Candy Spelling Can Eat My Wrapping Dust

I've been away from the blog because we've been moving into our new place, and you know, moving takes a lot of emotional energy and at the end of each day, all you really feel like doing is watching people be broke ass idiots on Pawn Stars and dipping some cheese naan in the take-out chicken tikka masala.  That's it.  But now we're getting settled and I'm realizing that all the things I thought I was going to like best about this place maybe aren't even my favorite parts.  It's like how when you buy jeans, you never know which ones are going to be the jeans that, when they rip, you're going to consider spending $300-500 recreating via L.A. custom jean makers because the brand doesn't make that style anymore and you can't live without them.  In the store, you didn't know they were that level of jean.  It took some time together.

So while I'm still totally happy about all the things I was originally excited about in this place-- like it's still great that we finally have our own closets so that Brent doesn't have to keep his socks in the hidden part of the ottoman, sure-- some other hidden pleasures have really been making strides toward center stage (or center condo, if you will).  And so as of today, I've compiled my 3 favorite things about my new place of living.

1.  My wrapping bar.

Tori Spelling's mom can suck it because I have my own designated wrapping area now, and I heard she's putting her mansion with the wrapping room up for sale, so maybe she's going someplace where she'll have to wrap alongside, like, the washer and dryer.  How gauche!  Maybe to you the wrapping bar looks like a wet bar, but that faucet is actually for washing off my fingers when they get too sticky from handling the Scotch gift tape.  The bottles of wine are also there not because that's where we're going to serve people wine, but because those bottles are all gifts to us, and so they belong.  That's their home.  Especially the bottle with the gift card from Ben Stiller.  So maybe it's not actually written to me and it was actually given to Brent; sometimes Brent and I laugh because we're almost like the same person, except I'm the one who doesn't get all fucking nerdy in front of the History Channel for ten hours when they have a "Life After People" marathon or anything on about ancient Greece.

Anyway, I love this wrapping bar.  I'm going to do a lot of wrapping here.

2.  I had some kind of idea that once I moved, I was going to be swimming a lot because we live right over the pool and the pool is a very nice one, but I probably should have known better-- having lived in a place with a pool before-- that what I actually like about a pool is seeing it glow at night!  I believe there is no better color on earth than an electric blue.  I mean, that's the entire reason why I bought my truck and didn't care that the gas pedal can stick and kill you.  So one of the really beautiful things about the new place is that our big bedroom window overlooks the pool, and so when I go in there at night and the lamps are off and the pool is glowing, I have an incredible sense of well-being that stems from the fact that that color not only exists, but is lit up.

It's daytime right now and I'm too impatient to wait to get a picture of the pool glowing, so please just use your imagination.

3.  This third thing I don't have a picture for because it's an audio thing, so you'd need to hear it.  And I don't have a sound clip up because I have no idea how to put an audio thing up on the blog.  But it's this: our neighbor in the condo to the right keeps a fountain on her terrace, and she never turns it off.  THEN, additionally, there is also an artificial babbling brook down by the pool.  What this means is that when I'm lying in bed at night, there is always the sound of trickling water.  In my bedroom, it always sounds like it's raining.  And rain at night is probably my top favorite sound to go to sleep to.  Maybe if we had lots of huge bills and Brent liked to count them in bed at night, that would usurp rain's place.  For right now, though, I feel pretty confident giving it top position.

What's especially great about the illusion of the rain is that it's not generated by me.  Sure, I could have bought a sound machine or my own fountain all these years if I wanted to hear some trickling.  Except then I would have woken up in the middle of the night and been like, "Yeah, there's my fountain going."  But because I'm not responsible for either the fake brook or the fountain on my neighbor's terrace, I'm able to keep alive the illusion that the sound is natural and the world is right, and that's worth its weight in covered parking.

Someday I just might wrap up a gift on my wrapping bar and walk it over to the lady next door for being so giving with her fountain noise (and electricity).  It will have tiiiight corners.

UPDATE: My phone camera makes it look more greenish, so just adjust your monitor.

Comments

[Shannon]

Feeling the love of the glowing blue pool...though it's never quite as fascinating while you are in it. My window positioning isn't quite so fortunate.

[Meg Rosoff]

LA is...different. Ben Stiller and glowing pools. We have big sleek orange urban foxes and REAL rain here in London. No wrapping bars though.

[Laurel Hechanova]

The figure drawing mannequins are masturbating on your wrapping bar, aren't they? And the dog. The dog is a voyeur?

[Terry]

A few years ago in Las Vegas, I visited this expensive gated community called "The Lakes." The nearly identical houses all had little docks on a fake lake which really just amounted to a humongous pool, albeit with boats and fish.

What was most striking about this David Lynch inspired development was the unnaturally bright primary blue color of the water. Do you remember the Ty-D-Bowl man and his blue water? That color. Recently, I read an article about maintaining the lake at The Lakes. To avoid the dark green slime-like color that the unavoidable algae would otherwise turn the water, large amounts of "harmless food coloring" are dumped into it every day. Would you love it there or what?