To Live and Drive in L.A.

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It's all about simplifying your life. And Merry Christmas!

To Live and Drive in L.A.
By Juliet Johnson

I drive a horse-drawn carriage in Los Angeles, for my newly-started wedding carriage business. Today someone has rented the carriage to propose to his girlfriend in Pasadena. I angle the huge white horse Clyde out into traffic, pulling our decorated white carriage. It’s a Sunday afternoon. We’re picking up the groom around the corner from where he’s going to surprise his girlfriend and ask her to marry him.

Old people always smile at the carriage and big old Clyde’s head. They’re in the crosswalk, or on the sidewalk, bent over, they look up at me like elves or trolls, smiling. Look, the ice man is here.

The groom appears. He’s Chinese.
“Hi, I’m David,” he offers his hand. “My sister arranged all this.” He looks rushed. “This is a nice carriage.” He’s carrying a large bundle of exotic white flowers. His cell phone rings. It looks expensive. He talks in Chinese. I know he’s not faking it, but it still seems like showing off. He covers the receiver.
“I flew in from Asia last night just for this. I was in Singapore. I was going to rent a helicopter.”
Wow.
“I thought, you know, fly in on a helicopter. But my sister said horse drawn carriage.”
Yeah. You are proposing to a GIRL. Nine year old boy, I’d go with the helicopter. Maybe shooting people as you come flying down, nice touch.
He looks at the carriage. “This is a great business. Where’s the most popular place you go for weddings?”
I’ve only done three other jobs.
“People get married everywhere. Anywhere they call, we go.”
He’s nervous. Now I’m nervous. I’m thinking what I’ve been thinking since his sister Kwan first emailed me and booked this job. What if she says no? I have to know the details.
“Do you live in Singapore?”
He nods.
“What do you do?”
“Telecommunications.” He then says some vague business stuff to hide the fact that he’s actually a huge Chinese porn star.
“That must keep you busy,” I say.
“Very. We’re going to get married, and live in Shanghai.”
God, I hope she says yes.
“How long have you been dating?” I ask hopefully.
“Nine months.”
Yikes.
His cell phone rings again. He’s gotten the go ahead. He gets into the carriage.
We go around the corner.
I realize on this job that I get to intimately witness pivotal points in people’s lives. We turn the corner and this guy is going to be getting married. Or tragically rebuffed in front of all his friends and me and Clyde.
We get to the busy corner where the restaurant is, and a bunch of Chinese people are standing in the courtyard. Suddenly everyone’s looking toward us and screaming. David looks at me, clutching the flowers. Scared.
The girl I identify as the girlfriend Jenny comes from between people, sees the carriage and David and her hand goes to her mouth. Her face squeezes up and she starts to cry. It’s so beautiful that I almost start to cry. David leaps down to her, she’s paralyzed as he sweeps in, hands her the flowers and hugs her.
I’m guessing Jenny has said yes, she had to say yes.

People stop to look at Clyde, in cars and in the crosswalk, especially guys in groups, in their late teens and early twenties, with scruffy beards and bad hair. Their favorite phrase is “That is one BIG ASS horse.” Clyde takes it all in, eyes half-lidded, leaning on three legs, one hip loose, resting. His ears are alert. He flicks them back every few minutes, scouting to see if I have any information for him. When I don’t, he sighs.
The groom waves me around front and I pull Clyde around.
David gets back in. A lady from the curb says, “Hi, I’m Kwan” – her husband rushes out and hands me a hundred dollar bill. I wish there were more guys like this. Jenny gets in, holding her flowers.
We trot toward the park for a short ride.
David and Jenny are speaking entirely in Chinese, nonstop. Except for the words “email” and “birthday” for which I guess there is no Chinese alternative. Jenny talks so much that I wonder if David is having second thoughts. I know I am. He just committed to her forever. Is he sitting back there realizing, as I am, that she’s never going to shut up, the entire rest of his life?
I decide to just drive. Enjoy my brief loyalty to David and his helicopter dream, and his new Shanghai bride. It’s getting dark. Back at the restaurant, I say goodbye and congratulations to David. I won’t be seeing him again. I pull back into traffic and head back to the trailer. My favorite part of the ride. The carriage empty, just the sound of the clip clop of Clyde’s heavy feet as the 21st century cars shoot past all around us. Going somewhere, not very fast, completely out of sync with the rest of the world. In the midst of the cement and hurtling metal on wheels around us, I see Clyde’s furry ear flick back to me. I’m listening, he says. He’s why I drive a carriage in the big bad city of Los Angeles. Maybe someone will see what I see.

