Moving

  By Eden M. Kennedy | February 22, 2012 - 12:20 pm | ,
14 Comments

Posting will be light this week, as we’ll taking all of this . . .

over here . . .

. . . tomorrow.

I’ve just finished shredding five years’ worth of bank statements and I’m about to sort through a drawer full of cords that belong to electronics we haven’t used since the last Bush administration. I’m hoping to weed so relentlessly that all we’ll have to move will be our beds and a bag full of shoes. I’d start a Pinterest board about my new interest in possession-free lifestyles but I’m afraid it would be nothing more than an ode to freshly refinished wood floors, aesthetically challenging floor lamps, and Fluevogs. Actually, that sounds pretty good, I might do that anyway.

All of which is to say: posting will resume next week from our new location!

Belatedly

  By Eden M. Kennedy | February 15, 2012 - 11:58 am |
14 Comments

In March of 1995 I was sitting at the bar of Jimmy’s Oriental Gardens reading James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss when in walked Jack.

I had just broken up with a guy and was telling myself I wanted to be alone for at least two years before I even thought about dating again.

Michael Jordan had just had a 55-point game against the Knicks, and there were two commercials I liked at the time: one had Louis Armstrong singing “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” and the other was a Jaguar spot that used Etta James singing “At Last.”

“I like that song,” I said one day a few weeks later, sitting on my couch watching a Lakers game with Jack. The next night he came into the bookstore where I worked and handed me a CD.

“See ya ’round campus,” he said, and walked off.

The bookstore had a café attached, and in the afternoons Jack would come there with his friend Dave after they got off work. They were building a house on Bath Street and would sit at a table on the sidewalk, their t-shirts and shorts and boots covered in sawdust, drinking Heineken.

My manager, Leslee, and I peeked out the front window at him. “Nice legs,” she said.

A few weeks later Jack and I slow danced to “A Sunday Kind of Love” at Jimmy’s while Willy closed up the bar and Dave sat slumped in a booth watching us. “I need a girlfriend,” he sighed.

Dave has a wife and three kids now.

Happy the Day After Valentine’s Day, when all hidden meanings are revealed.

We’re having some fun

  By Eden M. Kennedy | February 10, 2012 - 7:58 am | ,
12 Comments

I appreciate the fact that no one’s called me out for not posting ever day like I said I would. It turns out that committing to daily writing, keeping your editors happy, working a straight job, getting a condo into escrow, and looking for a new place to live all at the same time is kind of a drain on mental resources. The good news is, I’ve managed to keep all of those other balls in the air, if not this one. The bad news is, the emotional roller coaster that is packing up all your shit and finding a new place to put it is not one I feel good about sharing online. One minute I’m swept away with excitement and possibilities! And the next I have abandoned all hope and am picturing myself living under a porch with a sleeping bag and a flashlight. Jack is the one keeping us all together emotionally, physically, and spiritually at the moment. Jackson’s job has been to stay home sick all week, complain about homework, and be exceedingly huggable. Here’s a photo he took of his nurse the other day:

Actually, maybe Peewee is the one keeping me together spiritually at the moment. His expression here conveys more about patience, humility, and acceptance than I could ever put into words.

In other posting news, here’s a link to the latest Popcorn Whisperer, where the cast of Twilight continues to discuss recent plot developments in season two of Downton Abbey. Special guests this week include Robert Downey, Jr. (in the same photo as last week because I can’t remember where I put all the Iron Man action figures) and the Incredible Hulk, who I love because you’d think he’d just be screaming all the time, but he’s actually very thoughtful.

Gossip

  By Eden M. Kennedy | February 6, 2012 - 2:52 pm |
10 Comments

On the way down to Oxnard to pick up Jackson from a sleepover Sunday morning I was going back and forth between Patton Oswalt’s Finest Hour and Aziz Ansari’s Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening, and by the time I got to Jackson’s friend’s house I had tears running down my cheeks from laughing. So when Jackson got into the car I was all, You have to listen to this! It’s so funny!

I often forget that Jackson’s not 30 years old, and then I’m lunging for the power button to turn off something that I only that second realized is completely inappropriate for someone who’s actually 10. Fortunately, we were only about four blocks away from his friend’s house (i.e., before he heard anything that would change his life for the worse) when Jackson paused my iPod and said, “Mom, I saw Britney Spears yesterday.”

Me, of course, I was thinking, Sure, you saw somebody who looked just like Britney Spears, ha ha, put Aziz back on. So I said, “Oh, really? Hm.”

But he insisted. “Mom, I’m not kidding. I saw Britney Spears. She brought her kids to the trampoline place.” And then I remembered that we live in Southern California, and that Britney probably lives somewhere in the Valley and has two little boys who would totally want to spend their Saturday afternoon at a place filled with trampolines. I pictured Britney chugging a Big Gulp, kicking off her Uggs, and jumping right in until somebody got a black eye or hit their chin and bit off the tip of their tongue.

I wasn’t sure what else to say. It’s not every day Jackson sees a celebrity so I thought it would be polite to be interested.

