I love LA. Deal with it.

I'm sitting in my office wearing a cashmere sweater with fingerless gloves and a hooded jacket. I'm wearing a wool monkey hat, and uggs. It's 61 degrees. Christmas weather. I think I am officially a southern Californian. It sprinkled this morning. More of  mist really, and the sky is grey, and from the moment I woke up, I've had the strong urge to drink coffee and write beat poetry, whilst contemplating world events, and suicide. So THIS is why people in other places are so creative and hard working! The weather is terrible! Or at least not perfect. Perfect weather makes it very difficult to take things seriously.

just any old January day in Southern California

Yesterday Nipper took Jack to a carnival at the local public school. I knew I was going to have three solid hours to edit my video and get stuff done. But the sun was shining, and everything I don't know about using final cut pro, combined with the beautiful weather, sent me into a minor tremor. I looked at the monitor, checked my iphone, tried to stream a movie on netflix on the laptop, while editing on the imac, checked my phone again, updated facebook 4 times, and then when it really felt like I was about to have a seizure, I got up and walked away.

as cold as it's gonna get

Emerging into the sunshine, my blood pressure immediately dropping, my heart rate slowing, my eyes finally able to lock and focus, I decided that cleaning cat poop off the patio was a much more pleasant way to spend my afternoon that editing. THAT'S how beautiful the weather is. I would rather stand in my yard scooping cat turds out of the decomposed granite than sit in my pretty pink office and work on my own music video. It's a miracle ANYTHING ever gets made around here, much less documented on this blog. I'm about 10 projects behind. So many things to write about, but I can't get myself to come inside, sit down, and write. It's really really nice here!

Our jacaranda is like something the lorax made up

If I'm ever to be a serious anything, we are just going to have to move. Between the sunshine, and the jacaranda blossoms, and the night jasmine, this place is like eden, and anyone who says different has never lived in Michigan in February. Longest month of your life.

dead tree walking...

When Nipper Knapp and I first saw our house, it was like stumbling upon an oasis in the desert. Seriously we were parched. We had looked at every nasty little saltine box from West Hollywood to Eagle Rock. One place we looked at had a enormous yard. This thing was like a football field. It had two giant oak trees at the back that provided shade for the huge expanse, of what had clearly been, a latrine. The previous owner had either had horses, or cattle, or two of the largest dogs ever, because the lawn was COVERED in poop. I'm not a realtor, but I don't think "sea of poop" is one of those buzz words that helps sell a house. We passed. 

We were so disheartened by what we had seen in our price range, when our realtor called us about this place, and we told her we didn't even want to see it. But she persisted, and as soon as we walked in the door, we knew. The yard was unfinished and there was this dead tree in it, but we saw it had a lot of potential. Plus the house was wall to wall windows. Most of the other houses we had looked at, were like submarines. Just little portholes for peering out at the dangerous neighborhoods they were located in.  

Well it turned out that dead tree in the yard was a jacaranda, and it wasn't dead at all. (If  you grew up south of Texas, you pronounce jacaranda: Hock-a rhonda, and if you grew up north of it, you call it a Jack-a-randa). It is one of the greatest things about our home. It was in this state, because the people next door had insisted, that the old man who owned the house cut it back hard every year, so that it's blossoms wouldn't dirty up their driveway. Imagine that! The lady with plastic flowers PLANTED in her garden was opposed to delicate purple petals raining down on her property. Oh I don't know, only one of the most beautiful things witnessed by man, in the universe!!!! Needless to say, we have let it grow, along with the carpet of lavender petals it leaves on our lawn. So, uhm, I guess what I'm trying to say is "Look at my pretty tree, and SUCK IT, crazy neighbor!!!!"