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Woops. We are ridiculous. First we cause ourselves some ulcers then we go back to the apartment we debated about for far too long and now we are moving in October. No, we don’t have time to move, and no we are not made of money, and no I am not as excited about the neighborhood, but I LOVE THE SPACE!! This photo doesn’t do the place justice…I’ll just have to take more. So, yes we are moving, and yes I am terrible at getting organized to move, and yes this is going to cause a larger ulcer, and yes it maybe doesn’t make a ton of sense, and yes we will get to take care of my bro’s dog for 6 months, but yes…I AM EXCITED! People come visit! I promise the bathroom is not right next to the living room anymore…but now you might want to bring ear plugs if the sound of a train passing by bothers you.

The view from the perspective of a 2.5 year old….

This past weekend the “girls” (mom, sister and my two nieces) were visiting while Cooper went for a man fest with some guy friends in Mississippi. Boy it is great to be with girls. Not that boys are bad but having some time with the girls you love most is such an amazing thing. We did all the best things you can do when the weather was as perfect as it was…we… visited my new apartment (!!!), went out for lunch in North Berkeley, walked to parks and spent HOURS playing, went out for Naan ‘n Curry, ate chocolate ice cream, took my sister to a spa, went to Cheeseboard, walked to a pizza joint for pie and pitchers of beer, went out to breakfast with one boy (brother) then to the street festival right outside my apartment. It was all so much fun and so tiring that we accidentally got to the airport early so we all took naps in the car. The hard part: when we have to leave each other. We tend to get “ferclempt” and shed some tears. Some may call it girl power, others may just see it as a super close bond. All I know is that I love the girls in my family.

Guess Who from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo

Ummmm, this is great. Couldn’t have been a better song choice. I used to rig Guess Who? by putting the faces in exactly the same order on both boards then telling my component “we are supposed to put down who we have before we start”…that way I knew right away who their person was and I always won. Yup, I was that kid.

A quick installment on things I love…

* Waking up in the morning and pressing snooze for an hour and a half then telling yourself, “Self, you don’t need to get up for anything. Turn that thing off and keep sleeping.” Then doing it!

* Drinking coffee or any warm and soothing liquid (or thick pudding-ish spicy hot chocolate) out of white mugs where the lip is so fat you can barely get your mouth around it (a bit of an exaggeration but you know what I mean).

* Walking from Rockridge to Berkeley and stopping in favorite shops for as long as I want.

* Going to the Half Priced Bookstore and loading up on their really good $1 clearance books.

* Drinking good beer.

* Quality lining in clothes. Especially little details that no one else will see but make you feel really happy. (i.e Cooper’s Ted Baker suit with pimpin’ lining or the inside of a pair of shoes that no one really gets to see but you love it).

* Thinking about making a key lime pie. Maybe actually making it will induce even more love.

* A student or artist setting up a free screenprint of Obama on Berkeley’s campus. Awesome screen print and color choice (a pumpkin orange). I loved seeing folks (young and old!) take off their shirts to get the print. I considered taking mine off but thought against it, then thought…”It is Berkeley! People will support me!”…then again thought against it.

* Seeing a potentially homeless man smoking a cigarette, wearing clown face paint and ACTUAL CLOWN SHOES! A kid and his mom walked by…the kid was excited but I would have been scared.

* Asking random strangers who are eating ice cream “How is it?” People are always pleasant while eating ice cream.

* Going to my favorite park in Berkeley to watch dogs and happy folk enjoy life.

* Boba Thai iced tea. I’ve mentioned this before, but I had to mention it again.

So, I’m trying to get into this video world a bit and figure out how to do it for my jobby job. Cooper and I were testing a mic the other night and this is what came out of it…(WARNING!! I look disgusting, I am dressed like a grandma, and I need botox to plump my lips up. Please overlook the visuals and just listen to the audio).

Cornish Game Hens from Ali Beckord on Vimeo.

A fifteen step program in “How to form an ulcer” (aka nearly lose your boyfriend and risk your own insanity)…

Step 1. Pick the busiest month of the year when your boyfriend has more to do than humanly possible.

Step 2. Fall in love with a new apartment. In our case it was a loft space that was sooooooo cool with 40 foot ceilings and 1200 sq feet and allowed for dogs! The down sides: right by the train tracks with hooting trains that go by all the live long day and night, it is not nearly in as cool a neighborhood (or as safe), it is further from BART, and it is more $$$.

Step 3. Spend two days waiting by the computer pressing refresh every 2 seconds in hopes for the rental application to come through.

