It's never promising when your guests end up like this after just one day of visiting.
The truth is, Ruble did it to herself. Her first day in El Ley she headed straight to the beach while I headed straight for the cube. My trip took four blocks, hers took about four miles. She came home with a rosy glow and a good excuse to prop her feet up. Ruble started out her vacation going roughly 300 miles per hour, which, to her credit, is one-third the pace she normally exists at, and has continued it since, despite my complaining about tiredness and aches. We both fall asleep on the couch at night until Mack makes us realize what we've done and herds us 28-year-old retirees-in-the making off to bed. At 11 o'clock. At night!
Friday night we tried to go out and find our youthful spirits, but the three hour time difference and the impending Daylight Savings Time (okay, I'm looking for something to blame) wiped us out minutes after we ordered a drink and paid a $10 cover. Mack finagled our cover money back, and Ruble and I sneaked a taxi to Blockbuster to rent a movie (read: put something on tv that we could fall asleep to). We entered our sweet dreams that night through House of 1000 Corpses, a flick that made me love clowns again and that satisfied Ruble's every movie desire. We both lasted about 14 minutes.
Saturday we were much more vibrant, while the sun was up that is. We perked up at 9:30 and headed off to the Getty Museum. That place is freaking amazing. We only scoped two of four pavilions that contained art since the grounds were so gorgeous we had to cover every square inch of them. I don't know much about architecture, but I know I like fountains and mazes and windows and panoramic views and cacti. The Getty has it all. It also has Van Gogh, Pissarro, Cezanne, Degas, Millet and other names that sound familiar but only look familiar in the context of their respective notecard collections. My favorite part of the Getty were these rebar vases/vine trainer things that made the most beautiful canopies.
I've been wanting to go to the Getty for a while, and I can't think of anyone who would have been more perfect to share that experience with than Ruble. Even as museum guards were scolding us for accidentally using a flash and giving us insider tips on where the best lookout points were, Ruble was offering up her beaming smile and making friends in her effortless way. I know she radiates friendly, I just haven't experienced how people are drawn to it in a while. Like moths to a flame I tell you.
In an effort to justify our 11 p.m. crash time on Saturday (we did make it through The Last King of Scotland at an actual movie theater before collapsing), we decided we'd head to the hills for hiking on Sunday. We got up early, bought some picnic goodies, and headed off to Temescal Canyon. We did what all responsible hikers should do -- wander around trails marked as closed with a half a bottle of water each. Why the trails were "closed" is beyond me, unless the closing notices were actually warnings about how hiking the trail would give you unexplainable ass pain for days to come. We hiked about two miles before our trail merged with a Will Rogers State Historic Park trail and we ended up far from home. At least we got to see some beautiful countryside and enchanting valleys along the way.
We hiked about two more miles up Sunset along a sidewalk that was probably more dangerous than the aformentioned closed trails back to the entrance of Temescal Canyon and hopped in the truck to meet Mack and his family at Topanga Canyon for a picnic. I was starving, but that I devoured two bags of potato chips during the drive will remain mine and Ruble's little secret. We did another little hike at Topanga, which brought our walking total for Sunday to about 300 miles.
Our after dinner stroll to find deer found Shahin and her mini-me Laila hiking with purses and heels through sandy trails adorned with horse poop. They called it Beverly Hills Hiking, and it was cute. Laila has learned Betsy's "push my butt" trick, so I spent most of my time hunched over trying to help her get up the incline by shoving her barely there behind.
Maintaining Ruble's 300 mph pace hasn't been easy. Tonight we hit up Saw III (sucks) after giving into the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Hypnotism Factory and tomorrow we've got, brace yourselves, Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios. I'm sure by Thursday, when Ruble's had her fill of R&R and heads home, I'll need a vacation.
I've been wanting to go to the Getty for a while, and I can't think of anyone who would have been more perfect to share that experience with than Ruble. Even as museum guards were scolding us for accidentally using a flash and giving us insider tips on where the best lookout points were, Ruble was offering up her beaming smile and making friends in her effortless way. I know she radiates friendly, I just haven't experienced how people are drawn to it in a while. Like moths to a flame I tell you.
