Cocktailhag, the blog

I’m in LA at the moment, helping my dearest friend Tina get her house ready to sell so she can finally escape this dreadful place after over a dozen unintended years.  And, for me, her time here meant six residences and about twenty remodeling projects, which has enabled me to escape Portland for at least a few weeks each year when the days in Portland get shorter than the Super Bowl and  people are routinely drowned walking across lawns.  No matter how much one might hate living in LA, each winter those contemplating fleeing decide to stay another year, and for good reason.  If it’s 70 degrees and sunny in the January, that’s some compensation for all the frustrating hours spent stuck in traffic.  Were it not for this phenomenon, I think LA would be uninhabited by now.

Last night Tina, her mother, four-year old son, and I were driving from the Marina to Encino for dinner, dreading the inevitable clogged roads and freeways at that hour, and they debated which route to take.  I’ve learned to stay out of these discussions, knowing that Tina and her family tend to be incorrigible backseat drivers, and even if I had an opinion, they would dismiss it out of hand anyway.  In the past, this led to our first impromptu Chinese fire drill when I was caught behind the wheel in Florence, Italy, with Tina and her cousin, and another time in downtown Seattle with her and her mother; by then it was so routine that Tina was halfway around my Bronco before I’d unbuckled my seat belt and pulled the emergency brake.  As we pulled out onto the dreary and horrifying Washington Boulevard, a voice from the back seat started right up, “Are we taking the 405?”  ”What if we get stuck?  ”Watch out for that cop.”  ”Turn on the map.”  Tina was uncharacteristically silent; this newest backseat driver was the little one in the car seat.  Blood is, evidently, thicker than water.  We all agreed that getting out of LA as soon as possible was probably a good idea for all concerned.