Liner Notes 1/17

What's Spits up?

My in-laws left this morning after spending the long weekend here, meeting their grandtwins for the first time. We hadn't seen them since last spring and it was lovely. (I didn't take nearly enough pictures of our time together because that's kind of what usually happens.)

Hal's mom, Susan & Revi

Grandpa Norm rockin' the bottle service

Over the weekend, everyone went to see the new Metropolis II exhibit at LACMA, an exhibit many of you have forwarded on to me (thank you) and one we have all been waiting for months to see. We're huge fans of the museum and between LACMA's NexGen passes and Hal's work we can go free every day after school, which may end up being the case now that the kids have seen the exhibit and fallen hopelessly in love.

For those of you not in LA, this video is just as cool:

Favorite moment of the week: A scene

Trader Joes Checker: Hey, man. How old are you?

Archer: Six and a half.

Checker: What is that, first grade?

Archer: Yeah. First grade.

Checker: What's three plus two?

Archer: What!!??? I can count by twelves all the way to two hundred and forty.

Checker: Is Math your favorite subject?

Archer: Yeah. Math and working on my personal narrative.

(sometimes it's hard to focus.)

I cut my bangs last night but instead of trimming them I adjusted the part so my hair would look thicker. I regret not taking step by step pictures because that would have made for a pretty awesome tutorial. If any of you bang-rocking ladies are experiencing hair-loss and would like to thicken up your bangs, let me know and I'll mock up a tutorial to post.

Hint: this is what your sink will look like afterward:

And your bangs:

Here's the before:

Not to sound dramatic but on Friday afternoon I almost died. I was crossing the street with Revi (after miraculously getting Bo to sleep via wrapping her up in my sweater) who was wide awake, kicking her legs as I sipped my Avo-kale smoothie when a driver, who wasn't paying attention, floored it on a left turn to beat oncoming traffic...Now, I know most people don't walk in LA but I happen to be one of the crazy ones who prefers to go by leg.

I have two of them after all and pay a premium to live where I don't have to get in my car to drive.

In LA, we don't have left hand turn lights most of the time so it's a constant battle, turning left. One has to yield to oncoming traffic and then floor it when there's a window to turn and/or the light turns red. I get it. I've lived here all my adult life.

But this was different. I was already halfway across the street when the car appeared, left blinker flashing, racing oncoming traffic without paying attention at all to whether anyone was crossing the street.

"Holy shit, this car's going to hit us."

But it didn't. The woman in the passenger seat screamed, the car swerved, I jumped out of the way... And then it was over and the car sped off and I was standing in the middle of the street with Revi, now asleep, clutching a kale fucking smoothie.

And then I turned and walked home.

These moments typically bug me out for days. I usually lose my appetite directly after almost dying. Instead I became incredibly thirsty and by the time I got to my front door, my cup was empty.

For whatever reason, it felt like one of those game-changing moments. But only because everything stayed the same. I was fine. I went back and got the same smoothie the next day, this time with both babies. Crossed the same intersection. Felt time surround me like a sort of god-like enterprise. Because that's what time is: an invisible government, every moment a newly elected president of presence. Seconds distinguish us from death, happiness, fear... The clock is always right and we are always against it. Every day, time hooks us up, pulls us back, guides us forward. Whether we insist on walking, driving, riding a unicycle along an electric line... We're all just a bunch of weirdos trying to get from one side of the street to the other, safely, or at the very least, more enlightened.

Over the weekend a very dear family friend's cancer came back. In an email, she eloquently wrote about her situation and ended it with the following:

"So here's the plan: we go forward with joy, hope, gratitude, courage and humor, we boost each other up with love and encouragement, and we don't take things too seriously..."

Some of the wisest words of all time. Thank you, Denise. We love you with our whole hearts.

GGC