My Friend Tom

To all of you who expressed your concern regarding my friend Tom who I mentioned was sick last week, thank you so much for your sentiments. Tom passed away last Tuesday on September 11^th. I didn’t mention it then because I didn’t really feel like I would have the appropriate words to be respectful but still mournful at the same time. I’m sure I still don’t, I mean, can you ever?

            I’m going to tell you a little about my buddy Tom Duddy. He was from the North East, complete with the accent and was super offensive to many a Kentucky woman. He was the best. I could go on for hours about all the nonsense that Tom and I talked about, but I’ll just let you know why he was a legend, because Tom was a legend. Tom had this magical ability to find people. People who were hurt or people who needed something, and he would find them a best friend. Tom was there for me on at least a million occasions and I don’t even think he knew it. When I studied abroad, he was one of the few people who kept in contact with me. When this evil chick in college was spreading rumors that I was sleeping with my teacher (and I was still getting Bs?!?!) Tom would introduce himself to my friends and my fiancé, and even was engaged to me for a few months on facebook until the entire thing blew over.

            That was just the tip of the iceberg. Tom travelled for work all the time, and wherever he went, he would meet people who just needed to talk. He would listen. I’m sure there are people all over the world who don’t even know he’s passed. I guess that’s how those things are. If you live life right, there will be a huge network of people who have been touched by your existing.

            I guess that’s where my feelings come in. I’ve always been pretty good at accepting death as a part of life. You can’t be sad for the dead. No matter what you believe, there is always some rational that death is a pleasant thing for those we love/who are good. Either there is some sort of paradise or there is nothing at all, so you can’t mourn for them. We cry for ourselves, we miss them, we needed them, we don’t like what has happened. Our feelings in death can be such selfish things, but the more upset you are for someone’s death, the more proud you have to be of them. They did something worth missing.

            Tom taught me something great. He taught me that I don’t want to be looking for another Tom Duddy, I want to be a Tom Duddy. Tom was a guy who was just your friend because he wanted to be. He didn’t use people. I don’t once remember him talking about his own need to get ahead. He didn’t use people, he was there for everyone. I guess this just makes me want to carry on the legacy. So often we live our lives saying, what about me? Where is my best friend? Where is my support system? Why haven’t I achieved this? Why am I here? Instead I want to be that best friend, the support system. Everything else will fall into place.

I want there to be a huge group of people that can say, when I met Brittany everything changed. I don’t want to be just another person on someone’s list who used them. I want to be as sincere as I felt Tom Duddy to be.

That’s Living the Dream. 

I don't know if you still read this, but here is a song that makes me think of everything I left.

Professional Wrestling = Life

So, I’m heading home in the morning, and that means I’m packing, and that means that I am distracting myself with whatever else I can. That means thinking the deep thoughts about Hippies that make me feel bad about myself, or boys who make me feel short (Not ugly, just not big enough) or even girls who make me feel like I’m not smart enough, or not pretty enough, or not professional enough, or…whatever…not enough of something.

Then I had this thought. Some people live their lives totally guarded. They get hurt once and they put up walls. They know they have walls and they like them. They use the walls to protect themselves and to torture everyone else who wants to see what is on the other side of the wall.

Then there are some people live their lives totally open.  They invite danger to brunch, ask it to watch their purse and to make sure no one puts rape drugs in their drinks while they go to the bathroom. Then they get upset when they wake up and all their money is gone.

Then there is ME

I live my life like a professional wrestler. WWE style. I get beat up a lot, because I enjoy the crowd, I enjoy the rush, but I don’t get raped and robbed by danger.  I am calculated but I don’t have to build a fortress around me to protect myself. I just make sure when the person hits me in the face with a chair, that he doesn’t hit me too hard and that it’s not a real chair and the ground has some give in it, and there are medics backstage to check out my shattered cheek bones. I mean it’s just a bone. It will heal.
I know that when you get hurt, you cry a little, shake it off, and take some Advil. I can live through anything, some people get paralyzed in car wrecks, some people become blind, and some people are the crazy cat lady even when they don’t want to be. I can handle a chair to the face, or a little heartbreak here and there, and even mean girls. I mean, what else am I supposed to be doing here? Being alive isn’t just breathing and paying bills, it’s about seeing all the crazy people around you, and seeing how they interact with each other and with you. It’s a joy to be alive, even when you have an emotionally shattered cheekbone.

