Robotanists

It's like a good car ride. You know the kind. You've just had a horrible day and it all starts out with the mission to set out and find a great cupcake to make it all better with some sugary goodness.

I walk into my apartment. Greeted by my ever loving pets, who sadly just sometimes can't make a bad day go good. I strip off my Universal Studios uniform, put on some comfy clothes and walk over to my drawing table. As the computer hums and the screen lights up, I load my email in one window and facebook in the next. Of course this is somehow going to make everything better right? Let's "lurk" the ones that made us have such a bad day. Immediately, I click off all tabs, shut my computer, give Banksy and Cleo kisses and say quietly, "i'll be back soon guys, it's a cupcake kind of a day".

Hopping down my apartment stairs, with a quick pat on the head of the neighbors cat, I jump in my car, throw on some Avett Brothers and start driving.

As I make my way out of Burbank Blvd, I turn, but not towards the cupcake shop, but rather the 101 north. It's the type of driving that for the first 15 minutes you think you are on a mission and know your destination, but soon after, as the engine zooms, you just keep going...past exit numbers, and towns that you don't recognize the names. The music blares, and I'm in a zone. I don't stop. Don't turn around until about an hour and a half out side of Los Angeles.

When I do finally turn the car around, I think I've solved all the problems that I started with and decide that the West Coast just isn't for me...or is it? And my head begins spinning again...when I arrive in my driveway, three hours later, back where I started, I am indeed, exactly that, back where I started.

Little do I know, within weeks it will all turn around, there will be a glimmer of light that will enter my life. It comes by way of a mix tape called "Whiskey Sunset".

Just a girl, looking for a cupcake, but getting way more than she bargained for...and an empty tank of gas.

Ray LaMontagne

During my childhood, holiday time was always crazy. I mean, we are Italian....so there's always an enormous amount of food, and relatives, and Christmas cheer in the air.

This particular Christmas I remember being very sick. Just one of those miserable colds that you can't breathe out of your nose, you wake up and stay in your pajamas, that thick purple Dimetapp every couple of hours or so...miserable. Absolutely miserable for a youngster.

The house that I grew up in was small: 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a living room, kitchen, unfinished basement, and 6 people living there, 1 dog, 90 rabbits, some chickens and a rooster.

My family members filed into our house. What seemed like so many of them. I was in charge of the jackets. I would take everyone's warm winter outwear and place them on my parent's bed in their bedroom. Now I was sick, so of course every one thought I was in bed...but, alas, this mischievous youngster was not.

I snuck into my parent's bedroom and began going through each of the coat pockets, curious as to what these family members of mine may hold inside of them. Dirty tissues for runny cold weather noses, keys, and one pocket in particular: a box of tic tacs.

Not just any tic tacs, the white ones. I took one out of the package, and ate it...ahh delicious mint. I tapped a second one out onto my hand, and for whatever reason, I wanted to smell it. More than anything. I lifted it up to my nose and of course couldn't smell, not only because I was sick, but seriously, who can smell a tic tac? So this 5 or 6 year old decided to do the only thing  I knew to do: stick that tic tac up my nose as far as I could, because by golly, I was going to smell that damn minty goodness.

As the candy coating wore off in my nose and I couldn't dislodge the small candy, it began to burn. I remember said burning like it was yesterday. I ran into the kitchen found my mother, in the middle of about a million other things and said "mommy, mommy, it burns it burns!" To which she responded, "of course it does, you have a cold, and you aren't feeling well!" I repeated "no!" as I pointed at my nose and explained what I did, the burning getting hotter and hotter. We tried blowing my nose...nothing. Again and again. Finally, my mother slowly walked to the bathroom to get the tweezers. Little did I know she didn't plan on tweezing anything out, she walked so slowly so that the tic tac would begin to dissolve and finally just finally I would be able to get it out with a tissue.

I remember this moment in my life like it was yesterday. The burning, the scurrying, the crying, the sitting on the counter as I told my mom the story of what had happened...

Just a girl, very early in her life, with a love of going through the guests pockets, looking for hidden treasures, or a piece of candy to smell while overcoming a damn miserable cold.

Don Henley

He sleeps by my side. Quietly breathing. For every one move I make, he makes the same in return. If I turn to one side, he will as well. If I curl my legs up, he will move in such a way to still be my perfect fit. My other piece. Even my better half.

It was late January, and the weather in California was rather warming to this northeast girl. My days were not very full, and during those "winter" months I was feeling rather lonely.

Over the course of that fall and winter I learned to do well with such loneliness. I would lay on the floor of my living room, record player blaring, feeling the music in my back. Saturday nights would consist of a well cooked Italian dinner for one and a bottle of wine. Nights like these I came to enjoy. I could hear my mom saying "you won't be happy with anyone else until you are happy with yourself..."

