Sex Talks

Last night's episode of NEW GIRL was called "Eggs" (baby, not breakfast-maker variety), and it raised an important/scary issue that many women approaching their 30s experience. Can you tell me how many viable eggs I have left?  Or, in the words we actually mean, can you tell me exactly  how soon I need to start thinking about having a baby?   SPOILER ALERT: Jess and CeCe enlist their newly pregnant, lesbian gyno friend to perform a test that determines how many viable, baby-making eggs they have left. Jess is panicked about the whole thing (shocker), while CeCe could care less (same). Then, wouldn't you know, Jess' results come back very positive (high numbers of remaining, very peppy eggs!) and CeCe's come back very negative (not so much). Jess is happy (she has tons of time to find the adorkable man of her dreams!) and CeCe is freaked (she was basically told to start having kids immediately, if she's going to have them at all). NOW, I realize this is a ...

Since the day I started my first full-time job, I have been online all day every day during the work week. That's five days a week, approximately nine hours a day, approximately 250 days per year for a total of eight years, or in other numbers 2,250 hours spent online (don't check my math, just know it's likely wrong). Yes, there were times when work took me out of the office (read: away from the Internet), specifically the thirteen grueling days of the Tribeca Film Festival. I was fully off the grid during that insanity. But other than that, I have sat at a desk in front of a computer to do my work, and that computer has been connected to the Internet.  I didn't sit on Facebook or Gchat all day long...exactly, but I popped in several times throughout the day for long conversations with friends all over the country. Some days I would have my Gmail open all day long so chats would just come in as I worked. On those days R and I would chat all day long about the myriad t...

Hello from my first Los Angeles Thanksgiving. The turkey is the smoker (that one up there. It's R's masterpiece), the apple fritter is in my belly (my fave way to start a holiday day), and I'm nestled in to watch the mini bits of Broadway during the parade (slash wait for the Rockettes. I used to want to be a Rockette. I sort of still do). Life is very good, and here are a just a few reasons why: 1 3 Things that I am thankful for this year The love and support I received from friends and family, far and wide, after deciding to pursue my writing full-time. Some of them probably think I'm insane, but they didn't tell me they feel that way, and for that I am grateful.  $18 pedicures at Satin Soles on Fairfax. It is an necessary, unnecessary indulgence.  Gchat, without which I would not have Dani, Sara, Geanna, Katie, Carly, and Abby at what feels like an arm's length.  Facebook, without which I would not know what Alex is up to every second of every day.  My Dad...

Just one week after leaving my paying job to be a full-time writer, I attended a beautiful wedding. At that beautiful wedding I met many lovely people. Most of those people asked me what it is that I do. Here's how that typically went: Person: So what is it that you do? Me: I'm a writer. Person: Oh very cool. What do you write? Me: Mostly television so far, but I just finished a feature, so we'll see. Person: Wow. That's great. Anything I might know? Me: Um...no.  Person: Oh.  Me: I'm just at the beginning of my writing career, really.  Person: Good for you.  Me: So right now I'm going on a lot of general meetings, but I'm also working on a few pitches for my own concepts.  Person: So you'll sell your own show? Me: Probably not, but if you have a pitch worth taking out it can be helpful to position you as an idea generator for staffing season.  Person: Uh-huh. Me: That's the time of year when all the new television shows get picked up and they hire a...

Katie passed me a link to this very interesting article yesterday afternoon. Here's the gist: "Being intimate with multiple partners while in college has become so expected that it has become a stereotype. And, after a crazy weekend of partying, students love to gossip about who �hooked up� with who.  But that�s not to say every college student is participating in risky sexual promiscuity. In fact, a new study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln says quite the opposite. The study finds students talk about �hooking up� so much, they begin to believe their peers are �hooking up� more than they actually are." So people who say they get lots of action actually don't get much action at all?? It feels like we should have been on to this considering sex and false bravado have gone together since the beginning of sex and false bravado. And yet, I was surprised. My perception of my own college peers was that they were all hooking up. Granted this was in the early ot...

As you know I now spend my days as a sort of stay-at-home Mom minus the kids. I'd call myself a housewife, but that's wildly un-PC, plus I'm not a wife. "Freelance writer" is technically the term, but that doesn't get to the core of the 10,000 other things I feel obligated to do during the day on account of the fact that I'm home. Maybe if I had an office in our apartment, I thought, I could go inside there and pretend it's another building. That way I won't feel like I need to dust the really dusty ceiling fan directly above the kitchen table slash my work space. Or, I thought, I could spend two, three hour sessions every day writing at some local coffee shop. 9am til noon then 2pm til 5pm maybe? No time to do a load of laundry because they're expecting me at the Coffee Bean on Robertson at Beverly by two o'clock. I tried that the first few days of my new situation only to find the tables already occupied by hundreds of other Macbook Air o...

Yesterday was my first official day as a full-time writer. Well, technically it was Friday but I had to celebrate being a full-time writer all day Friday, so things officially kicked-off yesterday. Here is how I organized my endless hours of freedom. 6:30AM: I was awoken by R who had been up for a half an hour already. He tried to start talking to me but I said, "I wake up at 7AM now," and went back to bed. 7:30-8:00am: Did a series of exercises culled from tear outs of Self Magazine fitness moves stolen from the dentist office. I thought about also running outside for a bit, but decided that was too aggressive for day one.  9:30am: Left the house for my morning writing session right on time. I've been debating which of the dozen plus local cafes to award my first session of my first day as a full-time writer for a few months, but finally landed on Paper and Plastik because it has the best table space to pretentiousness ratio.  9:30am to noon: I re-read the feature script...

...dramatic, but true.  As of tomorrow, I am officially/finally/hopefully forever, a full time writer.   GOD it feels good to type that. For the past two years I have worked nine to five, six, and sometimes ten as the Director of Branded Entertainment at a LA-based production company. Before that I was a branded content producer at a NYC-based media agency, and right after college I worked in PR for a wedding website and as a sponsorship account manager at the Tribeca Film Festival. That's seven years of jobs that were fulfilling and interesting, but not my ultimate passion. I did them to earn money and gain experience in an industry while I chugged toward my writing career. Today thanks to a combination of the money I've saved, the progress I've made with my writing, and the courage I've somehow harnessed, I'm leaving that behind to start an entirely new chapter. In a way it's just a full-fledged version of a chapter I started a very long time ago, with this l...