On a side street, an old lady smiles at me. Fresh milk delivery.

"The Prison of Preschool" in Los Angeles Family Magazine

"Pete Fix It" in Los Angeles Family Magazine

"Birth of a Nathan" Los Angeles Family Magazine

My book is coming! May 2008

October and November

Driving Giant Clyde and the carriage

Nathan Avery, Lilly Bessie and Emma Vivian

"You Can't Take It With You" on MOMbo.org

"He Rides Off" at MOMbo.org

"Vitello's" "With My Mouth Free" and "My Pregnant Lungs"

Read my three short humor pieces on Thisisby.us.

All Dogs Should Be Jed

I can't stop looking at dogs. Not the dogs I have, currently strewn around the floor in the office, all looking like they were hit by elephant tranks. But strange dogs. Dogs I don't have yet.

The baby is the only one who knows what's really going on with me. She accompanies me to animal shelters where barking dogs assault us from hard cages. She keeps one eye on the computer while breastfeeding, so she can check out craigslist, petfinder, pennysaver while I am looking for my one true dog, the ultimate dog, the dog I can't have.

What's wrong with my real dogs? Hank, the giant Great Pyranees/Border Collie, yellow and white, he's like Hawaii and we're the continental United States. He floats around, his own luau, everything is a party to Hank. Some kid jumped on him at the park and he snapped at her and ever since then I started doubting my dogs. What was I doing with these evil dogs? I used to have only nice dogs.

Then there's Owen, the black lab/Shepherd mix that my neighbor rescued out of a vacant lot in our neighborhood when he was 4 months old. Of course I took him in. He looked just like Jed, my wonder dog, recently deceased. All dogs should be Jed.

Five years later, I find out all dogs are not Jed. The most Jed and Owen have in common is they were both black. I've spent five years with Owen being afraid of everything. Apparently love doesn't conquer all. Here's the deal with shy dogs -- if a dog isn't around humans during the first three months of life, they will have a lifetime of fear of humans. SOMEONE SHOULD TELL A PERSON THESE THINGS. THERE SHOULD BE A CHECKLIST. We spent the first year with Owen peeling him off from where he was plastered into corners, dragging him out from under beds, watching him cower and shake and move his head juuuuust at the last minute when you reach out to pet him. My dad said get rid of him. My stepmom sighed but understood. My mom fed him bacon.

Years later Owen is still shy but the best behaved dog we have. Easy on the leash. Jumps on the bed to sleep with you only if you invite him. Content to lay for hours at your feet while you type. He's like a visiting British person. Tea would be nice, but no no, don't get up, I'll just sit here, no bother.

Then there's Maisie, the 13 year old yellow lab mix, a relic from my past relationship with Will. We found her at the Annapolis animal shelter, 6 months old, leaning against the wire fence of her cage, looking moonily out at us. Of course we had to take her. At 13 she has an all white face, smells terrible from too many swims in the pool (chlorine versus old skin, an aromatic battle) and still looks at you moonily especially if you have pizza.

I guess no dog is enough. As it is, when I come in the door, flanked by children yelling at me or at each other, I wade through a dog wagging stream. Yellow dog, black dog, huge fur dog. I love the dogs. The kids hate the dogs. The dogs get in the way of the fruit snacks cabinet. The dogs are right at their face level and breathing on them heavily while I enjoy a more jaunty perspective. I love the dogs. I wish there were more dogs.

Living in a family just makes me thirsty for more family. Barry and I work back to back in our office, with our dog carpet spanning between us, and we can't talk, there's no time while he's worrying about money and I'm searching the computer wilderness for Jed to come back.

The kids in school, the glorious baby smiling with her whole body, fists and legs and feet, the husband, the dog stew, the house, the minivan, the grandmas, the dandy, the pool, the grass, the sky, the possibilities, it isn't enough, there just will never be enough. Goodness expands and cracks out of our money-less house. I can hear it calling, feel it rushing over us and I think I'm trying to block it from leaving with dogs.

So forget trying to understand it. I'll grab the baby, grab the leashes and go for a walk in the glorious suddenly now.