Step 4. Get the application and fill it out.

Step 5. Get burritos and drive to the new apartment space and sit outside in the dark to see what it is like at night. Eat the burritos.

Step 6. Take the completed application and drive it at 10:00pm to the property manager’s office in San Rafael before anyone else can get their application in.

Step 7. Sit outside the property manager’s office for two hours until 12:00am and talk about whether this is the right decision or not.

Step 8. Get cold feet, don’t turn the application in and drive home. Boyfriend is relieved, girlfriend is having second thoughts.

Step 9. Wake up the next day to a girlfriend with regret pains (aka start of ulcer). Boyfriend drives back to San Rafael to turn the application in (aka start of ulcer).

Step 10. Wait for days and days for the credit dude to do his job.

Step 11. Convince your current property managers to allow you to give a temporary 30-days notice (when it is actually now 29 days) even though you don’t know if you have  a new apartment or not.

Step 12. Wait. Deliberate. Get nervous.

Step 13. Go back to the space and check it out once more. Girlfriend loves it boyfriend is not so sure.

Step 14. Think too much. Get way too many people involved in helping you make a decision. Try to sleep through the night. Don’t sleep. Girlfriend has dreams about boyfriend leaving her because the loft rental was too stressful.

Step 15. 1:30 pm…your application is accepted. 2:00pm you call the boyfriend for a final decision (all while you know you have to give your current property managers a final decision on whether to continue with your 30 days notice or not by 5:00pm that day). Boyfriend and girlfriend talk over and over and make up their minds 2983758275987 times but then change it 2.5 seconds later. 4:30pm the ulcer starts to take full effect. 4:45 you pass on the opportunity.

Ulcer.

The loft space at night…don’t tell me it is cool because it is gone. Moving on.

If you go to Montpellier, France…here is what you should do:

Go to the beach…..

Walk through a little town that I don’t know the name of, but it is protected by UNESCO so that should help you figure it out. I was not prepared for this, but if you do go take hiking shoes so you can go on a nice jaunt in the hills…

Find a great vineyard and do some wine tasting….

Then eat some food while sipping wine. Go to a place that has food you could never make for yourself and you know is probably some crazy part of an animal you never thought you would eat but you actually like the taste…

Then hold a massive bottle of wine while people run off into the sunset. Which is honestly what I am doing here…

 

Ok, back from France. Actually, I’ve been back for two weeks now but not mentally really. Have I officially unpacked everything? Noooo. Have I done laundry from the trip? Nooooo. Is the apartment in a good shape? No way. Maybe January things will get better. Ha!

A few days after coming home I ran off to Colorado for a girls weekend with a mom, a sister, a 2.5 year old, a 2.5 month old, two female dogs and me. The highlights:

1.) Having my 2.5 year old niece sing into her baby monitor when she was ready to get up from a nap, “Allllllliiiissssoooouououuoun (kind of like an Indian-ish yodel tone), I have to go pottttttyyyyyiiiiyyyyy.”

2.) Going out to dinner with the girls and having the 2.5 year old under the table (on a floor covered with her spaghetti) looking for her pacifier while and not finding it so my mom then put the 2.5 month old on the bench and joined the 2.5 year old under the table on the spaghetti floor to look for the pacifier. All the while my sister and I tried to control things…actually, I drank (downed) my mojito.

3.) Swimming with my niece in the kiddie pool which was really “warm.” The best part: imagine a really tall, really white gal squeezing into a tube slide with a 2.5 year old on her lap and then spilling out of the slide a top lots of little kids. I was a giant white gal amongst the little ones but it was so worth it. We also went round and round the lazy river singing “lllllllaaaaazzzzyyyyy riiiiivvvvveeeeeerrrr” (again in an Indian-ish yodel…the thing my little niece has somehow being doing a lot of lately).

4.) Taking a cuddled up nap with the 2.5 month year old. I have never napped with a little tiny baby before but we were such cuddle buddies. I didn’t want it to end!

5.) Going to the Denver zoo which was really pretty impressive however the entire time I kept thinking, these animals shouldn’t be here. Nonetheless I did find my new favorite animal: the Elephant Shrew!

