YOLO

This Labor Day weekend I had plans to attend an outdoor screening, do a little prep work for an upcoming job, and go bar hopping in Venice Beach.  Some work, some play, close out the summer with a couple friends and a glass of rosé. Simple.

What I did instead was drop everything to party in Palm Springs for a night, come home, and then drop everything to party in Vegas.

3 days. 16.5 hours of traffic. 800 miles.

Because YOLO.

I don’t know where the YOLO obsession originated. It was engaged sometime around my last Vegas trip in July and when I think about it the first thing that comes to mind is my friend Anastasia (a 100lb blonde) throwing her arms around gangsta-rap style and bellowing, “You Only Live ONCE!” so I guess I have to credit her with planting the seed. And I suppose her craving for excitement struck a chord with me as I stared down my four-year anniversary of moving to LA and was feeling a little stagnant. I used to be a YOLO-er. My twenties were a veritable YOLO-coaster, so electric and full of experiences, whereas inventorying my thirties leaves me with depressingly little to brag about. Two breakups. Unstimulating work. Travel that largely revolves around holidays and reunions and other people’s fortune. I look at the last 7 years and see the spontaneity-loving adventure-junkie in me cooking dinner for one and fretting about retirement.

I needed to YOLO. So I did. And it was awesome.

We booked a room at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs on a whim Thursday evening and were poolside with cocktails in hand less than 24 hours later.  We met a fantastic group in from New York City and enjoyed an unforgettable night drinking and laughing and bonding with people we’ll never see again. “That was too much fun!” I moaned on the drive home the next day. “We have to do this more!” Anastasia nodded. “YOLO,” she affirmed.

I got home at 5pm on Saturday and dropped my suitcase. I browsed the refrigerator and contemplated take-out options. I showered. No more than 30 minutes had transpired since I walked in the door from Palm Springs when I glanced at my phone and saw a text from Anastasia. “How seriously are we taking this YOLO thing?” it asked. She had a friend in Vegas with a suite at the Palms. He had room to spare. Did we want to come?

Of course we did. In no time, I made a reservation to board my dog, added to my already packed suitcase, bought champagne and Smart Waters and set my alarm for 7am. We drove from LA right up to the valet at the Cosmopolitan, put bikinis on in the restroom and marched straight for the pool to commence another whirlwind night of dancing and laughing and making memories.

It was magical. And not because of the drinking or the partying but because of the joy that comes from shedding expectations, engaging all your senses and living in the moment. The thrill was intoxicating and I spent the grueling 7.5 hour drive home brainstorming ways to harness that recklessness constructively in other areas of my life.

“I need to YOLO my career!” I announced.  “I’m going to take creative risks!” 

“I have to YOLO my friendships!” I insisted. “I’m going to edit myself less!”

“I want to YOLO Los Angeles!” I declared. “I’m going to get more involved in my city!”

The possibilities were endless: YOLO-ing our vacations, YOLO-ing our love lives, YOLO-ing our health. Just talking about it was invigorating, and I felt the dormant adventurer in me begin to rise up again.  So now my challenge is to nurture her by  taking that first step and putting this enthusiasm into action. Because as I experienced this weekend, YOLO begets YOLO. Once you break out of your comfort zone and flex some liberation, you can’t help but want to continue and the growth that follows is precious.

Join me if you dare…

YOLO!

The Best

I recently had the pleasure of tagging along to LA Magazine’s Best of LA party, celebrating local front runners in food, culture, nightlife and more. How thrilling to stand among those who elevate my beloved city! How depressing to recognize that I’m not one of them.

“And what are YOU the best at?” asked LA’s Best Chocolatier*. I gulped my wine. I joked. I changed the subject. Apparently I’m the best at evading uncomfortable questioning. And although in the moment this was passed over for a conversation about artisanal butter, I have not forgotten. It’s been two weeks. I should not care this much but I do. I need a hug and a promise that I actually contribute something, if not to the world or even Los Angeles then at least to my immediate surroundings. So after 14 days of obsessive reflection and a considerable amount of alcohol, here is what I’ve come up with:

The Top 4 Things That Heidi is Best At

1.     I am the best at picnicking.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, I am a picnicking MACHINE. You need a lightweight weatherproof blanket? Stakes that hold your wine glasses? Flameless candle? Travel Boggle? Table-in-a-bag? I have all of this and more, not to mention a keen palate for haute lawn-dining cuisine like stuffed grape leaves and prosciutto-wrapped dates. Next time you’re seeing Othello in the park or an outdoor screening of Chinatown, swing by my getup for some pinot noir in a polycarbonate glass! Unless you actually like sitting on your sweatshirt and eating Dominos. In which case, we can’t be friends.