E-How Articles

Check out this article, and if you want to read more just scroll down. On the right hand side it says "Read Other Articles by this Member." Click there. There are 60 fun-filled articles!

Old Yeller

"You Can't Take It With You" on The Imperfect Parent

My Pregnant Lungs on The Imperfect Parent

Dating the Preschool Parents

The Seat

We got the minivan so we'd have more seats. With the baby it was too hard to smash into the station wagon.

Now picture it, we have two front seats, two middle seats (one always occupied by baby) and a long back bench seat that would have been my favorite as a kid.

Now every morning there is the fight for THE SEAT. Not the front passenger seat because now death happens in that seat and airbags have taken all the fun out of the word "shotgun." Wait, maybe just another word for instant death.

Not the bench seat where you can spread out in the back and be unbothered by anyone. No, the seven year old and the five year old fight about the lone middle seat, the empty-handed pioneer on the aisle, THE ONE THING THEY CAN FIGHT OVER CONSISTENTLY.

We used to take the bikes to school but since the baby we've been slower so we take the car, and every morning there is this. Rush to get up. Rush to eat. Rush to brush hair. Someone copying someone else. Screaming. Tears. Rush to get dressed. Rush to get the backpacks. Rush to get the baby. Rush out the front door.

And there she is. The vast white minivan, perfect for undercover surveillance. The untouched vehicle, lolling in the driveway.

Then the race. Emma is always behind because she's two years younger, so she's already crying. "It's my turn in the seat!!"

Nathan has gotten to the car and opened the automatic door. Jumped in.

I already made the rule that the first person in the car has to go to the back. This stopped the running pell mell for awhile. But then they started keeping track of whose TURN it was for The Seat.

This morning it's 8:04, we have to be at school at 8:07. I am dropping the baby into her car seat as they scream at each other about whose turn it is. I adopt my schoolteacher -let's-be-fair voice that even I hate. Emma wins the seat because apparently Nathan had it twice in a row yesterday. An unprecedented coup by any judge.

We drive the one block to school as I tell them how terrible children grow up to be terrible adults, shunned by Good People and left alone to torture animals who are too helpless to get away. They seemed interested in this gleaming, future life. The one where they get to make all the choices.

At school the Seat is forgotten in lieu of tumbling out of the giant car and tumbling toward class. It's picture day.

"Mom, can I go?" Says Nathan, his hair tumbled blonde ice cream. Emma looks hopefully at me.

"Okay." I watch them run across the street, suddenly best friends, heading toward the school. I heft the baby up, the baby who is too young to know about the Seat and will soon enough be running after them and away from me.

We amble to catch up with the kids, with the fighting leaking out of my ears and leaving a trail of stress behind me. It's only EIGHT O SEVEN.

On to the next disaster.

Look What I Did This Summer

Lilly Bessie Thumper Opper,

a beauty

Chain of Fools

Chain of Fools
By Juliet Johnson


We woke up Saturday. I wanted to go to the snow.
We get on the road to the mountain by 10:30. We only have an hour before it’s time to get ready for nap. The sky is looking crazy for Los Angeles, dark leaden clouds, a pirate ship of doom in the sky. Actual hail is coming down through palm trees. Our car climbs the mountain. There’s snow on the side of the road. The kids are excited. Cars passing us going down are covered in snow. The kids shriek. There’s a cop up ahead that seems to be stopping cars. Uh oh. Are we smuggling anything? Fruit, or Mexicans? Does anyone care if you smuggle Mexicans anymore? I start to get a bad feeling. Not about Mexicans. I roll down the window. The cop says something about needing chains for the tires. The kids look stricken. He’s making the sign with his finger, to turn around. I don’t want to turn around. Barry’s turning the car around. We’re pelted from the backseat. “Aren’t we going to the snow? Can’t we go sledding?”
Barry points out the sad chainless families playing in the bald patches of snow on the side of the road. Throwing snow balls that look like dandruff. “No,” I say. “Let’s get chains.”
Barry looks at the clock. He hasn’t eaten yet today. “Let’s go get a Mexican lunch and then take a nap. Then you can go to that funeral,” he says, hopefully. I try to picture my day, all dressed in ski pants with packed food, going back down the mountain, eating one more in a chain of bad burritos, taking screaming kids back home for a nap, then running off for a funeral. My gramma had died a few weeks ago. And now a distant friend had died. Then our fish died last night. I couldn’t do death without snow. Snow first, even if it meant putting off and possibly missing death. “We’re getting chains.”
The kids yelp in happiness. Barry looks at me, still hungry, but gunning the motor.

