Thursday, June 30

Don't you hate it when your favorite blogger refuses to post for weeks? I know! I suck. I constantly am thinkiing..."ooh. I need to blog this", but then I don't get around to it. I think the main reason is because I have been doing alot of IM, and I normally tell people whatever story through IM and then I just don't feel like typing it all over again. Well, I don't know if my posting is going to pick up anytime soon. Today is day 1 of a three week trip. Today I am in Newport Beach, CA and on Saturday I am flying to Newport, RI. Then I will continue on to Nantucket and then Cape Cod and possibly also NYC. We'll see. OK, other developements. I got two new roommates... Karis and Sonja (good vibe from a girl who shares my name). Both are really cool. They move in while I am away, so that will be strange to come home to two strangers living in my house. Let's see. What else... lately I've been really into myspace. And finally decided to not move for now.

Tuesday, June 21

Living Alone

Although I always lived alone, I haven't been alone in this house for many years. I've always had roommates. Yesterday my last roommate moved out. I'm still debating my next move. But for now I'm enjoying being alone. I wake up and play music really loudly. I don't have to shut my bedroom door anymore. I do pilates in the living room in just my bra and underwear. And I've taken to cleaning the house. It was never worth it for me to regularly clean before because within an hour my roommates would mess whatever it was I just cleaned. But now I know everything I clean will stay clean, because I don't make messes anyplace except my bedroom. Ok, and the garage.

Saturday, June 18

In the last week I have been working alot for Kelly and I also have gotten Kelly and Tom to decide to sell their house and move in with me (until they find a new house to buy). There are so many other stories that I just am not enclined to share here, which kills me you know. I feel like I'm keeping secrets when I don't blog everything. But then again, I guess I am actually keeping secrets. Ok, what can I tell you? Hmmm. Well, I took the Caitlin and Christian over to Hidden Villa for the last day before they close for the summer. I got a bit reminiscent and stopped by the camp office to see about working a few weeks this summer. I have a phone interview with the new director tomorrow. I lost my cell phone somewhere on the farm. And I have no frequency up there so that decreases the chance of having someone hear it ring and find it. Last night was a Miyake's night that turned into an all nighter. I had a garage sale this morning where I sold just some stuff and made something like $65. I only took a 3 hour nap and then came to Kelly's to watch the kids. I am exhausted beyond belief. I'm heading off to bed. G'night y'all.

Tuesday, June 14

I had the kids all day long yesterday and had such a great time that it makes me a little sad to leave them. Highlights: *We had Cooper's friend, Ethan, over along with his family to go swimming. The water was great and I got back on the diving board. Before I knew it I was back to doing flips and one and a halves. (I use to be on the diving team in HS.) But somehow I would choke whenever it came to doing an inward dive or a reverse dive. Now I'm more motivated than ever to get over it and do them. *Jack and I discussing how it would be great to have audio video games where there is just narration and no screen to watch. *Us girls throwing the football around in the front yard. I really am not the person to be teaching Lil Ryan how to throw a football, but we had fun and it was cute.

Monday, June 13

Tonight I ran a few miles around the neighborhood and stopped at my gym on the way back to do some weights. There I see a guy that maybe I know. And as I walk past him on my way out he nods and says "Hey Liz" and I just nod back with a simple Hi and continue on. I know more people than I actually remember. And I am anti-social so I don't talk to many people even if I know them. But it was Danny Page like I thought. What I remember about Danny Page was that I met him when I was a high school freshman through Carrie and I think there had been a crush somewhere between them. And I remember when I was probably a senior he took my Presentation Athletics sweatshirt. Just imagine this total skateboarder guy sporting the all-girl high school's athletics gear. It was hilarious to everyone back then. I never got it back either.

Letting Go Is Hard To Do
The goal of the weekend was to sell off all my belongings. But that's a real hard thing to come to terms with. I remember when I first moved into my own place when I was 21. It was a small studio cottage backhouse converted from part of a garage. And I had packed just my bed and entertainment center and desk in this little place. I later added a very small custom made couch and had to block the back door to the garage to fit that in. Later as I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment, I found that I didn't have sufficient furniture to fill it. I inherited a kitchen table, a couch, and a fake christmas tree through a breakup. And then I came into what I now consider home... a 4 bedrooom house and I some how managed to fill every corner of every bedrooom. I struggled to create some kind of uniform decorative flow through the disarray of inherited furniture that came into my life. You all know how this is when you first move out... trying to shake off that fraternity style decorating, yet having no money for anything classy. And there was no ikea in the area when I first began this journey. But over the years I've gotten all the wood furniture in my house to be of a consistant stain. And I've remodeled and repainted and recarpeted the whole house. And I've rotated through couch after couch until I finally accumulated 4 matching pieces. And now when my home is indeed looks and feels like a home, it kills me to get rid of it all knowing I will have to start all over again at some point with mismatch junk and probably an impossible fixer upper. And why did I do it all? Why did I obsess over this house for the last 3 years? Well, I think I thought I was preparing for my future. I was under the pretense that any day now Mr. Right would walk into my life and we'd fall in love and get married and then we'd be blessed because we would be all set up in this beautiful house I had created. But where did I get this notion that this is how my life would play out? God never said to me "If you build it, he will come". So here I am with no prospect of Mr. Right and a beautiful house that is too big for me and too much work for me to maintain on my own. I never anticipated having to maintain it alone. But here I am alone and being held captive by this house. There is nothing for me in San Jose anymore. This house (and my church family) are the only ties to here. And I already found a new church down South. So I just have to leave the house. I think I want out by the end of the month, which is a a whole lot of work to get done in just 3 weeks. So I didn't sell my belongings last weekend because I wasn't quite there yet. I keep thinking that I'll find a way out of it. But I know there isn't one. So I have 2 more weekends to come to grips and sell it all. This is me scrapping my life and starting over from scratch. How damn scary is that?
My House
Bye Bye Home