The Rat Chronicles Part 2: Not a Casual Relationship/ One Shu too many

Last month I started the Rat Chronicles, a tale of terror. It has been so long since I blogged, I know most of you probably forgot what happened, Quick run down: I found poop in the floor, and I googled it, and it was a rat, and I tried to buy traps but I couldn’t find any for giant rats (They are so huge!)

So, after one night of sleeping in sheer terror, we call the landlord and he sends out the exterminator. The exterminator tells us that it is indeed a rat, and sets some traps. We are so confident that we are going to find a rat, I’m checking the traps every few minutes

          I wake up the next morning to find…POOP ON THE FLOOR AROUND THE KITCHEN!!!!!

He’s a genius! So I name him Barnabe

We realize that he is eating the dog food. So, the next night, we put the dog food up. No poop in the kitchen, but Barnabe pooped around the traps! Then I put dog food around the traps. Barnabe eats the dog food, poops and doesn’t set off the traps. Then I get serious, I vow to emotionally destroy this rat!

          I start doing things to him like, sneaking into the kitchen at night, while it’s totally dark and just screaming “Boo!”  Then I start talking about him really loudly so that he can hear it and feel bad about himself. (Don’t think that matters? Well, roomie found out that rats are as cognizant as a five year old. So it totally matters) I also sang him a song about how he should leave, and…It worked!

(Ok so the exterminator came back and sealed up the spot where he was coming in, but I’m pretty sure it was my song that did it) So, no more rat. We will miss Barnabe, but not really.

In other news: Remember that grown up job I mentioned in my last post? Well, after 5 long weeks, the office ladies decided that they couldn’t take my Angry Birds phone case, the way I packed my lunch most days, and the way I didn’t feel I needed lypo. They sat me down and told me that I “Wasn’t professional on the phone,” “Didn’t fit in,” and “They had a feeling I wasn’t enthusiastic about my job” (enthusiasm is vital to being on hold with an insurance company for 3 hours of the day. Without it, office moral would be down…I mean if anyone talked to me, they could have seen that I was not enthusiastic and that could have pulled down office moral) In general, Shu Shu (Yep, that’s the name) had some very good reasons for firing me. (NOT) So, for 3.5 weeks I was stressed and depressed, then I got a telemarketing job. Where I have been told I am “professional on the phone” “Fit in,” and “boost office moral” Yeah so…they’re stupid and Taylor Swift writes songs about them. 

The Rat Chronicles: (Part I) Google the Poop

                A few weeks ago I moved into a new apartment, got a new job, and started being a grown up. The roommates and I had to deal with some of the usual new apartment issues. Our pilot light went out on the heater, we had a really bad clog in the shower, and we found out that the apartment came with an extra roommate. Yeah, there are four of us now, and two dogs. Oh, it’s not like he takes up much space because he is a rat. YES! My wonderful new apartment that was “such a great deal” has a rat in it!

                I first discovered a small rat turd, ok a large rat turd, in the middle of the bathroom floor. I decided to ignore it. I was busy and it could be anything. I mean, I had never seen mouse poo that large and I refused to believe that a rat would live where humans live in Los Angeles, California. Rats live in New York City. Everyone knows that. About 3 days later, I find another one, and I decide to tell the roommie. She and I had minor panic attacks and start searching through the rest of the house. We find more evidence and have major panic attacks. Then the animal instincts kick in, and I HAVE to kill it. There is nothing that can satisfy me besides the death of this rat!

                Roommie and I decide to buy traps, but I’m not an idiot, I know that the first mistake I can in this war is to underestimate my opponent. If you don’t understand and know your enemy, then how do you know who you’re fighting? First things first, I download The Art of War then I get to work. I need to be sure that we have a rat and not a huge mouse. So I google the size of the poop. That worked. They had scale drawings. We definitely had a rat on our hands. I couldn’t seem to find a good source on how to kill a rat that didn’t gross me out. Lots of blood, gore, and videos with machine guns…not kidding.

