I’ve been off my website/social media for almost a year. I kept my accounts and enjoyed what other people posted but really haven't posted myself since February or so, and longer on this site.

Some friends I haven’t seen in awhile asked if I moved. A man I bought furniture from messaged me and said he really didn’t want to come across creepy but asked why I hadn’t written recently and asked that I begin writing again. It was not creepy - actually very cute.

For awhile there was just so much changing so quickly it was enough to keep up in just living it, let alone informing online about it. I decided to just go through the motions of things and use it as a chance to learn more about myself and what I actually want to put forward.

I understand Instagram hiatuses. With all this change, and honestly raising of my responsibility for my life and everything in it, everything became so almost pure. I felt like photos couldn’t do things justice. How many likes can I get on something so wonderful? It didn’t measure up.

Instead I just enjoyed things. And now I feel at the point where I enjoy them so much I want to share them and I’m able to. They’re familiar and lasting and ready to be introduced.

Bringing a kitten into my Dad’s room the night of his birthday to wake him up.
The magic that is my mother.
My sister moving back to California just miles away.
My boyfriend’s laugh and the fact that I didn’t know someone like him could even exist.
How close I have become with my youngest sister.
The love of all the wonderful friends I have.
How many interesting and amazing people I am fortunate enough to know.

I feel like I’m living the life of a princess.

So after quite the hiatus, I found I have a lot of memories and experiences to write about and share. I think coming into the Holiday season, which always makes me excited, I felt like I was bursting at the seams with everything. So I’ve been working on some things for this site and page that I am really excited to put forward in the coming months and use as an opportunity to learn more about others.

Its good to see you again

Much Love,

Claire

The smell of tylenol.

I used to like that smell. I never got sick. None of us did. It smelled like candy which I didn’t have often and it tasted like warm sour sugar. I only had it once or twice but I thought it was great.

I don’t like that smell now. It just makes me angry, then tired because I’m not very good at being angry.  But it makes me so mad I want to pick up that little cup of pink liquid and throw it against the wall and pull everyone far away from it. To pool water, in the summer when I’m 12, confessing to shaving my legs even though I didn’t need to yet because its blue and breezy and light and let me worry about that instead.

I drowned in that smell.

Things change all the time. I know that. We all know that. But they’re little changes. I’m eating dairy. I’m not eating dairy. I’m trying to lose weight. I’m going to eat whatever I want.

You turn around and a year has gone by. And its fine, but its gone. Then its years.

Remember MySpace? I can honestly say when I used MySpace I thought it would never end.

Not that something better wouldn’t be come up with, but the culture would never end. I remember thinking what did best was things that were strange. I felt like everyone had some weird song lyric as their caption and weird comments on their pictures and the more confused I was the more I had to aspire to be confusing.

I remember one time looking at a picture of someone I knew. It was a bad picture. She didn’t look good.

Thats how I would put it now. I don’t mean in regards to her looks.  She was and is pretty and lovely and thats why it didn’t look good. Her hair was green and purple and chopped into a pixie cut and it didn’t look like her. It looked like Hot Topic threw up on her, really.

It didn’t add up. I looked at it and it just didn’t make any sense. But it seemed like the confusing thing again. I was confused so it was a good photo.

I wanted to be a part of it. I opened up the comment box and kept it open for awhile.

I finally decided on, “The grass looks wet in this.”

I just laughed out loud to myself as I was writing this. Because I really did comment that. I hit post a comment and posted it.

Later, I saw a conversation on someone’s profile.

“Remember that little Claire girl we went to school with?”

“yea”

“She commented something like the grass was wet on my picture. xD XD rofl.”

“wtf haha”

I remember reading it my cheeks started to burn. I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t tell if she meant for me to see it because it was on someones profile or if she just didn’t think.

I went and deleted the comment right away and turned off the computer. I didn’t belong on MySpace. I felt so ashamed for thinking I did.

I’m sure some can relate to something like this. In retrospect, its very funny to me now. At the time, it was completely demoralizing. I wished I could just be myself but I wasn’t sure who that was.

————————————————————————————————————————-

Eight years later, that girl with the wet grass in her photo called me crying because her heart was broken and she said she didn’t know who else to call. She asked me what to do, what would I do, what did I think, and met me and followed what I said.

She got over it and got through it and we never talked about the wet grass picture. I once asked her to tell me of someone who had truly helped her in her life and without a pause she pointed and said,

“You.”