Joelle Bryman (who was one of the coolest chicks I've never been able to be as good of friends with as I should be), 
Chris Ramsdale (who desperately needed to be proved wrong for thinking I was a lesbain all those years),
and Tyra Connor (who is as funny today as she was in Mrs. Wheaton's English class when we were discussing the subtle sex in Romeo & Juliet). 
I also liked seeing Amy Leinbach, Allison Salyer, Brad Lacy, Paige Harlow and Nicole Drewitz again, mostly because they always made me seem cooler than I am. And finally, I got to meet some of the husbands and wives, although it still feels like we're too young to be married and breeding. 
(Sarah came in disguise as a black man named Will for some odd reason.)
While on a quick visit to his mom's house (my lifetime partner Heather), I had the chance to play with Chase until his naptime. Granted, playing with him sometimes makes me feel like an idiot since when I pick up a tractor and say, "Go tractor, go," he usually corrects me with, "That's a combine." Just before his nap I told Chase to pick out a book for me to read to him. I'd asked him earlier if he was in school and he'd said yes, so I asked him what he was learning, and he sighed as big a sigh as a three-year-old is capable of and answered, "God." When it was time to pick a book, Chase told me in no uncertain terms that he did not want "the one about God." I found this immensely amusing, but only because I know Heather and John are not religious zealots with the goal of brainwashing their kids. Chase is just a demon, see.
By far the most manipulative babe is my blood nephew Benjamin Ace. BAM has managed to get five women hanging on his every gurgle and has successfully interrupted our typically cooperative existence. He has turned my mom, his GG, into a baby hog. He pukes on us, pees on us, and poops on us, and yet we still hang around him inches from his every move and are collectively at his beck and call. He's already turned us into a cult and he can't even speak. Hopefully by the time Shannon and Charles's expectation gets here in May, I'll have found a way to conquer the demons inside. Or I'll have rationalized falling completely under their spell. 
On the way home Mom and I picked up some pizza from Pazzo's to really bring home the P-theme that was developing from the day. We got home, argued over who got to hold Ben (who was also celebrating his one-month birthday), stuffed our faces and then capped the meal with pumpkin pie. Betsy landed a black iPod, three jars of pickles, an Amber ring from Amber, and a Chi flat iron. I, sadly and despite numerous attempts, didn't manage to clepto any of her loot. 
I had reconciled her closet tendencies and gave her complete ownership of them until yesterday. I walked into the garage/storage room to bring some food to her closet cave when I turned around and saw Ms. Kitty adopting a similar behavior pattern. Only Ms. Kitty has claimed the dryer as her private quarters. 
I guess I can be grateful they're just pets and as such they won't ever be able to take a gun to school or start huffing spray paint in an attempt to drown out the abuse they endured at the hand of their parents. Even so, I'm starting to see a pattern. If Mack ends up shacking in a closet, like Shannon did when I was 11 and we shared a room, I'm committing myself and protecting other lives from whatever it is about me that forces people into dark, cramped places. Sheesh.
The British call them biscuits. We call them cookies. My favorite breed is the peanut butter kind, and down the road at Tulley's Coffee Shop they have mega peanut butter cookies with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup smooshed into the center. Now that's just cruel. Even crueler though is that the last time I went to the grocery store to satisfy my cookie monster tendencies I discovered that every cookie in the cookie aisle was bogged down with the Trans Fats. You know, those indigestible preservative fats that come from shortening and hydrogenated oils that have been banned in other first-world countries. Needless to say, I try to avoid them. Usually it's easy to do, since my diet mostly consists of potato chips, apples, diet 7-Up and the occasional TF-free Payday bar that Mack shares with me, but in the case of cookies, I was lost.
I've always liked Cool Hand Luke's Fig Newman's and a year ago discovered the thrill that is his raspberry vinaigrette dressing, but now with the Trans Fat revolution kicking the carb conflict to the curb, I'm throwing all my money to the Newmans. (Try Pop's Corn -- the ONLY microwave popcorn safe from TF!) Their food is genuine, pure goodness. That the company has given more than $200 million to charities since 1982, well, that's just icing on the cake!
