A Week in Hell

Let me preface this entry with the following statement: Based upon my first week in Los Angeles, I feel confident saying that spending a week in eternal flames almost sounds inviting.
LA itself is amazing, sunny 70 degrees everyday, with the exception of my first three days in the city. Los Angeles experienced 40-year record breaking rainfall…Just my luck, right?

So, the rain poured, but on the sunnier side my furniture and remaining wardrobe was only days from arrival. Anyone can live without furniture, dishes and clothing for a few days. The arrival date for my movers came and went with the disappointment of news that my belongings were apparently being housed in a warehouse somewhere in Chicago until I mailed the moving company a cashiers check for half of the balance; and that balance being twice as much as I was originally quoted. Oh the joys of moving…

The cashiers check went to Chicago, overnight ($17) with the promise that my furniture would be on the next truck headed west, scheduled to leave within days. At last, a bed and couch in my future.

While waiting for my furniture, IKEA beckoned and lured me in. Like a desperate fool I caved to the idea of purchasing an unassembled Scandinavian futon. The IKEA experience in itself is traumatizing, but let’s gets to the good stuff. I had the ridiculously heavy and cumbersome futon box loaded into the backseat of a sedan (that was fun). Get the piece home, even the valet struggled loading it onto the luggage cart and away it went into my empty apartment. A Scandinavian twin futon beats the hell out of the floor, right?

Thinking it would take only an hour to assemble my new bed/chair I emptied the box, opened the tool set and took a gander at the assembly instructions. Bravo, the instructions were comprised of stick figure diagrams. No words, just stick figures without faces showing the proud new owner where to put the screws. I know where the screws went…my MasterCard.

After about an hour (the hour I estimated assembly) I realized that what I had assembled was on the wrong side of the frame so I had to disassemble my hour of hard work. Another night on the floor, because I had no furniture meant I had no lamp and my living room doesn’t have overhead lighting. My hopes of sleeping on the IKEA twin futon dissipated. Bambi and I sprawled out on the floor with my neck pillow among the nuts, bolts, screws and three-piece wood and metal futon frame.

Next day, more rain. I ventured to Target to pick up a few essentials, toasted, microwave, vacuum cleaner, etc. Knowing I would only be in the store a few minutes I made the fatal mistake of parking on the street, opposed to paying the 10 dollar garage fee. As I looked for the elevator to the street fortunately, a Target building maintenance man directed me to the seemingly correct elevator and stepped onboard. My floor was up, the door slid open and the wheels on my cart seemed to be stuck, by stuck I mean not moving. The line to enter the elevator was at least 15 people deep, all staring at my disabled cart which was blocking their entry. The maintenance man came to my rescue, popped the cart up on two wheels and saved me from the wolf pack at the elevator. A guy in line snarled “you can’t take the carts out of the store, duh” as me and the maintenance man shuffled by, refraining from eye contact with people in the elevator line. At last, I opened the door to the street and low and behold the door came out around the block from where my car was parked!

In hopes I would fall off of the face of the earth, the maintenance man abandoned the Target cart on the sidewalk, threw my boxes on his shoulders and followed me around the block to my car in the pouring rain. We loaded the boxes into my trunk, I thanked him and palmed him a ten spot for his trouble and slammed the trunk abruptly ready to escape the torrential downpour.

A paralyzing pain shot up my arm when I realized that my pinky finger was trapped in the trunk. With the other weak hand, I grabbed the latch and released the flat, purple little finger from the enormous mouse trap. Though I had been in such a hurry to escape the rain I burst into tears and stood in the icy showers for a few more moments before I could muster the strength to collapse into the driver’s seat.

I finished my errands with pain pulsating into my pinky fingertip. The rain remained persistent. Back at mi casa, the unassembled futon welcomed me. Nearing dusk and five hours later, the futon was ready for inauguration. To my dismay, and for the record, Scandinavian furniture is definitely not Tempurpedic….

Welcome to LaLa

Me & Dad somewhere in desert...

So, the rest of the trip west went off without a hitch. Dad and I had a lovely time at the Carignan residence, thank you for your hospitality, Ken. Ken is my future-ex-husband. His casa was our half-way to LA pit-stop. We had a lovely dinner in the mountains and the conversation was mostly between Ken and Dad speaking about me as if I weren’t present. It went a little something like this:
Ken: So Paul, you must be really proud of your daughter here, she Finally graduated from college, huh? Dad: Yes, I am really proud, it just took her about ten years. (Both laughing) Ken: You will really be in luck if we can just get her working now. Dad: Oh she’s gonna work or…..
So you get the point, all jokes aside we had a great time with Ken in the tiny little mouse-hole of a town he calls home. And Ken if you are reading this, it’s high time you came out of retirement buddy, skiing and kayaking Is Not a job!!!

We finally saw the Hollywood sign late Sunday afternoon. We were starving so I made the executive decision to show Dad around town and take him to my favorite vegan restaurant.
This was my one and only opportunity to actually decide where to eat.

Dad is famous for asking where you want to eat, then he says “I don’t want to eat there.” He asks again, gives the same answer again, and after about three rounds of this “Where do You Want to Eat Q&A” he tells you where you’re eating. The beauty of his psychological manipulation is, he knew all along where you would eat, it’s all about the guessing game for him.

