I’m sorry, this is California.

I woke up to a rather violent thunderstorm going on outside, which aggravated my dogs to no end. Tired, I grabbed my glasses and turned on the news whose headline said TORNADO WARNING.

Hm, why are we covering news in Kansas?

“Some of you may think that a tornado can’t happen in this populated area. It can only happen in the open fields of Kansas or the Oklahoma valley. But that’s not true.”

Wait, I’m sorry, WHAT?! A TORNADO? Just to clarify, because I’m a bit confused, a tornado is the gigantic huge swirly thing that sucks up everything in its way right…?
The storm of the tornado is centralized east of Santa Ana and through the 5 in Laguna Hills, moving up to the Pomona, RIverside and Arcadia…

I live here.

“Now is not the time to drive. Stay away from highway bypasses. Stay indoors and go to the lowest part of your house, such as the basement.”

Um hello, this is California, WE DON’T HAVE BASEMENTS.

…

The weather man just said, “Now remember, a tornado is a violent upward draft.”
I love how he had to remind the California viewers what a tornado is. Because honestly, this is California and we don’t believe in tornadoes.

Not Again

Sweet bliss to be back home where weather is unbelievably SUNNY and warm at the end of December and people are walking around in, yes, I’m going to say it: t-shirts.

LA is beautiful. I don’t care what anybody says but this city has blue open skies and green hills and freeways that I can speed on again and that is perfection.
My two days back home were pleasantly spent reconnecting with friends and my beautiful Lexus IS250 that really is the only good thing left in my life.

But those two days couldn’t have gone by faster as at 6 am the next morning I was back on the road on my way to LAX airport for my last trip of the year to NEW YORKKKKKKKKKKKKK!

My friend Amos tells me that I have a problem. That it’s not normal or, in fact, healthy to be heartbroken because I can’t afford to buy something or do something that I want to do. Materialism. What a bitch. I hate it but I want it. It’s so hard to let it go. All I can think about is replenishing my lost Marc by Marc Jacobs wallet with another Marc by Marc Jacobs wallet – of the new season, of course.

New York. In the words of Carrie Bradshaw New York is where 20 somethings come in search of the two L’s: Labels and Love.

Love, I couldn’t care less for, but oh labels, indeed I do.

Not at all surprising that after spending 9 hours traveling from LA to Boston (during which I could not get Augustana’s song out of my mind) to New York we arrive to yet another empty baggage carousal because surprise, surprise, they lost our luggage. It hadn’t even been an hour since my luggage from Milan was returned to my La Crescenta house when I lost another one.

Hannah was upset. I was mildly amused. Of course this would happen. I didn’t feel good about checking in my bags in the first place. We described to the airport people what our suitcases looked like. ”Black.” Name one personal item in the bag. “A green and white striped towel.” Hannah and I are in NY, towel-less, eye-contact solution-less, and clothes-less.

We grabbed a NY taxi from the airport to Amos’ cozy NY apartment where we watched Sex & The City, the movie and ate Chinese food delivered in little Chinese food take-out boxes.

Life isn’t so bad after all. Once you get used to the bad stuff.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

Overnight, winter arrived. 

Out of nowhere, the wind came. And the wind is merciless – so cold and bitter and seeps into your bones and through our cracked kitchen window that I can’t shut. 

Milan has an inefficient way of dealing with conservation. They’re so obsessed with recycling that if you don’t recycle then they’ll dig through your trash, somehow find out who the trash belongs to, and fine you 300 euro. So basically, recycling is mandatory. I’ve never recycled a day in my life before coming here where now I’m washing out empty sauce bottles and sorting paper from plastic. 

Milan also has controlled heating. The whole city doesn’t get heating until tomorrow. As in we couldn’t use our heater because the city had it on lockdown. Not only is it shut off during the warmer seasons, but it also shuts off starting at 10 p.m. every night. Uh, hello – that’s when it gets FREEZING. 

Apparently the reasoning is that at 10 p.m. you should be in bed so since you have your blankets you don’t need the heater…

And for some odd reason, during the day when the sun is out and when nobody is home, the heater is again, available. 

Milan is so backwards. I’m still freezing.

This entire week I’ve lived off of vegetable soup willing myself to stay at Stage 1: runny nose and sore throat. Stage 2 would be my life crumbling into a feverish mess.

 

Milan is covered with a thin, invisible film of coldness. Over the trees, the buildings, the park, the street, the stores – everything is cold, cold, cold.