel thinks that being in such a small place makes me feel like I am back home in my childhood room. I sometimes feel they are in cahoots on this issue( I love it when I can use the word cahoots. It is one of my favorite ‘c’ words along with cattywampus and chicanery).

Igor has made this argument before with less directness and less effect. Strangely, for reasons totally unclear to me, I decided he was right and that we need to get really serious about looking for a house. Igor, He-weasel and likely even you know that I don’t plan on living in L.A. forever but our lease is up in two months and we are going to have to move again. Wherever we will move will not be forever but just because it won’t be forever doesn’t mean that it can’t be okay for now. Do you like my unbridled enthusiasm about my search for a home in L.A.?

It has been four days since seeing Igor and three and a half days since I finished the book and I am still feeling like he may be right. Perhaps he is wrong about needing six bedrooms but he is right about the space. With DeSalvo’s book in hand I feel like I can survive another move, make sense of the last ones and maybe even get clear of what I really want in our new home instead of going into house hunting unconsciously( I will be writing a lot more about her brilliant book. This may be my favorite book of 2009 and I feel absolutely certain that DeSalvo wrote it just for me. La Francamericaine who told me about my favorite book of 2008 told me about this book and she too is quite convinced it was written just for her. I assure you, I will be writing about DeSalvo and her fantastic book and how it has moved me and what it has unearthed in me).

51 days until our lease is up and I am only slightly panicking. I would feel better if Igor was my realtor. I could look at houses while I lie on his couch. We could figure out what my resistance to houses with wood paneling is really about.

About Me

My name is Tracey, aka La Belette Rouge. I am a psychotherapist and the author of Freudian Sip @ Psychology Today. I blog about psychology, my therapy, dreams, writing, meaning making, home, longing, loss, infertility and other things that delight or inspire me. I try to make deep and elusive psychodynamic concepts accessible and funny. For more information, click here .

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