Last week I decided to get lunch from Whole Foods on my break, meaning I went walking. In Los Angeles. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? I know. After I picked up a few things, I took a different route walking back to the office in Santa Monica, because well, it was really nice outside and I wanted to go exploring a bit. I’m so glad I did because it was as if God was reading my thoughts earlier in the week about how much I wanted to find a great spice shop in the L.A. area. Lo and behold, there was Penzey’s Spices on 4th Street, beckoning me to come in. Oh I did, how could I not?

Let me tell you, it felt like spice heaven. Endless shelves and racks of every single seasoning, every spice – be it sweet or savory, everything you’re always out of when you’re ready to cook or bake. Cinnamon, vanilla extract, at least half a dozen types of curries, salad dressing seasonings, anise seed, fennel, shallot salt, even zatar, a Middle Eastern blend of sumac, thyme leaves, white sesame seeds and salt. Imagining the possibilities that Penzey’s had to offer was making me dizzy, so I quickly grabbed some nutmeg, something I never have on hand, and poppy seed, because I had been wanting to make a lemon poppy seed bread for a few weeks.

I’m not sure who thought up the lemon and poppy seed combination (I’ve searched with no substantial results) but I am publicly thanking them now, because it is divine, especially when the lemons you use come from your own backyard, like the ones above.

The lemon tree that sits in between the orang and pomegranate trees at my house has special significance: it came from my grandmother’s garden, and it remains as the only tangible thing I have to remember her by. For a while after she passed away, I never thought I’d see it give fruit again, but a few weeks ago in an amazing moment, my mom came in, with a lap full of lemons in her shirt.

I used a super easy recipe from one of my favorite baking sites, Joy of Baking.  Baking does so much for me. It lets me be creative, helps me de-stress and allows me to reflect on things while I’m measuring, mixing and pouring.

I’ve realized that I bake not only because I love food, but because it’s sort of my therapy. It keeps me sane, and it reactivates me to deal with the world again. I guess you could say it’s an escape.

A tasty, delicious escape. I didn’t taste my lemon poppy seed bread (blasphemy) because I’m watching what I eat, but I have it on good authority from my sister that it was like a slice of heaven.

Trust me when I say that I know I’m about 18 years late on opening any kind of discussion on Mississippi Masala, but I recently saw it for the first time and although it cannot be in any way classed as “Bollywood,” the Indian subject matter magnetized me to it instantly.

Directed by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair), Mississippi Masala chronicles the story of an Indian family as they struggle to adjust to life in Greenwood Mississippi, after being expelled from their homeland of Uganda by the Ida Amin regime. Father, mother and their daughter Minna (Sarita Choudhoury), stay with family who own a chain of motels called “The Monte Cristo.” At 24-years-old, Minna cleans at the hotel, while her mother runs a liquor store and her father writes endless letters to the Ugandan government in order to regain control of his confiscated house.

As the Fresh Prince of Bel Air would say, Minna’s life gets flipped turned upside down when she falls in love with Demetrius (Denzel Washington), the town’s African-American carpet cleaner. Of course, it becomes impossible for both of their families to accept their inter-racial relationship and so we are caught in a black-Indian or Blindian-if you will- love story that threatens to runs the lives of all parties involved off the tracks.

Mississippi Masala  enlightened a few things for me, mainly that:

a) Denzel Washington was extremely handsome back in the day

b) I love the 90s so much more than I can express in the confines of a blog post

c) I love Minna’s entire wardrobe in this film

d) I had no idea there was an Indian community in Uganda

Besides intriguing love story, authenticity of the characters and  just all around awesome time this was filmed, Mississippi Masala reminded me about something that so many films suffer from today that I can’t stand: too much dialogue.

Characters in films just talk way too much for my liking. So much can be said without saying a word, a concept that Dawnson’s Creek could never master, what with Joey Potter and her SAT- word soaked soliloquies.  A stare, a glance, an embrace, the stroking of hair, the caressing of a cheek and then quite the opposite-tears, distance, blatant ignorance. Mississppi Masala had a lot of this, so much so that it felt like it could actually happen, not that it could happen within the confines of the silver screen.

If your family came to the U.S. as immigrants, this is definitely a film that you will be able to relate to. It still amazes me how my parents picked up and moved to a completely different country – not because they wanted to, but because they had to, because of the Iranian Revolution. Minna’s parents’  financial, economic and social struggles can be echoed all across those that were forced to leave their homelands in order to establish lives in a new environment.