2.     I am the best at listening.

People smell it on me, I swear, and it’s always been this way. From the depressed prom date at age 16 who drove us to the beach and unloaded all his self-loathing on me to the alcoholic writer who just last year cried after kissing me because he missed his ex-girlfriend, I have an incredible gift for attracting the one person in a crowd who needs counseling. Only four days ago while working on set, a security guard sat down next to me, told me her little brother had killed himself two weeks earlier and we processed her emotions together for a solid three hours. And the thing is, it’s not a burden. It’s totally natural. Something in my DNA is incapable of walking away from a lonely heart and everyone in the world seems tapped into this. Once, while slumping bleary-eyed at an empty airport gate waiting to head home from Vegas, an Autistic-esque young man sat down next to me and confessed that he was nervous about leaving for college. We explored his anxiety, I got a free geology lesson and he professed his love for me as I boarded the plane. What can I say? I’m the best listener.

3.     I am the best at faking a foreign language.

I love traveling. I do not love being an American tourist. And so, my snobbery has birthed a fool-proof method of faking the mastery of a language. I learn a handful of salutations, a bit of time, money and restaurant-related vocabulary, the questions How much and Where is..?, the Groveling Phrases (various incarnations of please, thank you and pardon me) as well as the verbs To Be and To Go. I round these out with a blessed knack for mimicking accents and pronunciation, feign deafness when someone asks me a question I don’t understand et voilà! I’m fluent! If I had the wherewithal to develop this and license it to Rosetta Stone, I’m certain I could make a gazillion dollars. But I don’t. I’d rather use that time to travel.

4.     I am the best at hurting myself.

And no, this is not figurative. I actually, physically hurt myself multiple times a day. I don’t know if it’s some sort of medically valid spatial/ depth perception issue but I have a particular talent for getting up from dinner and banging my knee on the edge of the table top as well as cutting corners too closely when I walk and slamming my shoulder into the wall.  In my apartment alone I have bailed out for no reason in the tiled courtyard, tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs, slipped in the shower and hurt my knee, slipped in the shower and hurt my elbow, slipped in the shower and hurt my head and tripped into an old bookshelf in such a way that I embedded an industrial staple into the bottom of my heel. I also nail my forehead on the corner of the freezer door at least three times a week. My parents praise this as a natural affinity for physical comedy. Boyfriends generally fall somewhere on a spectrum of bafflement to full blown annoyance. All I know is that my body hurts all the time and I have more than earned an endorsement deal with Band Aid.

OK, so these aren’t exactly noble contributions but they’re all mine and I’m going to stand proud. Because it’s either that or cry. Why not join me? What sort of insignificant nonsense are YOU the best at?

* Love. Go there immediately.

DIY

I love crafts. 

It started around age 5 with Play-Doh and Shrinky Dinks and has since evolved into a full-blown obsession with creating. On any given day you can find me tweaking my favorite brownie recipe, tending my houseplants or practicing a new embroidery stitch. I've taken on everything from stained glass art to jewelry making to knitting and I dream of a day when I'll have space for quilting and gardening. In a perfect world I would spend my days mixing my own organic cleaning agents, reupholstering vintage chairs and aging homemade cheeses… The fact is, nothing makes me happier than working with my hands. 

However. 

I'm terrible at it. 

Not that the final result is bad- somehow I always manage to more or less achieve the expected outcome - but the process of getting there is always disastrous. Which is fine. I'm used to it by now and it's pretty common knowledge that all of my crafty undertakings trend more toward Lucille Ball than Martha Stewart so imagine my surprise when I was recently praised by my good friend, Melanie. I had just mentioned in passing that I was planning to make my own almond milk that coming weekend. 

“Every time I talk to you, you’re sewing pillows or making a soup from scratch.” She cooed. “You’re so domestic. I love that about you.” 

