My Best Friend

I lost my best friend today. She died of a cardiac arrest after surgery to take out a massive growth on her spleen. I thought I was going to bring her home today. She looked great yesterday. Life is precious.

There is so much to say about her. For now, I hope you visit her my space page here (www.myspace.com/travelingmaggie) to see the trip that we took through her eyes.

I miss her so much

I am devastated.

I Love Maggie

I love my dog, Maggie. I adopted her 10 years ago at the Santa Monica Animal shelter and it was love at first sight. A few months ago, we spent 120 days on the road traveling across the USA in my little 4x9 teardrop trailer. These pictures are from that trip. I rushed her to the hospital today and found out that she has an enormous growth in her spleen. Tonight, she is having surgery to remove the growth. I don't want to project. This is all I know so far. I will keep you updated on her status as I know more. She is my baby. I miss her being out of the house already.

Skinny or Die

I am not skinny. I am 6 foot tall and wear a size 12.

I hate to shop. I especially hate to go to the mall.

Now that we have established that, the other day I went to the mall to go shopping.

Big Mistake.

At first I was horrified. After a coffee(magic in a paper cup), I became amused. We, as Americans (yes, I am going to clump you into this generalization) are obsessed with “skinny.” In our society, it’s a compliment to be skinny. I have curves. I thought all women had curves. But, we can’t have curves in the clothes being sold today. I know that this isn’t a scientific study, but I went to 3 retailers browsing around with my coffee in tow, looking at what styles were in today. All I saw were descriptors of clothes as “skinny,” “toothpick,” “pencil,” and my favorite…”destroyed.”

What? I can see the conversation now with a 16 year old to her mother…”can you stop at J.Crew to pick up a pair of destroyed pencil skinny jeans for me? Pleeeeezzzeeee…. Oh yeah, and a pair of toothpick destroyers in a size 0.”

First of all, if you wear a size 0, you are already skinny. You can’t get any smaller. Is there a negative 0? Certainly I wouldn’t know. Usually, sales people walk away from me or I have to flag them down to find my jumbo size in “the back.” Have you ever even seen “the back?” I have no idea what is there, but a lot of the time, even the salesperson is scared of it. You can tell it’s a nightmare there when they sigh and say,” oh, everything is out here” and turn to chew their gum, twirl their hair and carry on the conversation with another employee on how so and so did this or that.

If you want to smell like you made out with a used car salesman while being deaf from going out all night, take a stroll through Abercrombie & Fitch. You are greeted with a 10 X 15 foot black and white picture of a man reaching in his pants looking for something. What are we selling? Jeans, yeeeah…right… So, the music is loud, the stench comes at you before you get in and obviously by the looks of the 12 year old salesgirl (wearing a top no bigger than one you would put on a barbie), I greatly surpassed the age maximum to get in the store and for them to care. Doesn't matter what you need or want, the music level is loud enough they can pretend not to hear you. Anyway, they don’t have my size and there is no “back.” I had to laugh at the men’s jeans with holes all over it selling for $100. At $8 an hour, that kid has to work 12.5 hours + to buy those jeans. In this day and age, do you think kids think like that?

Why did I even go to the mall, you ask? I wasn’t going to say but I went through a drawer of postcards from Aveda offering free trial sizes of items if you bring the offer into the store. Needless to say, I haven’t been to the mall in years. I had about 10 postcards. The sweet salesman looked at the postcards, looked back up at me...smiled. He looked back at the postcards and then back at me. Under his breath, said, “um… wow, this is from 2002...we don’t even carry this product anymore… (Smile...nervous laughter), this is expired (as he ripped the postcard in 10 pieces), and then finally, “this I can do!” He said that just about when I was starting to walk away...whew...saved.

I scooped up my 3 samples and off I went.

Until next year…

O Magazine Photoshoot

I grew up in Southern California and have always lived close to where the “magic” happens. I am 6 feet tall, but I have never considered modeling or anything of the sort. Well, once my mom took me to a model agency when I was in 6th grade I think (because I was a foot taller than everyone else) and they told me I needed to lose around 20 pounds. What??? I’m 13 years old! Needless to say, I left and never went back. I would rather play sports anyway. Humph! I showed them!

An opportunity came my way through a friend to participate in an Oprah Winfrey (I guess I really don’t need to put her last name here) Magazine photo shoot. Of course I was going to say yes! I did and they decided to include me in the shoot! They needed a male model in his 30’s so I asked my friend Dave (livesinavan.com) to come and join me in the fun.

For some reason, I was nervous leading up to the shoot. I mean, we’re talking OPRAH! Hello!!! They told me to bring swimsuits and wear beach clothes in brown, beige, and purple. Ah! Just what I have in my closet! Every pale skinned woman has a flattering beige swimsuit on hand. Hummm, this was going to be challenging. I threw all of my pasty colored clothes in a bag and off we went!

I have to be on time…to everything. Dave and I were going to be 2 minutes late and I started to panic. Obviously, I have never done this before. Dave (the veteran to photo shoots and being an extra on tv), told me not to worry and that we would be sitting around all day. What?? Nonsense!!

We sat around all day.

For this shoot, there were about 15 models posing to recreate “Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte” painting by Georges Seurat for the 21st century. I was cast as one of the women in the background sitting on a picnic blanket. We started the shoot about 3 hours late in overcast, cloudy and windy conditions. Was I complaining? Heck no!