My mind flew back to the MySpace comment in that moment. I think it was confusing and strange because it really was confusing and strange. I think I felt I had to be confusing because it was confusing.

The girl in front of me wasn’t confusing anymore. She was earnest and honest and heart warming. Those things are not confusing. They are very very clear.

There are a couple things I have learned over the past two months. And while I’m not quite ready to go into the depths of what those two months have entailed and continue to entail, I will tell you these things

1.  Kindness always wins. Anyone who tells you otherwise just hasn’t learned that yet.
2.  It is so important to understand how strong you are actually capable of being, without expecting anyone else to match you. The same goes for being kind.
3. Your reward for maintaining these two things is that you can find those to surround yourself with that make you the best version of yourself you can be. And lastly,
4. Nothing is permanent. Even jail.

I saw an inmate say “I only have 45 years in here. So one day I am going to get out and go home to my family. So I still win.”

—————————————————————————————————————————-

There is a lot of change happening in my life right now. I sometimes feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff. One minute I’m looking at the view and feeling great about the fact that I’m holding myself up and the wind still hasn’t swept me off, then suddenly I’m feeling like the wind has picked up and I’m gripping the ground with all of my weight to stay standing through it all.

But the good news is, I am still standing through it. And I know I can keep standing because I haven’t fallen off yet.

Even though the grass is wet.

Yours,

Claire

My high school experience was funny. I went to a competitive Catholic school. Both of those adjectives being things I am not.

I dreaded it. I just wanted to move to LA. I had seen friends of mine go to these massive private high schools in the area and become consumed with homework and flash cards and study guides every night and all weekend and it seemed horrible.

I had to be coaxed through the whole process. Through the application process, the teacher applicant meeting, the “shadow” day, orientation etc. I hoped something would happen that would cause me to have to leave the school shortly after starting.

I remember the final conversation on it with my parents, in which a month before school I was still intending to not go.

“I actually really think you will like it,” my mom said. I felt the opposite but it was clear I was going, the tuition had been paid and I would be attending every ice breaker retreat orientation there was planned before the impending first day of school.

I looked at it pessimistically, but I really had nothing to lose. While everyone else who started their freshmen year that August day was worried about what honors classes they’d pass or teams they would make, or what friends or colleges they would find I had no expectations. To everyone I had spoken to about this high school experience I didn’t want to have but was being forced to, if I even liked it, we had won.

I was the only one who came from my school. I contemplated putting on an accent for the entire duration of my attendance because who would even know if it was fake? It was kind of an excuse to develop a new persona. Because unlike everyone else who had grown up with all of their fellow classmen I was a blank slate.

There were some bumps I’ll cover at a different time. But I’ll say the minute I decided to stop trying to find boys to like or ways to be more appealing I did love it. I loved it.

I couldn’t have cared less about my grades or classes or what anyone thought and it was really just playtime all day. I liked it, so we had all won and it really just felt like something I was doing for awhile for fun.

Cutting forward, I got into a relationship that summer after freshman year, with someone I had said the December before I would never date because we were too good of friends.

I remember in saying that to people thinking how Nicholas Sparks and great it would be if in the three years to come we never dated, and it became painfully meant to be. And then senior year in some whimsical after football game rainstorm we had some huge fight in which a confession was made saying something along the lines of “You’re the one. You were always the one.”

But among other things, I am an impatient person. So with similar vehemence and melodrama, we finally and climactically got together on the last day of school. Complete with the cardinal “in a relationship with” Facebook update.

Those two years are another story. What I will say is for the last bit , within many fights I found myself saying, “What? Do you want to break up or something?”

I think this is because deep down I was hoping that question would receive a “yes” and “you’re free now.”

It took a year to receive an “I don’t know.”

After a few choppy conversations and hidden relationship statuses and a sudden sense of distance, it was done.Everything changed and I moved to Los Angeles 2 weeks later.

I was wide awake all the time. I couldn’t sleep or eat or barely blink. At night I would just walk around the house, watch some TV shows trying to make it not so silent. But I was happy. Just shoved into so much difference I had to be awake through it all.

A week after arriving, a friend from back home visited me we can call Joel.

I remember I was so skinny. I’m not fat now but I was so skinny – from 6 mile runs and lack of hunger and sleep. I wore a little floral tank top, shorts and heeled sandals.

