Aug
6

happy [belated] birthday to me

By Heidi | Published: August 6, 2006


dancing in toscas
Originally uploaded by in retrospect.

i celebrated my birthday a week ago sunday in san francisco with some of my nearesst and dearest. it was one of the most fantastic weekends i’ve had in a while. which was a relief after running up to my birthday with persistent bouts of insomnia, paralyzing introspection and a kind of concern about this one that i’ve never had before.

maybe all you need is time to hang out with your dad in the backyard, have an unexpected encounter with experimental olives, consume french food for 12 hours straight and cap off the evening dancing with friends to dean martin blasting from the wurlitzer at tosca’s on columbus.

and stop to remember that watching time pass, regardless of your current state of affairs, is still better than the alternative.

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Jul
18

wild-eyed and desperate

By Heidi | Published: July 18, 2006

i can’t sleep.

at least not through the night. and it’s transforming me into an irrational emotional frustrated creature that can’t focus or keep a single thought in my head.

i’ve never had trouble getting myself to sleep. ever. i’ve always been one to rest my weary head, and slide easily into a deep slumber that not a freight train nor a window-shaking bass-playing roommate could disturb.

yet for the last month or so, like clockwork, i spring wide awake around 3am. and i lie there. helpless. and sleepless. watching the sun creep up over the horizon and into my bedroom window while i silently curse the passing of time as i am present for every single sleepless moment of it.

now granted i’ve been getting itchy again lately. not sure the why or the what of it yet, but definitely getting itchy.

maybe as you approach the middle of your life, you no longer can wander around in the seemingly infinite space of time fucking around making mistakes, attempting this and that just to see what will happen.

or maybe in the middle of your life when you spend too much time overanalyzing and thinking about the passage of time, your mind starts screaming out of sheer frustration.

that’s enough to keep a person up at night.

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Jul
13

back in touch

By Heidi | Published: July 13, 2006

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on women in power: “I’m not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten what high school was like.” [via salon]

it has become painfully clear to me (again), how in many cases women can be far more cruel than our male counterparts.

i’ve spent most of my life surrounded by male playmates as a child, mostly male friends as an adolescent to primarily working and socializing among men as an adult.

interestingly enough, over the last few years in los angeles, i’ve attempted to reverse that pattern by surrounding myself with women believing that i needed more women in my life. to mixed results.

i touched on this subject before as i struggled to “overcome” this tendency and find some kind of balance.

while there are a handful of dear, dear women on whom i have come to rely for my sanity, perspective and general well-being unlike any other time in my life, i find myself harshly reminded why i have historically surrounded myself with men.

since then, i’ve come to realize that this is not a thing to be overcome, but embraced.

and i resolve to do so in the future.

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Jun
14

amen sister

By Heidi | Published: June 14, 2006

[via salon] Jewel talks about what she learned after she started drinking at 30: “I grew up singing for alcoholics, and it never really seemed like alcohol fixed anything. I was afraid that it would get me. Around 30, I kind of realized that alcohol really does solve all your problems. Whoever said drinking doesn’t help lied. You live and you learn.” (Page Six)

amen sister.

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May
19

daniela's birthday wish granted

By Heidi | Published: May 19, 2006


solitary wish
Originally uploaded by in retrospect.

last night i met up with my two favorite women in the world for a little pre-celebration of daniela’s birthday.

we started out at the house with a little champagne, gifting and girltalk followed by dinner at a greek resaurant in malibu where we feasted on octopus, dolthmas and shrimp prepared to inspire food performance art.

all was just fine and good, until the conversation turned abrubtly to my love life. the only trouble with running with a crowd of coupled up friends is their, admittedly well-placed, concern for my social life. or rather my lack of one.

after many years of spending time in misguided, ill-advised relationships i made a conscious and deliberate decision a few years ago to get comfortable in my own, single, skin. this is not a secret to anyone i know, or anyone who reads this site with any kind of regularity.

i’ve come to realize the pursuit of happiness, and being single are not mutually exclusive endeavors. at the same time, it can be a tough and lonely place to hold firm to the idea that i simply refuse to waste my precious time with people that i feel no sense of connection with, this includes friends, lovers and dinner dates.

however, after many months and years of watching me frighten men off in bars with a simple raise of an eyebrow or verbal assault, while inexplicably entangling myself with inappropriate, unavailable or unsuitable prospects–my girlfriends have decided that i can no longer be trusted to make these kinds of decisions without their intervention.

after an hour of defending my position that a shotgun approach is not my style and putting myself out there online just makes me feel like i’m in a bar 24/7 fending off bad one-liners and ill-intentioned propositions–i finally told my dear friends (with no small amount of exasperation) that fine, if they want me to get out there then they could write the damn profiles and field the prospects for me.

