Can I Borrow a Xanax? I ate too much antipasto in the sun...

So in the haste of trying to catch up I may have forgotten any sort of "Happy Thanksgiving" message...but I hope everyone had a lovely one, ate some bird, watched some flying leather, and drank too much!

I had my first Thanksgiving away from my immediate family...ever. True to form, I made a huge deal out of this in my head beforehand and thought that I'd be so upset and it would just be the worst. HA! Was I ever wrong.  Do you know anyone who's ever had a "bad time" arriving somewhere at noon to have a tropical drink handed to them by a "mixologist" 9-year-old-second-cousin-once-removed? Or didn't enjoy herself while shoving proscuitto and salami and mozzarella down the hatch while sitting in the sun next to an outdoor fire pit? Oh, and after a dinner spread of Brajole and Corned Beef (and yes, Turkey too) it was time to drive (don't worry, not me...I don't drive after more than three rum drinks) to Thanksgiving dinner number two. Just a little tip: never do this. Don't try. Do not attempt. Don't even think it is possible. Actual words I uttered en route to dinner #2 were "wow, I'm not disgustingly full!" I think the cliche term for that is: famous last words. Well, it's a good thing that my boyfriend's brother, wife and children had already formed their [seemingly good] first impressions of me, because after a bite of turkey and half of a dinner roll I had to excuse myself for fear of vomiting. I politely (at least, I think it was polite, I'm not sure, remember: mini-bartender cousins are dangerous) excused myself from dessert as the sight of the Oreo creme pie was setting my gag reflex into motion, and curled up in the fetal position with heartburn for several hours.

Other than that things have been pretty run-of-the-mill. Just kidding! There's no mill! I'm anxious to start my "life" out here but also really fucking petrified. I'm trying to keep it together, but I don't know what its like to live in a city that isn't New York (or London, after my brief stint there) and I definitely don't know what its like to be away from my entire clan of friends and family. I feel like such a baby, and I know I'm behaving like one, but I somehow missed the whole "growing-up-is-moving-away" thing...until now. So I had a nice long panic attack this afternoon (complete with my teddy bear and a cave of sheets to hide under) and I'm done. I can't do it anymore. I'm going to relish the fact that I have the opportunity to live in a place where it is sunny 75% of the year and that I can afford the car that I'm picking up this week and that I'm not whining about wearing a scarf and my hands being freakin' freezing all the time. Hell, I've been in a hot tub twice in the last 24 hours, shit ain't so bad.

A

PS: I posted videos the other day...did anyone watch them? I know it was the holiday, but as it was my first foray into the "vlog" situation (of sorts) I wonder what people think. 

Easy does it...

I haven't been able to find the time to mentally review the past two weeks enough to write about it, but I do have a few more pictures and even two videos from the drive to post. I promise that I'll start writing again, but my brain is like pudding right now and the idea of coming up with a coherent display of intelligence in any capacity is so beyond my grasp that I think I'll leave it to the images for now.

White Sands, New Mexico: Child playing on a hill

 Santa Fe, New Mexico: Abandoned building?

I think this video is New Mexico?

I know everyone enjoys Arizona scenery, but does anyone like banter about the cinematic merit of "Meet The Fockers"?

A

PS: My favorite part of that last video would have to be "you're never going to watch this whole thing".

...hi

It's 1:03 am, Pacific Time (huh?) and I'm beyond disoriented, but here in LA, my new home?

Catching up...slowing down

From the Quality Inn in West Texas, I give you the past two days:

New Orleans...view from hotel room

 Bayou at sunset-excuse the lack of focus

Austin, Texas fast food, again, focus is terrible

New Orleans, French Quarter

I've got more photos, some of San Antonio and the Mission San Jose, but for lack of time I haven't been able to upload them to the laptop yet.

As a side note I'd like to add that driving through west Texas after dark last night was quite the experience; nothing for miles and miles in any direction, a deer directly in the line of traffic on the Interstate, whipping winds, and an [almost] full moon illuminating the hills. In typical Adria fashion I managed to ruin the romanticism and eerie nature of the area by stepping in a cactus on my way to go pee behind a deserted, albeit working, gas station off of the highway. If there's anything I love its pulling cactus pricks out of the top of my foot with a tweezer in a cheap motel.

