Best Year Ever

In 2008, I...

Kissed my husband on New Year's Eve, made a wish. 
Peed on a pregnancy test. it was positive.
Was robbed.
Was broke.
Experienced the publication of my first solo book.
Got my first bad review. Cried. 
Got my first good review. Cried. 
Mourned the death of a best friend.
Signed books at my favorite bookstore(s).
Road-tripped from Portland to Vancouver in a hot-boxed Subaru.
Helped Archer pick out his first show-and-tell.
Carried a human-child in my body.
Celebrated my twenty-seventh birthday.
Learned to sew. (Thanks, Mom.) 
Wrote my first pilot.
Came to terms with the fact that most likely it wouldn't sell. 
Wrote a short film. In Production. 
Gave birth to a perfect daughter.
Spied on my son as he whispered in her ear that he loved her.
Participated in electing my first President.
Protested in the streets in support of marriage equality.
Camped out in the living room with my family during a power outage.
Said goodbye to a best friend who had to move away. 
Received my millionth unique GGC visitor.
Cried in my children's hair.
Re-fell in love with my husband.
Finally fell in love with my life.




...is so grateful.

GGC


Letter to my Skinny Jeans

Dear Skinny Jeans,

Hi. It's me, GGC. We broke up about ten-months ago when I was two-months pregnant. It was sudden, I know and I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. One day you were on me and the next? Folded up and pushed to the back of my closet like yesterday's news. I didn't mean for it to happen so fast. It's just that, my hips thickened a lot faster this pregnancy and past the eight-week mark, I couldn't wear you anymore. I couldn't wear any of you. Not even you, Cheap Monday stretch-jeans that I so adored and wore pretty much every day last year. Not even you.

Us: days before I outgrew/left you for maternity jeans.

It wasn't you, skinny jeans. It was me. I went and got knocked-up and couldn't wear you anymore. I gained forty-five pounds and have yet to lose them all. I'm trying, though.. I'm really working on it and I'd appreciate if you could find it in your pockets to forgive me for leaving you in the dust-bunnies, in an old GAP bag, no less.

Every day for the past two-months I've tried you on. Pleaded with you to zip over my flabdomen. Begged your zipper to forgive my waist and your buttons to reconcile with my hips. And yet, so far nothing has been resolved. It's obvious that you're still upset with me for leaving you. It must have been hard for you to see me parading all over town in my paneled-Seven jeans and maternity leggings. But! Or should I say, butt....

You'd have to be blind not to see I want you (on my) back and I'll do whatever it takes to prove to you that I'm worthy again. I'll work out more and eat less. I'll give away all my maternity jeans once and for all and I won't even ask for them back this time. Good riddance, maternity jeans!

See?

I think you and I are capable of wonderful things, skinny jeans. Great adventures, plenty of high-heeled nights on the town and boutique shopping for sweaters and tops and vests. A new wardrobe to compliment you. To compliment us. (You would look GREAT with my spanking new handbag, FYI.) I want you to feel wanted again.

I hate that we can't be together, skinny jeans. I'm tired of pretending with my fat jeans. They're comfortable, sure, but they will never make me happy. Not like you have and will (HOPEFULLY!!?) once again.

So please, beloved skinny jeans, cut me some slacks. Open up your fly and let me back in.

I miss the way we wear.

GGC

Merry Everything

With love, 

The GGCs

Parenting in the 411 Age

One of my favorite topics/conundrums: Is it possible that in the age of information we know too much? Cue Carrie Bradshaw a la I can't help but wonder....


I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Is Google your parenting co-pilot? How has the Internet helped and/or hindered you? Do you think it's possible to know too much? Or has knowing "everything" empowered you as a modern parent and/or person? 

And in other news, I'm closing shop/unplugging for the next week, busy with family and fireplaces and sale racks to DIE. Can we please talk about how CHEAP EVERYTHING IS RIGHT NOW? 

Talk about donning gay apparel, I mean... 

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Enjoy your families, my fabulous friends. 

