Optimistic Birds

I must be getting old, because I actually caught myself enjoying bird watching the other day.

Firstly, in case you don't know, I'm hanging in Minnesota for a bit. Marcus and I are finishing our book, What Women Never Tell You, without all the distractions that Los Angeles provides. Plus, we wanted to spend some time with my family.

Secondly, my awareness of birds in Los Angeles was limited to seagulls at the beach, crows outside my window (very early on a Sunday morning CAAAaaah! CAAAaaah!), and once in a while a nightingale, I think, in the evenings when I lived in Los Feliz. I've lived pretty much all over Los Angeles, and that's what I remember of the birds around me.

But here, we have bright-red cardinals and royal-blue blue-jays hanging outside the very large front window of my family home. The home where I grew up, actually.

Not only do they hang out for us to watch, munching on the bird-feeder my Dad put out. They sing and seem to be having a good time. The weather here isn't exactly balmy yet. In the last ten days, we've had sunny, 65° days, and we've had crisp, 40° days. More of the latter. Oh, and sometimes with rain. It actually snowed here in mid-April!

Even though I grew up in Minnesota, my blood thinned after all my years in Southern California. In other words, I'd put on a coat at 55° in LA.

But what struck me about these birds, is that they're so optimistic.

I realize I'm anthropomorphizing a bit.

And I'm sure the bird population here has nothing to do with their sunny outlook on life. Literally, sunny. They're trusting the sun will eventually come to northern Minnesota and stay, at least for a few months.

I'm sure it's some long-ingrained bird instinct, passed on and cultivated over many, many generations of aviary genetics.

But to me and my non-bird-brain, they just seem optimistic.

So, I'm taking a queue from the birds. Today, I'm going to just trust that the sun will come out tomorrow. I'm going to be optimistic that things will just work out. Optimistic that mother nature, father time, and sister christian actually know what they're doing and I can just follow my instincts.

Which is what, I guess, I'm doing here.

Know that I miss and love all my cherished friends in California (or wherever else my friends might be). I'm writing, singing, bird watching, and doing all I can to stay optimistic.

I had to learn SIGN LANGUAGE when I moved to Los Angeles!!

It's true. I had to learn sign language when I moved to Los Angeles.

No, I'm not referring to the most common communication of the hearing impaired. I'm also not referring to some sort of gang signs. What I'm talking about is much more...pedestrian, or should I say, motorist?

Case and point:





















Seriously. These are real street signs in Los Angeles.

I feel like I need a law degree and years of training at MIT and Quantico as a decryption specialist just to park my car without getting a ticket. Furthermore, the ticket rates are astounding. A citation for parking on a Santa Monica street during "street sweeping" is $61.00. No kidding. Sixty-one, U.S. Dollars. I think that will send a child in Somalia to school for a year. Seriously. Los Angeles, you should be ashamed of yourself! That's highway robbery! Oh, wait. No, it's not. It's side-street robbery.

But we skimmed over the absurdity of the signs too quickly, I think. Let's just sum up. I'll separate them to help illustrate that each list is for ONE parking spot on ONE street in the greater Los Angeles area. Also, for authenticity, I'll recreate them in the colors they occur on the original signage. (Thank the heavens we don't have snow in Los Angeles. I can't even imagine the cluster f&$k that would take place if there were parking issues around snow & snow plows. I think Hollywood would move (along with Ford & many other U.S. corporations) to Mexico if L.A. had snow.

Buckle your safety belts, readers. Here we go!

Post 1 - somewhere in Downtown Los Angeles

• TOW-AWAY NO STOPPING 3 to 6PM EXCEPT SAT & SUN
  
• 1 HOUR PARKING 8AM-3PM EXCEPT SUNDAY
  
• TOW-AWAY TEMPORARY NO PARKING 6PM-6AM THURSDAY & FRIDAY COMMERCIAL VEHICLES WITH USE PERMIT EXEMPT
  
• TOW-AWAY TEMPORARY NO PARKING ANYTIME FRIDAY ONLY COMMERCIAL VEHICLES WITH USE PERMIT EXEMPT
• TOW-AWAY TEMPORARY NO PARKING 6PM-6AM FRIDAY & SATURDAY COMMERCIAL VEHICLES WITH USE PERMIT EXEMPT

Post 2 - somewhere in West Hollywood/Hollywood Hills

• NO PARKING NIGHTTIME 7PM-7AM and ANY TIME SUNDAYS
• 3R Permits Exempt
• 2hr PARKING DAYTIME 7AM-7PM MON-SAT 3R 3C Permits Exempt
• NO PARKING 10AM TO 12NOON WEDNESDAYS
• VIOLATORS WILL BE CITED TURN WHEELS TO CURB AS INDICATED
  

Post 2 - somewhere in Los Angeles...no idea where this is

• NO PARKING 9AM TO 12NOON MONDAY
  
• 2 HOUR PARKING 8AM-6PM MON THRU FRI
  
• NO PARKING ALL OTHER TIMES VEHICLES WITH DISTRICT NO 34 PERMITS EXEMPTED
  
• DO NOT BLOCK DRIVEWAY

Ok. Does anyone else's brain hurt? I graduated with honors and some sh1t, didn't I? I need a water break between signs. What I want to know is, how does the meter-maid even know when to ticket people? Ridiculous.

This last one is hilarious because I'm fairly certain "DO NOT BLOCK DRIVEWAY" was posted by some driveway/home-owner who was sick and tired of having their driveway blocked by fed-up motorists looking for parking.

It seems a miracle to me that we Los Angelenos actually go 24 hours without getting parking tickets. The last place I lived, and I mean really lived, not visited or stayed for an extended period of time (I spent an entire month in China and over the last ten years have spent more than 2 cumulative months in New York), was Minnesota in 1997. If memory serves, during my last spring in balmly Minnesota, I got a parking ticket. My citation was for an expired meter. The fee: a whopping $8.00. Muahahahaha. I'll wipe my a$$ with eight dollars for Christmas sake.

But back to Los Angeles. Like most of these blogs, it got me to thinking...people like to rag on Los Angeles. I was one of them before I moved here and there are many, many things for which to diss Los Angeles about. Smog, traffic, phoniness, fake-boobs, fake-blondes, fake-friends, and the fact that you can't spit in West Hollywood without hitting an actor, are all reasons people talk sh1t about L.A. But if we all survive here, with the crazy waiter/actors and the silicone-plumped blondes, and the PARKING SIGNS, and we're not killing each other or ourselves on a regular basis, we've seriously accomplished something. Maybe we're not doomed to replicate Idiocracy (a must-see Mike Judge film - a hilarious & horrifying 500-year future projection about the inevitable dumbing-down of our society).

You see, if we can manage to drive and park our cars in Los Angeles, navigating around and through the smog, the fake boobs, the fake people, and, especially, the PARKING SIGNS, maybe we're not as doomed as many of us pseudo-intellectuals think. Maybe we should give more credit to the parking impaired citizens of greater Los Angeles.

Because, for most of us, navigating around Los Angeles' streets and parking signage is only slightly more complicated than navigating life. So, I guess stopping to read the signs, as confusing as they may be, is worth the time and effort...sort of.

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