not realizing the excitement that this would generate or how eagerly they would take on this challenge, the conversation spiraled rapidly into something like this:

d: ooh! ok. we’ll put profiles on match and eHarmony..
l: we could do multiple profiles! you know, for all the sides of heidi we know and love…!
d: and craigslist and yahoo…
l: would we get to pick from your flickr photos? public or private?
h: erm. public. and preferably the snarling ones.
d: maybe we could show up and sit in the corner to observe!
l: that’s perfect. with recording devices and telephoto lenses….
d: i feel a little like a pimp!
l: i know! how fabulous is that? we’ll need purple hats with feathers
d: and a gold tooth. which one should i do? the top or bottom?
l: top side, definitely. okay, so we’ll put up profiles on match eharmony and myspace and craigslist um…
d: ooh! we could do eBay!!! if they can sell a potato chip shaped like the virgin mary on eBay i’m sure we could auction off a date with heidi! oh man, this is like my birthday wish come true!

by this point i’m slumped back into my seat, drinking heavily at the enthusiasm at which my supposed “friends” have taken on this challenge.

even though i managed to retain veto power, i’m afraid. very afraid.

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May
1

monday greetings

By Heidi | Published: May 1, 2006


best card from boss ever…
Originally uploaded by in retrospect.

coming into the office i find this on my desk from my boss. apparently my secret is out.

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Apr
26

empty gesture

By Heidi | Published: April 26, 2006

i’ve been traveling a lot lately on business, so earlier in the year i made some significant investments in tumi luggage. for a girl such as i, with a shameless bag fetish, tumi luggage officially qualifies as an investment.

tumi bags are fantastic, amazing, magic bags that made me feel like i had a mary poppins carpet bag when i packed for europe back in march. plus they have this fabulous bag tracer registration program to return your bags to you should they get lost.

however this also means i now receive tumi spam, which normally i don’t mind at all. but today i received this:

Dear Tumi Customer:

You are part of a select group of Tumi customers we are inviting to form the first-ever Tumi Advisory Panel….blahblahblah… To be considered for the advisory panel, please click on this link to register….blahblah..In appreciation for your completed survey, we will send you a $25 Tumi Award Certificate redeemable at tumi.com. blahblah…Thank you in advance for your participation in shaping the future of Tumi.

not to sound petty, but offering me a $25 gift certificate to use at tumi.com (i dare you to find a single item for $25 or less on their site) is akin to handing a small child a copper penny and sending her over to the 25-cent gumball machine. only to watch her waddle over and stand expectantly in front of that shiny red, cast iron and glass bank of heaven, containing objects of her pure unadulterated desire. then leaving her blinking helplessly at the relative pointlessness of the gesture.

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Apr
25

wait a minute

By Heidi | Published: April 25, 2006

does this mean that if i’d eaten better, things could have turned out differently for me?

if only i’d have known!

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Apr
24

baby steps

By Heidi | Published: April 24, 2006

baby steps

my sister and i are very close. we talk almost every day, and every once in a while have marathon conversations hashing out our deep-seated childhood issues, our ideas about relationships, religion, child rearing and often, haircuts.

my sister has a love/hate relationship with her hair. each time she ventures out to her inevitably new hairstylist, it’s cause for a major discussion. curly? straight? bangs? layers? short? long? the laundry list of considerations is fairly extensive and frankly, exhausting. now, this may sound like an insignificant topic, but trust me this is a major issue we’ve been working through for years.

so over the weekend, i mentioned that i had my hair cut, and was very happy with the results. she remarked dejectedly that she wished that she could have that with her hair.

so i launched into an in-depth analysis about how i’d been with my stylist for almost two years, and that it wasn’t always that good. as a matter of fact in the beginning of our relationship, i asked him to cut off all my shoulder-length, blonde hair and color it brown. which was a pretty daunting place to start a relationship.

from there it was a careful process of getting the color and the cut right as it grew out. inevitably it was too ashy, too light, not natural enough…i was frustrated and almost left him several times, but i knew he was talented and gave a great cut so i stuck with him. and over time he and i finally got to place where he knew what i liked, and we started having some fun with it.

as i related this story, in an effort to get suz to stop switching stylists every visit, inevitably getting caught cheating on one stylist with another and having to hide behind the counter (which is, strangely enough, a woman’s worst fear in a salon) she should really consider trying to develop a relationship over time with one good stylist with potential.

then i paused for a minute grinned widely and asked, “now how is it that i can manage to develop a healthy relationship with my stylist, but am completely unable to manage this in my relationships?”

she replied, “baby steps.”

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Apr
17

euphemism of the day. or year.

By Heidi | Published: April 17, 2006

after a particularly animated rant about how a particular thing should be handled this afternoon, which sounded oh so very elegant and logical to me, a colleague smiled at me and quietly shook her head.

i asked her what she was smiling at, she replied,”you’re so cute when you’re being naive.”

which gave me pause while i thought for a minute and shot back, “well, now i know why i’m so frigging bummed out half the time. it’s that my expectations are way up here (holding hand above head) and what actually occurs is down here (holding hand below knees). it’s the chronic and debilitating disappointment of it all.”

she smiles again, “oh no, it just that you are not necessarily constrained by reality. and that’s a good thing.”

mmmm. not sure about that.

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