MONDAY SUNDAY

The weekend was so exhausting I was tired right through Monday. Actually all of last week wore me out because I got off the couch, missing the last week of Olympic events, but since swimming was over I found myself less transfixed by the games. And I missed Ian. But yes, I got off my couch and resumed my mad social whirl. If it can be called a whirl when you’re home by 10pm. But hey, that’s after working all day so it’s pretty whirly.

Thursday night I went to a party to celebrate the opening of new production offices for a company that a couple of my friends have set up. Ms. Joey impressively raised $6 million to finance an independent feature. Get down with your bad producer self girl! Very proud of her. Very happy to go slurp mango margaritas and have tortilla chips with guacamole and salsa for dinner. I also got to catch up with old roommate, dear friend Richard. He got married two years ago and twins arrived shortly after that and he’s kind of fallen off the face of the earth. I love that, other than being really busy, he’s still got all the irony and neuroses that I’ve always loved. He makes me laugh.

Friday night Lori came up with her kids and did NOT ask me “how is the dating going” – at least not until I brought it up the next day. She must have heard me the last time we got together - the time when she asked total strangers if they had a single son that I could date – and I told her that shit like that made me want to avoid her phone calls and why couldn’t she just be happy that I’m happy? Which is good because she’s one of my oldest friends and although we could not be more different we still know each other so well we can practically finish each other’s sentences.

She came with her two youngest kids, Hailey who’s almost 11 and Michael who is almost 13. We went and saw Napoleon Dynamite because there really aren’t that many movies out there for kids and they’ve seen most of them. So Lori and Hailey thought Napoleon Dynamite was totally lame and Michael and I thought it was okay. The guy in front of us thought it was hilarious and laughed uproariously, almost insanely throughout. Then after the movie Michael and I quoted lines from the movie to each other and giggled so I guess it was a little better than okay. It just be that it’s really directed to people with the humor of adolescent boys.

We got home from dinner about 9ish and Lori and I were reminiscing about when we saw “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” and since I own it we decided to share it with the kids. And it was only after the movie started and the word “fuck” was flying around that I raised an eyebrow and wondered if perhaps this movie wasn’t really appropriate for kids under the age of 15. That’s how old Lori and I were when we saw it. And after we saw it we spent the rest of the night crying every time we thought about it. And then there’s the sex and the suicide and the smothering. We told them to cover their eyes. The movie is still a wonder. And it still makes me cry. And it’s really not PG-13 at all, but the kids liked it anyway and I’m not their mom.

We all got to sleep about 11:30 and then got up again in what seemed like only a few hours to take Michael out to Woodland Hills and drop him off at Temple to attend a Bat Mitzvah. Lori had driven him up from San Diego just so he could do so – and so we could hang out. There was a little drama about what Michael would wear. She wanted him in khakis with his plaid shirt tucked in with topsiders. Michael and I were both pretty yeeesh at those shoes. He was willing to wear the outfit she picked out for him but with the shirt untucked over a black t-shirt and with his black converse tennis shoes, which we both thought looked a hell of a lot better than those topsiders. This would be one of the massive differences between Lori and I – and I think it comes down to the Orange County fashion sensibility being quite a bit different than Los Angeles. Especially when you’re talking about people over 30. Or it could just be that Michael and I are equally eccentric about what we think looks good. In any case she guilted him into wearing the ugly shoes and I wondered if I’d had children would I make them wear ugly clothes. Especially if I was going to drop them off at an event where no one knew me and no one ever would so I would never have to suffer their judgmental comments at the soccer field where the married with children gather to continue the hierarchical hell of high school.

But anyway.

After we dropped Michael off we headed out to Malibu since I don’t know my way around Woodland Hills and Malibu is just a left turn off the freeway and a much nicer place to eat breakfast and shop. And although I swore I wouldn’t buy anything I found the greatest skirt that I knew I wouldn’t find anyplace else and so I bought it. Because I’m weak. And because I knew that there would be days, and nights (that’s how fabulously versatile this skirt is) when I would be thinking, “If only I’d bought that damned skirt…) And I really try not to regret. We weren’t shopping that long when Michael called to say that the Bat Mitzvah was over, but there was a party that night and could he spend the night and get a ride home tomorrow.

