Parenting

DIARY

Ten Things Getting Divorced Has Taught Me (So Far)

This is a place I can tell you - from the bottom of my heart - that I never, ever thought I'd be. I grew up with parents who were married, and still are. My friends' parents - nearly all of them - were married, and still are. Kendrick's parents too. Married. For life.

So even though divorce is apparently something that happens to half the couples out there (at least), I never thought it would happen to me. Because I never saw divorce as an option; not even close. No matter how bad things got - and from time to time, they did get there - I honestly couldn't imagine ever pulling the trigger, so to speak. I imagined saying those words as the equivalent of setting off a bomb in the very center of our home: an unthinkable. A tragedy.

And then I did just that. Blew us to pieces.

Decor

Kids’ Rooms (In Progress)

Pendant Lamp | Table | Blanket | Bed | Rug

Here is a nice - but also slightly vexing - thing about my kids' new bedrooms: They are huge. Like, twice the size of their last ones. (Thank you, Gods Of Real Estate That Isn't Located In Silicon Valley.)

And like I said, that's nice, and they love them, but those cavernous, popcorn-ceilinged (why) rooms presented a bit of a decorating conundrum...which was compounded by the fact that on moving day, I discovered that neither of their beds could be removed from their old bedrooms without being disassembled. And since both of those beds were from Ikea (his; hers) and thus required Herculean disassembly and reassembly abilities, and because the idea of having to do all that Herculean dis- and re-assembling on the exact same day in which I was upending my entire life was less-than-appealing, I just sort of...left them there. (Kendrick came and got them later; don't worry, I didn't bequeath The Ikea Problem to the new owners.)

DIARY

Loud House

Me, in the bedroom that's just mine. (Image by @smiechbuziak)

When I think about the first time I lived in LA - right after college, when I moved out here to look for acting work - there's rarely anyone else there, in those memories. It wasn't like I spent all my time alone - I had friends, and I had my boyfriend - but most of the time, whether by choice or not...I was. Me, at the do-it-yourself car wash, feeding quarters into the soap machine. Me, driving north towards Santa Barbara, then turning around when I got there and driving right back. Me, wandering through the Fairfax Farmer's Market. Buying a donut, just to have a thing to do.

I was so lonely.

Just A Little Encouragement

Money Talk

Whee, responsibility!

I hired a financial planner, and it is already changing my life, and so I am going to take a minute to explain why I think you should maybe do the same.

OK, so I have a very emotional relationship with money. A lot of people do, I imagine, but the extent to which my financial situation in any given moment has an immediate and profound effect on my mental state in that moment is kind of overwhelming. Literally, it goes like this: Book job --> happy. Do not book job --> utterly panicked, fully devastated, and completely incapable of taking a step back to realize that I've gone ahead and made the hustling lifestyle work for a solid fifteen years now, and will almost certainly continue to make it work going forward, because that's just common sense.

Real Talk

Halloween Fails: A Retrospective

This year, we will be doing the trick-or-treating thing with my friend Shannon and her family. I will be wearing my skull shawl, because skulls. My son will be in a Spiderman costume from Target, and my daughter will be in a Tinkerbell costume she ordered off of Amazon, and I have a feeling it will be slightly lower-key than it has been in past years, but also, it will be...

...

...you know. Halloween. Which means I am about to witness what pure joy in 7-year-old and 4-year-old form looks like. I may be exhausted already in anticipation, but I'm also (ssh) pretty excited.