Over and out,

A

Road Trip 2k10: Legs Two and Three

Coming atcha live from Atlanta, Georgia, this is 11/13, 11/14:

Great Dismal Swamp-North Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina

Not much to show from Atlanta, but tomorrow brings great Southern opportunity [and wonderment on my part] as we drive through Alabama and Mississippi right on down to New Orleans. I feel like this is all happening too fast to take in. Cruise control and Trader Joe's trail mix and iPod playlists and so much highway are swallowing me up. I always thought it'd be easy to write about this experience, but it's really not. I don't know how I feel about any of this. It's entirely surreal to be moving so far away, but it still feels like a vacation. I know how I feel about one thing, though, and that is the Name Your Own Price deal on Priceline.com–I wish they were paying me to say this, but they're not. It's UNBELIEVABLE! We stayed in a gorgeous hotel in downtown Charleston for $50 less than the regular rates AND just got a room in the French Quarter in New Orleans for a THIRD of the price. A THIRD!

So much of the country really looks the same, it's a little bit depressing. Maybe that's unfair because I haven't even left the East Coast yet, really, but rural South Carolina looks a lot like rural, upstate New York. 

More later in the week, but for now keep checking in on Twitter for pictures from the road!

A

Road Trip 2k10: First Leg

Chesapeake Bay

From a hotel room in coastal Virginia, this is day one....

A

The Blues and The Bathtub

Rub a dub dub
I sit in the tub
Bubbling my troubles away

BB King sneaks in through the window
Crooning on the bath mat
Reminding me that there are bigger things

Bigger than my chest congestion
Bigger than waiting
He reminds me to shave my legs

Pilgrim, says Eric Clapton
It's almost Thanksgiving
The goose is getting fat
Please put on your shower cap

You think I'd be bothered
By the blues watching me bathe
But the butt is just human
and the blues are forgiving

Ella, come sing on the ceiling tiles
I'm just waiting
and you can wait with me

I don't want to live in now
so I'm bathing in the past
and not washing my hair.

...

She woke from a dream into what her life had become. Somehow, while she had been sleeping, resting peacefully, the ground beneath her suffered a quake and all was indistinguishable. The people she once trusted were replaced with mannequins. New faces, unrecognizable, beautiful faces surrounded her, circling in like vultures, smiling and reassuring while remaining foreign and petrifying. Her hand was being held, tightly, and it was him. He whom she knew. He whom she trusted, not a mannequin like the others, not speaking tongues, but staring, wide-eyed and expectant. She held her breath for a long time. Too long a time. Maybe this was the dream. Maybe the world hadn’t flip-flopped while the moon rested above, and she was consoled momentarily by her thoughts. But her eyes sprung open and she knew the dream world was nothing of the sort. He was still there, still holding her hand, but it was his world now. All the constants in her reality were replaced. She knew the colors she saw were the same, but that their names were different. Her blue no longer looked like blue, but was red now. Her red, yellow. There was a calmness to this stability in the changes, a knowingness that it was right, even though subconsciously she knew it to be different. The beautiful faces were benign and her fear was fading. They reached out and caressed her hair, brushing it back from her face. He looked on, never letting go, approving and stoic. There was food but it tasted of mere air. It had matter, took up space and was undeniably real, yet somehow lacked taste, although it served to fill her stomach. She didn’t remember eating, or moving, but she was alive, so she must have.

His facial hair grew and retracted as if mechanical, but it made no difference. The passing of time was evident, yet she sat and watched, as though she were the axis that the world was spinning ‘round. Stagnant while complacent, the still and calm of the universe balanced atop her sternum. She knew this to be true, and understood her relevance in the scheme of things, but no one seemed to take note. The faces passed her by, in rotation, smiling and reassuring her that things were just as they had always been. He turned his head and the ground shook. She clenched his hand and the earth mended beneath her feet, clad in irrelevant shoes. Her belongings: visible, but drifting out of reach. Her life seemed tangible, as if she could take a bite out of it, or shred it in a cheese grater. The colors grew more vibrant, the faces less clear, his always standing out from the crowd, like some Mecca of peace and quiet amongst the storm, but also somehow causing the tantrum of wind around her. The tornadoes whizzed by, the rains fell, the water hit her skin and penetrated her pores, causing the feeling of “wetness”, or at least what she used to know to be wetness, but now it felt still, dry, unnervingly heavy upon her. All at once gone, though, like time passing through at light speed and she drugged at the control station.