                So I head to the store. I wanted a regular snap trap, but roommie thought that Folic Acid would do the trick. Too bad folic acid prevents spina bifida, doesn’t kill rats. However, those rats would have the healthiest babies ever! We go to buy the traps, but nowhere open in the middle of the night in LA sells rat traps. (A little known fact about LA, everything closes super early. I think it’s from all the crime. There is no 24 hour Walmart, and very few 24 hour restaurants. It’s disgusting) My thinking is that mouse traps are better than no traps at all, but a man at the store begs to differ. He tells me to A) tell my landlord and B) not buy the mouse trap. He seems to think that the rat will just look at the trap and laugh and me (and evil squeaky laugh) and then he will know that he is superior. This man was right. The rat is superior.

(Tune in Next Time!)

Sometimes I try to do stand up...

HEY! Latvia look at me doing stand up at the Comedy Store in Hollywood!
The rest of you can watch me too.

Make Little Brittany Proud: What 8 year old me would have wanted.

Ukraine welcom to the blog. Bienvenido!

Remember that nun that I thought lived down the street and had weird habits? Well one day I saw her running just as fast as she could down the street (still in nun garb) and then stopped, turned around, and ran just as fast back the other way. A few days later. I was watching Law and Order and I saw a bunch of Orthodox Jews, and I realized that was her outfit! She's not a weird nun. She's just a teen Hasidic Jew! So relieved. 

Here's a song I'm obsessed with: 

Totally unrelated:

Well, it’s the middle of January and I realize that my New Year’s Resolutions are pretty crappy. (Because I never made any) So I am going to make some.

So I have to look over my life and see what I doing and what I want to do. As I do this, I start thinking about me as a kid. I’ve been thinking about being a kid a lot lately. My toys, my dreams, my desires, and my intense imagination. Most of my strongest memories are my imaginary ones.  So I think, what life would make little Brittany proud? And I know exactly what I need to do. I need to become a LA county lifeguard, who is a part-time cartoonist, and a part-time pig trainer. (I had varied interests as a kid). Ok as you may have guessed, I’m not a fantastic swimmer. So, this life isn’t going to be as perfect as I may have hoped. I recently found a list that I had written to myself 10 years ago, of things that I wanted to do before I died. And as much as I wish, get a BA in Spanish, meet Tim Allen, and buy a car were on that list, they aren’t. I have to make some changes to make 8 year old Brittany proud.

So here is a short summary of life right now:

-I’m job hunting, that’s gross, but has to happen again. Starbucks doesn’t really pay actual bucks

-I’m moving soon. We needed our own rooms.

- I need to eat lunch soon (that one was for me)

-I’ve started the open mics around town and am getting this standup comedy thing on its feet. It’s standing up…almost.

- I’ve been doing improv shows every week, and that’s cool. It’s always good to A) exercise your brain B) exercise you voice C) Meet people D) Be creative.

-I’m writing stuff, very slowly, but writing things. I need to finish something soon.

- I’m also acting silly, dancing around, making references that most people at the table won’t get, making friends, scaring people, hoping to go to Disneyland, and trying to stay away from the cops.

Basically just being me, but I realize that much of what I feel I was known for (ie having great birthday parties and initiating sing-a-longs) has been pretty much lost.

Here come the New Years resolutions!!!!

 I hereby resolve to:

-Finish writing something great

- Have 30 minutes of brilliant stand up

-Only invest my time in things that I love. I will live by my passions. That is why I left so much back in the ol’ K-tuck.

-I will not work a job I don’t like,

-I will not be friends with people who I do not enjoy.

-I will not eat food I think is yucky.

-I will not wear anything that I feel isn’t great. I will make my 8 year old self super proud!

-I will attempt to cultivate a group of people who will celebrate an epic birthday with me,

-I will also attempt to cultivate a group of people who will have a sing-a-long with me. I can do it.