"If that's what you have in mind, if that's what you're all about, good luck moving up 'cause I'm moving out."*

        Well….I got an apartment. Hooray! I will be living by myself finally!

        I’m just scooting in under the wire, too. I have always said I’d live alone before I turned 30, and since I’m turning 30 in August in 5 years, I’ve made it with time to spare.

        But I’m not going to lie like I usually do. I’m scared shitless. I’m 85% sure I’ve made the right decision and I’m just scared because it’s new and different. Not because it’s the wrong apartment and I should hold out and look at 25 more places before deciding. And anyway, there’s no going back because I put down the deposit today and I don’t exactly have tens-of-thousands of dollars to plop down deposits at every apartment in town out of panic.

        I did look at a lot of apartments, and met a lot of interesting people. Apartment managers seem, in general, to be an unappealing sort. Or maybe it’s just that they are in an unappealing position. They have to walk every dipshit off the street through the same apartment over and over again, usually to have that person (like me) show disdain and argue about décor. But since most of them are living next to rent-free, I don’t feel sorry for them one bit. My current apartment manager (a man with a gold medallion tangled in his copious and always exposed chest hair) spends his days driving to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf that is one block away, drinking tea and reading the newspaper, and then driving back home. At least, if I ever get locked out, I know I can walk over and find him. And maybe score a ride back home. (That is, if he recognizes me, which he never does even though he's known me for 8 years.)

My manager's chest hair is like this, without all the sex appeal.

        But here I’d like to share a taste of some of the other apartment managers I’ve met over the past month.

        Apartment Number One:

        After waiting in front of the building for 5 minutes, Ron (who graciously agreed to come with me) and I finally realized that the apartment manager was in the back of the building waiting for us. Why? Because she was a painfully shy woman in her early-thirties, who clearly didn’t want to have any interaction with human beings. She was practically hiding in the bushes when we finally found her. She cowered in the doorway while we “explored” the approximately 400-square-foot apartment. She pointed to the applications lying in a stack in the kitchen and tried to scurry away, but seemed torn knowing that she really wasn’t supposed to leave us alone in there. Things became clearer when she explained that her mom was actually the manager, but she was out at the moment. We thanked her and left her to run back into her own apartment and slam the door.

        Apartment Number Two:

        Sadly, I never met this apartment manager, because when I drove down the street I was so horrified that I immediately turned around and went home.

        Apartment Number Three:

        John was a Chinese man in what appeared to be late-middle age. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and had a truly offensive set of teeth. The first thing he said to me was, “Are you looking at this apartment for your son or brother?” What the hell is that supposed to mean? How old do I look? And who looks at apartments for her brother?

        He kindly offered to let me park in the garage, since it was street-cleaning day, but that was pretty much the last time he was pleasant. He proceeded to walk me through a building in which every hallway and the apartment itself was carpeted in blue pile. I think there must have been a sale on blue carpet (it’s probably an ongoing sale) when the building was erected because the whole place reeked of smoke and mildew. I was almost willing to overlook that, because the apartment was fairly sizable, and a one-bedroom rather than a studio. It also had a really big balcony, which I loved.

        But there were a few problems. There was no overhead lighting, the cabinetry was cheap, dark, hideous wood, and there was virtually no closet space unless you count the “hall closet” which, while being 3-feet wide, was about 8-inches deep, so I’m not sure what you could keep in there besides a broom. Or many brooms.

        I asked about the air conditioning (there was a wall unit in the living room but nothing in the bedroom), and he said I could get one of those “portable” air conditioners. Hmm, I’ve never heard of those. Do you think he was referring to fans? He also suggested that many people don't use the air conditioner because they're concerned about saving the planet. (Don't you guilt-trip me, guy!) Then I asked how old the carpet was and he said it was “only two years old.” I said I’d need new carpet and I’d need it not to be blue. He was surprised. “You don’t like blue?”

The portable air-conditioner is real! And it looks like a spaceship! And it costs as much as a spaceship!

        Then he started acting like I might not even get approved. He started saying things like, “We accept, at the very least, a score of 650, which is average. You’d have to have good credit.”

        I started to get offended and a little mad. Why is the guy with the unfortunate teeth and the Hawaiian shirt who lives in the smelly building talking down to me? Do I not look like a person with a respectable credit score?

        I have to admit that the balcony kept me in that apartment longer than I should’ve been there. I’m a sucker for sitting outside in the California sun. But as soon as I got out of that building, I felt nothing but relief. 

The view from the balcony of my current apartment. Sigh. I'll miss this.**

        Apartment Number Four:

        Jocelyn kept rescheduling me for one reason or another, but that was okay, because I was kind of sick of looking at apartments, and this one was affordable enough to make me suspicious.

