Hey again!

So sorry we took so long to update. We’re back though and we’ll update it more frequently. We’ve so much more to tell you. And if you thought the first part was funny wait till you see what happened to us – it involves constantly hiding from our apartment manager, a lot of chocolate and one to many trips to rite aid and Ralphs

Ok, so when we first arrived in Westwood, the tenants of the apartment, whose names we still didn’t know, were just clearing out all their stuff. We greeted them with our usual Hello ‘cough sma’. Just in case you forgot from our last blog, their names were Usma and asma and we could never tell who was who. One of them watched us as we signed the contract and was bemused when we offered her $1200, or our first months rent, in a wad of notes. We were very unorganised – we had no envelope or anything. It was like we were criminals with all the rent in 20 dollar bills. All we were missing were the shades and the briefcases! Anyway, the girls couldn’t get over all the bags we had. We had more stuff for 3 months than they had in her apartment for the whole year!! The manager was even more amused as he believed our 13 bags belonged to only two of us, as there are only supposed to be two people living in the apartment at any one time. This meant one of us running to the bathroom every time the manager paid us a random visit. He must have known something was up, because every time he knocked at our door he heard the crashing and banging of us trying to hide. After some time we eventually came to the door, outwardly trying to act calm and adding polite but flustered comments like  “Eh just dropped a cup!” but inwardly freaking out and thinking “I hope Carol’s ok squashed into the cupboard under our sink!”

As we said earlier, Usma and asma were clearing out all their stuff and when I say all their stuff I mean ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!! We were lucky they left the mattresses for us!! We decided to settle in with a nice cup of tea as we Irish like to A LOT! However when we opened the press a bare sight was beheld. There was no kettle! NOOOOOOOO! Its ok we though, don’t panic. We’ll just boil it in a pot. So we opened another press and to our utter disbelief there was no pot – sorry let me rephrase that – there was NOTHING what so ever in the fecking apartment. Things didn’t look good. You see, we really like our food and our tea, as you will see later. Once we came out of shock, we swung into action and marched to our nearest Rite aid … what a dump – no just kidding. It was very ‘practical’ as my mother would say. We stocked up on all the necessities – pots, pans, sweeping brush, bin, cutlery, toilet paper – you name it we got it! By the way, the pot we bought was probably the dinkiest pot in the world – it could only fit one carrot and one potato – no we’re just kidding – it could fit 2 carrots.When we got to the checkout our hearts fluttered slightly as the girl asked for “ 300 dollars please”. We stared at her blankly! Again she repeated “300 dollars please …” Outwardly we remained calm and handed over the money … inwardly … we died. In the space of 24 hours, over 1500 dollars was taken from us. Rite aid somehow seemed too expensive for us. 7.11 here we come! As we emerged from the shop with all our bags and crates upon crates of water, we called for a taxi. Tired from our ‘spree’ in rite aid we rested on our crates of water. When the taxi man pulled up he smiled graciously and place our bags in the trunk. He thought he was done … how wrong he was on. His smiled vanished when we stood up revealing the 8 crates of bottled water that were to fit in his car. “Are all of these yours?” he asked nervously. We smiled embarrassingly. For the next ten minutes the four of us, with much effort, managed to manoeuvre the eight crates into the car, with occasional help from passers by. It was another story trying to get them into our apartment – thank god for the elevator.

So now we were settling into LA – a place obsessed with appearance and bursting at the seams with size 0 starlets. This was the perfect place for peer pressure to force us to eat sticks of celery instead of sticks of Cadburys.

We had prepared for a summer of slimming down – exercise, fitness, general skinniness. How wrong we were. Skinniness turned quite rapidly into mild obesity (just kidding but that's the way it was heading). We imagined ourselves after the summer – toned, tanned, our hair blowing in the breeze. The reality was quite different – somewhat chubby, with white bodies and red faces from sunburn and kids saying – "What are they mom?"

What were we thinking? If LA was so obsessed with weight then why were the shops exactly the same as back home. Filled with sweets like shops in Ireland. However in Ireland these sweets are present to comfort the citizens because most of them suffer from a disease called SAD disease which is basically a disease about the weather. SAD stands for Seasonal Affected Disorder – it is actually a disorder. Look it up if you like. Basically it's because we rarely get sunshine to boost the endorphins in our brains so we substitute this with chocolate and sweets like Cadburys. But even in LA, where the sun is blazing down on our Irish brains and filling them with endorphins we still seemed to eat sweets. Little did we know that Cadburys was available in LA so basically after that revelation…..well lets just say the only muscle we were exercising was our jaws.

We found a local food store. It was heaven. We spent more time there than at the beach (only kidding but it was heading that way) – scanning the food isles like crazed peasants who hadn't eaten for months, grabbing random items off the shelf. In the beginning, when we went through our "We're going to be so healthy it's unbelievable" phase, we hovered in the organic corner plucking fresh vegetables from the shelves and trying to look like professionals sniffing the sweet aroma of health from their unprocessed exterior. How LA were we? However, as time went on, our noses were gradually drawn to a far sweeter aroma – chocolate in all its delight! Homemade cookies, muffins and Betty Crocker homemade mixes shone in front of us. We were moving from our "so LA" phase into the "let's be like housewives and make lovely home made buns and tea" phase. This would be interesting. We envisaged ourselves sitting on our cosy apartment couch snuggled with our cups of Barry's tea (we actually brought Irish teabags with us!) and eating fluffy muffins or mouth-watering cookies while watching an all American chick flick. Yes we were all going to turn into Bree Van de Kamps – with our neat little buns and immaculately white little aprons hovering (we hover a lot don't we?) around a ceramic pot mixing our light fusions of creamy delights. However, the nearest thing to Bree was the mouldy cheese in our fridge. And we ended up mixing our prepacked batter with drops of milk, red faced from the blasting heat from our oven…..We really should have learned how to work that! Instead of floating little buns of heaven however, we had lumps of undercooked sinking goo. That wasn't going to be nice. Even though we had predicted this inevitability when we saw how our buns looked, we still were somewhat curious. Maybe these chunks of imperfection would in fact be divine. Well divine is a bit of an overstatement – they were …..Well…..gooey, gummy, mushy lumps of crapiness. So it was back to being healthy – well for a day anyway! Back to "Ralph’s Food store" it was. This time we headed towards the chickens. The chickens were our friends. We could relate to them. They were white and plump and in LA and I mean…..half the time we run around like headless chickens anyway!

Check out what happens with the chicken next time. Especially with that tiny pot – it's quite a story! Also come back to read more about our adventures - you don't want to miss our disastrous night out in Hollywood, having 40 applications rejected and working for Environment California !