Aprilbaby's California Life

Los Angeles for A Free Iran, Protest at the Federal Building

Here's my slideshow of the day. Happy Indepence Day! Please help to bring freedom to Iran by reading, signing and passing on this petition. Thank you!

Kooky Stuff I Never Noticed Before

It's hard to believe I've lived near Pierce College in Woodland Hills for years and only just discovered John Ehn's folk art statues. For more info about John Ehn and his Kooky and sort of creepy statues, Check out this site and this one.

 

Ebook and Website for "Craving Normal" Coming Soon!

I love LA! My Visual Ode to the City

Here's my slide show of just a bit of what I love about LA. There's always something new to discover.

Pierce College Farmer's Market

I just drove by Pierce College in Woodland Hills and saw a sign that said Certified Farmer's Market, April-September,  Thursdays from 5 pm-9pm. I don't know how it is, but I'm going to check it out. It'll be located at the corner of De Soto Ave. & Victory Bl.

 

 

Gadzook-illions, incomprehensi-billions... New Numbers for Our New Economy

(

(That's my photo on the $100 bill.That's how worthless US $ has become)

Writer and Bargain Hunter, Julia Scott (the Bargain Babe), is a Facebook Friend of mine. She liked my Facebook status, where I mentioned my husband and I are busy thinking up new numbers (i.e. Gadzook-illions and incomprehensi-billions) since the Fed is printing money like toilet paper. So she posted about it in her Bargain Babe Blog. (photo from Julia's site).

Check out her blog! She's got lots of great money-saving tips!

Oh, here are more numbers I thought of:

What-chu-talkin-bout-Willis-ions

Can-never-be-paid-off-in-a-lifetime-zillions

I’m-a-slave-to-the-government-kabillions

Take-my-first-born-plus-an-arm-and-a-leg-trillions

Just-shoot-me-now-quadrillions

My Utopia or Your Utopia? A "New" Concept of Communing in California

Here's an intriguing NPR story about people returning to the idea of communal living here in California, due to the economy.

What's most interesting to me are the comments. One commenter named Andrew Huston wrote:"I lived in an "Intentional Community" in Silicon Valley that eventually broke down due to the power dynamic. The founders of the community were all about harmony and making decisions by consensus, EXCEPT when anyone disagreed with them and then they became despots. Others got into arguments about who could be "Greener than thou". Finally there were always arguments about who was putting in enough time in the communal garden, or making communal meals etc. The whole thing ended in tears."

Which is how I always assumed "Utopian" living would be, because we all have different ideas about what would be Utopia, so the only way to live "as one" would be to force one person's idea of Utopia onto others through enforcement of rules, etc.

Many of the commenters conclude that it might be best if we all just got back to the good old fashion knowing  your neighbors, having parents home to keep an eye out for the kids, kids who should be playing out in the sunshine and not alone inside with video games and junk food.

Now that's my idea of Utopia: Live and let live, but keep an out for each other.

 

Here's a little post about my week in a commune.

A Day in Malibu, Better - and Cheaper - Than Therapy

Sit back, relax and watch my Malibu Slideshow.

When Things Were So Bad They Were Good: My Goofy Website

Here's a goofy website (When Things Were So Bad They Were Good) I created (and need to tweak) as an assignment in my web design class. If you click on it and the Kodachrome navigation buttons don't light up, can you please tell me? Thanks! Sometimes they don't work in Internet Explorer.

As I said, I'm still working on it; it needs more text and meta tags, etc. And the theme is completely useless other than to humor myself. But, these days, humor is one thing I can still afford.

I Finally Made it to Glamour Magazine!!

No, I didn't contribute an article... but check it out. Yep, that's me!

In the '80s I lived my life according to Glamour Magazine, following every home-made facial religously, taking every personality quiz, i.e. "How Date-able Are you?", and trying out every hairstyle and smokey-eyed make-up technique. Finally, it all paid off!!

OK, so it's a few decades later than I hoped. I never imagined my fashion faux pas would catch up to me so many years later. Oh well, the editor Susan did mention I have a killer guacamole recipe. That's something, right?