        While I was waiting for her on the day of our actual appointment, I looked at the list of names by the intercom. I knew my friend Justin lived on that street, so when I saw his rather uncommon last name on the call box, I was excited. Oh, Justin lives here!

        When I told Jocelyn about Justin, she said he was her “favorite tenant” but that, if I mentioned her, I should refer to her as “Seda” because she’d recently changed her name. Okay.

        Jocelyn showed me all around the building and in the apartment. The apartment was listed as a single, which I’ve since realized is a euphemism for “studio.” I had thought it meant “one bedroom” but it doesn’t. So when I walked down the hallway to see the bedroom, I was bummed to find only a bathroom.

        And it was a nice enough place, and I liked it a lot. I considered applying and even took an application with me.

        But when I sent Justin a text telling him that we might potentially be living across the way from one another, he seemed a little upset. “Wow, that is so weird.” Thanks, Justin!

        But it wasn’t meant to be anyway. I just couldn’t picture myself there.

        My Apartment:

        Robert, my new apartment manager, is a story for another day (perhaps many stories, as time will tell). He’s a very friendly man from Hungary (which is, coincidentally, one of the few places I’ve visited in Europe), and boy, oh boy, can that man talk. In four languages, as it happens.

        But my apartment is quite lovely, has hardwood floors, tons of storage, and lots of western exposure. I will go into more detail on it as I live in it.

        And in the meantime, I’ve finally found a place to hang my “L.” (And lounge around naked, if I ever decide to. But I probably won’t, because I get cold really easily.)

*Lyrics from "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" from Billy Joel's super awesome album/magnum opus The Stranger. 

**Photo courtesy of Emily Sommer.

"Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well it's you, girl, and you should know it. With each glance and every little movement you show it."*

            I remember being approximately seven-years-old when I first saw Mary Richards hang her large, gold “M” in her new apartment on the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (I was watching it on Nick-at-Nite, not, like, on it's original air date, duh: I'm super young!). Her apartment was a fabulous studio with shag carpet, an enclosed kitchen, a tiny balcony and what appeared to be the world’s largest walk-in closest (which also seemed to house her bathroom).

            For many years I've thought about what kind of apartment I would have when I finally managed to afford to live on my own. I knew that there would definitely NOT be shag carpet (duh) and there would definitely be laundry and parking on the premises. And if I managed to finagle a balcony into the deal, so much the better.

            Alas, things have changed since the 70’s.

            I would like to show you the differences here.

            Example one: Mary Richard’s first apartment:

Good friend over to hang out whilst hostess does needlepoint
.

            Now, I make approximately the equivalent of what Mary was pulling down at the News Room as an associate producer at WJM over 40 years ago. Let’s forget for a second inflation and that her job was much more important and high-powered than mine. Not to mention the fact that she quickly became "best friends" with all of the people at the office (Ted, Lou, Murray, Gordy and even Sue Ann).

            Let’s also forget, for a minute, that Mary lived beneath Rhoda Morgenstern, who was perhaps THE BEST NEIGHBOR OF ALL TIME. I mean, how sweet would it be to have the funniest, goofiest and realist gal pal of all time living right upstairs? (And we’ll just as tactfully forget the fact that Phyllis and Lars lived downstairs.)

            But my life isn't like this at all! The more I look at apartments, the more convinced I am that it would be in my best interest to move to Minneapolis. In the 70’s. (My flux capacitor still isn't working...is anyone else's?)

            And there’s an additional problem: I have a large, purple “L” that I’d like to hang in my new apartment (should I ever find the proper abode). But think about it: how do you hang an “L”? There’s nothing for it to hang from, so I guess I’m going to have to bore holes in the wall and have it rest on screws. (Tacky.)

            Examples 2 through 4: here are some photos of the apartments I've found:

You can't even get the photos upright? Really?

         So, alas, my life isn't like Mary Richard's life...at all. Sigh. And that makes me sad. I can't hang my "L," I don't have a wise-cracking sidekick upstairs, hell, I don't even have a balcony/shag carpet/a really important job. In addition, this whack-job of a potential landlord can't even post photos of his (or her) available apartment in an upright fashion (literally and figuratively). 

                  I still love MTM and everything she stands for (powerful, single woman who doesn't need a man to make her feel worthwhile and who doesn't need a bedroom to make her apartment feel like home), but she kind of set the bar a little too high, didn't she? 

                  Fuck you, Mary Tyler Moore. (Aw man, I can't drop the f-bomb on Mary Tyler Moore. It's been tormenting me all day.) Darn you, Mary Tyler Moore (shake fist at sky). That feels much better.