Everyone is looking for chains. At the foot of the mountain, hoards of people stuff into Sports Chalet in a disorganized mass. There’s a run on chains. A helpless man at the counter tells Barry he’ll have to wait at the end of the line and there’s no telling if he has the size chains we need.
It’s 11:15. Emma and I have eaten half of our packed food waiting outside of gas stations and tire stores as Barry and Nathan run inside to look for chains. His hands are always empty when he comes out. I’d just finished reading “Moby Dick.” I knew the folly of chasing something you weren’t meant to have. I get on the cell phone. The auto parts gods guide me to one possible store, in the heart of seedy North Hollywood, where the computer says there is the one set of chains left on Earth that will fit our car. Barry’s stomach is eating itself. His eyes are waving a white flag. “If we drive there, even if they have it, we’ll have to go all the way back across town, up the mountain –“ “We’re getting chains.” The kids start hitting each other with My Little Ponies, holding the tails and flinging the hard plastic parts at open eyeballs. It’s 12:15. I would really like to go to that funeral. The guy was a nice guy. I have to make it. But first there must be snow.

We get to the last auto store. We all go in, even though it’s hailing, we’re in ski clothes and Emma has bare feet. I scrutinize everyone, assuming they’re all here for chains. When it’s our turn, the lady goes in the back to look. She comes out with a black bag. I think she’s gotten her lunch. She’s ready to check us out. Oh, SHE HAS THE CHAINS. This is already ending better then “Moby Dick.” Barry makes sure they’re the right size. Why not take more time, sure. Then she rings us up. SIXTY DOLLARS. Barry looks at me, ill. I tell him “Pay up, daddy . We’re going to the snow.”
We jam back into the car. Nathan’s thrilled with a new bag, and one with actual CHAINS in it. There’s a Jack-in-the-Box on the corner. I tell Barry we’ll get some food to go, and head directly to snow. In the drive-through, I see Barry lose the will to live. He doesn’t want this food. He wants to be lying in a corner somewhere, watching golf. We get possibly the worst lunch of our life, and in protest, Barry pulls over to eat the food slowly by the side of the road. Nathan eats a hamburger over the chain bag, dripping ketchup inside. The kids have now read every book in the car, played with all their toys, eaten everything I brought, even the cookies. They’ve been in the car for three hours. They’re looking to break some skulls. We go up the mountain again. There’s a longer line of cars to the cop this time, but we’ve got the BAG. We get to the cop. We flash him the bag like it’s counterfeit money. We get the nod and the smile. He tells us to put them on if it seems too slippery. We drive gleefully, past all the jammed up cars that are playing in the white parking lot dandruff. Now there’s lots of snow, but we need a hill, preferably one that doesn’t empty out into the street, that we can sled on. We’re on a MOUNTAIN. There aren’t any flat parts. We drive farther and farther. No one has chains so there aren’t any cars up here. We’re alone on the mountain. We finally see the perfect hill. We screech over. This is it.

The kids scramble out of the car. I wrap up their extremities with more material. Nathan left his waterproof gloves at home so of course he has to wear red gardening gloves. We start walking up the hill, I put the blue circle disc on the ground, pack Emma on it with me, and we go sliding down, tipping over and falling on our heads halfway down. Nathan goes down, up, down, up, down on his back, down on his face, down with snow shooting up his pants. We make a snowman. Emma finds nuts that look like eyes and we stick them on. She finds a piece of snow that actually looks like a head. We stick that on. We eat snow. We take pictures. Barry stands at the bottom of the hill looking cold. He looks like he needs something to do. I send him to the car for cameras and gloves periodically. Finally a nasty looking dark silver cloud is moving in. A freezing wind starts, blowing ice. “Time to go!” says Barry. We force him to go on one ride on the sled.We drag him up the hill. He gets on the disc with Nathan, I pile on with Emma. They go first, and then we go after, and we are going so fast, and they are stopped at the bottom of the hill, Barry laying on the snow, and Nathan on his knees, and Nathan looks as we speed toward him - and SLAM into him, and he flies into the sky and lands like a rocketed cat. He LOVES it. We’re all laughing so hard, flat on our backs, real laughter, from the same desperate place that had us scrounging for auto parts, sweeping all that out and coating the place with flowers.