Lesson to be learned? If you're going to be a slave to fashion, you, too, may end up in a "Real Person or American Apparel Ad" under the category "Believe it or Not" years later.

For more of my questionable '80s fashion moments visit my Flickr page.

Need Web Design, Web Content, Logos & More?

Hey everybody! (or whoever is still stopping by) I know my blog is neglected and dusty, but since I've returned to school I haven't had been blogging... as you see.

Here's some of what I have been doing in the meantime: Learning website design and Photoshop skills. If you need web design, Photoshop skills and web content written, I'm here!

Here's a website I designed for my husband's amazing recording console business.

And, as for my Photoshop skills, I've designed book covers, logos and more. Please check out my professional site to view the rest.

And here's an assignment I had: To change one face  into nine different images using various Photoshop techniques.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to visit. I'll try to stop by more often and visit your sites as well.

The Green Room of My Brain (Strangest Post Yet)

In the green room of my brain, just off the frontal lobe, pull back the curtain and you’ll see two impatient players waiting for their cues:  Imagination and Adventure. 

Imagination is off in the corner of the green room smoking a clove cigarette and drinking a glass of Cabernet, while drawing on a sketch pad.  She’s fidgety, doesn’t like what she’s drawn.  Tears it up. 

Meanwhile, Adventure is huffing and puffing on a treadmill, keeping flexible.  She’s got her muscles warm and passport ready.

“Holy crap!” snarls Imagination.  “What the hell’s she doing now?”

Adventure nods, while sweating on the treadmill.  “I know.  It’s ridiculous!  Why is she watching the Food Network again?  I mean, come on!  Who needs to watch Giada De Laurnetiis eating tiramisu in Rome, when she could be getting off her ass and traveling to Italy herself?”

“It’s not as if she can taste the damn food anyway,” Imagination agrees. “I’m good, but not that good.  Doesn’t she realize if she just used the two of us she could do some of these things herself – make a tiramisu, travel to Rome…? Something, anything.  Yet here we wait while she watches TV.”

The Conscience, holding a clipboard and wearing a headset, pulls back the curtain to the green room.  “Five minutes, kids – be ready.  I’m getting her to consider getting off the couch.  Just stand by.”

Imagination takes a big swig of wine and a nice long drag on her clove cigarette.  “Yeah, right.  I heard that an hour ago.”

“Well, I’m burning calories but going no where fast,” Adventure huffs.

“Hey, don’t be so hard on her,” Imagination says to Adventure. “At least she’s not watching re-runs of Sex and the City.  You can thank me for that.  At least I’ve got her imagining things beyond designer shoes and trendy cocktails.  Sure, she watches travel channels and food shows, but that’s because she’s imagining all the places she wants to go and recipes she wants to create.”

“Great!  Her passport’s expired and her cookbooks are getting dusty on her bookshelves.  Thanks for nothing!” Adventure says, wiping sweat from her brow.

“Please!”  Imagination is now seeing more red than the Cabernet in her glass.  “At least I’ve motivated her that far.  What about you?  Aren’t you the one to blame for her not even exploring as far as her own bookshelf?  I’m only as good as the motivation to go along with it.”

The Conscience pops back in.  “OK, Adventure you’re on in one minute!”

Adventure runs to the sink to wash her face, takes a big gulp of cold water and stands by the Green Room door for her cue. 

“Hey! What about me?!” Imagination asks the Conscience. 

“Oh, you’re not needed yet, so keep drawing.  But watch the wine intake.  Her thoughts are getting a little loopy,” The Conscience says.

“Thoughts?" Imagination throws down her pencil. "What’s she thinking about. She’s been watching TV for an hour?”

The Conscience answers:  “She’s thinking about her grocery list and it’s getting weird.  Already her list includes corned beef hash, saltines and sardines – she’s remembering foods from her childhood, specifically things her dad ate in the navy.  So cool it with the wine, OK?”

Conscience nods over to Adventure.  “Let's go!  You’re on!”

As The Conscience and Adventure run down the brain grooves, Imagination yells from the Green Room, “Where’s Adventure going, anyway?"