*"Love Is All Around" The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song by Paul Williams.

"You ever have moments where your self-satisfaction runs so deep that you don't know what to do with yourself? I just had one."*

    Okay, so I’ve been AWOL for a while, but I have some really good excuses. For one, I got sick last Thursday. Today is the next Thursday and I’m still sick. I didn’t take enough Zicam and I haven’t gotten enough sleep, so it’s not so much my body’s fault as mine (is it weird that I consider my body a separate entity from my brain/personality?); nonetheless I’m still kind of upset at my body and not myself. But I’m hardly ever upset with myself, because I like myself so much (does saying it a lot make it true?).

    Secondly, I got back from Omaha on Monday to find a stranger living in my apartment. This is a true statement, though the stranger wasn’t a surprise. My friend Dara’s been in Poland studying for the last year or so and her new Polish friend Marta got a Fulbright Scholarship to do research at Cal State LA. She needed a place to stay for a few days until she scored an apartment, but a few days has become a week and god love her, she’s overwhelmed as shit and hasn’t found a way to get to CSULA on mass transit, let alone found an apartment. But…I don’t really play well with others. That’s kind of why I have to live alone. And Marta’s been sitting in my spot in the living room, so I don’t know where to go. And I can’t really write while she’s there, because I can’t settle into the proper headspace. So I’m hiding out at Chad’s apartment while he plays shuffleboard up the street with some friends. And no, Chad isn’t an 87-year-old retiree. 

Chad's fish tank. The best part of my new writing environment.

[It would probably be in my best interest to simply tell Marta she’s in my spot and offer her a new spot, but my cold is making me stupid and tired and so I just keep going to my room and since my room is pretty much wired in my brain as a resting space, every time I go in there I immediately fall asleep. That could also be the cold’s fault.]

    Thirdly, Chad is running for Neighborhood Council and I’m his campaign manager. Just kidding. But he is running. And his upstairs neighbor has a crush on me and keeps trying to give me CDs he finds in the trash or old VHS tapes of “classics” such as the little-known Judy Garland animated flick, “Gay Purree” in which she voices a Parisian cat.

Hmmm....

    Allow me to describe him: long hair, British teeth, pot belly and he's about 45-years-old. Every day he wears the same outfit: long shorts, wife beater (today no shirt, however), backwards baseball cap, white socks pulled up and black sneakers. He works as the apartment manager here and seems to think he and I would have a lot in common. He took Chad and I up to his apartment one time and it looks like Buffalo Bill is living there, except for the poster of Audrey Hepburn he has taped up over his bed. I will tell you more after we start officially dating. I’m not really sure why I get all the sexy men. It’s a blessing. And a curse.

This Buffalo Bill, not the famous American showman. (Silence of the Lambs: Jonathan Demme, 1991.)

    And d. I have some raucous mosquito bites, courtesy of the Midwest, which are making me feel gross in general. Plus I scratched the shit out of ‘em so they look disgusting too. AND, since I’ve turned thirty, I’ve found that it’s much harder to keep up with shaving my legs. I think my leg hair has started growing faster. What’s next? Ear hair? 

I am intentionally not zooming, as then my leg hair would be all up in your face. I also have a couch print going on.

    Anyway, as you can probably tell (since I’ve told you), my life has been a little crazy of late and that is why I haven’t been posting. I wish I’d been spending this time productively, but that, sadly, is not the case.

    Poor me.

*Quote is courtesy of my dear friend, Erin, who left this very phrase in my voice mail. Sometimes the quotes just fall in my lap.

"What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happening!"*

            I walked into my apartment on Friday afternoon and went to the kitchen to make a snack. There was a dead bee on the windowsill, so I freaked out (just a little) and went to grab a paper towel to clean it up. That’s when I saw bee number two, dead on the other windowsill. Number three was in the sink. I’ll fast-forward to the total body count: eight. Slightly unsettling if you’re a normal human being. Mind-numbingly terrifying if you’re afraid of bees (or spiders, cucarachas, beetles, bed bugs or those fake ladybug-looking things that are yellow or orange instead of red). Also, I’m a little bit allergic to stingy things. Not die-of-anaphylactic-shock allergic, but swell up like the Elephant Man allergic. (Just to be clear, the story of Joseph Merrick kills me, and I don't mean to denigrate him or anything. It's just that I look a bit like him when I swell. Also we share an astrological sign. Leo, in case you're interested.) 

        So I started crying, like a normal, grown-ass adult does, and called my friends Richie and Jerome, who were on their way to pick me up for a movie, and asked them to help me clean up the carcasses, as I’m a big, fat weenie burger who isn’t fit to live on her own or have a letter on her wall.