GGC

Memo to Husband: You're Cute






GGC

Pictures of the Gone World

me in 2003

I had an epiphany in the car this morning on my way to Archer's school. It was a song that did it as songs so often do. Ask me what the song was and I don't even remember. It had been many years since I'd heard it, a time capsule of cacophony, suddenly leaking memories.

I moved here when I was 18. I grew up here. Lived in a house full of guys, here. Got engaged when I was twenty before calling it off when I was twenty-one. I did drugs in bar bathrooms, here and got so drunk I woke up in my own puke, here. I had sex with strangers, here. And friends. And other people's husbands. Men my father's age. And then I cried about it. Laughed about it. Felt empowered and ashamed. Wanted to move so I left. Missed L.A. so I came back. Made plans to join the Peace Corps... to save myself from becoming an LA cliche. Met Hal the day the forms came in the mail. Got pregnant and now here I am.

I used to live off Melrose, behind what used to be a Smart and Final where my old roommates and I shopped for parties we frequently threw. It's an American Apparel, now, which reminds me of the Warehouse parties they used to throw downtown. One memory leads to another until it's hard to recognize myself. In this new life that isn't really new at all. Driving every day down Melrose, past the cheap shops and ATMs and thrift stores where I used to trade in my clothes for someone else's; to drop Archer off and then pick him up from school.

I've lived here nearly a decade. No one recognizes me from the past. Last week I saw a guy I one-night-standed (or maybe he one-night-standed me) years ago, while hiking, my newborn daughter strapped the chest he once fondled. I'm good with faces so I recognized him. Our eyes met for a moment before he looked away. Had no idea who I was, that we were naked together once. Maybe even twice. When my hair was still blonde and my eyebrow was pierced. This stuff happens all the time.

.....................................................................................

I got a shipment of books in the mail last week. Books with stories I wrote and edited in High School and when I should have been in college but didn't go. Stories first published a decade ago under names that were not mine and names that were. A "best of" collection of some of my many lies. Truths, too, but mostly lies. Secrets hidden in teenage stories for teenage readers. Dreams of being taken seriously as a writer after being laughed at by Lawrence Ferlinghetti who told me to my face when I was nineteen, that I was a "sell out." I had introduced myself to him as a writer and a fan.

"What do you write?" he asked.

I showed him the books I was signing and he frowned.

"Every writer should be so lucky to "sell" something," is what I should have told him but instead I smiled, pretending, and asked him to sign my copy of Pictures of the Gone World, with its pages torn and the following passage highlighted:
'We think differently at night' she told me once
lying back languidly And she would quote Cocteau
'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am constantly shocking'
Then she would smile and look away
I wanted so badly to be the girl in the poem. Sometimes I still do.

.............................................................................

A close friend of mine recently moved to Encino with her husband to raise her son. Out of Silverlake and into the suburbs. Selflessly pulling herself out of what was. Growing up.

I never understood why. "Your apartment was so great," I told her. "You could have raised your son there just as easily."

But I get it, now. After one song on the radio, I understand. She didn't want to take a trip down memory lane every day she drove her son to school. She wanted to be able to listen to the radio without falling down the rabbit hole of yesterday or five years ago. Or ten. She wanted to make a new life without having to bury the old one, being reminded daily of who she once was: the single girl who ate breakfast at noon and dinner at midnight. Who was reckless and careless and destructive. She didn't want to see that girl at every intersection, in every store window, ex-lover's eyes.

A disclaimer for those of you who plan to raise children in the playground of your youth: Beware the boulevard of broken heels and broken hearts. Ghosts forever lurk in storefronts and sidewalk cracks and songs on the radio. Take the long way to school. Listen to CDs.

GGC

Kissing My Parent's Asses Once Again

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I pretty much worship my parents. My family is my happy place for sure and I can only hope that one day Archer and Fable will feel the same way about Hal and me and our merry little foursome. Today's Momversation is about becoming your parents...

A girl can dream. 



Also, because so many of you have asked, (which is super flattering! Thank you!) my eye makeup situation equals the following:

MAC "honey lust" shadow for lid
MAC "humid" shadow for crease (if you have blue eyes i recommend .... "plumage" for crease.)
MAC "showstopper" shadow for under eye and across the eyelid with MAC* eyeliner brush
MAC liquid liner for edges of eyes. 
L'Oreal Lash Architect mascara in Black/True Brown. (I've tried every mascara, designer or otherwise, and this is by far the very best.) 

