Giveth and Taketh Away

So in my last post I was all mopey, all "I hate California and don't want to live here anymore." And I'm still that way, make no mistake. I spend my free time daydreaming and planning the logistics of what it would be like to live somewhere, anywhere, that is not California.

So after all of my whining, I was pleasantly surprised and excited on Saturday when I was trolling the internet for rentals and found a listing on Craigslist for a 3 bedroom house in Torrance that was going for only $12 more a month than what we are paying now. Everything seemed perfect. Utilities were included, so even though the rent was slightly higher we would still be saving monthly because of the utility cost. It had three bedrooms so it would be a place we could stay in for years. It was less than five miles to my office and less than 10 miles to Edgar's office. It had a yard. A BIG HUGE FUCKING YARD.

So I eagerly sent an email off to the poster that I would like to check it out and Edgar and I hopped in the car to drive by the property to get a first glance at it, hoping that the poster would give us a call while were out in the vicinity. The neighborhood was great. Everyone had yards. Everyone had yards they took care of. NO CONCRETE.

We didn't get a call from the poster that day, but he did email me the next morning.

And that's where it all fell sadly, horribly, irreparably apart.

Manuel, that was his name, told me that he would not be able to show us the house because he was living in South Africa, where he had been transferred for work. But the house was available! And his lawyer in South Africa had the keys and the lease, and they would send us the keys after all necessary agreements had been made.

FUCKING CRAIGSLIST SCAMMERS TRYING TO STEAL MY MONEY AND MY SOUL AND ALL OF MY HOPE IN THE WORLD.

I spent Sunday in bed curled in a ball under the blankets.

Bummed

I've been feeling really low today. A lot of it is probably that I'm really tired and therefore really cranky, but I'm also being gnawed at by an issue that I've thought about many times but that seems to be staring at me down a barrel of a gun lately.

I feel like I'm never going to be able to live anywhere in California but a one bedroom apartment.

I don't understand how people here live in houses. I don't understand how two income families can live in a two bedroom apartment. I don't understand how it's affordable at all. Oh, that's right, it's not. HELLO CALIFORNIA, LAND OF THE MIGHTY FORECLOSURE.

Edgar and I have recently had this idea floating around that we would like to be able to move into a house this year. Nothing fancy, just a two bedroom rental house somewhere in the Redondo Beach area, which is a convenient location for both of us near our jobs. Our original plan had been to live in our current one bedroom apartment through November of 2011. Our thought process was that even when we have a baby, since we have the loft space, that we would have plenty of room to live through that time with a child under one year old. But I just have really strong objections, that I'm hesitant to voice, about raising a child in an apartment.

I don't say that to disparage anyone that has children and lives in an apartment. My brother has children and lives in an apartment. But I just look back at my own childhood, where I always lived in a house. A house with a yard. And if I was living in an apartment with a child in Indiana, where I grew up, I would probably have no problem with this, because in Indiana, apartment complexes have grass and playgrounds and for not that much money at all, you can live in a place where you're not worried about gangs and bad schools and if the people in the apartment below you are smoking crack. You know what California has? CONCRETE. And dirt. And gangs. And middle income families being priced out of rentals in safe suburbs.

And forget about buying a house unless you win the lottery or work in the entertainment industry. I just don't understand how people that make the same amount of money that Edgar and I do can afford $800k for a 1200 square foot house with no yard and no privacy and still have any income left to pay for other important things, like, you know, groceries.

Part of me just wants to say fuck it, pack it all up, and move back to Indiana where life is affordable and a down payment on a nice house doesn't cost two years worth of salary. But I can't do that. I can't ask my husband to pack up his life, find a job in another state, and leave his family and friends behind. He doesn't have that much family here that he sees, only his parents and his brother, but since we're the only potential for grandchildren in his family we can't just leave his parents. I say this in the most loving way as possible, but meeting Edgar and falling in love with him really fucked up my plans. When I moved to California, I figured in the back of my mind that I was only doing it for the life experience, that I would live out here for a few years and then go back to Indiana where life as a whole is affordable. But that went out the window with meeting Edgar (and don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my husband for a chance to move back to Indiana).