After days of consuming hardly anything except Starbucks tea and Smartwater in attempt to avoid fast food and gaining 10 lbs, I was hungry for some good old fashioned tofu. At Real Food Daily, I binge-ate humus and tofu tacos, Dad went for asparagus soup and the tofu TV. dinner. I was so satisfied from the wonderful, healthy vegan meal; nothing could ruin my high (I thought). The smell of french fries and hamburgers was a thing of my sensory past; we had fresh Santa Monica air in our lungs and tofu in our bellies…mmmmm. No sooner than the car door slammed and the ignition fired Dad says, “What was that? I just paid xx$ for a plate of cardboard!” To my dismay Dad was not a fan of pitas, pureed asparagus or organic Japanese twig tea.

I know when we got to the hotel and Dad went out to chain-smoke and get Starbucks he secretly ate pastries to make up for the cardboard dinner. Sadly, I had to take Dad to LAX bright and early Monday morning. I wish he could have extended his trip, God knows I would need him, or someone the following week, I’ll get to that. Anyway, I would like to thank Dad for his support on my decision to move cross-county and for riding in a car with his favorite daughter.
Dad has always told me I was his favorite daughter and I always felt so special. For many years I somehow always believed that I was his favorite over….the children that he doesn’t have. Seriously, my entire childhood I didn’t get the joke, then when I was about 17-years-old (no lie) I was like: Wait a second…I’m your only daughter, I’m your ONLY child, I have to be your favorite!!! Dad looked at me very puzzled, in disbelief that it took 17 years for me to get that joke. He then asked if my roots were blonde and yes, I got that one.

The very long journey was an adventure I will never forget and I’m happy I had the opportunity to share it with my favorite dad. We got some well-deserved father-daughter time together….aside from his occasional bitching about my driving:)

Ready, Set, Go!!!!

Good thing I moved to LA instead of Vegas because my journey has been filled with bad luck. Maybe not bad luck, let’s call it Dramatic Events. So this is the tale of Zoe’s Series of Dramatic Events.

Thursday, October 08 Dad and I packed my car and headed west about four hours behind schedule in true Kemper fashion, or what we like to call Kemper Time. Yes sad, but true, we Kemper’s live in our own time zone and it’s not Central. My Dad calls me every year a couple days before my birthday to confirm December 9th, he says he’s joking but I know it’s really because he can’t decide if it’s on the 8th, 9th or 10th. At least he’s in the right month! What more could a daughter ask for?

Four hours behind and rain pelting, we hit the road. My movers must have been on Kemper Time too, because they were a day late picking up my furniture and wardrobe. Not to mention before the moving truck pulled away, the two tattoo covered, booze and weed reeking, in search of Bob Evans restaurant truck drivers racked up a bill of packing materials and per-step charges of nearly double what I was quoted. Still in a rage over moving fees and only 2 suitcases in tow and my little dog Bambi, I felt ready for four days in the car with my favorite guy who has forgot the exact date of my birthday for the past 2_ years.

Every two hours, on the hour we stopped for Starbucks and a smoke break. Fyi: Dad is a chain smoker so on the smoke breaks he smoked not one but two or three cigarettes, while pumping gas and chatting it up on his cell phone presumably to my wicked step-mother. Who I am not and hopefully will never speak to again (a whole other story I won’t waste anyone’s time telling).

By the end of a fun filled day on the road I was ready to retire into a nice suite at the Ritz, unfortunately, Dad doesn’t share my taste in five-star hotels, so we called it a night at the Holiday Inn Express near Kansas City. Though Dad would never have sprung for the Ritz, I don’t think there is anything five-star near the entire state of Kansas, so dad was in luck! Of course the Holiday Inn was not pet-friendly and I had to smuggle B in passed the front desk attendant because the car was not parked on the side entrance of the hotel as the room, as a professional dog smuggler would do (not that I know).

With day one coming to a close, Dad hooked up his snoring machine, yes he uses a snore machine or he may stop breathing in the middle of the night and I’m not sure I am capable of administering CPR. Many years ago Dad’s father, Bill, and Dad were on a road trip similar to this one, long before snore machines were invented. Bill was very religious (in his own way) he always told everyone that God loved them and so did he, quoted bible scriptures often (but not in an annoying way) and adored my dad. On this particular business trip they were on, Dad started snoring like a gorilla, do gorilla’s snore…anyway he was snoring like something big and grizzly. When my Dad snores, it’s not just a flutter it’s a bump in the night that causes gagging, choking, non-breathing. But, the good news is: when he does stop breathing dad stops snoring but when he resumes breathing, he resumes snoring, even louder than the time before. Back to the business trip before snore machines, Dad was snoring, Bill wasn’t sleeping and being the ever faithful follower of his lord and savior J.C. Bill prayed that Dad would stop snoring so he could sleep. And stop snoring he did, but Dad also stopped breathing. After moments of non-breathing Bill prayed once again, for Dad to start snoring again so he wouldn’t have to attempt CPR, which I can neither confirm or deny that Bill knew how to perform. Lucky for an unborn me, Dad started breathing, Bill didn’t sleep that entire trip and I had a restful night thanks to technology.

With day one behind us and 500 miles closer to Los Angeles, despite the monsoon-like rain, we left Kansas City with a sunny outlook, to my dismay I should have been on the lookout, seriously.