There was not a hint of cynicism. Not a trace of mockery. There was genuine admiration in her voice and in that moment I saw myself the way she sees me: Betty Crocker in a checkered apron, lovingly placing pies in the window to cool. So radiant. So competent. So hilariously wrong. 

To my dearest Melanie who always sees the best in me, I offer the following chronicle of a recent Sunday afternoon, when I endeavored to spray paint my coffee table while also preparing homemade nut butter: 

1:00 Begin by roasting nuts for butter. Set oven to 450. Spread a cup each of outrageously priced raw organic walnuts and almonds on a cookie sheet. Add a quarter cup of flaxseeds, which hop and bounce and scatter all over the floor. Hear dog coming to eat seeds off the floor, lunge to keep her away, spill entire sheet of nuts on the floor. 

1:06 Vacuum kitchen. 

1:13 Start over. Put fresh batch of nuts and seeds in the oven. Set timer for 10 minutes. 

1:22 Carry table to the courtyard garden. Realize that even though “drop cloth” was noted on Iphone calendar, Wunderlist app, a Post-It taped to the front door and a napkin laid out on my wallet, a drop cloth was never bought. 

1:23 Stare at drop cloth-less ground.

1:24 Struck by genius idea to improvise with garbage bags. Congratulate self on creative brilliance. 

1:25 Cut up garbage bags. Decide to tape them together with masking tape. Do not have masking tape, only painters’ tape. Same thing. 

1:27 Not the same thing. 

1:28 Tape inexplicably not adhering where it needs to yet adhering everywhere else. Bag bunching and gathering and puckering and ultimately resembling a deformed spaceman. 

1:29 Curse. Wrestle. Surrender.

1:30 Take plastic bag spaceman to the garden; lay it on the ground, rest table on top. Plastic bag spaceman is actually performing better than expected by bubbling up and protecting surrounding bushes. Genius restored. 

1:31 Prepare to spray. Shake can as directed. Pop plastic security tab off nozzle. Aim and spray. 

1:32 Realize plastic security tab was not a plastic security tab. It was an innovative spraying mechanism that has now been broken off. Paint foams out the bottom and splatters all over self, the garden and the table so that table is now stippled with paint. Must avoid uneven coating! Step back to inspect malfunction, spewing paint all over concrete walkway. 

1:34 Curse. Curse again. Realize mid-cursing that paint is drying on the concrete. See hose coiled in the garden across the walkway. Turn on water and flood the paint splatters, to no effect. Curse. 

1:35 Reach angrily to turn off the spigot, slip on the slick concrete, trip on the coiled hose and fall through a cluster of Birds of Paradise, crushing them and hitting head on my apartment window. 

1:36 Curse. Question the logic behind wearing a strapless mini dress to paint furniture and send up a silent prayer that the events of the previous thirty seconds transpired without witness. 

1:37 Regain bearings. Note a trace of smoke. Burning. Food burning. Food burning in apartment. 

1:38 Race inside and instinctively pull smoking tray of charred nuts from oven without a mitt. Holler, sending tray to the floor. 

1:39 Curse. 

1:41 Run scorched hand under cold water.

1:43 Fire alarm sounds. Need a broom to wave smoke away. Do not own a broom so wave Swiffer back and forth in front of the alarm, accidentally hitting alarm, sending it to the floor and breaking it. 

1:45 Bandage burned hand. Vacuum another $21 worth of nuts and start over for the third time with a fresh batch. 

1:56 Return to the table outside, which is now splattered with drying paint. Plastic bag spaceman has kicked up in the breeze, stuck to the tacky surface and is drying onto the table. 

1:58 Anchor plastic bag spaceman with three pairs of flip flops, sand table and re-spray with second can of paint. 

2:13 Table is coated and drying. Renewed belief in abilities. Return to kitchen to finish nut butter. 

2:14 Place roasted nuts and seeds in food processor. Blend. 

2:19 Keep blending.

2:28 Worry that food processor was not intended for this purpose and might short circuit. 

2:32 Open brand new jar of $10 local, small-batch wildflower honey and add three tablespoons to the completed butter. 

2:33 Test a sample. Butter is delectable. Swell with pride. Wasted materials, burned hand and broken smoke alarm are a distant memory.

2:34 Fantasize about quitting desk job to craft custom artisanal nut butters for neighborhood eateries while setting the jar of honey back on the counter. Miss the counter entirely. Watch in slow-motion as $10 jar of honey plummets to the floor and shatters. Honey everywhere. Glass everywhere. Dog trots over to investigate. 