But as I look parenthood squarely in the face, California just becomes uglier and uglier and uglier for me. I hate the concrete. I hate the fact that people here don't live in neighborhoods, just rows and rows of streets where houses are interspersed with broken down businesses and the crime incidence link of the residential/business mix that I learned in criminal theory in college won't get out of my head. I hate the traffic. I hate the bars on the windows. I hate the stupidity. I even hate the weather. WHAT I WOULDN'T GIVE FOR A GODDAMN THUNDERSTORM, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

So I feel stuck. And sad. And hopeless. It wouldn't matter if we didn't have a car payment and a few credit card bills a month, because even if we had those to put towards rent for a house, we would still live in a shithole house.

I apologize for what has been an entirely self-indulgent post of me being a whiny mess.

City of Trembling Angels

Here in Southern California we sure love our earthquakes. An earthquake happens, even the most minor tremblor possible to still be classified as an earthquake, and it's like a damn nuclear bomb went off. BREAKING NEWS.

There was a 4.4-magnitude earthquake this morning (at 4:04 am to be exact, you can't make that kind of symmetry up, natch) that was centered less than 10 miles away from where we live. It likely would have gone unnoticed by me had I not been up a few minutes earlier to go to the bathroom. Edgar woke up near the end of it looking confused, and after a "Earthquake. It's over. Go back to sleep" from me he was out like a light in promptly 4.4 seconds. HOW EASY WAS THAT?

But you would think by the media coverage that the ubiquitous Big One had just hit. Now, I grew up in the Mid-West, so earthquakes were new to me when I moved to California. My very first earthquake happened in the middle of the night, and garnered the same response from Edgar to me as I gave to him this morning. I've gotten used to them over time and now they're no big deal to me, even though I do get that little thrill every time the earth just magically starts shaking and rumbling underneath my feet. I'm sure I would feel differently if I was driving and a freeway bridge collapsed or my home tumbled down around my head, but that has never happened so I'm a-okay with earthquakes to this point.

This is Southern California. There are earthquakes. But people are all OH MY GOD AN EARTHQUAKE WITH ALL OF THE SHAKING WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, I THINK I BETTER CALL THE NEWS BECAUSE HOW ON EARTH WILL THEY EVER KNOW ABOUT THE EARTHQUAKE. WITH ALL OF THE SHAKING. Seriously, that's what it's like. On a local news station's website this morning, they mentioned in their story that they received calls from locations "all over the Southland" of people reporting shaking, and then listing the wide array of cities that people called in from. BECAUSE ALL OF THAT SHAKING HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. I just don't get it. The earthquake happened this morning and I was all "geez, I really hope that no fire trucks or ambulances get called from the station near our apartment because I'd really like to go back to sleep now." At no time did it ever cross my mind "I really need to call ABC7 right now because there is obviously no way that they know about this and I really hope they get the scoop over KTLA."

They're the news, people. They know. They're going to talk to the USGS anyways. They don't need you.

Around this time last year there was a mild earthquake, like a 3.0, that was centered out near San Bernardino. Edgar and I were watching TV at the time. The earthquake was literally so slight that I thought it was just Edgar tapping his leg against the edge of the bed. But oh, no, not so. The show were were watching was cut into by BREAKING NEWS, where they proceeded to show the obligatory shot of the seismograph from the USGS shaking it's pen all over the paper while taking a call live from a woman in Fontana. "And I looked at my closet--my closet door was open--and I saw my clothes, and they were just shaking!" And she was so serious that you'd think the Osama Bin Laden himself had broken into her house and staged the worst terrorist attack since 9/11 on her walk-in. And the newscasters were trying to make it a much bigger story than it was, like "Oh, do you have any damages?" And she's all "no, but my neighbor's dog is barking a lot now."