Jammubhai: I’m ashamed of you! I am so ashamed of you!
Anil: [referring to Meena's family] Why do you always take their side? I worked hard for this motel and I am *not* running a charity!
Jammubhai: Anil, you have become American.
Anil: So what? I’m living in America! You don’t like it? Then go back to India!

I had a good cry yesterday. You know, those crying sessions you have where you just let it all out – all the stress and pain and what not, in the form of salty tears. Sometimes you immediately feel better after wards. This was not one of those times.

Like most people I suppose, I suppress real raw emotions when I’m around people that aren’t my immediate family and closest friends. Yesterday  I struggled with that, as there’s only so much contact you can avoid when you work in an office setting.

I held it in for most of the day, but when I packed up to leave, got to my car, the tears flowed while the engine purred all the way home. Driving on the 405, with news of the Santa Barbara fires in the background, the cool breeze felt comfortable against the wetness of my cheeks and the muggy atmosphere of my car. The unbearable heat was a reminder that California summers are here again, waiting in the shadows of Los Angeles to ruin my life.

I’m not sure what I was thinking about in the car that day, because I was experiencing a mishmash of emotions that were dancing and crashing against each other in my head. Fears, hopes, dreams, regrets, circumstance, love, hate, rejection and acceptance – they rose and crashed independently of me.

And in that moment of haze, the only thing I could remember was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S Eliot.

I wise a wide-eyed and introspective sophomore in high school when I first was introduced to the likes of this poem. Anxious and excited, I walked into the first day of Honors English class to find a photocopied version sitting on everyone’s desk. The assignment? Interpret this 130 stanza poem and bring your written commentary back to class tomorrow. It was a classic “WTF” moment, if only “WTF” had been in popular use back in 1999.

Trying to interpret the meaning of this poem became the bane of my existence. Every explanation we brought in was rejected and it was at that point that I started to wonder about J. Alfred Prufrock. Who was this buffoon of a character and why was he making my life so difficult by not speaking clearly. By the end of the week, I was so sick of hearing about J. Alfred Prufrock and it was the first time, I think ever, that I was happy to see a piece of literature vanish from my site.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

I kept thinking about the passage above and I came to the conclusion that no, there will not be time and not in the Jesse Spano “Caffeine Pill Freakout” kind of way either. There wont be time for a hundred indecisions and revisions. There isn’t time, because you’ll wake up one day and look around and hate yourself for wasting it all. If you want something, make it happen. If you want to go somewhere, go. If you want someone, do all that you can to show how much love, compassion and generosity you’re capable of. The time isn’t later, the time is now. Love, real love (whatever that means, anyway), is not an every day occurrence. It’s not something that lives in people’s lives all the time, that’s why everyone is always out there continuously chasing it.  Most people are not in relationships because they feel they would lose one half of themselves if they were ever apart, they’re in relationships because of convenience, confidence and inability to be alone.  So when you find that person that is always there for you, no matter what, the person that you wouldn’t mind spending every waking moment with, the person that you can yell and scream at but know in the back of your mind that while you’re doing it, everything will be ok, the person that doesn’t try to change you, doesn’t blame you or resent you, grab them and don’t let go.

So no, Mr. Prufrock, there will be no time.  Life is too short to have enough time to dwell, to be wishy washy and to procrastinate.

I made it to my doorstep just as the sun was coming down and as Prufrock was disappearing from my mind. I took a look in the car mirror and decided makeup couldn’t help me at this point, so I tried as best I could to wipe the wetness from my face and step inside, to the sounds of television announcers and the smells of dinner.

There was alot that was left unsaid in my mind and still in the paragraphs above, but real emotions are raw – too raw to be said out loud and sometimes too raw to be heard, even if they’re coming from someone sitting behind a computer. Bringing rawness to the surface is a difficult task and not without consequences. I might write about it one day, but today, I’ll just be happy if I can make it home without having to wipe any tears.

There are a lot of things no one tells you when you get a dog, like that it takes anywhere from 6 months to a year to potty train them and not 2 weeks like literature suggests, or that they make this terrible swooshing sound that runs through their entire bodies, just seconds before throwing up or that they like to steal bras and underwear out of the laundry bin and run amuck around the house with them. Yea, I know.