        Then I went to work online trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The answers ranged from informative to outright horrifying. One lady said they don’t come in through the windows, but through holes in the wall or air ducts, and then they head for the windows because they see the light. (Yay! My screens aren’t broken. But, boo! My walls are?) One guy said he found bunches of dead bees in his house each day and when the exterminator finally arrived, he unearthed a hive that was five layers deep and twelve feet high. (Can’t think about that today or I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.)

One of the many images that underplays the danger

 of both bears and bees.

        The most comforting thing I learned is that bees bed down when the sun sets, so I didn’t need to worry needlessly while I was sleeping (or trying to sit in my living room or pee or eat or drink water)—as long as I was ready to roll as soon as the sun came up, or, at the very latest, 10 o’clock, which is when the bees go to work for real. (Think of it as the post-coffee break, pre-lunch period, when everyone is really alert.)

        Richie and Jerome helped me by cleaning up the dead bees (Jerome even heroically killed one that was on death's door in the sink) and forced me to buy some Raid (more so I wouldn't be so nervous rather than because they expected me to unleash my wrath on the bees. I don't hate bees, I'm just a little jumpy around them.).

        I called my apartment manager, Sir Robert the Long Winded, on Saturday morning and explained the situation. I was headed to work (one of the few times I felt supremely grateful to be working on a weekend). He said that he’d try to call an exterminator and/or pest control, but that they don’t usually work on the weekends. Really? Don’t they? What if I had a family of tarantulas in my apartment (oh please dear lord never let that happen to me!)? Or a nest of scorpions? That would have to wait until Monday?

        I explained that I’m allergic to bees, though I may have exaggerated the extent of the allergy a bit, and told him that this was a seriously exigent matter.

        And guess what? He took care of it!

        Just kidding, he totally didn’t. And when I called him on Sunday morning, he said that he hadn’t seen any bees in my apartment, so he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. So I reiterated how serious the situation was: that I was afraid to go home and I didn’t want the owner to have to pay for a hotel room for me to stay in while I waited out the hellacious bees (Richie recommended The Roosevelt...it is close by). Robert T.L.W. said he’d call some more exterminators.

            Well, he did or he didn’t, but anyway no one came and I was super nervous when I woke up this morning. I could hear the hive buzzing in my kitchen—I just didn’t know where they were.

        Fortuitously, I ran into Robert on my way downstairs and he took me on a bee tour. And I took some pictures, which, like most of my pictures, are pretty bad. I don't have any fancy 18x zoom, so just know that the black dots are bees and the window in question is my kitchen.

Those blurry black dots are BEES.

        They’re in the air duct connecting my stove vent to the outside. And they’re having a blast.

        I will end this post now, as it’s far too long, but know this: I do not want to be responsible for the decimation of a beehive.

        I was super nervous putting honey on my yogurt this morning for fear they’d see me through the window and exact their revenge. And what if these bees are Africanized? What if they know that the exterminator is on his way and they come for me like they did for Winnie the Pooh? I cherish nature and all that, but I don’t want to die alone in this apartment covered in pustules and swollen up like an unrecognizable blimp. Aside from hoping to be an attractive corpse and, more generally, not die alone in my apartment, I’m still young and I have a lot of dreams for the future.

Africanized bee, raping a stick?

Honey Bee. Sweet and innocent and gathering nectar.

        More later.

*Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973). I’m sorry, I know it’s cheesy, but Easter is just around the corner, after all.

"God, I wish I could get her back!"*

One of these just doesn't belong?

       Sometimes I like to write about movies that I enjoy or just have opinions about. I did this with the film Heathers a while back, and I’ll likely do it again. I like movies a lot, sometimes even movies that I know aren’t “good movies.” Of course, movies are a lot like wine: the kind you like is the good kind, right?**

        I had the opportunity to re-watch St. Elmo’s Fire (Joel Schumacher, 1985) the other night while I was stripping my dining room table (Ron and I got rid of cable, and now I watch Hulu shows on the TV through my laptop, with “limited commercial interruptions”).

        It might be a sign of my advancing age (maturity? Cool! I hope so!) that when I watch movies from my childhood, I take particular notice of everyone’s apartment/living scenario. In this case, I think it was directly tied to the fact that I’ve been looking at apartments for the last two months and will be moving shortly (as I've mentioned previously). 

        In any event, St. Elmo’s Fire is an improbable movie about a very probable group of friends (except for one, which I will get to in a minute) who have just graduated from an EXTREMELY improbable alma mater: Georgetown University. They’re all trying to find themselves and figure out their places in the world. Of course, they all look to be in their early-to-mid-thirties, so it’s a touch unrealistic, but who cares? It’s mostly Brat-Packers, and we love them all. Or at least I do.

