A lot can happen in six months....

Holy cow....has it seriously been SIX MONTHS since I posted?  Wowza.  This is why I have never done much journaling.  I just don't have the dedication it takes to keep up with it!  But I realized yesterday, that has to change.

We are in the process of moving (to North Hollywood!  More on that later!!), and as we've been going through boxes, I found some my son's yearbooks from the homeschool group I used to run in Virginia.  I can't believe how much I had forgotten.  It was such a joy to look at those pages and see pictures of us from events I hadn't even remembered I had actually organized and attended!  Egyptian Day, Colonial Day, the Mad Scientist Club, field trips to places like Colonial Williamsburg and national parks.  All of us moms got together and scrapbooked pages for this yearbook with photos and journaling about the events, then had them printed and bound.  Each child had their own page in the book which listed out their favorite things, what they enjoyed about the year, what they wanted to be when they grew up.  What a treasure these are!

I then began to think about all the major events of just the past six years since we moved to California that have no real documentation - maybe some pictures, but I never wrote down my feelings or thoughts, and I feel like that's such a shame.  I want to be able to look back at some of the big events going on in my life and say, "oh wow, I had forgotten all about that!" and have the joy of reliving it again.

Moving to Hollywood is absolutely one of those big events!  So I am making a vow in writing, today, that I will document this event with pictures, video and journaling, even if it's just jotting down a few words each day (I have to remember it doesn't need to be War and Peace to satisfy the goal).  I want to remember this...the joy, the stress, the exhaustion...all of it.

WHY ARE WE MOVING?  Well, back in October, we were invited to come to the VIP Breakfast for AIDS Walk Los Angeles, and to walk, of course, by a lovely friend we were volunteering with at Gay Days at Disneyland.  I knew my pal Pauley would be walking, too, so I asked her who she walked with since we were newbies to the event.  She said she walked with her church, Hollywood United Methodist.  I plan to blog more detail about this life-changing day in a separate post, but let me just say that we made the most AWESOME friends that day, ended up attending this unbelievable church (and anyone who knows me knows that "church" was a four-letter word for me based on some bad experiences!) and making even MORE friends...and between that, all the actors and crew we became friends with from Anthony's film who also live in L.A., all my event coverage that I have to commute for...well, it just became apparent that we needed to be THERE!  The only thing holding us in Orange County is our son....and believe me, I am heartbroken to be leaving him, but he is 20 and living on his own now.  I need to start living my life, too, and it's only 40 minutes away.  He plans to come up twice a month to help me with business stuff, but it's not the same as seeing him every day like I do now.  But I just know this move is RIGHT.  I can feel it clear to my bones.

So we rented a beautiful house in North Hollywood. We just decided one night that even though Anthony wasn't finished restoring my Mustang (which was one of the things we thought we wanted to be DONE before we tried to move), we were just over it and wanted to GO.  So we hopped in the car on Wed., 3/6/13, and BAM.  There it was. It had everything we said we wanted, in our price range, wasn't in the complete GHETTO (we saw some houses for $300 a month more that had shopping carts on the lawn and bars on the windows!!), and it just seemed to call to us. The only down side was the owner is storing some of her stuff in the garage, so Anthony doesn't have a place to use as a workshop.  I know he's disappointed, but he also seems to realize that since it was the only pitfall, and being that finding anything else THIS perfect would take a miracle, he is hoping against hope he can find a way to make it work.

So as of today, I am in the process of selling off my old toys that my mother saved for me (God bless her).  Original boxes, original instructions, all the pieces.  We've been hauling them around for YEARS and they just go from attic to attic.  I took pictures of them all, not only to have them for selling on eBay but to keep for myself.  I will put them in an album "toys from my childhood," so I won't forget I had them. But hauling them around is just not worth it anymore.

Oh, and Nate is moving, too!!  Good Lord!  He rented a house after realizing that living in the walk-in-closet-sized apartment was driving them nuts.  So we're helping them move plus trying to pack our own stuff.   GOOD TIMES!

We are moving on April 6, and we already have at least a dozen wonderful friends helping us on the other end.  We've been looking to having friends like this for 25 years.  I feel so blessed and grateful!!  I feel like everything in our lives has been leading us to this moment.

My photo for today is of my Barbie Fashion Plaza that I just ADORED as a child.  I think I'm going to keep it.  I have to have one toy still around, right?  Also take note of all the boxes.  Craziness is in full gear!