Saturday, June 4

Every office was just stumped by what I wanted to do. I spent all day Friday hitting up city halls, police departments, planning commissions, zoning departments, and business developement offices for Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, and Laguna Beach. Over all concensus is that it isn't looking good. Every office was stumped by me seeing that I am treading on unchartered territory. And at first glance they all thought that there were no glitches and were giving me the go ahead. But I know their ordinances better than they do so I play devils advocate against myself and make them dig deeper into municipal code until they have found the section that throws a curve ball into my plans. Why help them? Because I know sooner or later someone is going to bitch about what I'm doing and I don't want them coming and shutting me down 2 months down the road because they were too lazy to figure out their own code regarding the matter when I first came to them. So Newport is a definate no. Costa Mesa wants me to get an expensive permit, but they already told me that for where I want to be they would deny my request. Laguna looked tricky and their planning department wasn't around... probably too tied up with the landslide stuff going on there. And Huntington was baffled. They seem to be giving me the go ahead, but they are researching to be sure. I really kinda want to move down here though. (Sorry Kelly! I know you hate to hear it.) So at what point do I walk away from Urban Crepe and get a normal job. I think first I should look into changing the business concept and do a little comparison on exactly how much it will bump my start up costs if I settle into an actual physical location and ditch the mobility of a catering truck.

So I figure that I might as well visit with my sisters while I am in SoCal. So I call up Michelle and then Deborah to see if they want to go out to dinner. But Deborah tells me that she can't because it's actually my niece's 3rd birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. So why not... Michelle brings Bryana and drives up from San Diego and we meet at the birthday party. We actually have a decent time playing dance dance revolution and other games completely inappropriate for anyone over the age of 10 to play.

Later I met up with Shawn, TiTi and Matt at the bars. Matt had these 2 girls with him and they were so nice. I was getting along with them really well. And then as is the trend lately in Newport, we come to realize that we go to the same huge Mega Church down there. They are Rock Harbor girls. I have made so many awesome Christian friends in the last 2 trips down there. It gets me all psyched and really wanting to move. But I'm sure my enthusiasm will fade by midweek.

On Saturday I lounged around with TiTi. Shawn went to go look at a buying a condo and he put an offer down so I maybe will move in with them if they get it. And then I went to a party in Malibu at Haylee's. It was mostly Haylee's friends from softball so Sunstar and I felt a bit out of sorts. I slept in the next day and didn't go back to Newport for church... (gasp) a rarity for me to ever skip an opportunity to go to church. Instead I headed to Hollywood Blvd to hit up Neighborhoodies and drool at their merchandise. But shopping only made me frustrated at how I have no money to spend. So I went back to Sunstar's in a bad mood saying... I'm sick of Hollywood. Let's get out of here. And we spent the whole 6 hour drive figuring out how I can create a more comfortable lifestyle for myself. Sunstar's ideas all revolved around me marrying rich old guys and paying him to come lay out by the pool. If you have any better ideas that don't involve demoralizing myself, feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions.

Thursday, June 2

So as soon as I return from Vegas and get around to unpacking my luggage comes the time to get it back out and pack it back up for a trip to Newport Beach. Kelly sat at my house as I packed pleading with me not to go away this weekend as she just got back into town yesterday, but I can't delay this trip any longer. I'm researching the option of moving down here with the creperie and seeing whether their city planning stops me dead in my tracks or not. So tonight Sunstar and I drove down here. Tomorrow is the only day I have to really accomplish any business. The rest of the weekend will be devoted to fun. Stopping at the LA location of Neighborhoodies is a must seeing that I missed out on stopping at the Las Vegas store last weekend. I must also see my sister this weekend. She'll come up from San Diego. I must go to Rock Harbor and this time I'll buy worship cd's and not get evacuated from the building. I must hit up a party Haylee is throwing in Malibu. Possible musts are visiting my old coworkers over at UBS PaineWebber, hitting the beach, returning to Club Vegas, and picking up that beach bag I regretted not getting last time I was in town. If it's still on your mind a month later then it's probably a safe purchase. This Bulgarian trance music Sunstar has me listening to has me pretty jazzed so I'm going to go dance with Roxy around his apartment.