Plenty of Rain and TV

Cyber Detox in Paradise

We are having some weather lately! The power went out Wednesday evening, and didn’t turn back on till 14 hours later. I thought the campus would be closed, but couldn’t be certain. I quickly realized after leaving my neighborhood that we are last on the priority list, since the rest of the city was bustling with its normal life.

The wind is doing the most damage, and at times sounds like a jet hovering over our house. When I’m laying in bed at night the thought that keeps going around in my mind is what if a tall tree crashes into the house.

Then I wonder if these thoughts are some type of paranormal warning. In an episode of Unsolved Mysteries I watched a hundred years ago, one of the segments was about an older sister being visited by a spirit, and told to move her bed to the opposite wall. She moved the bed, and went to sleep, and during the night a car crashed into her house, right into the wall the bed had been. So her moving the bed saved her life.

Although, my constantly thinking the tree in our front yard might crash into the house is not the same as a spirit visiting me and delivering the verbal warning, “Go sleep with your kids in the back bedroom,” what if the spirit world is just reading the audience? They won’t send a spirit to warn me because they know I’d have a heart attack when I first saw it, and then there’d be no one to save anyone.

I heard back from a job I applied to in November, and sadly, it was a pass. I applied to be the principal’s admin at the top school in Sacramento, figuring the kids would get free tuition, so it’d be a job that benefited everyone beyond financially. If you add up the 50K for 13 years, well were talking Indecent Proposal kind of money, except it’s not liquid, and paid in installments. So I wouldn’t get the pleasure of the act or rolling around in cash afterward.

I took it as a good sign that the principal emailed me with the rejection, meaning I was actually under consideration. But, I don’t have to question the meaning of my rejection, which was, “Alicia you (and husband) can make enough money to pay for this school without compromising your goals; doing really self-indulgent work, which wouldn't be the case if you're busy doing someone else’s paperwork.”

If I end up on a late night talk show, and get asked about my life’s work, I won’t say, “Success occurs when luck meets preparedness,” I’ll lament, “I worked my ass off, and it eventually paid off, that’s the only thing I was sure of.”

I once heard Sofia Vergara give an interview and she said she didn’t exercise, and ate whatever she wanted. I felt like a citizen’s arrest was in order, or at least initiate a massive fine by the FCC because it’s dangerous to disseminate this false persona; I just stuff myself with gluttonous abandon, and still look like a top ten stunner, take up your complaints with God.

Maybe it’s because my definition of “eat whatever I want” would be much more detrimental, everyday I’d start with a cheeseburger, IPA and box of See’s chocolates and then see where I go from there, squeezing in a green juice somewhere.

I follow JLo on Instagram, and she is also a top ten stunner, however, half of her posts are pictures of her working out. She is a serious gym rat, and isn’t embarrassed to acknowledge her excessively healthy lifestyle, not drinking and sleeping her 8 hours a night. I applaud her self-control, and willingness to keep it real. We all know it is not easy to fit into a teeny sequin body suit, a huge component of her work, and in her case, it’s work she loves.

Lena Dunham also pulls this false persona shade during interviews. I love her work, but I find the so riddled by anxiety, and barely able to function in the world, a tad too much, and actually quite unbelievable because the question would be, if you’re a top writer-business bitch but also combatting your verbal incontinent, awkward, anti-social, pill-popping, hot mess self, well then who is driving your multimillion dollar ship?

When I was in college I took up Cardio Kick Boxing. I did Billly Blanks’ Advanced Tae-Bo video video so much I memorized it word for word. In one part “Michael” demonstrates the modified version of an exercise, and after showing it, Billy yells at him, “Micheal, you a top basketball player, now get up. I’m not gonna let you get away with that.”

That’s what I yell at Vergara, “You’re a top celebrity, stop acting like you don’t work your ass of for it. I know you don’t eat carbs, and I don’t judge you for it, look how well it pays off!” and to Dunham, “Girl, we all now you aren’t a puppet and have a strong sense of who you are and what you want your work to be.”

I watched the pilot episode of “I Love Dick” on Amazon. It’s another show that celebrates the self-hating woman, and although Kevin Bacon is a hot piece I don’t give the show my seal of approval, its too sad; the heroine’s desire for approval is depressing and there is not a single redeeming quality about her. Who knows though, it’s the pilot, so perhaps she comes back and has something to offer other than wanting to impress a man, albeit a very sexy man.

But I can now connect the dots of some covert PR taking place in the past couple months, since I read about the author of “I Love Dick” in the New Yorker a month or so ago, and there was some Instagram buzz over Dunham giving this book to one of her gal pals, some conspicuous product placement at the time.

I veered over to One Mississippi, a FANTASTIC show about a self-loving woman. It’s an emotional roller coaster, while being genuinely funny. One Mississippi is renewed for a second season, and has a billion great reviews. It’s only six episodes long, so I was happy and bummed watching the last episode, the timeline on the bottom of my screen counting down to the end of my enjoying this great show, like an hourglass. The last episode was a tearjerker, and since I watch TV while I’m running on the treadmill, I usually avoid shows where my throat gets constricted from being emotional. But I fought through it, and nose breathed during this part.

The following day, I stood on the treadmill thinking, “What the hell am I going to watch now. The light in the world has dimmed with my current favorite show ending.”

And then Amazon proved their algorithms effectiveness because I saw Schitts Creek in my Recommended-For-You. I’ve been waiting eons for the second season to become part of Amazon Prime, and it finally happened. Trying not to cry while running is a challenge but the laugh-out-loud jokes in Schitts Creek offer another challenge because I can't put a cap on my embarrassingly uncontrollable laughter, breaking the silence at my relatively calm gym by loudly cackling, maintaining eye contact with my tiny phone to diffuse any confusion.

I need to just own it, the same way I expect others. I am not ashamed to almost trip over my feet on a machine that could cause me severe dental damage because I love to be entertained. I suffer for my TV, and that doesn’t mean watching shows that are less than amusing because even those shows offer insight into content trends and why I read certain stories in the New Yorker. Intel I figured out on my own, without the help of a spirit ghost.

The rain, and TV watching, are seeping a little too deep in my mind because last night I dreamt I met Titus Burgess while I was getting ready for one of my sister’s wedding. We were anxious because all the plans were confusing and it wasn’t clear how we’d get to the wedding. My hair looked the best it has in years, and at one point a turkey ran right passed my feet and out the door.

The week before last I went on a cyber detox, and I dived back into the Internet world with gusto. It was good to realize much of my pull toward being online is self-constructed. I decided to do a cyber detox over my winter break after reading a quote by Pascal, “All of humanity’s problems come from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Because I had worked myself up to compulsively checking my email, leading me to get caught up in frequent wasteful cyber loops.

I broke the detox once, when I felt certain my boss emailed me. After I checked my work email, I saw nothing from him, and then realty hit, he never emails me initially. He is one of the last “phone-first” kinds of people.

I should think about this at night, when I grow increasingly concerned about my concerns over the tall tree crashing into my house. Unless there is a ghost talking to me about this tree, there is nothing I should do but go to sleep; I have TV stars to talk to, weddings to get stressed out about, and turkeys that need to scurry at my feet.