this is a reminder to myself

This entry is for me. I don’t want to forget today, as I’m home now, thinking about everything that happened that led me to here.

I wake up in this house that is mine, that I own, with my husband. He lets me sleep in. I get to work early. I drink coffee. Email. More email. I work on my script. I take a moment to give a friend and her family a tour of the lot, driving a cart through Stars Hollow, around the ER set. This is my daily life, these places that used to exist solely on my television. I’m on the other side now, and I am incredibly grateful. I hope it lasts. Also, I get a weird thrill out of driving the cart.

Lunch with my co-workers, the people who always make me laugh and currently help keep me sane. One has bought some kind of infomercial computer pen, and we tease him for buying a glorified Simon. We go to the run-through. The weather is cold, but not too cold. It’s pulling me out of the office, so I take my computer to a coffee shop, where I write and write and write, banging out the next episode, drinking coffee with chocolate in it, because the weather dictates it to be so. I stop to read a friend’s script, and it’s really, really good.

It’s dark. I drive way up high into the Hollywood Hills for a script meeting. Everybody is nice, and the notes are good (which means they liked more than they had problems with, and they trust me to keep working on the film) and I’m as excited about the project as they are. There’s wireless in the house, so I send a note to my friend I’m supposed to meet for dinner: “See you soon.”

But then we keep talking because there’s more to talk about, and we’re still getting to know each other. “Oh, don’t leave!” she says. I don’t want to, but it’s late, and I’m still trying to make a good first impression. That, and I’m starving.

In the rain, my phone dies. The battery is gone. I forgot to charge it this morning. I borrow someone else’s and tell my friend I’m on my way. I wind my way down the hills, down to Wilshire, down to the Irish pub where I eat my first real meal of the day. It is ten-thirty. We catch up, share gossip, drink beer. We watch a girl celebrate her 21st birthday with her third Irish Car Bomb. She’s still drinking them incorrectly. I tell Kara about the time I did one and got pirate eye. We start swapping drinking stories, and I find myself talking about my life almost five years ago to the day, when I was puking in the back of Chris’ car, wailing about how I can’t move to Los Angeles, that I’m making a terrible mistake, and I’ll never make another friend again. Beside me is an actor who guest starred in last week’s episode. I feel like too much of a geek to say hi. He looks at me and can’t quite place me. If only I was brave enough to talk to him last week. Sometimes I’m still just too shy.

We go outside and meet two gay boys, one of whom is feeling sassy enough to tell us what it’s like to have sex with a woman when you don’t think you want to have sex with a woman, but sometimes it’s still good. This is information we might not have known otherwise. His boyfriend finds this disgusting, and walks away. The other one takes our phone numbers, with a promise of Karaoke in the future. We know this won’t happen, but it’s nice of him to offer. We were talking and he couldn’t resist barging in on our conversation. He leaves when he cannot hide the fact that he’s had to pee for the better part of an hour. We finish talking about seemingly everything — our families, our friends, and when the hell we’ll be able to see each other again.

I make my phone work long enough to text stee, telling him I’m on my way home. He’s leaving his poker game. My phone dies again.

All of the lights on Wilshire are green, and it feels like it’s just for me. It’s lightly raining and the streets are empty and wet. My iPod keeps me company, playing love songs the entire way. I make it down Virgil without hitting a red light. I’m on the 101. There is no traffic. Again, nothing but green lights on Alvarado and Glendale. It’s like I’m in a movie, driving home in the rain. These are both such rare occurrences. U2’s singing about a beautiful day as I get on the 2, the best little highway in Los Angeles.

I make it to my house as the iPod’s battery dies. I am home first. I grab my computer to get this all down. Because there are days when all the lights are red, when the notes are endless and the run-through is miserable and I’m wondering if I’ll ever be able to get to a bar before it closes in order to see even one of my friends. So I’d like to have a little reminder of the days when everything goes better than I ever could have dreamed five years ago when I was curled over an air conditioning unit, puking my guts out, begging someone to stop me from moving to Hollywood.

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