One of the children in the shoot decided that she had enough. She didn’t want to stand in the freezing beach weather in a swimsuit anymore. At the last minute, they pulled me from the back and put me right in the middle of the shot, holding an umbrella and a child’s hand with my purple dress on.

I did my best to try and pose to the side. You know what I am talking about. Most women know that doing so will make you appear thinner. Well, the secret was out and I heard, “hey, woman in the purple dress...please stand straight on to the camera and stop turning” over the megaphone. Who me? I didn't do anything...

I don’t know what issue this photo will appear. It was an experience for sure. Even though most of the models had agents and were complaining about the long day, I didn’t mind. I was fortunate enough to have been invited. I look forward to seeing the end result. At least I will have photographic evidence of me in a dress…holding a child’s hand no less.

Sorry to say that David did not make it in the picture. I sure did enjoy his company, though! Thank you Dave for making the drive down to experience this with me. I look forward to visiting you up north and watching you doing stand up comedy!

Here are some pictures I took to give you an idea of the day... yes, that's "Niky Stevens" from the L Word.

Treasures a.k.a. "Stuff," "Junk," "Crap"

I am tired of “things.”

My garage is full of things that I haven’t looked at since I moved here 6 years ago. Well, I try not to look at it, but it’s a little obvious. “It” looks at me each time I try to sneak in there to do laundry or search for something. I was sick of “it” yelling at me all of the time. “Enough!” I say, softly… but firm.

I have to admit that the task of cleaning out the garage has haunted me for years. “Oh yeah, I will get to that later,” would be my response to people, knowing full well that later meant never. There was just so much crap; I mean “treasures” that I have saved over the years. Who doesn’t need a box full of plastic utensils, corks, paper plates, bottle caps, or other useful miscellaneous items? I know there is another box full of corks somewhere, but I dumped out the one I had to count 644 corks (at an average of $15 bucks a bottle…these corks represent $9,660…I feel sick for some reason..AND there is another box). I saved them to do some sort of project, but I can’t even think of anything now that I did the calculation of cost. Ugh. Anyway, moving right along…

I am getting some cold hard cash today by selling my ping pong table. Helloooo $80 big ones!!

I made some progress yesterday by throwing donated items in my car so I am forced to go to the Good Will instead of putting a pile back in the garage hoping for the best (which I have done too many times before). Ahhhh, PROGRESS! I can even put my arms out and shimmy side to side in the garage and not touch a thing! I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, however.

There are things in the rafters I need to pull
down and look at. Too many things to mention. Looking up there now with the look of panic on my face…ok, must…look…away…

I wanted to redo the entire garage and make it into a guest house. Better yet, there is enough room to push trailie in there, lay down Astroturf, knock down the side wall and put in a garage door…VOILA’!! Instant guest home! Set down some folding chairs and it’s all set. This is great motivation to continue to move through the clutter to a new trailer park heaven. There is happiness in my heart I can’t explain right now.

This is gonna be gooood!

Where Nobody Knows Your Name

I love being spontaneous.

I try and do something new and unplanned all of the time. It could be why I don’t like to make reservations too far in advance. It might mess things up if I wanted to skip town on a moment’s notice. You never know what is going to come up in life. For a week, I decided to get out of town and not tell anyone. Well, sort of. I flew so somebody needed to watch Maggie. So, I told 2 people. Other than that, nobody knew where I was.

Those “sneaky feelings” are exciting. Remember life before you had a cell phone? No really…remember? You had to make an extra effort to reach out to talk to someone. Now, you can reach in your pocket to contact anyone in the world. There is something to be said for getting lost.

I left town not knowing how long I would be gone. For the week I spent away, I explored a new city and grew to love it. I went to a play, walked around different neighborhoods, ate at some amazing restaurants and some not so good ones, bought some clothes, walked in the park, got my hair “did,” drank way too much coffee and unfortunately, laid on my death bed for 24 hours. I must have eaten something that did not agree with me. For those of you who are “lucky” enough to know what I am talking about, food poisoning feels like you are going to die. That’s how I felt anyway. For how horrible it was, I am fortunate it only lasted a day.

There is something to be said for exploring a town where nobody knows your name. I don’t have to worry about anything. I can look lost, I can be myself, I can break out of my routine. I did all of that. For a moment, I didn’t worry or miss anything.

Now that I am home, I am going to be a tourist in my own city. I know it sounds so cliché’ but I am seeing things differently. I am off to jump on my bike and ride along the beach before seeing some fast cars and interesting people.

Also, I will blog about some exciting activities coming up this week…

It feels good to be back.

Changes

I am doing things differently. It's been a while since I posted a blog and there are reasons for that. I do enjoy blogging and I am sure many of you can relate to what I am experiencing. I am human, although sometimes I wonder how open I should be online.

I am a private person.

When I tell people that, they look at me as if I told them a joke since it seems as if my life is posted for the world to see. It is and it isn't. There are few people in my life that have seen me through the ups and downs... even they don't know everything. Probably a good thing. I am sure it's like that for everyone.

I am looking forward to the future. For now, I will continue to live in the present.

For the small amount of time that I have done things differently, opportunities have presented themselves. I am paying attention. I see exactly what is in front of me.

I will continue to write about my thoughts, experiences and lessons along the way.

Stay tuned...