I’m not sure why I thought that outfit was crucial. I felt like I had to show someone how much I had changed in that one week and this was for some reason the way to do it.

We went to Whole Foods, and Joel started talking about how he had been hanging out with my ex boyfriend. He said they had talked a lot, and had determined I had really been holding him back in his life. Even though I was the one who just moved across the state, while nothing had changed for him. He said they had determined the relationship went on way too long and it was for the better that it was over. He also said the ex boyfriend had been hanging out a lot with an old friend of mine and they would probably get together soon if they hadn’t already while he was in LA.

I’m very proud as a person, but at the time it stung. If it was now I would say, “Did he also tell you he cried as we said goodbye and said he wished I didn’t have to go?”

I drove him back to his dorm feeling slumped. My outfit now seemed silly and uncomfortable and I felt like a kid who’d tried to show off and felt flat on their face.

I was determined to show how much I loved my new life. But as I drove away from the West Side I could barely keep reminding myself. I felt nauseous and my legs felt like jelly as I got out of my car to go up to my apartment. I had bought a ticket to visit home that day but I couldn’t collect my mind enough to pack so I just put a sweater in my purse and got into the car to head to the airport.

I walked through the terminal and security feeling out of place and tried to shake it. My legs were still jelly as I boarded the plane and got in line to get a seat.

I got the the top of the aisleway and noticed a man with sunglasses on and a lot of tattoos, which scared me at the time.  He was staring at me.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was surprisingly kind and when he spoke, the entirety of the plane’s passengers turned towards me.

“Are you going up for the big concert?”

It was BFD that weekend, so I assumed that’s what he meant.

The people on either side of him laughed and stared at me.

“No I’m just going to see my family,” I replied.

“Oh where do you live? I live on Hollywood & Vine. Hollywood & Vine, ok? Do you know where that is?”

I only knew where Toluca Lake was. I didn’t know I lived in Koreatown. “I live about 20 minutes from Toluca Lake. I’m just visiting because I used to live up here.” As in last week, I thought. I was so embarrassed. Everyone on the plane was staring at me and he was so intent on talking to me.

The line moved suddenly and I was relieved.

“Ok well it was nice talking to you! Welcome to my beautiful city,” he said, taking my hand.

My cheeks were so flushed, “Thanks,” I said and hurried down the aisle and pulled my hand away.

I found a seat and sat down, now feeling not only disappointed but also pretty embarrassed. I opened up Facebook on my phone and scrolled down, when I accidentally opened a poster for BFD. It said “Jane’s Addiction” on it “featuring Dave Navarro.”

It was the guy from Hollywood & Vine. The guy on the plane that asked me where I lived. On the front of the poster.

I googled “Dave Navarro.” There he was again, the same guy from the front of the plane, who was asking me so many questions while everyone stared.

I thought about it the whole flight. Was he asking me about BFD in case he wanted to invite me or something? I was confused as to why he had taken an interest in talking to me, but also hoped I would see him again. I was definitely scared by how many tattoos he had but his voice was strikingly friendly.

I got off the plane quickly but he was gone. I was disappointed but thought it was cool to have seen him anyways and started to text my family that I was getting off the plane.

Suddenly from behind me, came that unpredictably friendly voice saying, “Goodbye girl of my dreams!”

I turned and there was Dave Navarro, at the Starbucks kiosk with all the assistants that had been sitting with him. I was so shocked I just waved back and kept walking as they all laughed at me.

I didn’t care about the ex boyfriend anymore. I didn’t care about the Whole Foods lunch or what Joel had said about my holding someone back. At the end of the day, quite literally, Dave Navarro had a 3 minute conversation with me and told me I was the girl of his dreams.

I thought back to my countlessly repeated query, “Do you want to break up or something?” and realized I was only asking because I had already decided. And that’s just waiting to be told it’s ok so that its not all on you if it goes badly.

But I don’t think it ever really does. I have found you can end everything you’ve ever known all on your own and by the end of it maybe even become the person of someone’s dreams. Special thanks to Dave Navarro for saying the right thing at exactly the right time to show me that.

Xoxo,

C

I had a teacher when I was four named Elaine. Elaine was Filipino I think. She had the same hair as Kelly from Saved by the Bell except it was dark black. She was also big boned and always looked a little displeased, like she wasn’t where she wanted to be in life teaching all of us. She always reminded me of a hippo. Not because of her size but just how she could look so happy sitting lazily and then snap when she was disturbed all of a sudden.

