City of Angels and High-Colonics

For the next few days, I will be not be blogging from the more affordable side of the Brooklyn Bridge, but from that magical land of fake boobs and fake noses and fake professions of love.

Yes, Ellay is everything you think it is and more. Why you can hardly swing a cat without hitting an US Weekly cover girl. I would know because in Beverly Hills, swinging cats outside the Coffee Bean passes for fun. That's just how wacky it is out there. They gargle with their own urine too. (And I'm not making that up - one international leading lady confessed as much to me one drunken night over Schnapps shots.)

The truth is, while some of you might imagine that my days and nights will be spent doing wild, illegal, and dangerous things with very famous and important people in a hillside bungalow at the Chateau, the reality is a little different.

I will be working in an office where the windows don't open--perhaps not a horrible thing considering the smoggy goodness of the LA air quality. I will be meeting with people who may or may not want to be meeting with me. I will be trying to smile through the jet lag. I will get funny looks from waiters when I order things with ALL the sugar and ALL the fat. And I will be missing my daughter extraordinarily.

This will be my third overnight business trip away from Thalia. And I try to remember that there are indeed a few benefits to heading west tout seul:

-Two glorious nights with no parallel-parked baby kicking me in the head repeatedly
-Someone else to make the bed
-$14 Belgian waffles that I don't have to pay for
-Cruising down Sunset in a Mustang convertible (hopefully not a banana-yellow one like that one time) knowing that at any red light, I just may find myself next to Sally Struthers
-Six uninterrupted hours on a plane to do the Sunday Times crossword
-Spicy tuna rolls-a-plenty
-Time with a few friends and family who I don't see nearly enough, including my about-to-be-ridiculously-successful cousin, the screenwriter (in today's Jewish families, screenwriters are the new doctors, dontcha know)
-Bailey's in the minibar
-Corona in the minibar
-Coppola Chardonnay in the minibar
-Feeling like myself again, even if just for thirty seconds at a time when I get so caught up in life/work/Coppola Chardonnay that I forget I have a baby.

However there's one huge con that gives all the pros a run for their money:

-Feeling guilty for those thirty seconds when I get so caught up in life/work/Coppola Chardonnay that I forget I have a baby.

We will see how this trip goes.