        The first time I saw this movie, I was probably 15 or 16-ish, and it seemed to me that it was a silly, stupid movie about silly, stupid people (how the hell did these characters get into Georgetown? I only know one person who went to Georgetown and she’s Mensa-candidate smart. And now you’re telling me a drugged-out saxophone player who can’t keep a job as an upholsterer went there? Seriously? Okay, whatever.). And while that original theory holds up for the most part, it seems like I may have short-changed this brilliant film its place in history.

        For instance, while garish and unreasonable, people in the eighties knew a great deal about style. Bold colors, large hair, entire walls of your home devoted to a photograph of someone with a Flock of Seagulls haircut, and lots and lots of un-ironic saxophone music abound in this film, and you know what? It is kind of amazing.

Billy/Rob wails on the sax. Without irony or a jazz context to support him.

        [A brief tangent: the 80’s used to be the decade we (and by “we” I mean my generation that came of age in the late 90’s but were born in the 80’s) were able to point to and say, “Can you believe things were ever that ridiculous?” But now, like everything else will eventually be, the 80’s are back in a big way. Leggings and skinny jeans and booties and wayfarers and baggy sweatshirts and leg warmers: it’s all back. I guess I should have known. Anything Michael J. Fox or Molly Ringwald did, said or wore will forever be cool in my book.]

        So, back to St. Elmo’s Fire. These people are out of college for all of four months and already their lives are falling apart. Alec (Judd Nelson) wants Leslie (Ally Sheedy) to marry him, but since she won’t, he regularly bangs a salesgirl at the lingerie shop where he buys Leslie gifts (although, let’s be honest: when a man buys lingerie for a gal, it’s not a gift for her). Alec and Leslie’s best friend, Kevin (Andrew McCarthy, one of my earliest and most enduring crushes) is in love with Leslie and knows about Alec’s cheating.

        Jules (Demi Moore) is a rich, coked-out slut who can’t control her spending and is stuck as executrix of her hated ex-stepmother’s will. But her real problem is her father doesn’t love her. (She also has a hot pink apartment. Not necessarily a problem, merely worth mentioning.)

        Billy (Rob Lowe) and Wendy (Mare Winningham) are an odd pair of best friends whose relationship exists solely because Wendy keeps giving the drunken, childish Billy (who has a wife and a child, by the way) money. Also, he’s intrigued by the fact that she’s still a virgin. At 22. What? Call Social Services! How dare this woman be a 22-year-old virgin in the 80’s!

        Kirby (Emilio Estevez) rounds out the group as the crazy person who’s so desperate to win over med student Dale (Andie McDowell) that he stalks her all over the city. Yeah, that plotline is kind of dull, so I most likely will not mention it again.

        Okay, so obviously, these people have “upper-middle class problems” and it’s not really that compelling to the world at large whether or not they’re able to work it out, but damned if I wasn’t glued to the screen the entire time.

        For one thing: Leslie and Alec have one of the coolest apartments I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge, wide-open loft space and they install this glass-tiled wall to separate the apartment into rooms. That blew my mind. And, honestly, it made me care less about Alec's cheating and more about keeping those two crazy kids together. For the sake of the apartment.

        Also, there are several lines in the movie where I thought to myself, “Is this where this saying came from, or did they just repeat a cliché?” For instance: 

        “I’m beginning to think there are no coincidences.” –Leslie

        Or this interchange between Kirby and Kevin:

        “I always thought we’d be friends forever.”

        “Yeah, well forever got a lot shorter, suddenly, didn’t it?”
      
        Then there's the line which Demi says to Rob, "You break my heart. But then, you break everybody's heart." Ouch.

        But perhaps my favorite line, spoken by Wendy just before she gives Billy her virginity:

        “Last night I woke up to make myself a peanut butter sandwich. And it was my kitchen, my apartment, and it was the best peanut butter sandwich of my entire life.”

        That quote I liked just because it seemed custom-made for me, since I’m moving into my first apartment by myself.

        But I want to underscore some of the significant things this movie has to offer. It talks about how hard it is to go from “student” to “working adult”: that is hard. There’s no road map, and at least these kids graduated in a booming economy. Hell, in the 80's people were wiping their butts with money. My generation graduated into horrible unemployment rates and a god-awful housing market while being told at the same time to wait to get married. Hell, at this point, marriage might be the only thing that keeps a person out of the poor house. At least you can split rent and utilities, not to mention the tax breaks.

