Category Archives: Livin la Vida Loca

Stuff we do with people we like.

NKOTBSB Part 2- Please Don’t Go Girl

Originally I was going to be the picture of restraint with these New Kids posts.”Don’t bore everybody Em, not everyone is obsessed like you” I told myself but as you’ll soon see I have no restraint.

My deepest apologies.

I think you’ll forgive my fan-girling though because there is another back story to that concert that I wanted to share and I think you’ll all agree that it’s far more important than a childhood dream come true.

We went to the New Kids concert at the beginning of July but we bought our tickets last year. At that time Renee, my friend and one of my best NKOTB-partners-in-crime had been recently diagnosed with lymphoma. It was a scary time. It wasn’t clear what her diagnosis meant. What stage was her cancer? What would it mean for her quality of life? The length of her life? It was a time when I kept all your questions on the inside because it was really scary to talk about them out loud. News would come back and it wasn’t good; lymphoma in the marrow, chemo and more chemo.

Things didn’t seem hopeful and I desperately wanted to imagine a hopeful future for Renee. I wanted something for her to look forward to, so when Lisa put out the call for concert tix, I told her “I’m in, get me two tix, one for me and one for Renee”.

If you knew how infamously tight-fisted I am and how expensive concert tix are you would know how desperate I was. I called Renee with the news all fake-cheerful “I think you’ll be done with chemo by then and we’ll go and have SO MUCH FUN!” Ever-positive I could hear her grinning through the phone “Of course we will! I don’t care if I have to go straight from chemo on July 2nd, we’re going to rock it.” In my head I prayed silently “Please God, let her be well by then.” Out loud I said “Of course we will!”

Obviously though, all the magical thinking and concert tix in the world do not make cancer go away. You know what does? Months and months of enduring chemotherapy. Renee finished her last round in June and as I was editing this post I found out that she is now officially in remission.

So now you know that the concert was about so much more than childhood dreams deferred, die-hard fandom or even simple escapism. For me it was about celebrating my friends’ triumph in a first-round well fought. Last fall I honestly didn’t know if we would be able to go to this concert together. I bought those tickets as an act of defiance in the face of an uncertain future.

You can only imagine my joy to be there with her when Joey Mac was hitting the stage crooning “Please don’t girl”. Normally I love to tease Renee, I like to wait until she is totally blissed out and then roll my eyes dramatically while simultaneously poking her in the ribs ( I mean before joining in myself, of course!) But this time when I looked at Renee’s enraptured face lit up with unfettered devotion for her childhood love I felt totally overcome with gratitude for every moment I’ve gotten to spend with that goofball. So I skipped the teasing just that one time. I closed my eyes, looped my arm through hers and hugged her tight because I am so incredibly thankful that she is still here.

Kareoke All by Himself

While watching Charice’s perform “All by Myself” on Glee…

Arnold-Where is that girl from?

Me-I think she won Filipino American Idol or something like that.

Arnold-Oh yeah, Filinos love kareoke.

Me-Duh. “All by myself” is my Dad’s favorite song.

Arnold-(Chokes on drink giggling) Really?

Me-You didn’t know that? It’s on his favorite mix-tape. You know the one with “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash.

Arnold-Wha-?

Me-Yeah, cause he says he wants to be “All by Himself”

Arnold-Niiiiiiiiiice.

You matter

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.-Fred Rogers

One summer I worked as part of the cleaning crew at a Conference Center. In addition to myself the crew included my friend Rachel, an ex-convict and a young man with mental disabilities. Obviously Rachel and I were thought of quite highly. Despite the boys out-of-the-mainstream pedigree we had fun as a group. The ex-con taught us self-defense using magic markers in place of pocket knives and in our down time we spent the day quoting Beavis and Butthead and listening to 80s mixtapes. Ocasionally if it was super slow, we’d lock a hotel room door, crank up Welcome to the Jungle and jump on the beds.

The work however sucked. Even though I was 19 and energetic, cleaning thirty hotel rooms a day is no joke. The first bed you make is easy; but by the time you’re on the thirtieth your back aches. Wet towels are gross and heavy and people are quite frankly, disgusting. Twelve years later I still have an irrational aversion to making beds.

I’m glad though that I had that job because it taught me that there are so many service jobs that are much harder than they look. I learned to think about the line cook on his feet all day and the hotel maid whose back aches from bending over and cleaning for hours on end.

When I was cleaning hotel rooms ocasionaly people would leave us meager tips of dollar or fifty cents. We would collect these and once a week we’d buy smoothies. Smoothie day was a good day. The smoothies gave us enough to energy to jump on the beds for Welcome to the Jungle and to jam to Footloose. It wasn’t just the smoothie though, it was what they represented, that there were some people who bothered to recognize the hard work we did.

When I was in Baltimore a few weeks ago I was almost delirious from a sinus infection. Sickness always makes me both emotionally volatile and sentimental and when I walked into my hotel room to find it pristinely clean after a long work day with a splitting headache I was overcome. I walked straight back out of my room found the maid next door and blurted out somewhat bizzarely “Thank you so much for cleaning my room. You did such a good job and I really appreciate it.”

I wish you could have seen her smile.

My point? The things you do matter. The small kindnesses you take the time to express can make a difference. Smoothie day would brighten our spirits after cleaning yet another disgusting bathroom and I like to think that my thank you put a little spring in the hotel maids step. So please, don’t ever think what you do doesn’t matter. You have so much power to make the world a better place, one small courtesy at a time.

