Ruthless Insouciance

As so often is the case, my day off was filled with big plans yesterday that disappeared into the stratosphere as I slept through calls from my friends urging me out of bed and on the bike (it was a gorgeous morning, and in my previous life I was a mediocre bike racer)and groggily picked up the cell only at 11am when a writer friend called to say he'd be in the city doing research for his first feature in Details magazine (congratulations!).

I rolled out of bed (only about an inch as I sleep on a mattress on the floor)and washed my face (something that I never let slide no matter how drunk/hungover I am, thanks to my mother's semi-rigorous upbringing) while boiling water for a gourdful of yerba mate. As usual, I f*****d around for way too long on www.perezhilton.com, a ridiculous website that I've been obsessed with for over a year. I don't have television and rarely watch movies, but some cruel friends of mine who know how shallow I can be plied me with trashy celebrity tabloid magazines last year until my addiction was firm and now I feel like Hollywood is my own personal comic book. I couldn't name Kate Bosworth's last movie (or any of them, for that matter) and I couldn't tell you what Nicolette Sheridan's voice sounds like, but I breathlessly follow their love lives and weight losses.

I finally made it out of the house by 1pm but only up the street for a much needed mani-pedi (where I enriched my brain with Ready Made magazine as opposed to my beloved US Weekly) and afterward lazed around the house doing god-knows-what. I know I sent some emails that must have meant something, because I have more stories assigned (for national magazines as well as San Francisco publications, hurrah!) but didn't write a word. I want to feel like I'm this very deep person but the truth is I adore my bourgeois-bohemian (boo-bo?) lifestyle, and although waiting tables is starting to take its toll on my body, the luxuries it affords me (like coming home last night and bidding on a T-Mobile Sidekick II on ebay although it doesn't even match my wireless carrier) are important to me and that makes me feel shallow as hell.

Laundry called around 5pm, and then I went to yoga until 9pm; the class size was me, another student who'd been practicing exactly as long as I have (off and on for a couple of years, more heavily in the last two months) and was at the same skill level, and the teacher. It was excellent, Wendy gave us lots of personal attention and I felt like I really improved. I left tranquilly and filled with love. In short, ready for cocktails.

I went down to The Restaurant all by my lonesome, sat at the bar, and put down a gorgeous hamburger and a serving of bread pudding with caramel ice cream. And three cocktails. I thoroughly enjoyed the (mile-long) walk home, which is absolutely unbearable after my eight-hour shifts (twice as long as a normal Restaurant shift) but after a 5,000 calorie meal felt invigorating. Nick Cave is still singing directly to me through my headphones, and I'm struck by how after almost two years of living here (which have passed by literally in the time it takes to say "I.love.city.living."), I am still struck dumb by the littlest things like a theater poster in the window of a locksmith's shop, the way the air smells at 12:13am in the fall, and the fact that you can never stop discovering little bits of beauty at least every other hour when you live in San Francisco.