Then there are things that you’re told that you brush off until it actually happens, like when they have horrible separation anxiety and you come home after a long day at work, practically wiped out, to find that your kitchen has been literally skunk sprayed with piss in revenge or that they might turn out to be super picky eaters that scoff at canned food.

When I brought Henry home that May day 2 years ago, I didn’t fully realize what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know that his baby teeth would fall out and he’d grow into his adult ones, I didn’t know that he would require surgery because of two bad knees, but despite all of that, I didn’t know that I was capable of loving him so much.

Driving back to L.A. from Hemet, Calif. from the breeders house was tough. He cried and he wiggled and he wiggled and he cried. It wasn’t until he tired himself out and fell asleep to the hum of the engine. He was only 2 lbs back then and about the size of a small stuffed bear. It’s hard to believe he’s only been in my life for 2 years, when it feels like a lifetime. There are many days when I can’t remember how I spent my time before he arrived and then there are other days when I realize how utterly empty the house would be if he wasn’t in it.

Upon the anniversary of a meeting that introduced us to each other, an encounter which has given me the opportunity to be happier, to laugh more and to realize that life does not seem right without a dog, I feel grateful to a 6 lb fiery Maltese, who loves green bell peppers, lettuce and blueberries and hates when you touch his paws, leave for work or don’t answer his scratches and calls for you to life him onto your lap has given me so much. I can only hope he feels the same. Judging by licks and nuzzles, it’s probably safe to say he does.

My mother cuts fruit like she’s had practice from before she came out of the womb: smooth and seamlessly, she glides around the apple or orange in her hand and sears away the skin without much effort, letting the sharpness of the knife guide her as she twists and turns  the fruit around in her hands. For her, a fruit peeler is child’s play.

I don’t know how she manages to do it and still, I don’t know why I’m so enamored by it. In fact, it seems so magical to me, that I’m convinced that I can’t call myself a real adult until I can learn to cut and peel fruit with her skill level. I have made it the defining mark of the grown up world.

If you think about it, cutting fruit nicely is quite a daunting task. I will never forget the countless times I’ve made an apple look like one of Delia Deetz’s sculptures in “Beetle Juice.” Or how I’ve basically pilfered a watermelon into mush. Sure, it’s edible either way, but it takes such grace and concentration to actually cut fruit into presentable pieces of food.

And this is my twisted, backward reasoning into believing that because I haven’t matched my mother’s fruit cutting skills, I can’t consider myself an adult. To be fair, it was probably acquired over time and perfected during her child-bearing years, but still.

It’s not even entirely about her way with oranges and plums, it’s more or less her way around the kitchen. Before she got married, she had no real training in culinary skills because she spent most of her days holding down two jobs and going to school at the same time and to think that without any prior knowledge, that she cooks the way she does (and believe me, Armenian and Persian food are not easy tasks) is just baffling to me. Her rice is always the perfect consistency, her dolma (stuffed grape leaves) is just heaven in my mouth and her desserts are to die for -even her simple vanilla cakes. When I eat her vanilla cake, I can taste her-her warmth, her passion and love, all baked between the insides of a delectable bundt pan.

So, I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that I better raise the level of my abilities with food presentation before I can graduate into adulthood. But moreso, I see that you get back is what you put in, especially if what you’re putting in is love.

It was a great morning today. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, life was just splendid. In fact, it was so great, that I managed to give a big “F U” to L.A. traffic and arrive to work early. Imagine that! It was just going so great for me, until I found out that in an evil plan to completely ruin the formidable years of my childhood and cause me a horrific amount of emotional trauma, Hollywood has decided to do a remake of “Drop Dead Fred,” starring Russell Brand. RUSSELL BRAND.

Now, I like Russell Brand I guess (the guy loves Morrissey, I think that says enough)  and he could pretty much nail this, but why can’t Hollywood stop regurgitating movies from the past and come up with something original? I mean, really – have you seen how hilarious and touching “Drop Dead Fred” is? Rik Mayall should have won some kind of award for that performance, and PHOEBE CATES! She is in it! Nothing can be bad if Phoebe Cates is in it! I don’t care if the rating on IMDB is 4.8 out of 10. This movie is a silver screen gem I tell you! And Hollywood is ruining my childhood by being a useless, unoriginal piece of shit. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore. Instead, I’m going to watch some “Drop Dead Fred.” Take that, film execs. Take that.