Five for Friday Pt. 49-LA Edition

Last week I went to LA for work. I met lots of great people at my site visits and got to hang out with some Torrie and Kat too! I also ate approximately 5 million meals. All of them were delicious. Today’s Five for Friday is the LA Food edition.

Put on your fat pants, your gonna gain weight just reading this post.

1. 1886 in Pasadena-I was so enamored with my drink and the company that I totally forgot to take a picture, but take my word for it, this bar is top notch. The drinks are creative without burying the licor in sugar or cream. It also has an amazing door that opens and closes with pulley weights giving it a fun speakeasy feel.

2. A/K/A in Pasadena-We had (among other things) portabello fries with truffle aioli. As they were delivered to the table my foodie in crime Katrina said “The aioli is so good, I want to drink it!” She made a drinking motion with her hand, just in case I didn’t get it.

I wanted to drink the aioli too. I’ll leave you to wonder whether I did, or not.

Portabello Fries with Truffle Aioli

3. Square One Dining-I saw this on OhJoy!’s blog and thought, “I must eat there.” Then I did. It was delicious and changed my life. The end.

French Toast with Bourbon Pecans and Vanilla Whipcream

Salmon Benedict: It comes nestled not on a muffin, but a crispy nest of deep fried hash browns giving it an unexpected layer of crispy. Genius.

4. Mozza Pizzeria-So fresh and so clean. This was reccommended by Torrie. My favorite pizza was a gorgonzola dolce that had rosemary and fingerling potatos. I never tasted the sweetness in gorgonzola dolce until I had this pizza, it was addictive. I wanted to shove my face in the whole thing but it didn’t seem polite so I held back, sort of.

Gorgonzola Dolce with Fingerling Potatos and Rosemary

Pizza Margherita

Squash Blossoms and Burrata

5. You tell me! Where do you like to eat in LA? What do I HAVE to eat next time I there? I mean in addition to the places that I already ate…

Taxi Cab Chronicles: Antoine’s Fragrances

My time with Antoine didn’t seem too promising in the first few minutes. He seemed to be of the polite yet detached variety drivers. A tall, handsome, middle-aged black man in a well-pressed suit he was a Baltimore native and a town car driver, in short a super-professional: the sort that answer your questions without encouraging further chat.

Usually it’s my goal to have a driver become my best friend during the 15-minute drive to the airport but after having battled a wicked and plague of a cold for the past few days I wasn’t really up to the task of employing my usual taxi-driver/friend-hostage tactics. I figured Antoine and I would have to settle for a normal client/driver relationship. I settled into my seat and prayed that he would take a break from texting to pay attention to driving me safely.

Then unexpectedly Antoine took ME hostage! “Why are people always trying to sell me fragrances?” he asked me apropos of nothing. “I have so many fragrances. More than 100 and people just keep trying to sell them to me like I don’t already own them!”

I mean, obviously that’s what he said. Who wouldn’t start a conversation like that?

I never did ask Antoine about who these neanderthals were who kept insisting he buy fragrances, but wow, did I learn a lot about Antoine’s love for them including how many he owned (more than 100), why he was so into them (an old girlfriend felt insisted on a strict shower than fragrance schedule) and what his favorites were “Christian Dior and Creed”.

The conversation was very weird, I mean, I kept wanting to say, “Why the heck do you keep saying fragrances instead of cologne?” but instead I fed the fire, nodding appropriately and saying, “Wow, it sounds like you really love fragrances” at the appropriate moments in the conversation.

Then alarmingly he thrust his cell phone at me! “See I don’t need more fragrances.”

People, Antoine had what appeared to be a three level bar cart full of cologne bottles. And he had taken a picture of it to show people. “Antoine you weren’t kidding!” I exclaimed.

“I know” he said, equally enthusiastic. “I have a lot of fragrances.”

I can’t tell you how it cheers me to know that there are so many wonderful weirdos in the world, and even better that some of that have at their disposal 100 fragrances to fill your world.

Emily makes a plan

Ha ha! Got you again. Today I am talking about myself in third person, because it’s fun, and catchy and reminds me of that 90s show Clarissa explains it all which I never got to watch because we didn’t have cable. :(

But as usual. I digress.

So on Monday I was talkin big about my BIG dreams and my BIG plans to be stupid-fearless and I alluded to a plan. As you all know well, I love plans, checklists, spreadsheets and things of that nature so when Jenny suggested the following simple plan I was all over it.

Why don’t you just use your blog and write one short story/essay a week. At the end of the year you’ll have 52 and you can pick out the themes and form a short story collection.

I know! Jenny is quite possibly a brilliant, mad genius! Even better? I’ve essentially been writing a short story once a week or so for most of the past year so my current plan is to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON! At the end of the year I should have about 50 stories and then you guys can help me sort out a theme and we’ll have a real-life little book sketch that we’ve done? Right? I love it.

And I love you guys too. Just thought you should know, in case I hadn’t said so lately.

Okay, now it’s time for you to help me write my short-story book. What makes the best short stories? Musings on my courtship with Arnold. (I assure you this story is ca-razay). Life lessons? Like “How I learned to not just be a geek.” or the “Naturally a Disaster” variety like “When appliances attack”. Let me know. I’ll do my best to acquiesce to your excellent judgment.

Eternal Love,

Notoriously dumber and less fearful MLE