My birthday is tomorrow (the big 44!) and all I can think is I will soon be with my friends, starting a new life, ramping up my goals in HOLLYWOOD...and that is the greatest gift I've ever received.

~~Rene'

Uh, hi Quentin! Uh...HI!

So this Friday, I will be covering the Eyegore Awards at Universal Studios.  I can hear the "WTF" after reading that line if you're not into horror movies.  The Eyegore Awards are akin to The Oscars for horror, but instead of evening gowns and tuxedos, it's skull shirts and black leather mini dresses.  

This photo pretty much says it all about the Eyegore Awards

The event is more laid back and filled with big names in the world of horror.  It takes place at The Globe Theater on the Universal Studios lot and signals the grand opening of their yearly Halloween Horror Nights.  After the awards, we'll also get to go into the park and see all the new mazes.

Sounds glamorous and fun, right?  Well, it can be, and getting to tour the mazes will be a blast, but prepping for these things, especially when you're not a college-educated journalist, can be nerve wracking as hell.  You stand still on the red carpet for 90 min., wait for people to grace your presence (and if you're not with Entertainment Weekly or something similarly large, you get overlooked a lot) and hope that you know something about the people who DO want to be interviewed - like their names, for instance, and most of all, you hope that you don't end up looking like an ass in front of someone like Guillermo Del Toro (who is getting the biggest award this year).

Let me emphasize that a lot of this fear comes from the fact that I am not a professional journalist.  Almost anyone can write for Examiner.com.  That's great for someone like me who loves to write, didn't go to college but has a Type A personality when it comes to grammar and spelling and loves to attend Hollywood events.  It can be terrible for Examiner, who seems hell bent on letting people write who can barely spell their own names, plagiarize other people's work and generally bring the class level down to white trash for their publication.  That means I spend a lot of time proving to publicists and studios that I am the real deal, that I will actually PROMOTE the things they want promoted and do so without making them, or me, look like an ass.

Rapid changes, and who am I

Who am I?  Holy cow, how would I even explain it?  I am a mother, a wife, a small, home-based business owner, a woman of 43.  Pretty surface level but all pretty normal, right?  Then comes the strange.

I'm also a writer of columns on soap operas, horror movies, pets, the LGBTQ community and the paranormal.  I have interviewed celebrities. I have washed poopy underwear.  I attended the after-party for The Scream Awards with the likes of Quentin Tarantino.  I have been on "empty the trash can duty" when the kid had the flu.  I've had my photo taken with John Landis.  I rarely get out of my pajamas since my office is at home, meaning I also rarely wear a bra, which is not as pretty of a sight as it used to be. I watch "General Hospital," "Supernatural," "Ghost Hunters" and dog shows.  I don't understand why "Saw" isn't a chick flick.  I have sold Barbie dolls, Beanie Babies, thousands upon thousands of VHS tapes, Justin Bieber party supplies and mullet wigs.  I love Disneyland but hate crowds. I am the wife of a Toyota mechanic who is also an aspiring filmmaker.  I love to cook and have had glimmerings about taking on a gluten-free food truck.

My husband and I up and made the decision to move to Southern California from Virginia in 2007 because we wanted to.  No job transfer, no one we knew.  People thought we were nuts.  Our daughter, who is now our son, was struggling, and we wanted a more open and accepting environment.  In five years, we are on our third house.  From a rental house in our first stop, Temecula, to a house we bought in Temecula, to lease purchasing that one and moving to Orange County.  Now we are planning a move to Los Angeles next spring.  We wither and die a little more each time we think of a U-Haul.

So who am I?  Hard to tell from that description.  I'm not sure I can answer that question.  I guess that's what this blog is all about.  Who am I, what do I want out of life, and am I going down the right path.  It feels like writing it all out will help.  If I go back and look at my thoughts and feelings at any given moment, maybe I can make sense of it all.  Do I want to be a writer?  A PR person?  Continue on with my business?  Lie on the couch and watch bad Sci-Fi movies with Debbie Gibson and Urkel?  Hope my husband makes all the money so I can sit on the board of a charity and plan fantastic cocktail parties and hob-nob with people named Buffy and Mimsy?

Hell, I don't know.  I hope this blog will help me figure it out.  I wonder if anyone will read it?

The main focus of my business these days is wigs, costumes, party supplies, toys and novelties.  That means that Halloween is fast approaching, and thus, my sales are going up.  This is my busy season every year, and it gets crazy-stressful and wild.  It has been my goal this year to stop doing so much manually and streamlining the whole process.