This is Southern California. We have gangs and drugs and paparazzi and Britney Spears not driving all crazy through the streets of Beverly Hills anymore and the Lakers and the Kardashians and wildfires and traffic and pedestrians getting run over on PCH without the drivers of the cars even stopping, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU CONSIDER NEWS? A BARKING DOG? SERIOUSLY, CALIFORNIA? My Caps Lock button shames you.

I'm gonna win the lottery and buy a helicopter

Seriously, I've had enough already. These bat-shit insane drivers that I've been encountering on my way home from work this past week are driving me ABSOLUTELY LOONY. I will soon be one with the bat-shit.

I'm pretty sure that's unsanitary.

My drive home from work, while taking less than half time now that I live in Long Beach as compared to when I was living in West Covina, is kind of like an obstacle course. First, there's the "Ooo, here? Maybe here? Oh no, gone to far!" game every day of trying to figure out when exactly to get over to make a left-hand turn from Crenshaw Boulevard onto PCH. The standard left hand turn lane is far to short to handle rush hour traffic, and instead of that overflow spilling to the next lane and backing it up, there's one of those yellow-line-on-each-side lanes that runs up the rest of the street. People who are savvy to the traffic at that time of day know that when they see a line of traffic in that yellow enclosure that they need to suck it up and get in line. But then there are the ASSHOLES who don't get over and then stop in the next lane with their blinker on, blocking traffic, and try to intimidate you by playing chicken with their front bumper to get in front of you. GO TO THE BACK OF THE BUS, MISTER.

After navigating this minefield, it's on to PCH, which is nothing but a plethora of stoplights, and the four miles that I have to spend on it every day take up over half of my commute time. And then you have to watch some jackass in front of you bounce around from lane to lane, always trying to get ahead, thinking he's a race car driver, and ten minutes later he winds up RIGHT BACK IN FRONT OF YOU. It doesn't work, dude. Save yourself the trouble.

Once I can mercifully get off of PCH, I end up on the 110 freeway. Joy of joys, the on-ramp is one of those lanes that continue on to the next exit; it's not forcing you to merge right away. So it's often my luck to get stuck behind some jackass that's getting off at the next exit and therefore has no need to accelerate above 30 mph. Or they're Asian (OH YES I DID). Or some person in the lane you want to merge into that wants to get into my lane, but every time I speed up they speed up and every time I slow down they slow down and it's just like "Um, excuse me, can you quit annoying the fuck out of me so we can do this?" And then the next lane over is no better because it's loaded with semis that are getting off at the next exit after that. A girl's only choice is to dart into that lane, gain some momentum, keep her eyes on the next lane over in the sideview mirror, and jump over whenever there is sufficient space.

This is where my problem has been the last two days. I don't cut people off. Even if you're pissing me off, I don't cut people off. Mainly because I don't trust other drivers, and I really don't feel like them fucking up my lovely red Dodge Neon and forcing me into another five years of car payments. Because I only have liability coverage. UNDERINSURED AND PROUD OF IT. So for the last two days, yes, TWO days, I have waited for that appropriate gap to get over, and all of a sudden cars are all up behind me about to run over me. As in they are like hundreds of yards behind me when I check that lane before I move over, and then all of a sudden they're on top of my ass. As in they are so far back that you can't even judge how fast they're going, because how could somebody that far back ever catch up to you. Which leads to the question: If I am going over 70, and you can get to me that quickly and are about to run over me, you've got to be pushing 90, SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU IN THE #2 LANE? I'm all about the driving fast and the getting home as quickly as possible, and I waste no time in the #2 lane. The purpose of the #2 lane is to get myself at a sufficient speed to move into the #3 lane. Ninety mph is definitely #4 lane material. RULES OF THE ROAD, RIGHT THERE.