Wait a minute! I have not shared any of the France adventures! Oh my it was a great trip. If you ever have the chance to go to Montpellier in the south of France go! And find a French family to show you around…it makes all the difference. The bride and groom were so amazing in showing a group of us non-French folk around…they took us to the beach (watch for topless mammas!), hired a local expert to show us around the amazing town, took us to a private organic winery and arranged for a wine tasting that was INCREDIBLE, took us on a hike in a town protected by UNESCO, had a fantastic rehearsal dinner and the wedding/reception were one for the record books. 1.) We didn’t start eating until about 9 or 10:00pm (the true European way), 2.) Cake cutting didn’t happen until 1:00am or so 3.) The DJ didn’t play “Celebrate” or “Shout” (not that they are bad or anything) but instead folks danced to Austin Powers inspired French lounge-ish music. Cooper and I didn’t go to bed until about 3am but rumor has it the groom’s parents were some of the last to party…until about 6am. Whoa!

 

I have pictures of my trip home and France and all that jazz but they are amongst 193752357928375298759283759283759237 photos from the past few months that I can’t get to them at the moment. I will be sharing, oh yes! For now, enjoy the elephant shrew.

 

 

Off to France.

That is all at the moment.

A little rundown on what our lives as nomads has entailed. It is almost weird to be home in a normal bed and go to a grocery store to buy food to make dinner rather than find a restaurant to make us something. I feel a bit overwhelmed because our apartment is a pit hole, I’ve got work to do, laundry to clean, photos to edit, albums to design, I am hungover from drinking water (yes water) at the wedding yesterday, tired and cranky…and lo and behold we are off to France tomorrow. All I really really want to do at the moment is clean out my closet. I have been craving a closet cleaning for ages now. Ho hum. But life is good.

Here is the general run down on how the past nomadic trips have gone:

Our flight to St. Thomas was to leave SFO at 6:00am on Wednesday morn. Since BART didn’t run that early we decided to get a room at the SFO airport for the night. Unfortunately, the hotels.com reservation was a fluke because the hotel didn’t actually have space so we ended up sleeping on the airport floor. I’ve slept in a train station before after drinking beers at Oktoberfest, but never an airport floor. Actually, I don’t think you’d call it sleep…more like half sleep and shiver from the cold for 4 hours. Painful.

St. Thomas was awesome. If you ever want to take a trip to the Virgin Islands where you don’t want to deal with exchange rates and don’t mind driving on the other side of the road St. Thomas in July is the place to go. The water there is incrrrrredble. Ashley’s wedding was fantastic and she looked beautiful (see previous post). The day after the wedding Cooper and I were so excited to have a day to ourselves for actual vacation but unfortunately, when we set out for brunch I had 2938752938579287 people honk at me because of my driving (I was the name on the rental) and I got a few “no, no, no” fingers from people. Not only that but the locks on our rental didn’t work so Cooper had to climb in through the trunk on more than one occasion to get a front door open:

Needless to say we enjoyed the water on our day off for as long as we could (i.e. only about an hour) until the sun went down and we didn’t leave our hotel for food ever again. Here is what we look like eating a picnic on the balcony of our hotel:

Next came NYC. Cooper is this really great brother who invited his little bro on a trip to the big apple. So, Assi and the Carras brothers took the city by storm (semi-storm since it was so hot). We walked the city and witnessed a guy catch a pigeon with a fishing pole then put the dead bird in his man bag as though it was a common thing to do. Is this normal? A first for me for sure. We ate Pink Berry like it was the only food on the planet:

we went to B&H (camera store) for hours; went to Brooklyn where I bought an awesome wooden postcard; ate Swedish meatballs; attempted to get my haircut on a whim but I had communication issues with the guy who was to cut my hair (to the point that I was sweating on my neck and he kept touching my sweaty hair) that I left the salon without a cut…and with sweaty hair; attempted to go to the David Letterman show by myself (Cooper had to do an engagement shoot and Ross wasn’t interested in “the David”) and was 2 people away from getting in when they ran out of seats…story of my life; treated myself to a Bumble and Bumble haircut at their original salon which was fun but now I realize the guy gave me the same haircut everyone always gives me even though I told him over and over “no mom cuts” and “have fun with it…do something edgy”…now my hair is just three inches shorter and without style; went to the Good Morning America taping in Bryant Park and watched a free Feist (yippee!!!) concert…my mom said she saw me four times in the crowds that morning aka my 0.237383 seconds of fame.

Then Cooper’s bro was to leave NYC while Cooper and I made a jaunt to Connecticut for another wedding. A photo of three of us prior to the split:

While on the way to Connecticut we saw a truck on fire and a school bus accident with tons of kids on stretchers (to which we had a moment of silence). Aye carumba. We made it to the very American towns in Connecticut safe and sound. Thank the lord. Now we are back home just in time to leave again. Sweet begeezers.