Also swear by an assortment of pinky MAC lipsticks including Twig, Hug Me,  Fabby, Pink Plaid and Burt's Bees lip shimmer in Watermelon, Raisin and Guava. (Pink lips make green eyes POP! If your eyes are blue, go with red.) Blush by: Tarte Cheek Stain for cheeks and Studio Fix powder (in Hi! I'm super pasty!) for the face. 

*I've been using MAC products since 7th grade. MAC doesn't test on animals, gives a shitload of money to charity and has superior products all around. Except for their mascara. It sucks. 

Happy Makeuping!

GGC

Nipples that go throb in the night. And the morning. And also the afternoon.

My nipples are on fire. 

It honestly feels like someone is grating them like cheese before sprinkling them with shards of glass only to top it off with a few spritzes of lemon juice. It fucking kills and has since I started nursing Fable eleven weeks ago. Maybe it's because of the breast reductions. Maybe it's just me. All I know is that nursing my baby is agonizing. And yet... I love it. WTF? Perhaps the pain is what is making it so rewarding for me. 

Kind of like getting a tattoo and how the pain is almost.... pleasurable? Like I endured in order to leave the parlor with a beautiful scar. I don't know if I would be as into tattoos as I am if they didn't hurt. It's the pain I crave more than anything, honestly. The feeling of the needle. The buzz. Watching something become permanent. With me always. A sign that I'm a masochist? Perhaps. But that's like, fifty-seven blog posts worth of TMI. 

So let's get back to nursing...

ouuuuuuuuuuuuchhhhhh!!!

My post about how to breastfeed after a breast-reduction is up on Work-It Mom, today, but I wanted to follow up by sharing  a bit more with those of you hoping to breastfeed  post-op: It hurts. Bad. Probably because there isn't enough milk being produced (all those broken ducts) so the baby sucks that much harder to try to maximize consumption. Or maybe it's just that I've had two reductions so my boobs are that much more effed to the up. It also could be that I'm nursing Fable around the clock and my nips are permanently in her mouth (Trying to feed her the least amount of formula as possible) so the poor dears are sucked to the bone. Then again, maybe I'm just a puss. 

I guess, I just don't want to mislead anyone by making it seem easy because it isn't. It's hard and painful and will likely leave permanent scarring (not that breast-reductions don't scar like crazy but you know, FYI.) 

I will say this: one day I'm pretty sure I'll miss the pain. And that in itself is reason to grin and bear it. At least it is for me. For now.  

.............................................................

I do want to support everyone's cause if they/you should decide to breastfeed post-op and let you know that I'm here if you have questions, concerns. I was unable to breastfeed Archer past the six-week mark and even then, I pretty much solely pumped, and mainly supplemented with formula so I've been on both sides of the bottle, so to speak. 

Fore more information you can read my "how to breastfeed after a reduction" post, here. Word to you, mothers. 

GGC

Liz LEEEEEEEEMOOOOOOOON!

First of all, this:

Fable Lue at 10 Weeks

Second, today's Momversation is about Oprah which reminds of me the 30 Rock where Liz Lemon says "Liz Leeeeemmmooooooon" , which coincidentally I have been saying (to my own amusement) for weeks and can't stop. (Seriously. Please send help!)


Third, Do you use an IUD? More specifically a Mirena? Because we're talking all about Inner Uterine Devices up in here. Come on down and join the fun!

Fourth...


Sorry! I know. I'm like a Jewish Grandmother except I'm only 3/4 Jewish and not a grandmother. I do refer to bottoms as "tushies," though. So, you know... Shalom aleichem!

GGC

Oh! And thanks so much, Christine, from Glamour.com's Storked for featuring a short excerpt of Rockabye, here!  

Happy Trails. (Wait! Don't Leave.)


We met in the summer of 2002. I was walking the dogs past his window when he leaned out at me and introduced himself.

"Hey there you crazy diva bitch. I'm Frank."