The Conscience calls back over her shoulder, “Her cats are out of food.  I told her she needs to go to the grocery store.  She can't put it off any...” She turns a corner so her voice is too faint to hear.

Imagination stares at her empty wine glass and stubs out her cigarette.  "Gawd!  I’ve got a lot of work to do."

Back to School: Student Moms and the Beer Tree

I've always been very bad at blogging regularly, but I'm going to be even worse now. I've just returned to school. And wouldn't you know that on my first morning I'd run into my daughter's eighteen-year-old friend. After she got over the shock of seeing her best friend's mother at her college, she said to me, "Ah, that's sooooooo cute!"

But I'm not the only mom wandering around the campus. In my first class, I sit near three other mothers. Two of whom have four kids each!! We all agreed we damn well better get good grades or our kids will never let us forget about it. We also agreed the kid in the back of the class with the too-loud iPod was just about to get four-angry-mothers on his head about to yank out his ear buds if he didn't do it himself. We each sent him the stare-of-death only people who've raised kids are truly capable of conjuring.

That same week, my husband and I took a trip to visit our daughter at her student apartment. We brought her groceries and she took us on a tour of her college-town.

As we drove by the ocean, she pointed from the backseat, "And that's the path I take to the beach." But I was too distracted. I elbowed my husband and pointed to a stubby, leaf-less tree in a front yard.

"Lovely!" said my husband as he stared at the tree. It was adorned with upside down, empty beer boxes covering its branches. Just then, a shirtless-guy in surf shorts passed us with a twelve-pack under his arm.

Great...

I reached into my purse to get my camera, but my daughter begged me not to take any pictures. I regret that. It was really something.

How Seahorses are Like Pizza and The Beatles

Recently, I got a call to audition for a new game show based on the Trivial Pursuit game, so I said "What the heck." I tried out. And what do you know, I passed the trivia test and went on to play a mock game on video. So I felt good about that. Even though, just after finding out I passed the test, a guy who didn't pass the test said to me before leaving, "Well, I guess you must be trivial." Ouch!

Trivia: of little value or importance

Thinking back to my last few days of conversations I've had with people, I think my fellow game show auditioner might be right. I am trivial. But these days (with rising food prices, sliding economy, warring nations), sometimes I crave those moments of little value or importance... as long as they make me laugh.
********************************************************************
While we picked our car up at the repair shop, my husband asked the mechanic why he had a bunch of tacks pinned into a wall-sized map. The mechanic said, "Oh, those are all the countries I've been to."

I said, "Wow, that's great!" and looked closer at the map. "Thailand?"

"Yep," the mechanic nodded. "Beautiful place. Wonderful people."

"Australia?"

"Uh huh, another great place."

"New Zealand?"

"Yep. Really beautiful, but cold."

"Kazakhstan, too?" I asked, seeing a tack in the middle of the country. That one really impressed me.

"Uh no. That tack is just holding up the map."
*********************************************************************

With my phone to one ear and a pen in my right hand, I struggled to make out every letter of an extremely long email address I needed.

"Okay, B as in Bob? A as in Apple... (blah blah blah)... at U mail? Is that U as in..." I struggled to think of a word that starts with U. "U as in... underwear?"

Doh! Only after hanging up did I realized the "U" in U mail is for University, as in university mail.
*******************************************************************
Because my husband and I have been married nearly twenty years, it's rare that I can tell him something he doesn't know about me. So when he mentioned a story in the newspaper about seahorses, I got excited. Seahorses!!  Now, that's a new subject for us, I thought.

"When I was a kid," I started to tell him, remembering trips to the San Francisco Aquarium, "I loooooooooved seahorses, was fascinated by seahorses..."

He lowered the newspaper and looked at me. "You and every other kid. Who doesn't love seahorses? Seahorses are like The Beatles and Pizza -everyone loves them."  
********************************************************************

So not only am I trivial, but I'm completely average. 

 

My Life in Lyrics

For Sunday Scribblings writing prompt - "Observations"

Ever notice how you can relate to whatever’s playing on the radio? Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just an egomanic-drama queen who sees my life as a film and the music playing in the background as my own soundtrack. I mean, didn't The Beatles get together right before I was born just to write songs for me? Hey, they did sing "Michelle"... and that's my name, so I practically thought so.