“What was she wearing?”

“Some green bathrobe thing.”

“Uh, hmm. A bathrobe? Did she jump on the trampolines?”

“No, all the parents were standing around her. She had four bodyguards. I know they were bodyguards because they had those curly wire things coming out of their ears.”

I knew that was the end of the conversation because then he put Aziz back on and we didn’t talk the rest of the way home.

I can see!

  By Eden M. Kennedy | February 3, 2012 - 9:05 am | ,
25 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I finally got my eyes checked. (Life List! Or, if not Life List, then Life Errand.) After checking my eyes and examining the eBay reading glasses that have been living on top of my head for the last two years, my optometrist told me that I might be a good candidate for contact lenses. Apparently there is science that allows people who use reading glasses to have tiny, wet reading glasses hugging their eyeballs all day long, while also allowing them to see far away, drive without crashing into walls, etc. “How does that work?” I asked skeptically. My optometrist felt that it would be a better use of our time not to explain the physics of lenses, but to make me follow the tip of his pen until my eyes crossed.

Monday I went to pick up my contact lenses. They were hard lenses, so he put some desensitizing drops in my eyes to make them easier to adjust to. I spent the next three days with watery eyes, being unable to read. At the same time as I got my lenses I had also purchased a new pair of back-up bifocals for times when I didn’t want to deal with the contact lenses, which turns out to be always. I always don’t want to poke myself in my wandering eye, or watch both lenses disappear up into my brain with little hope of getting them out without the use of abrasive tools and prayer. I know, there’s an adjustment period, and I didn’t really give them a chance. But I am a glasses person, it seems. I know that now, deep in my heart, and I embrace it without regret.

Before! After!

What is this?

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 30, 2012 - 6:56 pm | ,
43 Comments

Jack says it’s a “potato bug.”

I almost stepped on this little fellow last week when we were walking along the bluffs. Since it was still wiggling its feet a bit, Jack flipped it over so I could take a proper portrait. It was huge! Like, two inches long. My god, it looks like a dinosaur, doesn’t it.

This handsome dinosaur bug is most assuredly dead by now, and I say it like that because I’ve been reading Evelyn Waugh.

Peace out

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 27, 2012 - 1:00 pm | ,
3 Comments

Videos of people waiting and trying to be still because they think I’m just trying to take their picture delight me for some reason.

If that didn’t do it for you, maybe my latest thing over at The Stir will suit your mood. My best actor and actress Oscar predictions are informed by nothing but whimsy and hubris, as will surprise no one. Have a wonderful weekend wherever you end up standing, sitting, or lying down, on camera or off.

This is why I cannot shop online

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 26, 2012 - 6:17 pm | ,
26 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I pulled my old wool royal blue pencil skirt out of the closet, and then I wore it to work and it looked terrible on me all day. It bags in the front and it bags in the back and the waistband itches and the zipper fell out when I was 23 and a dry cleaner on east 86th Street sewed it back in for two dollars. Yes, when did I buy the Sad Blue Skirt? In college, which was 30 years ago, from a thrift store, when the skirt was already at least 20 years old. So I wore a 50-year-old skirt to work the other day and was shocked to discover that it was tired. It needs a rest. It wants to go to the Old Skirts Home.

The next day I was up in La Cumbre getting my watch repaired, and you can’t get your watch repaired without walking past the J. Crew store. (You can, of course. You can avoid it completely. YOU can. I chose not to.) The J. Crew store was having a sale. Since Jackson was with me, I said, “Let’s go in for a minute,” and he said, “I’m going to stay out here on the bench,” and I said, “Stay where I can see you,” and then I went in and in the space of 45 seconds found four skirts that had started out in the $135 range and were now down in the $35 range. Because I was nervous about Jackson being alone on the sidewalk, I decided not to try any of them on, I just eyeballed the sizes and bought them.

As the cashier was handing me my new skirts in a bag, I said, “So, are these exchangeable, in case I have sizing issues?” and he said, “No,” and I said to myself, “I’m about to buy four new skirts that are going to end up on eBay,” and then I said to him, “Okay!” I took them home and they fit perfectly, but here’s the thing:

As you can see, they’re all pretending to be different sizes. I held them all up to me in the store, and then I held them up to each other to make sure they were they same, and then I brought them home and discovered that I had a 10, two 8s, and a 6. (I just threw the H&M skirt in there for fun, because I guess I’m also a size 12.) It reminded me of when my mom died and I tried on one of her dresses and it fit perfectly: it was a size 16. So thank God my new skirts all fit on my somewhere-between-size-6-and-size-16 body.

I’m not sure what my point is. J. Crew has magical skirts? No one knows what numbers mean anymore? My body is a wonderland? And skirts are just the half of it. I also have a man’s head (since women’s hats are always one-size-fits-a-cat), and I can reliably wear either a size 10, size 11, or size 12 shoe. Actually, I take that back. I have a pair of men’s size 7 Ecco loafers in my closet. They look great with everything.