Caught offguard by his friendliness (?) at first I smiled and waved. Kept walking. On the way back, Frank was still there. Sitting in his window smoking a joint.

"I want you to come over for dinner tonight. I'm cooking," he said.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Um... Okay?"

"What's your name?"

"Rebecca."

"Let's be friends," he said.

It was the first time since preschool anyone ever said that to me. Frank was a breath of fresh air during a time I desperately needed it. My fiancee had just moved out. Our friends had sided with him in the breakup and I was alone.

Frank would be the first friend I met through nobody but myself and the happenstance that he had just moved in next door.

"Yes! Okay. Let's be friends."

That night I brought a bottle of wine to dinner and Frank cooked Steak. He didn't have a bottle opener in the house and I was a vegetarian so we ended up jumping in his car and picking up food (and a bottle-opening device) to bring home. We ate all the food and smoked all the pot and drank all the wine and laughed and told secrets and became friends.

For the years that followed we were as close as two people could be. When my lease was up the following year, Frank and I got an apartment together. We traveled together and ate together and made mistakes together and told each other "I love you" before we went to bed. He protected me from the bad guys and made me feel beautiful, loved, important during a time I wrestled with whether or not I would ever be any of those things to any person. He took me on dates. Brought me flowers every week. Filled my gas tank and washed my car on the weekends. He was the man in my life for many years, my partner and the person I went to when I needed to be bailed out. Helped. Cared for. He never judged me. It was unconditional, his love. Like family.


Frank was there when I peed on my first pregnancy test. He was the first person to show up at my bedside the day Archer was born. He's been there every day of my life since we first met almost eight years ago. Driving south to sit behind me at a funeral. Accompanying me to family functions. Holidays. Watching my dogs when I spent the night away. Reading every draft of every manuscript I've ever written.

Last night Frank came over with a stack of photographs -- a yearbook of our troublemaking and debauchery as best friends and we laughed and cried and fuck! Those were the days...


I've known Frank was moving for weeks, now, but it didn't hit me until this past weekend. And boy, did it hit me. Hard. Since then I've tried not to think about it but it was impossible not to last night, leaning against Frank's beat-up Honda Passport, the same car we went shopping for a bottle opener all those years ago, holding hands, crying in each other's hair, saying goodbye.

Last night we said goodbye.

I know that his leaving Los Angeles is a good thing. It's time for him to make a change. Still, it's going to be hard living, here, without him. It's going to be hard on Archer and me and all of us.

But so blessed have I been to have had such a co-pilot on so many you-wouldn't-believe-it-if-I-told-you adventures. To have experienced a great chunk of my life by Frank's side. As his neighbor. His roommate. His dance partner. And best friend.





Frank, my darling. My heart runneth over with love for you. Distance can't divide, no matter how far the drive between us. The miles of hallway that separate our rooms, shennnigans will find a way and bring us together forever and ever amen. 

Good luck on your journey. Happy trails...



P.S. Fuck you for making me cry right now. Annoying.

GGC

bblogging with onehAnd

ive had a bAaby on my lap all dsy. this is hiow i type with a baby on my lap and then i go back afetr the post has been written and fable is skleeping and i change all the typos and mistakes and try to make sense of my thoufhys. (insert something funny here).

is it weird that i feel likev i can do anything right now (including typing a hundred words a minutewith my left gand.)? that i can be everywhere AT ONce? i csn mske dinner and blig and mert friends for birthday drinks and trim my bangs without getting little hairs im my eyes.

some womrn get post-partum depression but i think i have post-partum... something else. i feel like im high. on coke or ecstasy erxcept the only side-effects of this kind of high are illegible blog posts and the occasional reminder that i can't do everything. be everywhere at once.

exhibit a: every day for the past several weeks archer has been late for school and its my fault becsaue i have A hard time getting out the door with two children. once archers teacher said to him, "ARCGER? you need to wake up earlier so you can be at svhool on time' and i tried to explain that archer gets up plenty early. ot's me. i'm thw one who needs to wake up earlier so i csn fget him to school on timwe.

