October 17

Weekend. I still hate LA weekends. Thank goodness I have Thursday & Friday off. Anyways... Leigh and I hiked to the peak, came home and made our detox smoothie breakfast, then we got ready for the beach. Manhattan Beach. En route we stopped by a gross smelly costume store so Dave could return the Santa costume and scope out some Halloween ideas. But all the costumes were really old and worn out looking... We then picked up Matt and went to a cute little surf shack cafe in Manhattan beach. Leigh and I had our doubts about getting a healthy salad, but we ended up getting one of the best salads i've ever had! There was no dressing... but there was hummus and lemon juice and artichokes and avocado and it was really really really good. We hung out on the beach for a while, tanned, went swimming and then headed home. Home to do homework. Leigh went to a play at school, Dave went back to Matt's, and I slaved over homework. Well, not really slaved, because all my work is very easy, just very tedious and time consuming. More to come on tedious and time-consuming tomorrow...

October 18

Hollywood Sign hike. Detox breakfast. Then headed out to buy art/drafting supplies. I noticed an SUV with the words "armed security" waiting at the gate and thought that was strange... then I get a text 5 mins later from Leigh saying I just missed Brad (going for a spin on his motorcycle). Oh, and I forgot to mention 2 days ago that we saw the kids driving around in powerwheels cars (Black mini Ford Expedition for Shiloh, Pink something for Zahara). So yeah, art supply shopping. I noticed that canvases are more expensive here than at home... bummer. And a decent easel is gonna cost me a pretty penny :( Apparently i'm in the Kappa magazine and i've been getting all these emails inquiring about pricing. Gotta get set up for painting! Got home, went to the green store with Leigh to get "Liquid Lunchboxes" ... beets and ginger and apple and blah. It took me forever to drink it "it's not that it's gross, it's just bland. Like milk. I hate drinking milk. Unless its milk that honey nut cheerios have been getting soggy in." We had our lunch and then i set upon the task of putting the hardware on my drafting table. I figured it would take me 15 mins. Boy was I wrong. Probably took me an hour and a half.

First the mat was all wavy (because I didn't think to unroll it and flatten it yesterday), so i tried taking a hairdryer to it but it did nothing. Then I had to trim it to fit the board. So far, so good, (minus the wavy-ness). Next up was putting on the parallel ruler. DISASTER. So it started off find, but then i got to the bottom clamp things, the instructions all along were saying to pre-drill holes, but I was screwing the screws in just fine so i figured I didn't need to worry about a drill. I figured wrong. When I got to the 1" screws to screw in the clamps, I had quite a difficult time. So I searched the basement for a drill, which i found, (with a Harriman label on it - thanks Jordan - your purple Nixon Player watch and drill are treating me well), but no drill bits. So I tried to just power screw the screw in but it wasn't doing anything. This is when I started freaking out. It was a very weird occurrence because for maybe one of the first times in my life I actually felt incompetent. I never feel incompetent. I always pride myself on being able to do anything, but today I actually didn't know how i was going to get these screws in. Now don't get me wrong - my construction skills are pretty good, i've just never had to use a drill before. So I come to a standstill in my power screwing and I just don't know what to do. Dave wasn't home and I didn't want to wait til he got home since I had to use the table for homework! And I really didn't want to have to rely on anyone else to do it. I wanted to do it myself. So then the waterworks started. I collapsed on the floor and just lied there and cried for probably 5 minutes.

After my tears were all used up I decided to re-group. I went back down to the basement to perform another search for drill bits.... and there they were, on the top of the fridge. But there were only 4, two were huge, two were miniscule. So i brought them up. Then began the task of figuring out how to change drill bits. Again, the incompetency feeling returned. The tears were welling up in the corners of my eyes, but then i figured it out and began drilling my holes. The bit I was using was too small so i kinda had to play around with it, after about 30 seconds more of crying (couldn't figure out why it wasn't drilling... had it in reverse) I finally got my screws screwed in and my table was finished! Victory was mine! So yeah, I was really proud of myself and it just confirmed that i'm pretty much the most competent girl in the world.

Leigh and Dave had a cute date night - dinner and Where the Wild Things Are, I ate salmon and broccoli and carrots and drafted for 3 hours. I have a feeling this is just the beginning of many more lonesome drafting nights...

Leigh and Dave returned, Leigh found out she got a movie role which starts filming in a week, so we're embarking on a crazy workout schedule in addition to our detox! We watched Desperate Housewives, and now it's time for bed.