The ice and snow are whipping our faces now, so we hurry to the car, the kids climbing in, I get them cups of snow, and grape juice from the car, mixing it together to make icees. “Why’s it night outside?” Nathan asks as the dark cloud moves in. Barry snaps into survivor mode. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
In moments, the road is covered, there’s white everywhere, the windshield is so fogged up that we have to turn the air conditioning on, and even then, Barry and I are slunk way down in our seats to see out the front. Like we could even see the road, which has disappeared anyway. Barry shrieks. “It’s been three minutes! What happened!?”

We go about two miles an hour. Our goal now is to NOT HAVE TO USE THE CHAINS. We want to return the chains. We don’t want the chains. (Well, Nathan wants the chains. He’d rather have MORE chains.) We drive slowly, so Barry can relive the paralyzing Chicago winters of his youth where a long trip was digging your way to the mailbox.

We get back to the cop, and the road peeks out of the snow. We didn’t need our chains. We head past him, ready for civilization. The kids are deep into nap time, and not napping. They’ve abandoned their grape icees and have delved into tearing up a styrofoam cup and spitting it at each other. Then they practice seeing how hard they can hit each other. We are stopped in traffic for a moment. It seems we can’t get down the hill. People are getting out of their cars. OH NO. There’s no other way out. I’m still looking at the clock.. If we can get past this traffic, I can even make it to the funeral on time. The kids are through with the snow. They’re tearing up paper towels and rolling it into little balls and sticking them in their noses. They practice howling. The cars are not moving. A policeman walks by us at the speed of walking. He disappears around the corner. Forty five minutes go by. I start having the funeral service in my car. The funeral has begun allright. It’s for me. I don’t feel like playing I Spy to entertain the kids. I’ve been entertaining in the car for four hours. I’m all used up. They’re four and five, and short on sleep and out of ideas too. The only things they can think up at this point involve bursts of screaming and inflicting pain. I start to feel really bad that I’m missing the real funeral. What was I thinking, the snow? I should be there for my friend. He was a good guy.

The traffic finally breaks up. We head down the mountain, the kids are tumbling down their slope into behavior hell. I tell Barry to drop me off at the cemetery. He tells me I shouldn’t go in ski pants. I tell him the guy isn’t going to BE there, I don’t think he’d mind. Besdies, he was a make up artist for movies. A real hippie. I decide to listen to Barry on this, because in the end I’m usually glad I did. We’re on the freeway and close to home. Barry starts yelling at the kids that they’re going to be in big trouble when we get home. They never hear him angry, so they laugh cause it sounds funny. This infuriates him. We tell the kids their punishment is they have to clean out the car when we get home.

We get home, and Nathan is thrilled with cleaning out the car, he gets two huge bags, one for trash, the other for toys and starts on his job. He even wants a vacuum. He’s never had a better time. I get dressed up and run to the after-funeral party to try and pay some sort of respects to my friend. I get to the house, everyone is dressed like pirates, I don’t know anyone (all my friends went to the service, not the party), I write my name in a book, I feel inadequate, I leave. I call my friend Dirk on the way back home and he tells me about the service, and we talk about being left alive, and being taken in the middle of your life, just when things were going well. And how we’re not achieving at all what this friend of ours was achieving, and doing so by being kind, and himself, and using his talents. “He’s probably putting make up on God now,” I say to him. He says “No, he’s up there, going ‘Uhhhh…you don’t wanna go with that. Let me fix you up, whole new look.” Dirk says “Hey, where were you?” “A blizzard,” I say.

Back home, kids in bed, Barry puts the chains on my desk to return. I managed to do everything, even though I missed some key parts. I just couldn’t face death like that, I’d had so much death recently. I’d rather go on the search for chains, risk the four hours of traffic on the mountain, just for that one sled ride where Nathan went flying and we were all laughing, strewn together. Chain of fools. My friend Richard would have been lying on the snow, laughing with us. I’m sure he was in the sky, looking down while holding the make-up sponge to God’s glistening cheek, really studying our good time. Shrugging, dabbing his sponge, and saying “It was worth it.”