Angeleno Femme

You Haul.

Is this what it was supposed to feel like?

No memory from the womb, but maybe this was it. Walking into a new apartment, the fresh wood floors covered in sheets of plastic, a fine layer of dust coating granite counters. A bedroom with no bed. A shower with no curtain. Windows facing towards distant other-lives, and me, my life, waiting to relocate. No memory from the womb, no fresh starts since then, but maybe something close. Something with boxes, bubble wrap, and a blank space. Like a sheet of paper covered with the crumbles of an overworked eraser. This is new, sort of.

To pack up one’s life, to give the keys back, to stand in an empty, once-filled room and say goodbye. To stand in a empty, new-filled room and say hello. I want to burn incense and no one understands. But I want to burn them from where I leave as well. How does one tell a new tenant, “I once hugged the floor of this living room in a deep depression”? How does one tell a new tenant, “There were days when I never opened these blinds”? And though this soon-to-be home has new floors and carpet, a new fridge for new food, I wonder — what pains were once captured in here? What joys? What ghosts linger in this space, what has been happily left behind, maybe still caught in kitchen drawers or the nook between the dishwasher and outlets? What was purposefully not packed?

I’ll fill the closet, paint the walls, light candles and make it me. But like a man with a complicated history, I will look at a new home and wonder what came before, and then get lost in the thought of what is to come because some baggage can never be unpacked.

The Naughty & Nice Blogs

I’m welcoming to Tumblr world two of my close friends, whose blogs fall on opposite sides of the naughty/nice spectrum but both deserve publicity from my rambling bogus blog anyhow.

There is Danielle, a close friend from high school, who just started the cute.quaint.cozy blog that is devoted to her general life but more specifically her recent obsession with interior design (along with all things cutesy). She is one of the most genuine, sweet people I know, which is why I feel bad that she’s trying to figure out how to use Disqus, the most frustrating 3rd party app in the world.

Then, there is Billy. Billy is a friend from New York, a comedian who doesn’t eat vegetables and likes to dance. He just started the UnFriended All-Stars, a blog dedicated to him unfriending someone from Facebook once a week. I want to just delete my Facebook altogether (I hate it in the way you hate someone you are married to with kids, that kind of hate but obligation to remain). But Billy just wants less friends. He’s funny, and funny writers are always good in my book. He also tweets some hilarious shit, so you can follow him here if you want a good laugh on your Twitter feed.

As for this blog, it’s still just the good ol’ fashioned “I dunno, I post whatever I feel like” blog. With, however, a strong taste for cosmetics. So don’t forget that you can ask me questions at the top on my Tumblr, any beauty related questions.

Happy Superbowl Sunday, I won’t be watching because I don’t understand football, but I do like all the snacks!

Names I Cannot Pronounce

Before going to work, I went to Ikea today. I drove through the mysterious land of “Burbank,” a place I usually only go to as a transitionary point — the airport. Burbank is a weird area, reminiscent of desert towns where you feel like you are in the middle of a whole lotta nothingness (save signle story rows of ma-n-pa shops and indistinguishable store fronts). You drive towards a nondescript mountain and then, after you go over a bridge, are brought into the land of retail, a seeming oasis surrounded by things you would never parralel park for.

I was, admittedly, nervous. Ikea is the kind of place that renders people either excited or intimdated, I fell more towards the latter. I hadn’t been to Ikea since I was a teen, and I just recall aimlessly wandering the floors, no idea what I was doing. I didn’t think I’d fare much better at this point, but I’d conquered places like JFK and the Downtown LA freeway interchanges, so maybe I’d have better luck this time.

I was early, and standing around with a bunch of people who spoke other languages, waiting for an elderly man to pull back the yellow rope for us to enter, like some version of Nickelodeon’s Toys R Us Run, or any other competition that involved running, running, running. Everyone hustled onto the showroom floor when the rope was released, but I quickly realized there was no rush, and sat down on some couch, whose name I could not pronounce. Why must everything at Ikea have a name in, what is it, Swedish? With some undefinable accent mark over some of the letters? How do I say it? How do you tell people that you are purchasing the “EKTORP” couch and not look like an idiot?

I already had the looking-like-an-idiot part on lock when, after wandering the floor for a bit, I finally approaching an employee wearing frosted pink lipstick and desperately asked: “What do I do here?!” She looked at me with an annoyed expression and I followed up: “I’m new.” I didn’t understand how I’m supposed to purchase anything, seeing as how Ikea is, on the top floor at least, just walking through hypothetical rooms that have unhelpful tags on them with names that, yet again, I cannot pronounce. Can someone please help me with the VATE lamp or the POANG chair or my FLYGEL thingy? I don’t even know how to find the accent marks for those names on my keyboard, but they are something like double dots over letters, or a circle, or something else that is impossible to say. I just wanted help. The frosted pink lipstick lady handed me a piece of paper and a mini pencil and told me to write shit down. I felt like I was about to play a round of golf, though golf was looking far more simple than Ikea at that point — and that’s saying something.

Here’s the thing about Ikea: everything does look amazing. Is there such thing as Room Porn? I’d say Ikea is 100% Room Porn. Fake room after fake room that you just want to sawzall out of the second floor and load into a wide bed truck and super glue into your house or apartment. But, several things stand in the way of you and your fantasy room at Ikea. First of all, there is alot of shit going into that fabulous room. Ever notice on mannequins at cheapo stores like F21 or Wet Seal that things look great? Layers and layers of cute clothes. Oh, to be able to style oneself like that! But you have to buy so much shit to achieve that look! Ikea is along those lines. Secondly, I will never achieve Ikea greatness because I do not have a ceiling fixture that is a grid of power outlets. But it would be nice (though unsightly) if I did. Thirdly, how much time are you willing to spend nailing particle board together? I oogled a big bookshelf and thought, How cool! How neat! And how inexpensive! But…oh. Right. SO MANY PIECES! I am good at puzzles, but I am not patient.

It’s more fun to walk around the floor where you can actually pick things up and purchase them, instead of writing down numbers and finding your beautiful couch or bedset in a brown box on a cart. Things are, as is true with all Ikea things, mind-bogglingly cheap. If I thought about how much money I spent on makeup each month, and instead put it towards Ikea, I could BISVIK-KLAPPAN my way to an amazing living space. But really, I am looking forward to the day when I can afford to purchase things and have them be — yes — preassembled. For now, though, I will live with pieces of furniture that have names I cannot pronounce.