2:36 Wash kitchen floor. 

2:43 Wash dog.

2:49 Vacuum kitchen floor for the third time in 2 hours.

2:58 Wash kitchen floor again. 

3:06 Jar nut butter and refrigerate. 

3:01 Check to see that table is dry. It is! Bring inside the house. Inhale three painful, paint-fume laden breathes and immediately relocate coffee table outside apartment door to aerate. Subsequently live without coffee table for 4 days, using a small chair as a substitute. 

3:09 Shower. Scrub paint-encrusted fingers with nail polish remover. Open a bottle of wine to toast crafting success but decide to nap instead.

I wish I could tell you that this was an unusually blunder-full day but it wasn't. This is entirely typical and anyone who has ever lived with me can attest to that. But no matter! The nut butter was amazing and I've gotten many compliments on the coffee table. Next up is making my own multi-grain bread and rehabbing a bookcase I found on the sidewalk. What could go wrong there?

High School

My favorite (only) niece, Mary, starts high school this week, and, besides making me contemplate Botox, this has prompted an interesting discussion between my older brother, Damien, and I. He wants to know if I "discovered" myself in high school; if I consider myself to be the same person. "Because I'm totally different" he mused. "In high school, I didn't want to make any waves. My number one priority was to make sure no one noticed me - I wish I could go back and tell myself not to be scared..."

That was not my experience. I wasn't scared or particularly insecure in high school, I was just incredibly high strung. If I could sit down for an Awful Awful with 1991 Heidi I would tell her to chill out, stop putting so much pressure on herself and, for god's sake, blow off your homework for a night, onebadgradeisnotgoingtokillyou.

I was not very relaxed in high school. Correction: I was not relaxed, at all, period. A typical day at Saint Mary Academy began at 7:30am, before homeroom, when I would cram CliffsNotes, drill Biology flashcards and fret with my fellow over-achievers over whether Sister Sylvia might give us a pop quiz in World Civilization that afternoon. From there, I was launched into a full load of Honors courses, taking a pass for some if I needed to conduct a Peer Counseling session or give a campus tour as part of my Ambassador duties. As soon as the final bell rang, I would make a mad dash to one of several after school meetings (cooking crepes with the French Club? Signing petitions for Amnesty International?), many of which I had to cut short so that I could do a quick change out of my uniform and eat a soggy brown-bag turkey sandwich before bolting to the auditorium for a four -hour theatre rehearsal. I was rarely home before 10pm and my mother, with her infinite patience, would often stay up until 1am with me, pecking away at our electric typewriter as I dictated English essays.  Most nights I fell asleep with an open textbook on my pillow.

  

And that was just school. Outside of the Academy, I stacked my days with voice, piano and dance lessons, rehearsals for professional theatre productions, shifts at a local soup kitchen and a part-time job at Marshalls. Just recounting this schedule exhausts me and I remember it like it was yesterday. The urgency. The constant worry that I could (should) be doing more to challenge myself, milk opportunity, be better than the person next to me, excel, excel, excel.

  

Which is to say that I am exactly the same person I was in high school.

Eighteen years later, I've made a conscious effort to lighten up and I am considerably less anxious. But the yearning still exists. The restlessness to achieve, the impatience with structure and limitations, the fear of falling short of expectations - it's all there, only now it's more complicated because I don't compare myself on a high school scale, I compare myself on a human scale. Am I fulfilling my intellectual potential? Am I lifting up my community? Am I a supportive enough daughter/ sister/ employee/ friend? It sounds miserable but it's really not. I find it exhilarating. Keeping the bar just out of reach means I'm in a constant state of pursuit, perpetual motion, and that, to me, is what being fully alive is all about. 

But of course, I could still stand to chill out a little bit. So I will share with Mary the same sermon that 2030 Heidi will probably want to extend to me: 

Relax. Have fun. None of the pressures around you are terribly important in the big scheme of things. That said, do take pride in your work. Be kind to people. Respect yourself. Don't drink and drive, don't let your friends drink and drive, don't do anything you wouldn't want showing up in a Google search and make sure to sneak out of the house once in a while. 

Also, drink a mocha Awful Awful for me because I'm craving one now and it's driving me batty. 