        Also, just because you love someone doesn’t mean they’re the right person for you. This seems simple enough, but most of us still end up learning it the hard way.

        Another lesson: drugs are bad.

        And finally, and this one is difficult, just because you were best friends in high school or college doesn’t mean you’ll be best friends forever. People aren’t fully formed at 20, or maybe even at 30, so don’t beat yourself up if your gorgeous, wacky, witty gang of pals isn’t around forever.

        Before I sign off, I’d like to get to that friend that doesn’t quite belong. If you’ve seen the movie, I think you know whom I’m talking about: Mare Winningham. Why does she look, sound and act like a 45-year-old and how does she fit into this group of young people? Why is Billy so hot to sleep with her? Okay, so Mare was 26 when this movie was made, but so were half of those other “kids.” Why does she seem so old? And what’s more interesting: the rest of them have aged, but she hasn’t. She looks the same now as she did in 1985! Maybe she’s a vampire?

The only evidence she's older is that her hair is longer.

*Perhaps the best/dumbest quote from St. Elmo’s Fire, uttered by Alec (Judd Nelson) when he’s BY HIMSELF. A true testament to Judd's acting is that it isn't more ridiculous.

**Something my dad likes to say.

"This is not a Turkish bazarre!"*

So I had a yard sale last weekend. My apartment is overrun with seven years of accumulated junk and I plan to move in a couple of months. Also, I lost out on a couple of days of work and was facing a potential rent check bouncing situation.

When I told my friend Gabe I had a yard sale she said, “Where? You don’t have a yard.” And she’s right. I don’t. But I live in an apartment with an underground garage full of other people’s cars, so I couldn’t have a garage sale. And it would have been weird to write “Driveway/Garbage Room Access Area on the Side of an Apartment Building Sale.” It would’ve taken to long to make those signs, anyway.

Is this an Ernest yard sale?

Ernest Saves the Yard Sale!

I planned ahead for the sale. I advertised on Craigslist, I made a couple of posters, I went to the bank and got fifty dollars worth of singles so I could make change for people. I spent the Friday night before writing prices on stickers and affixing them to all my items.

I had lots of cool things to sell.

A bookshelf, an old CD player, a 300-lb television, a bunch of clothes, a keyboard, an entertainment center. There was a classy terrycloth bathrobe and an vintage looking jewelry box that I probably could've taken on the Antique Road Show and made me a fortune.

There were some other less cool things too, like stacks of VHS tapes, a Snakes on a Plane t-shirt, and a box of napkins with “Fabulous Cocktail Party” printed on them.

Then there were the things that I thought were cool that no one else seemed to think were cool: margarita glasses with little 3-D Mexican men in ponchos taking siestas against the stems. A fully functional George Foreman Grill. A wine glass my friend Bert gave me in college that holds an ENTIRE BOTTLE of wine (it's real!). And tons of pretty clothes that I’ve bought over the years that cost me a fortune.

A classy ad for a classy product.

I had a sort of hazy vision of how the sale was going to go down. I pictured a few moments of initial nervousness as strangers pawed through my stuff. Then I imagined that I would be rather bored—sick of collecting money all morning and attempting to read my book while neighbors kept interrupting to ask how much this or that item cost. Constantly having to get a dollar out of my stack of fifty one-dollar bills.

The reality was somewhat different.

Here’s what I learned from having a yard sale:

1. Old people are really bored.

A few of my elderly neighbors stopped by to pretend to be interested in one or two of my items.

The first was Chinese man, a professor of philosophy who lives with his daughter a couple blocks away. He said he was interested in my electric keyboard and asked if he could try it out. Since there was no outlet outside, my neighbor Diane agreed to take over while I escorted Dr. Lee into my apartment on the second floor to play the keyboard.

He tinkered around for a minute, playing some partial chords and then randomly striking keys. Then he seemed to lose interest in the keyboard and started asking me about what I did for a living and if I had a roommate. I wasn't nervous, because he was frail enough that I could beat his ass senseless if he tried any funny business. So I answered the questions as politely as I could while gently guiding him out of my apartment and down the steep stairs. His cane slowed us down a bit, as did the keyboard and stand I was carrying. But we made it back onto the street where he hung around for another 30 minutes telling anyone who looked at the piano that it was out of tune. Thanks, Dr. Lee.

Then we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to talk soon, but only because he doesn't do email--his eyesight isn't what it used to be.

There was a bit of overlap between Dr. Lee and Gigi, an elderly Filipino woman wearing a floppy-brimmed, black hat. In fact they spoke to each other for a few minutes giving me time to walk away and pretend to do something else for a spell.