She liked me though, I think. One time when I was playing on the field she called me over to the teacher blanket. She told me to look at the picture other teacher, Daisy, was holding of her boyfriend.

“Isn’t his chest too hairy? she asked me giggling.

I could barely see his face – he was ruddy and smiling with squinty eyes and all I could think was: thats the hairiest chest I’ve ever seen. I stared at the picture for so long, trying to get used it until even I knew it was awkward.

Elaine laughed the bubbliest laugh I’ve ever heard and Daisy took the picture back. I didn’t really know what to do – I thought it was weird seeing that picture of Daisy’s boyfriend with his hairy chest and squinty face. Should I tell my mom? I thought. How would that go? Mom I saw Daisy’s boyfriend’s picture today and it was just his hairy chest and I just thought I should tell you that.

Elaine was always happiest teasing Daisy.  Or the one time she came over for dinner with her boyfriend Kevin and I made them both go on the trampoline with me, like a little wing woman, making Kevin look good while he played with me.

A little after that I think she and Kevin broke up. I remember thinking it when we were driving back from a field trip she had been grumpily chaperoning on. She was sitting with her eyebrows furrowed, quiet except for a couple shushes when the boys got too loud.

I was sitting next to her and kept staring at her. I know this because a couple times she said, “What?” and I just looked away. Because I didn’t know what. Hence my staring.

I could tell something was wrong and I started trying to figure out what to do to make it better. We were coming back from Half Moon Bay and it was a long drive of my staring, and her what-ing, and my almost asking what was wrong and stopping myself.

Finally I thought of something.

I had to tickle her.

It seemed faultless. Bound to work, but just took a little taking one for the team on my part.

By this I mean, she was wearing a sleeveless collared shirt with areas of target exposed: the armpits.

I took a look at them. She didn’t bother with shaving them. She had fleshy arms and bits of sweaty Secret residue throughout. But I knew what had to be done.

I lifted a small right hand and reached for the hairy underarm.

Right as I came in contact and before I could say “tickle tickle” she scowled at me and said “WHAT are you doing.”

I yanked my hand out from under her arm speechlessly.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

“Don’t…do that to people!” she said as I sunk down in my seat and tried to sneakily wipe my hand off on my jean shorts.

I was so shocked. Who didn’t know a tickle when they felt one? I had tried to put her in a better mood only to put her in a worse one.

I went home that night thinking about the failed tickling incident, and Elaine, and Kevin, and Daisy’s boyfriend’s hairy chest.

Shortly after that, Elaine stopped working at the school. I often wondered where she went or where she is or what happened with her. Maybe that tickle was really bad.

At the time I realized something seemed to happen where people got stuck in moods. I didn’t know what moods or why and I didn’t know what that was like.

I just thought maybe I needed to learn to get stuck in moods. Because there was something I didn’t know that you could feel that a tickle couldn’t cure.

But looking back, maybe I still don’t know what that is. Because if a four year old kid reached over and shoved their little hand under my armpit after they’d been staring at me sitting in a bad mood, I would know what was going on.

The old spontaneous 1-2 tickle trick. And that I need to snap out of it.

Xoxo,

C

I thought first I would just explain why the name of my site is what it is and what the back story is on it.

I was raised with a lot of storytelling. Usually, and especially, funny stories and once in awhile, secretive back stories that you would catch on Sunday afternoon or on a late night drive home. Both sides of my heritage are long lines of storytellers and jokers and talkers meaning stories and humor were a large part of my growing up. In fact its all we did/do at any sort of family get together. I don’t know if we even end up catching up on things because we’re too busy talking about funny things that have happened in the past, even if we’ve talked about them a thousand times.

I remember watching the part in Blast From the Past where Christopher Walken tells some joke about a duck’s bill and everyone he tells thinks its so funny. I think I was 5 years old when that movie came out and I decided to remember the joke so I could tell adults and be really funny. The next time my parents had guests for dinner all I could think about was the duck bill joke. I waited so long through all of the dinner and all of the talking and long past when all the other kids left and by the time I got the chance to say it I was  bursting at the seams to get this joke out there.

“Hey I have a joke,” I said out loud. Which makes me actually cringe right now because it’s so cute from an external point of view but even at 5 years old I knew came off a little choppy.