And don't tell your Dad I said to sneak out of the house.

Unsolicited Advice on Getting Over a Cold

Today I'm finally getting over a cold -  And thank goodness because I can't be sick this week. First of all, it is summertime and simply aesthetically inappropriate to be bundled up on the couch sipping hot tea with the lights out while my neighbors grill by the pool. Second, I have tickets to Yankees-Dodgers tomorrow night, a phenomenon that only comes around every few years and must marked by drinking too much beer and making up chants that rhyme with "Mattingly". So, yeah. Cannot be sick.

Lucky for me I am expert at this. Having three years experience of being uninsured with no company sick time, I have mastered the art of holistic healing and, since colds are going around lately (and are pretty much always going around all the time), you yourself may very well be under the weather right now and could benefit from the following wisdom.

  

Heidi's 12 Completely Unsubstantiated Rules for Kicking a Cold: 

Before you even begin, you have to engage in positive self-talk because it promotes healing. No stomping around and moaning, "But I have a date tomorrow! No one wants to have a cocktail with a sweaty phlegm-monster!" Instead, focus on the benefits. Like how fever gives your cheeks a perfect flush and how delicious your cooking is when you're too congested to taste anything. Once you've established this, start taking the following steps...

1. As soon as you sense something cold-ish coming on, stay home from work. I know it makes you feel like a hero to push through your discomfort but everyone around you hates you. The ones with small children double-hate you. Stay home.
2. Turn off your phone. We both know you don't want to talk to anyone. And anyway, you're sick and not making much sense so you're of no help to anyone who calls you needing something. Also, this keeps you from going on Instagram and lamenting all the cool stuff that other healthy people are doing.
3. Take a shower. This also helps with the positivity thing. You'll feel less like a funky-smelling germball and being clean and warm will help you sleep. I cannot cite any sources for that but the data is out there somewhere. Probably something about your brain and circadian rhythms and associations with childhood pre-bedtime baths. Whatever. It's science.
4. Put on sweatpants. This is exactly the occasion that sweatpants were created for. Really, it's the only occasion that sweatpants were created for but you don't feel well so I'm not gonna harp on your personal style. Sweatpants are instantly comforting and since your body is fragile and you have the added stress of either living alone and taking care of yourself or being shunned by family/ roommates who don't want you to breathe on them, you deserve as much physical TLC as possible. Clean, though. Dirty sweatpants are a classic nod to unemployment and basically the opposite of comforting.
5. Sleep. Logical progression, duh. Should be obvious but you're sick so your linear thinking is off, I get it.  Also, if you have a dog, use him/her as a heating pad or body pillow to ease any muscle aches. If you have a cat... ha! Yeah, right. Your cat is gonna lay wherever it damn well wants to, and likely on your head, even though you have a debilitating headache. Just be grateful it's cuddling with you, idiot human.  
6. Drink citrus-y stuff. All day long. Don't ever stop drinking. Also, Sprite is not citrus.
7. Take 2 spoonfuls of this  weird stuff . It's gross and it works. You're welcome.
8. Watch Dumb and Dumber. Laughter is the best medicine and whatnot. THERE ARE NO SUBSTITUTES. Except maybe episodes of 30 Rock, Seasons 1-3.
9. Eat a steak. A guy I know who used to live in Japan told me it's a cultural thing there to eat a giant steak when you don't feel well so I totally do this. Roll your eyes but my Honda will go 400,000 miles if I take care of it. These people know what they're talking about.  
10. Take a shot of brandy. This ancient healing method is passed down from my grandmother, who maintains that it will "Cure what ails ya!". Some may question whether this borders on dysfunction but it definitely doesn't because grandmothers are naturally right about everything. 
11. There's nothing inherently medicinal about this but if you have a sore throat (and even if you don't) eat ice cream. Dairy is bad for colds (Again, no specifics but, science) so some people may suggest Popsicles but that's laaaaaame. I recommend Trader Joe's Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream. It's scrumptious and be warned that if you buy it from my local store and they run out I will cut you.  
12. Drink more. I'm not kidding. Rule #6. And sleep. Why aren't you sleeping? 

And that's the recipe, folks. Foolproof. If you follow these rules, I guarantee that you will feel better in 3-4 days, which is likely the same amount of time it would take you to feel better if you didn't follow these rules but I dare you to prove it. Happy healing!