and yesterday i filmef a momcversation episode while breastfeeding fable. i didnt havea chjoice. the natural light was almost gone ad fable was sick and the only thing that was making her happu was my boob in her mouth so i sat in front of my webcamn and i tried not to flasg the camera my nipple.

two nightas ago i burned the grains. i cook up these really hearthy whol grains every night so i can eat them in the morning with fruit for breakfast but last night i fdorgot they wrre in the pot. i just forgot. i thoufht i could nurse fable and watchsummer heights high and remember the grains but then hal was like, "qhats that smnell?" ad i was like, @:"oh, fuck!" and then i not only burnt the grains black but i ruined the pot i think. "we might need to buy a new pot now,' hal said and tyhen i got all defensive an asaid 'well im sorry i can't do everthing righy for fuck;s sake!''

the truth is, thjough? not a wholke lot can get me down rifht about now. not even a broken pot.

(insert photo of fable and archer herte.)

i've wantd to write this epic blog postabout how happy i feel. how in thde momment i am. so diffrent this time around. with archer i flt like =a failure and a loserrt anfd i didnt believe in myself or our family. i was scared of what might happen. i snuck ciggies during naotime and dreamt of running away.

so digfferent this timr.

(insert a picture pof me smiling like a lunatixc.)

ive been meaning to blog a love letter to my life and tell it how awesome it is but i've beeen nervous... becUSE i want people to rekate to me and maybe im too happy rifght npw abd people think its annoying and theyre sick of my big fat smile and want me to shjut the hell up already and 'tell the truth.' because its supposed to be hard with two kuds ANd a thousand other respoinsibilities. ivev b een told that im supposed to stressed. supposed to be having a reak hard vtime. 'just wait!' everyone keeps tellimg me. 'it gets harder and you'tr going to come off your high and crash!' of course its not easuy but i wasnt expectying it to be. i was't expecting this either -- this feeling of sublime happiness and love for all people and things et al. i m genuinely happy. busy AND exhausted and a littlre ovwerwhelmed but mostly just happu.

embracing my imperfetions. emcracing my chilfren. accepting myself. wandering arpond with an idiotic smile on my face all the livelonfg day and to hekll with the typods.

ggc

Finally I Get the Chance to Tell the "Unsolicited Advice Fairies" to Shut Up

Today's Momversation is about unsolicited advice and how we should all just focus on our own damn families instead of concerning ourselves with situations that aren't our own.

Momversating with Heather, Alice and Daphne. All of whom know a thing or two about the Advice Gestapo. (As I'm sure we a ll do, right?)



What do you think of unsolicited advice? What do you do when someone stops you in the street, or on your blog and tells you (in so many words) that you're doing it wrong?

.....................................................

**This really happened to my friend, Barbara. Swear.
***I love you.

GGC

She Thinks I'm Hilarious


(12/3/08 = Fable's first laugh.)

GGC

Chapter Two: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Teensyness

This month's video is only two days late, which means that maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this whole two-kids thing. 

Without further ado... Fable's Chapter Two:



musical credit: Rogue Wave "Eyes"

GGC

*watch chapter (month) one, here
**watch Fable's prologue, here

Before It Gets Complicated


He watches her first from afar. She runs to the swings and Archer's eyes follow. He kicks the sand and looks back at me and then out at her. He waits for her to notice him but she's too busy climbing the ladder to the slide. Up she climbs and down she goes and Archer continues watching. He watches until he becomes self-conscious and looks back at me. I'm watching him and he knows it. Gives me a look like, "stop looking at me, mom. Can't you see I'm busy. I'm doing something, here. I'm figuring stuff out."

I look away. Don't want to embarrass him. I rock Fable in my arms and blink sideways, spying through my sunglasses as Archer casually makes his way to her. Looking back at me to make sure I'm not looking. Until he forgets about me. Stops looking back.


My friends used to be all boys. Because when you're little it doesn't matter who's carrying what equipment. There is little pressure. Few repercussions. No one understands their bodies yet. What makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy. No one gets drunk and accidentally has sex. There is little risk of violent jealousy or jealous girlfriends/boyfriends who forbid relationships with friends of the opposite sex. There's no marriage. There's just... the occasional hand holding under the swings.


