Sunday, November 21, 2010

Wow. This is embarrassing.

It's ALREADY November! Didn't I post on here, like, yesterday(ish)?

Today, I'm returning temporarily or perhaps permanently to my original blogging format, where I focus individually on the five words in this blog's title. I wanted to tell you in advance so you could go get your husband out of bed, call your mom, and text all of your texting friends who are not your mom. They will NOT want to miss this exciting change.

So...

Live. A lot has happened since my last post about boots and movie props. In October I traveled to my former country of residence, Bermuda, with my family. During our two-week stay, we mostly went to the pink beach and drove a golf cart around to look for escaped golf balls who figured out that they really weren't part of a REAL sport, but rather, were merely the victim of a more sophisticated version of "Kick the Can." Our newly-found 11 golf balls are currently trying to reconnect with their past in Orlando, where their Mothership landed many years ago. Unfortunately, some golf balls are separated from Mom early in life and are dropped quickly from the confines of their comfy, spherical molds only to get whacked in the head by their new, adoptive parents who think that paying $250 to walk on grass and hit their new children in the head is not only sporty but also bound to impress the boss. Where have our values gone? No wonder Russia won't let us adopt any more golf balls.

Laugh. My daughter is four. She is a "Knock-Knock" joke whiz. Seriously, we're pretty sure she's a genius. Allow me to brag and share her latest work with you:

Her: Knock Knock! 
Me: Who's there?
Her: Chicken!
Me: Chicken who?
Her: Chicken fingers!


Learn. I don't know WHY on earth THIS just popped into my head, but have any of you ever stopped to wonder what EPCOT means? "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow." Did you know that "prototype" means "an original model on which something later is patterned"? Did you know that I lived in London for four years, which explains why sometimes I put the punctuation inside the quotation marks and sometimes I place the punctuation outside the quotation marks? There is a reasonable explanation, even if you never wondered or noticed why I do this. It is simply an homage to the Queen. It has nothing to do with my *ahem, directly correlated*  California vacation on which my family took my sister and me for two weeks during the 11th grade where I missed (translation: completely abandoned with glee) my English class's in-depth analysis of To Kill A Mockingbird via book, movie, discussion, and punctuation review. While I was out galavanting for 14 glorious days, throwing caution to the wind, I was underestimating the 50% value of that semester's grade for which old Mockingbird accounted. I didn't give my English class one thought while at the beach, amusement parks, the Hoover Dam, Red Rocks, the Spruce Goose, Catalina Island, or Vegas. (Note: some of the aforementioned sights are not in California. I may be from Kentucky where I missed two weeks of English class while on vacation, but I did not miss ANY geography classes.) The part of that glorious trip that I still recall with such fondness is the exposure to new customs and ways of life. For example: I will never forget the breakfast I had in Encinitas: scrambled eggs with salsa, fried potatoes with salsa, orange juice with salsa... We brought these western ideas back to our homeland, where no one had ever heard of salsa before. Or Mexico, which is now California.

Like. I put the "Like" category in here so I would force myself to realize that it's okay to really appreciate something without saying that I loved it. I use the word "love" a lot. I can't help it. I'm a lover. I'm a hugger. I'm a midnight...nevermind.

Love. I love NYC. This place is like a lottery ticket in the sense that the impossible is actually possible here. Confirmation of that blasts you in the face every time you step onto the sidewalk from your apartment door. In the past few weeks I have: been in the presence of legendary songwriter, Bob Dorough from School House Rock and Blue Christmas fame; met the author, illustrator, and star of a new children's book, Christmas Feet, featuring a gorgeous French Bulldog, Carlos; screened a new short film written by a good friend, David Tianga; become friends with an HBO documentarian and a guy who is a producer of a Broadway musical (warning: turn down your monitor volume). Everyone here is doing their thing. And everyone is doing it well. I love the challenge of living among these folks. The atmosphere and network keep you moving, keep you creating, keep you thinking. Maybe this city is actually more like buying a lottery ticket. You might lose. You might get lucky. Anything is possible here...even the impossible. But the point is: you have to work at it to find out. No one ever won the lottery without scratching off the silver box.