EVERYONE went SO quiet and I took a deep breath…

And completely forgot the joke.

I stumbled into some explanation of ducks and their bills and remembered that the punchline had something to do with dollar bills being related to duck bills. So after a lot of explaining that I tried to play off as setting up the joke, I finally settled on, “Get it? Bills. Duck bills, dollar bills.”

Luckily my dad laughed and everyone followed suit and I tried to play it off like they were just slow and I was brilliant and had cleverly remembered Christopher Walken’s joke and now I was successful and most likely had a permanent spot at the adult table.

I just felt so good about it. Like whatever is wrong with you – you could be kind of mean, or strange, or boring or stupid but if you’re funny, you could get a certain amount of those things canceled out. So I always wanted to make people laugh. Because I liked to laugh and I liked when I could figure out how to make someone else laugh that I didn’t know very well.

At around 7 I met a friend we can call November. She was older than me and cool, but because we had just met and I was funny which was golden to me, I didn’t think she could be “more cool” or “more” anything than me.  She came to my house but she wasn’t really funny. She just seemed kind of dark or something but everyone thought she was so interesting I kept trying to be interested in her.

I remember then she invited me for a sleepover at her house and right as we were getting ready for bed she got really quiet and mad, which didn’t make sense to me. I felt like if you were getting mad, thats a loud emotion and you just do it and make it known and be done. But she was so quiet and just, mad I didn’t know how to respond at all. I started telling her I could have just stayed home but I didn’t and now she was just being mad. She didn’t answer me. I was totally confused about what to do. Then her mom came in and she started to cry. Really quietly again, which confused me, again. I felt like crying was not a go-to response and only came about from scraping your knee or something and in that case it was an ugly cry. She told her mom she had a headache and her mom took her to her parents room. November was not that funny, except for in a weird way where she would hurt people sometimes and others would laugh. She also got quiet-mad a lot and quiet-cried and for some weird reason this made me feel like she was more feminine than I was. Which is really funny because I used to refuse to wear anything but dresses or skirts until the age of 7 or 8, whereas November used to only wear skater shoes and boy clothes.

But when she would do all those things it got so much attention and I started to think I could either be funny and weird and unattractive, or I could be quiet-mad, sulky and pretty.

So if I wanted to be funny, I couldn’t also be pretty or even really consider myself very feminine.

That idea, in so many words, stuck with me way beyond the following 6 years I would know November.

In the years of Myspace and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and everything else I grew up in, I found that if I wanted to keep up I had to be kind of sad and serious. I had to spend time trying to make sure my photos were good and wearing things that looked good in pictures just in case some were taken while I was out and in the end, often felt unsuccessful in that. I just wanted to talk and tell stories and hear other people’s stories and laugh and not worry that we all had to take 100 pictures throughout and that someone would catch a picture of me laughing with a double chin or something.  I basically thought I would just have to put away having fun because it didn’t look as good.

But the thing about those kind of ideas is they don’t really make sense. So they keep sticking to you but they don’t give you a way you can actually be in the end. So I came up with this site.

Its not who I am to wake up and sit here and try to take a thousand pictures of myself or my outfit of the day and make them look perfect. I love finding the weird points in a situation and finding it funny and actually, I just really like laughing and when others are laughing. It is so much more me to get up early and watch videos of tiny animals then order coffee and a croissant and write and narrate my dog’s voice to anyone who will listen even if that is just myself.

On the other side of things, I love being feminine. I would wear a dress and a sweater every day if I could. And the type of things I want to put on my Facebook or Instagram or even this site are the things I really love, like the thai porridge I made from Chrissy Tiegen’s cookbook that I loved so much I made 3 nights in a row, or my dog when he’s sleeping on a pillow tucked in like a person, or how crazy I get about Christmas, or things my boyfriend says about said tucked in dog. And I think those things are pretty funny, and more than pretty and funny.

So here I am and here you are, in this little journey of mine in making things pretty and pretty funny. I want this to be real, and fun and REAL FUN (I know I’m killing you right now).

You can definitely expect some bad jokes, bulldog pictures, foooood, stories and a few unexpecteded’s along the way.

So thanks for sticking with me through all that. Even though I feel a little weird, I’m excited for this and thats pretty funny.

Got you again. GOTCHA

Xoxo,

C