you are viewing archives from 2005

when i grow up...

A. stayed home on Thursday to work on two storyboards. One of the plusses of being the boss is that he doesn’t have to ask anyone’s permission when he stays home from work.

One of the minuses is that he actually has to complete the work that he’s stayed home to do.

For three hours he sat at the kitchen table, hunched over a ream of paper four inches thick, drawing as fast as he could. I retreated to the study, where I finished a quick rewrite of a pilot that Older SlackBrother J. started and that needed to be to our manager by Friday for the weekend read. At about noon, I took a break and popped in to check on A.

Which board is this?

The Crass Unicorn, he responded, without looking up.

A typical storyboard for A.’s show is about two hundred pages with two panels per page, resulting in roughly four hundred drawings and dialogue that needs to be completed.

I chuckled. That’s awesome. Did you write that one?

Yeah.

Are you having R. do it?

R. is our friend who does voice-over. When she discovered that The Last Unicorn was on DVD, she insisted that we all get together and watch. She recounted the dialogue and sang along to the soundtrack by America and endured our good-natured ribbing throughout the movie.

I am.

You realize how incredibly cool that is, I told him.

He stopped working and looked up. What do you mean?

It’s something she’s been taken with since she was a little girl.

She’s right for the part.

I totally agree. But you’re also making one of her childhood dreams come true, and that’s pretty cool.

I never thought about it that way.

You wanna make some of my childhood dreams come true?

He laughed. Are there any that I could help with?

Seriously?

Seriously?

I thought for a second. I tried to come up with one specific dream that I had, some tangible childhood fantasy.

And it hit me that I had accomplished most of them already.

I was obsessed with Mickey Mouse from a young age. My best friend was a boy named J. who lived across the street. J. and I would complete to see who could amass the most Mickey Mouse gear. If he got a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, I wanted a Mickey Mouse dress. If I got a Mickey Mouse sleeping bag, he wanted Mickey Mouse wallpaper. Sure, we grew out of our Mickey Mouse phase, but I couldn’t help but smile every day I drove through the iron Mickey Mouse gates at Disney Studios when my friend, mentor and boss S. had her offices on the lot.

I also loved animals and wanted to be a vet up until junior high when I realized that science may not be my thing. Eight weeks after moving to California I found a stray dog which brought me to the Dog Adoption & Welfare Group, to Thurber, to my friend and surrogate mom S. and her daughter and surrogate sister S. We bonded over our love of animals and our hatred of stupid people. I met B. and her husband R. who helped me adopt Thurber. I discovered the fabulous animal known commonly as the Pit Bull, and fell in love for a lifetime, donated my time, efforts and money to their cause whenever I’m able.

I knew from a young age that I wanted not necessarily to be famous but I wanted to be known. I wanted to be known for writing. I wanted to write stories that would make people want to read. I wanted to write things that would make a difference. I wanted to write things that would make people understand. Make people understand me. While I think that I would have eventually come around to the blogging world. I have my ex-boyfriend G. to thank for bringing the slack into existence back in 1997 and handing it over to me without a single complaint when we broke up. In July of 2000 I started writing for Lizzie McGuire, and while the writing career has been bumpy to say the least, the fact is that I still make a nice living doing precisely what I have always wanted to do.

As I’ve written before, it never occurred to me that I’d be married or have a family. My aspirations leaned more toward taking a lover (a phrase that I had read in something that probably wasn’t age appropriate- a danger of early reading!) and living somewhere fabulous. While Los Angeles might not rank high on the fabulousness scale to some, the house that A. is generous enough to let me live in is amazingly beautiful, with views that both make me forget anything I need and remind me of everything that I have.

And then there’s A., who’s as smart and sexy and a snappy dresser, who makes me laugh ‘til I cry and turns my tears to laughter. A man whose fabulous friends are my friends, friends like R., who I’m thrilled to see have their own dreams be realized.

I don’t think there’s anything, I told him. I think that things are pretty damned swell.

I'm gonna figure something out, he replied.

I kissed him on the head and went to go finish my script. Once sent off to Older SlackBrother J., I crawled in bed to finish my book. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember is the phone ringing.

I padded into the study to see A. on the phone at his computer, with this picture on the screen:





He nodded at me, indicated I should wait a second, and ended his conversation. He put the phone down and turned to me.

I just finished our reservations for Tahiti and Bora Bora for Christmas and New Year's.

Now that’s a childhood dream come true.

You dreamt of French Polynesia when you were a kid?

Hell no, I told him, I was terrible at Geography.

He laughed.

But if I had known it existed, you can be sure that I would have.