Um, no.

So we got back in the car and went and got him. And sat in traffic on the 405S. By the time I got home I was exhausted and took a little nap. Well I tried to take a nap. I never actually slept because I was on the phone all afternoon. So when I had to decide to drive down to the LBC for a CD release party, or out to Echo Park for extreme wine tasting, I opted for Echo Park because the drive was much shorter and I was running out of gas. Plus, Bud called me to tell me that she was on her way to another party up in Laurel Canyon before we were to leave and well, all that is just a lot of driving since we were heading down to Irvine the next morning for a little wholesale shopping.

Bud got over to my house about 7:30 and we headed out to The Echo, a club my friend Liz runs where they have monthly wine tasting. And this isn’t like any wine tasting you’ve ever been too. No. It’s extreme wine tasting which pretty much means that by the end of the evening you’ve consumed about one and half bottles of wine – should you choose to do so. They are held out on the Aimee Semple MacPherson celebratory terrace which is actually the patio out back of the club which looks like a penitentiary exercise yard decorated with festive Christmas lights. It does sit directly under the blue neon cross in the sky at the church where Aimee proselytized to the masses.

The wine tasting is conducted by an English gentleman named Julian who exhaustively researches the theme for the wine tasting as well as the wines and often gets blasted throughout the evening. The first one I went to was tied to the Tour de France with wines featured from the countries of selected riders. At one point during that evening Julian called us all cunts. Which, according to him is a British term of affection. Saturday’s wine tasting featured Argentinian wines and was thematically tied to haunted lighthouses and the horrible events that got them that way. I never really got the tie-in, but the reds were quite good. So was the Chardonnay and I’m not partial to those. In any case a good time was had by all although I really should’ve eaten dinner before I went because I was so hungry on the way home ‘round midnight, that I believed that I really needed to go to Jack in the Box for a little sustenance so that I wouldn’t wake up with a hangover.

Because it’s so much better to wake up at 5am with the most horrible indigestion I’ve ever experienced. But I wasn’t hungover. No. It just felt like my head was stuffed with cotton batting and everything I did was in slow motion. I headed over to Bud’s in Santa Monica about 10am to drink coffee and moon over her fabulous new Heywood Wakefield dining room table – pure art – it’s so sad that craftsmanship is almost non-existent in furniture anymore. It’s all become more or less disposable Ikea – even the expensive stuff isn’t made all that well.

We headed down to Irvine to hit the sale and get “special friend prices” and fab wool coats and cashmere and other fun stuff. Considering how wiped out I was I did pretty good as far as focus. This isn’t easy shopping. It’s dig through the racks for treasure hard work. By the time we were out of there we were hungry and tired. Profoundly tired. And because we couldn’t think of anyplace in Los Angeles where we could sit on the water and have snacks and cocktails – hair of the dog and all, we stopped in Long Beach at the Marina where McKenna’s Creek has been reincarnated as McKenna’s on the Bay.

I grew up in Long Beach and hanging out there has a level of familiarity that is both good and bad. Good in the sense of – how much fun is this to sit in the sun and feel the breeze and watch sailboats while sipping a bloody mary and eating a crab and cheddar on sourdough. Bad in the sense of – I’m so glad I got out of here and that I’m not one of these people who lives in the bar at McKenna’s. Which may have gone away but all the people who used to hang out there came right back and they’ve only lost hair and gotten fatter and more wrinkled.

Getting home after two bloodies took a little effort as alcohol and sun, while initially putting the wind back in our sails, left us feeling dehydrated and head-achey. It was all I could do to get home and fall back on the sofa where I talked on the phone for hours until I finally had to go to bed.

And that’s why I was too tired to write anything yesterday. I never got a chance to rest myself all weekend. But I had fun. Next weekend should work out better as Monday is Labor Day and it's all about resting.