So the first time, it's this old purple ghetto Windstar. He was way far behind me when I checked my mirror, far enough back that if he was going at normal #2 lane speed he never would have caught up to me. But this....this....DOUCHEBAG! Oh my god I said it again, he made me say it....time warps to the back bumper of my car and I can see him in my rearview mirror throwing his hands up and yelling and trying to be all hard, and when I see that, IT JUST MAKES ME SLOW DOWN. Don't push me. So he finally gets into the next lane (where he should have been all along) to pass me, and flips me off as he drives past, leaning forward just to flip me off a little bit more as he pulls ahead like "Oh my god oh my god oh my god I have so much middle finger for you that the first time you saw it it wasn't enough!" And I was all "Dude, you drive a 14 year old purple minivan. Not impressed."

And then yesterday, same thing. I get in the #2 lane after checking to make sure that the next vehicle is far enough back. Which he totally was. But again, he all of a sudden put on his super speed and starts FLASHING HIS LIGHTS AND HONKING HIS HORN as he starts to catch up to me. Dude, I can see you. You're going 90, why are you even in this lane?

I'm not even getting into the part after the freeway with the people who have mental blocks that prevent them from crossing bridges at more than 15 mph and then people who have stupid philosophies on when it's okay to drive through a crosswalk.

My conclusion: My was is the only way, and those motherfuckers need to never drive again. Ever.

You are no Santa

There are a lot of ways that living in California trumps living in Indiana. There are a lot of ways that living in Indiana trumps living in California.

Pro-California:

• No snow or ice (unless you go looking for it up in the mountains)
• No tornadoes
• It hardly ever rains
  
• Lots of sunshine once the marine layer burns off
• Seeing a TV show shooting a few blocks away from your apartment as you walk to happy hour
• The ability to go surfing and skiing all in the same day
• The weather channel has to give three different weather forecasts: one for LA, one for the beaches, and one for the inland valleys, because they're all different
• People call interstates "freeways"
• The number of a freeway is always prefaced with "the"
• Much better ethnic food restaurants
• Carls, Jr!
• Driving an hour and a half in rush hour traffic to get to work doesn't seem like a big deal
  

Pro-Indiana:

• Thunderstorms!
• Different types of rain
• No earthquakes
• The Indy 500
• Colts football every Sunday during football season without having to pay DirecTV for the NFL Sunday Ticket
• Changes of seasons
• People call the freeways "interstates"
• You don't have to preface an interstate number with "the" ("The 465," are you kidding me?)
• White Castle!
• Drive an hour and a half to work and you end up in Ohio, that's how awesome rush hour traffic is

So, when I moved to California, I was happily in the land where no tornado could come and huff and puff and blow my house down, and then I was introduced to the Santa Ana winds. I'm not really sure what causes the Santa Ana's, but it's a seasonal weather thing with winds that can gust at like 80 mph on a continual basis all day and all night. They thrive in the canyons and inland valleys and the land even further inland than that. When Edgar and I lived in Ontario, the Santa Ana's were so bad that they would knock over the landscaped trees in our apartment community, cover our cars in dirt, knock over patio furniture, generally wreaking havoc on the morning after clean-up. I got used to them fairly quickly, and when the winds would kick up I'd just be like "Oh, hmpf, the Santa Ana's again" and that would be that, and I would walk away feeling satisfied that I had successfully assimilated. HOWEVER. When we moved to Long Beach, I secretly thought to myself "How awesome is this, no more Santa Ana's!" Here we are, living less than a mile from the water, how would it be possible to have Santa Ana strength wind here?

Apparently it's possible. I want my money back.

Something crazy and wacky was going on in the air yesterday, because by the time I got home, the wind was insane. There were dirt and leaves and palm tree fronds whipping around the sidewalks, trash blowing around everywhere, and the cat was freaking the hell out because he was all "This? I thought we were done with this shit?" And I was all "Me too, little buddy, me too." And that stupid wind kept me up until ONE O'CLOCK this morning. That is one hour after midnight. That is five hours before I have to get up. THAT IS NOT RIGHT.

California, you're testing me. I don't like it. Quit it.