Gigi started every sentence with, “Listen, honey…” but she said it like she was a tough cookie from Bronx, even though her accent was distinctly Pacific Islander. She just seemed to want some good conversation; she told me all about her neighbors, her gay landlord, his sugar daddy boyfriend, her daughters and her youthful appearance. Then she asked if I had a bathroom scale, pretended to look through my clothes, and told me I had really pale skin. Then she continued on her way. Thanks, Gigi!

2. Some people are really cheap.

No one wanted to pay full price for anything, even if the listed price was already one eighth of the original cost. For instance, one woman asked me how much I wanted for a sweater for which I probably paid $25.00, brand new.

I told her, “Three dollars.”

She said, “How about one dollar?”

I said, “How about two dollars?”

She said, “No.”

And she left! But I couldn’t believe that my sweater wasn’t worth a measly two or three freaking dollars! Or that she was so cheap she couldn’t spend two dollars. If I ever found a sweater for two dollars, I would buy it even if it was the most hideous sweater in the world because TWO DOLLARS IS FUCKING CHEAP!

3. Having a yard sale is pretty dull.

I invited all of my friends to come visit me during my yard sale. Only Laura and Bryan showed up. They stayed for about twenty minutes before the boredom was more than they could stand. I don't blame them.

When customers are there, it’s a little bit easier to pass the time. You make conversations or quote prices. But when there’s a lull, you just feel like an asshole sitting in a pile of garbage that nobody wants, waiting for the day to be over.

4. You have to have thick skin to have a yard sale.

When people are going through your things and making faces, or when someone refuses to give you two dollars for a perfectly good sweater, you start to feel rejected. I mean, this is stuff I paid FULL PRICE for! So how do you think it makes me feel when you act like none of it’s good enough for you? Huh? How do you think that feels?

5. You don’t necessarily make a lot of money having a yard sale.

I had visions of hundreds of dollars dancing in my head. I thought about paying off some debt, getting a leg up on some bills, maybe even going shopping. I’m not going to lie: I thought I was going to make about $600.

I made $125 and had to leave the entertainment center outside for someone to take for free (also humiliating, though it did go fast once I put a "Free" sign on it).

I don’t regret having a yard sale. For one thing, I was scared to do it and it’s always good to try things that scare you (except heroin and cliff diving).

What I am upset about is the large amount of crap that’s now sitting in my garage. Oh sure, I gave a lot of the unsold items to Out of the Closet, but there was stuff in there that I still want to sell, dammit! Expensive stuff for which I expect to be paid hundreds of dollars!

I’m already envisioning a bigger, better-planned, elaborate yard sale in which I offer shoppers champagne and hors d’oeuvres, and sell my big-ticket items auction-style for HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS. But I’m guessing that I will still have boxes of crap sitting in my garage on the day I move out of this apartment. Thus defeating the basic purpose of the yard sale and mocking me every time I park.

And I ended up having to take 49 one-dollar bills back to the bank.

*Please attribute the title of this post to Miss Katherine Brooks in Kevin Sullivan's Anne of Avonlea. I started muttering this under my breath after the sweater incident.

"I wish I was 25 again and had all my mistakes in front of me."*

   I was cleaning out the contacts in my gmail account yesterday (hoping to avoid another mass email debacle) when I did a face plant onto a horrible memory. I hit on the email address of a woman whom I’ll call Jane Emerson. She was listed as jane@lasthespot. That’s close to the real URL, because that’s where I worked when I worked for Jane Emerson. I worked for Jane for four whole days.

   In the Spring of 2007 (one of the shittier years of my life, it would seem—at least, the first half certainly was), I answered yet another job ad on Craiglist. You’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson mere months before when meeting Ty, the “producer” who had adult acne and braces and wanted to pay me to be his girlfriend. But no, I had to go out and apply for more jobs on Craigslist. Because I’m a goddamn idiot.

   But this one seemed genuinely awesome because it was a writing job and it involved social media and online publications and all the stuff I wanted to learn how to do. So I applied and had a phone interview with Jane. She seemed kind of great. We talked for a full hour on the phone and it was a good chat, though she did seem really concerned with whether or not she could trust me. She kept saying that her fabulous, up-and-coming, online magazine, LA’s The Spot, was going to be really cutting edge and giving people a glimpse into shit that hadn’t even happened in the city yet. As a result, she really needed an employee she could trust to keep her mouth shut and write content. I said I could totally do that. And she hired me.

   I met her at a huge apartment/condo complex in Marina del Rey, a really fun one-and-a-half hour drive from my apartment. Sigh. Just thinking about that drive makes me mad to this day. 

I will add a better map of how far this actually is when I have more time.