About a year ago I met a guy at a bar. A little harmless flirting ensued over cocktails and cigarettes on the patio. He asked me my name and in return gave me his. He asked me where I was from and in turn told me his story. He had recently graduated from college and moved west to pursue film and music. He had a band. He casually mentioned his childhood in New Jersey. The small town he grew up in, outside of Princeton where his father was a professor. The story became familiar. The name of the town. His last name. Until. Wait. What did you say your last name was again? What was the name of that town? Oh my God. I know you. I knew you.

As it turned out, we had been friends before. In New Jersey where I was born. Our fathers worked together and our mothers were best friends. The world was pea-sized and we were clutching it together, slurring our mutual words of disbelief.

"Your name," I said, "was my first word. Your name!"

I shook my head until I went cross-eyed and he just laughed. He laughed and then I laughed and then he called his mother who was asleep and I called my mother who was dreaming.

"You were my first friend," I told him. "We were two-years-old..."

"It's been twenty-five years, then, since we last saw each other. I don't know that there is anyone else in the world I can say that to. "

Attracted to each other by fate or familiarity, we both spent the remainder of the evening trying to catch up, old friends that never made it past the dawn of our lives... What if I never moved away? I kept thinking. Would our friendship have lasted into the afternoon?

.........................................................


I watch Archer and think back on that night. It was well over a year ago when it happened. We exchanged phone numbers and promised to get together. Meet for drinks. Dinner. That I would come out and see his band play. We promised one another we would absolutely remain friends because what were the chances!??? Old friends from New Jersey meeting at a bar in downtown Los Angeles all these years later? Unable to recognize one another because we were two-years-old when I moved away? It had to have been a sign of somewhat.

Or maybe it was just life.

We texted each other several times. Made plans that fell through. Never saw each other again. It's complicated, now. Too complicated, perhaps to re-friend a man who used to be a boy I bathed naked with in my mother's garden.

He's in a band, you know? He lives in a loft with a bunch of dudes and I have two kids and I'm married andandandand.... It's just, you know -- what it is.

"Maybe we'll run into each other again. Or something," I think.

I don't know why watching my son play with my friend's daughter makes me think of this man I don't know but once did: The boy who was my first word.

I think, maybe I should call him. Nah, I remind myself. What would be the point? I have plenty of childhood friends I no longer speak to. Teenage friends I have long lost contact with. Highschool friends. Adult friends. Boys that became men. Relationships that became complicated because of sex and drinking. Drugs. Girlfriends and boyfriends and lines that should not have been crossed but were. Mistakes of mine. Mistakes of theirs. Love lost and found and confused and "I love you, too. But not like that..."

Less complicated.


I miss my friends.
The ones that got away. The boy friends who were never boyfriends. Our adventures on skateboards. Our trips to the desert. Bunched up in the passenger seats of beat-up trucks. Poop-jokes and take-out and smoking cigarettes out of bedroom windows. Trading mix-tapes and quoting movies and drinking out of each other's plastic cups.

It changes when you get married. When you have kids. It gets complicated. And that's okay. I'm happy, here, feet in the sand, watching Archer experiment with friendship. Letting go of fading photographs to make way for digital cameras.

I just... I miss Andrew. Even though I never really knew him. I miss him. I miss all of them. And watching my son play with his girlfriends makes me think of all the boys I loved and lost. The friendships that seemed iron clad when we were young. The friendship bracelets and trees carved up with our names, promises we would always be close. Like brother and sister. "Forever," we told each other and ourselves.

It's sad to know, in retrospect, we were wrong.

I guess sometimes I just miss the days when it wasn't so damn complicated. When men and women were boys and girls. When it was just two people who loved the swings.



GGC

Weighting to Exhale

Today on Momversation, Maggie from Mighty Girl talks baby weight with myself, Heather and Daphne. Timely, timely, timely.

Helllloooo closeup! Oy. Sorry about that. 



In other news, show me your money shots, people! I'm collecting your favorite snaps of your favorite children over here. And they're lovely.

Actual posts with actual words to come. Promise. 

GGC