The Big Tease

"One day, this will aaaaaallll be yours..." my husband joked last week as our rental car wound its way up Mulholland Drive. My hands were sweating (I'm afraid of heights...and cliffs...and of cars falling off of cliffs from great heights...) and I couldn't really LOOK at what he was gesturing at, but I knew what was there: LOS ANGELES.

I used to live in LA. I loved it then, and I maintain that it is my favorite city in the world. Since I moved away in 2001 (after an awesome turn in Set Decoration for films like THE GRINCH, and BANDITS--an exciting and short-lived career that came to a crashing halt during the writers strike in 2000, and stayed at its crashed halt after the twin towers fell down in 2001), I have been many things, a bartender, a singer, a painter, a shipping specialist for a luxury fragrance company, then a marketer for that same luxury fragrance company...now I push a screenwriting program (The world's best one! www.thefilmschool.com )--after all of this I have finally come back to what I always wanted to be, from the time I was a little girl and my best friends and I snuggled around the Ouija board in our sleeping bags and dreamed about what we would be when we grew up: a writer.

So, after several visits to friends in LA, sleeping on couches and being driven around as a tourist, heading there with my husband (who had never been there before--I found him in Iowa), staying at our own hotel, driving around our own (rental) car, I felt less like a tourist and more like I used to--consumed with the knowledge that Los Angeles is the place where I really feel at home. It was a major tease.

One of the goals of the trip, other than being the first real vacation we'd had in our nine (!) years together, was to show Chad around and see if he'd fall in love with it too. I fed him the best Mexican food, showed him the beach, took him to live music at Canter's The Kibitz Room--he seemed happy, in his typical unflappable way, happy but non-committal.

Back home--we got off the plane to find the Seattle sky swirling with snow. Sigh. A week of trying to catch up with work and fight a weird flu that has me hallucinating, and not in the fun way, has distracted me just enough from the fantasy of our five days in La-La Land.

Chad came home yesterday with news that he'd found a 2-bdrm-house for $1700/month--"We already have a 2-bdrm-house," I distractedly informed him. "In Studio City." He said and casually walked out of the room....so, maybe one day, LA won't aaaallll be mine...but at least I've roped my best friend into dreaming about it with me. And dreams DO come true.....look at that guy with the golden voice!