On this particular late January day, I had learned how to do just that. His name was to be Banksy. This 6lb, four legged creature, would teach me how to love just a little better, and my loneliness would forever subside.

Everyone says their dog is the best, but it is absolutely the truth for this chihuahua/dachshund/jack russell rescue that wandered Laguna Beach, California for 6 1/2 months before anyone finding this angel. He loves and loves and loves more. Follows me wherever I go and is an endless cuddler and sleeper...he clearly found me.

Recently I saw a bumper sticker stating "Who Rescued Who"? Wow. Isn't it the truth.

Just a girl and her dog making their way across the country, adjusting to cold weather, and making the world just a little happier.

Standard Fare

It was the most anticipated email I had ever received. I had waited for it throughout an entire summer; first for the reason of hoping I was the one to receive it, next because it took a while to pop up in my inbox. When it did, my life was wildly changed forever.

The second it happened, I printed out the pages and started reading in anticipation. It took two hours of slow reading, but it was gripping, exciting, gross, scary, and in some sense powerful. Not just the words but the very idea of it all. 

Once I was done I would read it again this time highlighter in hand. It was a script. But not just any script, MY script. The one I would co-star in. The one that I would spend day and night thinking about, preparing for, working on for 4 weeks, and then thinking about more once it was all finished. 

It was one of the best moments of my life. I read it over and over, and began writing notes. Things along the lines of what 'Molly' liked to eat, what she was thinking that the script wasn't telling us, who she really was. I researched Molly Monohan long enough, that I became her. Loved her. And was very sad when I had to leave her.

It was my first real role. It changed everything...

Just a girl, with a script, and a highlighter, setting out, to star in movies, and get a little fodder for the memoirs.

Metric

The morning after I arrived home from my cross country journey, I woke up, unpacked the Nissan Xterra I had rented, and started plotting my next move.  I went to the frigid-air and took out the eggs, set them next to the stove and thought, "breakfast. breakfast is a great first move. no better way to start your day, jazz."

I walked over to the cabinet, removed the frying pan, and placed it on the stove. As I opened the refrigerator door to remove the english muffins, something else caught my eye. It glimmered under the light of the open door, nice, cold, and drawing me over to it. I looked around knowing good and well that my parents were in Hawaii and no one was watching with the exception of my dog and cat that I had just uprooted and carted across the country with me. Who were they to judge really?

Quickly rushing back to the stove, putting the pan away, and the eggs returning to their rightful spot, I pulled a Corona out of the fridge. On my way to the couch I went in to the grocery bags from the trip and pulled out the beef jerky. I put my feet up on the reclining chair, beer by my side, all the while thinking to myself, "you make it back and somehow you turn into a 19 year-old frat boy"?

And so the transformation had begun. No, not into a frat boy, into a lost girl plotting something, anything that may come next.  Unbeknownst to her, that that something would not come again so immediately, and still has not today...So, I wait. Patiently. Soon enough it shall become clear.

Just a girl, with a love of Mexican beer, and a few wrong moves, welcoming herself home and experiencing life and figuring out how to live it...or not.

Indistinct Chatter

I vowed I would never do this. Not once. Not on my cross country journey. Not on set. Not even for a college journalism course. Seriously blogging? Why type of people do this kind of thing? This blogging? Clearly only the ones that have no voice in any other forum, that feel that they must enter the blogosphere every day, week, month to become something they aren't...or something they are. To be heard, nonetheless. By someone.  Anyone. Even for only a moment.

Ok. Alright. Enough of that. Consider myself Exhibit A, or J, as it were. Feeling the need to be heard through the indistinct chatter.  I sit in my childhood bedroom, for what feels like a year, but in actuality is only 4 months, well 3 months, 20 days, 3 hours and 32 minutes. Like much of America I lost a job. A dream job at that, that really didn't even get started...but enough of that for the moment.

As Exhibit J, I've not only been on the job hunt, but in my past months, have watched all of the Sex and the City Series, I am on the last season of Lost which I only began a month ago, as well as defeated the popular iPhone App Angry Birds. Pathetic? I suppose only as pathetic as needing this little voice to be heard, or to take my mind off the inevitable.  Which is. In Short. I moved from Los Angeles, back home to Connecticut (for the time being, I repeat hourly at least) for what. I don't know.

I'm here. And searching. And love incomplete sentences.  

Searching for a job, for a meaning, for a new acting gig, hell, for a new...something.

So I welcome you. 

Just a girl, with a love of the ellipsis, and incomplete sentences, setting out to give new meaning to the term Life and How to Live It.