It’s the morning of my eighteenth birthday. I’m driving my metallic-green VW bug to school. I turn on the radio. The Beatles are singing “They say it’s your birthday…” And I smile wide as though they wrote that just for me.

It’s a brilliant blue-skied June afternoon. I just got out of school and am driving to the beach in the same VW bug. The sun is landing like diamonds on cars that I zoom by. Wind whistles through my car’s little winged windows, whipping my hair around my face.  The guy I went to the prom with is sitting in the passenger seat. “Hey, can I drive your car?” he asks. I pull over and let him take the wheel. The radio is on. He pulls away from the curb as The Beatles sing “Baby, you can drive my car…”

An earlier summer, while cruising down El Camino Boulevard with my girlfriends, I see a cute boy driving in a car somewhere between Heidi’s Pies and the Hillsdale Mall. We meet, and spend the following weeks talking on the phone. On weekends we rendezvous at a McDonald’s on El Camino Boulevard. Then one rainy Saturday night, he and his friend Mark never show up to meet me and my friend Jackie. After almost an hour of waiting, we get back into Jackie’s Nova to return home to Pacifica. As her windshield wipers swish-swop, Phil Collins' voice pours out of her radio: “There must be some misunderstanding. There must be some kind of mistake. I waited in the rain for hours… and you were late…” Oh, as if my pain isn’t sharp enough, those lyrics make the night all the more tragic (because as a teenage girl, a boy not showing up is a tragedy).

Yesterday, I’m driving down the 101, taking my daughter to live on her own for the first time, to her very own college apartment up the coast. My husband is following us in a van carrying all of her stuff. We’re excited for her. Her future, like the ocean below the 101, is spread out and waiting. Sarah Mclachlan’s voice oozes from the radio, “I will remember you. Will you remember me? Don’t let your life pass you by… weep not for the memories…” My glasses get steamy. I’m such a mellow-dramatic sap. As the music plays, one part of my brain focuses on the road ahead of me while another part of my brain plays a transparent slideshow of my daughter’s childhood. The photographic-memories overlap on top of the dotted lines of the 101. There she is dressed as a kitty for Halloween, selling lemonade for 5 cents, graduating from eighth grade, carrying her surfboard down the beach…

Back in the Valley, just hours after moving our daughter into her apartment and returning the moving van to the rental company, my husband and I drive over to Brent’s Deli in Northridge. We split a pastrami reuben and fries. It’s a weird day. The sky is mottled-gray. The air feels thick and muggy. I munch on pickles and look around. There’s a rocker dude in the booth in front of us – jet black hair, goatee, tattoos up his arms, maybe a little eyeliner smudged under his eyes. He’s wearing a Joan Jett and the Black Hearts T-shirt. That reminds me of driving with my daughter earlier in the day. I remember a Joan Jett song came on the radio. I try to remember what song it was, but can’t recall. Guess I was feeling foggy.

Music is floating from the speakers at Brent’s Deli. Here we are, just minutes from Reseda, as Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” plays overhead: “She’s a good girl, loves her mama, loves Jesus and America, too. She’s a good girl, crazy bout Elvis…Loves horses and her boyfriend too. It’s a long day living in Reseda…” And then I hear my daughter’s words in my head from the day before. “Welp, it’s my last day in the Valley.” Just the week before she told me how she was excited about leaving, and how she’ll miss everyone, “But, you know, it’ll be nice to get away.” I know. That’s how I felt twenty years earlier when I left home.

So… she’s on to her new life. And so are we. Before leaving, Lauren finally returned my guitar, so I’m going to pick up where I left off teaching myself chords, and playing mangling the few songs I taught myself, like “Mrs. Robinson” and “Moon River”…

Moon river wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style someday
You dream maker, you heartbreaker
Wherever you’re going I’m going your way
Two drifters off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see

As The Beatles would say, “Obla Di Obla Da… life goes on.”  And I'm pretty sure they wrote that just for me, just for days like yesterday. Or does everyone think that?