There was music, and it made her smile but didn’t make a sound, although she could hear it. Her senses numbed to everything except his fingers intertwined in hers. She could feel her synapses firing, like miniature electrical shocks at the top of her spinal cord. They were speaking to her in a language she never studied in school. The words were not the least bit melodic, yet someone was singing and she could hear it clear as day, an oldies radio station playing Motown hits, telling her that he was holding her down. She opened the eyes in the back of her head, metaphorically, of course, and saw a familiar scene, her backwards ducts sucked up tears like a vacuum as she watched it unfold behind the firing synapses, behind the Motown and in a place where blue was blue and red was red and yellow was her least favorite color.

A tall man playing records in a big empty room covered in a black floral rug. A small boy throwing couch cushions and thrusting his knees in rhythm with the music pouring out of the speakers. Real melodies dancing through the air. Food that tasted appropriately so: mashed potatoes with chunks of red skin and real butter melting in the center, a volcano of carbohydrates. A child dances, twirls and smiles at the man, a smile that makes the ground shake and his hand, his hand that she has been clenching, clenching and clinging to for reality, balance in a world of chaos slips away, momentarily, the earth emits smoke and fire and she looks at the child, she watches her dance, she watches her smile at the man, she notices the way the colors are real and the ground stable. She recognizes what she has left behind and once again clenches his hand, the earth mending beneath their feet. The dance is over and the colors have changed and the clocks must go back an hour and we can sleep a little longer but the morning will still feel like yellow and blue will smell like red and her favorite color is indistinguishable. But his hand, his hand is still there, like a bandage covering up a healed wound, like a pair of un-prescription glasses, yet keeping the ground stable until she is ready for the coming storms.

A

An Exercise in Sobriety (I'm on Meds)

Last night, around 2 am, I started to write a post about how my drinking habits have gone from abhorrent to acceptable, but after reading it just now I thought it would be better deleted and started over with another day's wisdom. Ironically my itunes (always on random) just started playing "Drinking As Religion" by Mason Jennings.

Basically, my life is at a standstill waiting to leave for LA. I'm not going to get into it but I've been endlessly delayed by a slew of unexpected, some unnecessary, but mostly understandable occurrences and am still bumming around Manhattan, bags packed and just about ready to leave. That's the sidebar to this rambling, incoherent piece of writing I'm about to provide you with.

My life has no shape, rhyme or reason lately. Until I get on the road I can't really think clearly, logically, or plan ahead. Therefore, I've been living like a cross between a bum, a blind person, and an over-emotional stereotype of woman. I sort of wonder around the streets absently, listening to a lot of Radiohead and Brazilian ballads on my iPod and acquire things like sinus infections, which I have right now. This is part of the reason that I have the luxury of writing this post at midnight on what will probably be my last Saturday night as a New York City resident for a long time (although, one can never be too sure considering how delayed my move has been). You see, I've said goodbye to most of my friends. Also, I'm on antibiotics and thus should avoid alcohol. It's pretty difficult to hang out with people that you've already said goodbye to on a Saturday night and not imbibe. Or is it?

Because of my surroundings, lifestyle, age, or some combination of the three I've spent the past half-dozen years marking important milestones with alcohol. Important milestones being things like birthdays, big decisions, holidays, impromptu parties, sporting events I have nothing invested in, weekends, Wednesdays, long nights at work, and select mornings. Does this mean that I was an alcoholic (or rather that I am one?–once one always one), no, I don't believe so. Do you know why? Well because it was simply because it was what I knew, not something that I couldn't live without. My persona became tied to "drunk me" and she wasn't very cool or interesting. When you're in the 18-24 age group most social activities center around drinking and what I didn't realize until very recently is that that doesn't have to mean drinking until your friends are laughing at you, your bra is hooked OVER your shirt (see below), or you have pulled the skirt of the cocktail waitress down in order to get yourself another tequila shot.