   She was a chunky, middle-aged woman with a long, black ponytail and even longer fake nails that did nothing to hide the fact that she was…chunky and middle-aged. She was nice enough, though, and offered me a soda or a cup of tea. I opted for water, since I usually feel weird taking refreshments from people I don’t know very well. I always feel like I’m imposing, even when they offer.

   She said, “You should really have a Diet Coke. I’m going to have a Diet Coke.”

   I accepted the Diet Coke. She directed me to the couch next to her desk.

   The apartment was a pretty nice, one-bedroom place with a big, airy glass door that led onto a balcony.

   “I rented this to use as office space, because if I stayed at home I’d never get anything done what with my husband and my son always bugging me,” she said.

   “Oh sure, that makes sense.”

   She set about explaining what my job was going to entail: essentially, I would take articles published by the AP and rewrite them in my own words so she could copy them onto her website without any fear of people being mad about that pesky little copyright infringement/plagiarism thing. I didn’t really understand it as such at the time because a) I’m an idiot and b) I really didn’t know any better because c) I was an even bigger idiot in 2007.

   I was excited because it was going to be my very first writing job and I was going to be paid: $8 an hour! Which was $8 more an hour than I’d ever made as a writer.

   She was excited. I was excited.

   Jane spent an hour showing me how to use the website and setting up my email account. She gave me my first assignment right away: she wanted me to “write some copy” about a hotel that was reopening in Hollywood. I felt great. It was the quickest first day at the office I’d ever had and I was going home to write for money! I took the AP article and stood up with my laptop.

   “Okay, Jane. I’ll get on this as soon as I get home and post the copy this afternoon.”

   She gave me a weird look.

   “No, you need to write the article here.”

   I sat back down with my mostly empty Diet Coke.

   “Oh. Okay. So, this will be my office, too?” I asked.

   “Yes. Until I know you better, I can’t really trust you to be honest about how many hours you’re working. But don’t worry. It’ll be fun! We get to sample all kinds of fun products. People are always sending me samples so I’ll write about their products online.”

   “Fun,” I said.

   “Yeah. For instance, I just got these today.”

   She pulled out a green box with the words “DietLife Chews” printed on the side.

   “They’re weight loss chews with ephedrine and caffeine. So they stimulate weight loss and they keep you alert. You should try one.” She offered me the box.

   “Oh, that’s okay. I’m good with the Diet Coke.”

   “Come on, try one! You look like you could use them. Plus, if you try it, I’ll let you write about it on the site!”

   I tried really hard to wrap my head around what she’d just said to me. Had I been called a fatty on my first day of work? By a fatty even fatter than I?

   And you know what I did? I took a chew and opened it and put it in my mouth. She was watching me try to eat it and probably would’ve watched until I swallowed it, but her Skype phone rang (she had to have been one of the first-ever people to use Skype on a regular basis).

   “Hi,” she said by way of greeting to whoever was calling her. Pause. “I don’t know.” Pause. “Well, it’s your turn to pick him up so I don’t know why you’re calling me.”

   As she talked, I ate my fat girl candy and looked around at our office. It was dawning on me that even though she said she’d only rented the apartment for “office space,” an awful lot of personal things were in there: artwork and clothes and framed photos and skis. It kind of looked like somebody actually lived there.

   “I’m working right now!” she shrieked into the phone.

   I looked out the big, glass door to the balcony, so it would seem like I wasn’t listening, even though the apartment was really small and I was sitting two feet away from her.

   Then she started crying, “I don’t know why you’re doing this to me!” Pause. Tears. “Wait…no wait! I—well then fuck you!”

   She slammed the headphones down on her desk. Then she swept everything off her desk onto the floor. I'm talking keyboard, headphones, cell phone, papers, REAL PHONE...etc...

   I sat there and tried not to move. Like when spiders or rabbits think you can't see them when they're immobile.

   “You know what, Lacey?” she asked me, looking up through her tears.

   “Um…what?” I swallowed my chew.

   “My husband is a fucking asshole.”

   “Oh yeah?” I sipped the very last drop of my warm Diet Coke.

   “I’m going to take a Vicodin and go lay down in my room for a while. You can get started on the article.”

   She went into the kitchen and poured herself a very large vodka. Then she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

   I worked for about an hour, waiting to see if she died and then I turned in the article and went home.

   That was the first day. I worked for three more days and then on Friday, she fired me over the phone. I WORKED FOR THREE MORE DAYS. When she fired me, she said she didn’t feel like my heart was in it.

*The quote is from Louie, my new favorite television obsession, written and directed by the incredible Louis C.K. I don't really wish I were 25 again. Clearly, that was a bad year for me.