Birthday – Part One

I’m starting a bad pattern, which is blogging infrequently and then exploding everything into one post. This behavior must cease. I need to write more regularly (at least here on this blog), and anyone who cares to read it should do so in a more easily digestable size.

That said, I’m releasing the details of my LA trip in stages. Unless anyone feels like reading a five-page novella at once. I didn’t think so. Here’s part one:

So, as many of you know, I’m not so much of a birthday person.
First, I hate the concept of aging (and yes, I know that it should be expected that we are all going to get older, but known for saying that I’m a vampire – with the exception of the blood. I really hate blood. If I were literally a vampire, forget about the wooden stake through the heart, I would be certain to starve to death).

The part that I don’t talk so much about is the fact that my birthday reminds me of a ritual that I had with my mother where I would send her flowers to commemorate her extreme level of pain and suffering on that day. It was a ritual that she looked forward to. I would send a huge bouquet of roses to her office, and she would be the envy of her colleagues. FTD reminds me of that ritual each year, exactly a week prior to the day. And so it begins.

Last year, I think I blogged about my birthday, and my surprise spa day.

This year went a little differently. I decided to spend the blessed event in sweet home Los Angeles.

I planned the trip so that I could hang out with the BF while he worked on a show. (More about that later. Or not.) He was supposed to work for only a few days while I was in town. Turns out, he worked every day. But, I worked most days myself, so I guess I can’t complain. (Who’d listen?)

I felt right at home as soon as I drove my hideous rental car into the circular driveway of the Andaz West Hollywood on Sunset.

Regarding the hotel, my father asked where I was staying. When I told him, he said “You’re staying at the Riot House? Oh God.” He remembered the first iteration. The Andaz, formerly known as the Riot House — or the Riot Hyatt, is the famed hotel where Keith Richards threw a television off of the balcony of his room, where Guns and Roses fans gathered, waiting for Axl Rose to feed them bits of his steak from his balcony, and Suge Knight swung Vanilla Ice from a balcony by his ankles. They renovated a few years ago. SO not shocking that they removed all balconies.

I consider myself part Californian. Aside from going to college there, some of my best childhood summers were spent split between summer camp, visiting relatives on the east coast, and hanging out in West Hollywood on the Sunset Strip at the Franklin Plaza Hotel (now an apartment building, and incidentally the place where Nikki Sixx overdosed in the 80s [No, I was not there]). And people wonder why I don’t have a Chicago accent.

My father is a musician/producer, and my mother and I would hang out in LA while he worked on various projects.

And, since I’m clearly a textbook case of recreating my household, there I was . . . in LA, with my entertainment industry boyfriend who was there working, staying on the street where I “grew up.” Life is nothing if not ironic.

Stay tuned for the next installment!

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