While things like the photo above are certainly hilarious (made more so by the fact that when confronted at the time my blacked out rationalization for said "style statement" was "Leave me alone. It's very hipster"...yes, drunk Adria can be funny), they are not when the night continues in the way that so many open bar situations do: tears, a cellphone left in a cab, wondering my East Village block in boxer shorts and Frye boots searching for said phone on the sidewalk, falling down the stairs, and somehow ripping a perfectly placed beauty mark off of the center of my chest. Okay so that's probably never happened to another person, and it still remains a mystery how that beauty mark was removed so aggressively. I can only imagine that my alone, blacked out self was being self-flagellating in fits of lost-phone rage. This makes for a good story, sure, but what does it say about my character? If my mother had this URL she'd read this and immediately send me to rehab. And rightfully so. However, I vowed the next morning that nothing like this would ever happen to me again and I can honestly say that I don't think it ever will. Since that day in January I have become an adult in my drinking habits (not an adult like Charlie Sheen, but more like what I imagine Natalie Portman to be like at a bar). I no longer desire to drink myself into a stupor, or feel like sharing war stories from the night before, or comparing hangovers the next morning (although I will say that somehow my hangovers have remained lethal, even with drinking exponentially less booze–thanks, aging).

I think that it is so important that us young people recognize that fun and booze are not always connected. You can have one without the other and more often than not do. As I approach the day where I leave the 18-24 grouping (still more than six months off, but nonetheless...) I realize more and more that my generation has put too much emphasis on substance and not enough on human connection. Because let's be honest, I would probably hook my bra over my shirt and say it is "the hipster thing to do" without six sake bombs, half a bottle of Chardonnay, and three shots of Grey Goose. So let's have a beer and play Jenga and I'll still probably say something stupider, but at least I'll wake up with all of my beauty marks.

What are your views on excessive drinking? Was there a specific moment when you realized that your previous habits were ridiculous? Do you want to argue for the party crowd and overconsumption? I'm REALLY not judging anyone and I want to know what you all think!

A

PS: I won't argue with the euphoric feeling of downing two dirty martinis and harmlessly flirting with the European bartender

PPS: As I recently commented on Lauren's spot, I'd rather give up carbs and chocolate than red wine. So, you know...

I Jinxed the USA

I want to delete my Facebook account. I want to cancel my subscription to Kanye's tweets. I want to stop looking at photos of people who I haven't seen in eight years. I want to live in a world where people recognize that we cannot exist in a society without accepting that we are all a part of the same society. I want to be alone for a little while and I don't know how.

I'm not going to do any of this (how could I live without Kanye's witticisms?), but I'm feeling as though I should. My dependency on technology is no longer something that I am okay with. When I'm not on my laptop, iPod, or Blackberry I probably have the TV on. Yes, I read books, but lately I read before watching something on Netflix instant play, or in the bathtub, or with my phone nicely placed in my cleavage (classy, right?). What has happened to me?!

I spent a lot of time today looking at old photo albums and uploading old cds onto aforementioned laptop (which is coincidentally, although not surprisingly, atop my lap currently) and I miss the 90s. I mean, I hardcore miss the 90s. Yes, I miss being a kid, but more than that I miss the people around me and the way the world was. I remember having a very specific thought sometime around 1997/1998, which was: "Wow, I can't believe how lucky I am to be growing up right now! I live in the best country in the world, we aren't in a war, and everything is fucking peachy!" Okay, so I probably didn't say "fucking peachy" in my head, but you get my drift, yeah? So I'm sorry that I jinxed it, everyone. 9/11 is probably my fault. G. Dubs getting elected? C'est moi. The recession? Sorry. I should've knocked on wood, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were talking to ME!

So America, as punishment for being responsible for the utter downfall and demise of our once great nation I'm going to suggest that we all just sign off now. Stop updating our statuses, stop tweeting, stop telling everyone what you think and take a minute to figure it out. Take a moment to put a photo in a frame. Put a record on. Look at a picture of your long-gone family members and wonder "what would they think?" I'm going to shut my laptop now and try and be quiet for a little bit.

A

PS: Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to lecture anyone but myself.
PPS: I had nothing to do with planning any terrorist events. Just in case you don't get the joke.

Hibernation

After an eventful weekend packed with goodbyes and costumes and far too many chicken wings and Milky Ways I've decided to hide out for awhile. My head/chest congestion is currently operating at maximum capacity and I've been unable to make it a day without picking a fight and crying so here I am, on my parents' couch, head wrapped in a scarf, eating leftover halloween candy (oops), drinking "Breathe Easy" tea, trying to decide if I should watch Fern Gully or something I've never seen.

I'll be hiding here like this behind a pillow, wrapped in a scarf and donning my flannel, or in the tub doing crossword puzzles until its time to drive to California. If you need me for something send a carrier parrot (cause...they can talk).

Also, not a one of you left me road trip songs to download...aaaaand I know it was halloween week and all, but where's the love?