It’s a roundabout path I took — Bay Area to the Midwest to Los Angeles. I had to take a car, a stinking bus, and about a dozen escalators, but I finally made it through security at this stinking airport and am now in an airport bar that, despite its sticky floor, has nice cold Blue Moon on tap served with thick, juicy wedges of California navel oranges. That almost compensates for the fact that my flight is delayed by half an hour. That’s thirty more minutes between me and home.

I miss my man. I miss my cat. I miss my bed. I don’t know how people manage to have jobs that require frequent travel. I love being places, but man I hate getting there. I hate suitcases and hotel rooms, and I dislike that my usual diet of chips and salsa has to go out the window in favor of civilized cuisine that requires utensils and compliments on the chef’s presentation.

At least it was a beautiful day in LA. It always is. The 405 was even pretty clear for a summer day, and the freeway exits whizzed past — Sepulveda, Santa Monica, Venice. Someday I’ll get back down here, hopefully to stay. There’s a lot of great places to shack up, especially in California. But this is home. It always will be.

It’s somewhat redundant for me to say that the night before Thanksgiving the 105 freeway was a complete parking lot. We made our way toward the 110 at about two miles an hour, and just before we reached La Brea, Bubbles starts fidgeting. Several minutes later, just before we get to Crenshaw, she starts doing a bona fide pee pee dance.

“I have to go bathroom,” she squeaks.

“What? You just went?” is the general reaction. She did go just like, twenty minutes ago.

“I have to go.”

I look at her, and it’s obvious this distress is genuine. She’s sitting on top of her foot and doing that awkward wiggle that only a four-year-old can do because anybody older will have learned to be more self-conscious.

“I think she really has to go,” I tell the others.

Problem: We have just hit the threshold of places in Los Angeles where five white suburban females will not pull off the freeway. Whether or not the legends of bullets whizzing overhead and having our fancy minivans carjacked were true, we believed them. We had to push up through Downtown and make it back to the land of brightly lit malls, big box stores and chain restaurants.

We reached Normandie. Bubbles began to sweat. We reached the 110. Bubbles began to shake. Bam-Bam looked around her and found an empty Burger King cup. It was one of those obscenely oversized soda cups that they made fun of in Super Size Me, but it was empty.

“Here, use this,” Bam-Bam tells her.

Bubbles was always far beyond her years in terms of her snobbishness. She graduated from diapers early and by this age was informing us (correctly) when our outfits “just didn’t go.” She looked at the cup scornfully and shook her head.

“Okay, then,” my mom told her. “You can try to hold it but we won’t be home for at least half an hour.”

This means very little to a four year old. With renewed commitment she tightened her crossed legs and tried to sit as still as possible. But with each lurch forward and sudden stop, her squeals of protest grew louder.

This was getting serious. I could tell by her face that she was either going to injure herself or have a major explosion all over the seat. And I was sitting next to her.

“Are you sure you don’t want to use the Burger King cup?” I asked her, trying to strike a casual tone.

I get the stinkeye. “Of course not.”

“Okay,” I shrug. “But it’s your chance to be in the Pee Cup Club.”

The car got very, very silent.

“The what?!?” Bubbles wants to know.

“It’s a secret society,” I tell her, perfectly calm as I lie through my teeth. “You have to pee in a cup in a car while it’s moving. And then you’re a member for life.”

This concept is intriguing to Bubbles. Her face unscrews from the expression of agony she’s been holding as we pass Staples Center and she looks around the car.

“Are any of you in the Pee Cup Club?”

Some people will tell you it is bad to tell lies to children. I say if grownups can make up all that crap about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, fibbing about the existence of the Pee Cup Club to avoid having to spend an evening scrubbing urine out of the back seat of a Ford Windstar is kosher.

“Yes, I’m a member,” says Bam-Bam, in a grave and hush-hush tone. One by one, we acknowledge that we are indeed members all of the Pee Cup Club. Because she is four, Bubbles believes us even though every single one of us is full of shit. Like I’d ever pee in a cup. Right.

“You guys can’t look,” Bubbles tells us.

“We won’t,” my mom promises. “And I’ll drive really smooth.”

This is the part of the story where, if you are enjoying a nice tasty brioche, you may wish to either put the food down or choose to finish reading at a more convenient time.

Everyone pinky swears not to look, but Bubbles hesitates for a moment.

“Can you hold the cup for me?” she asks me.

Nobody can ever, ever, ever say that I do not love my sister. I nodded. She unbuckled her seatbelt. My mom slowed to try to avoid braking through the traffic. Bubbles drops her flower printed stretchy pants and hovers over the empty Burger King cup.

I remember this moment with surreal clarity. It is dark, and my aim is not perfect. Warm pee splashes onto my hand and I stifle the urge to flinch or scream. I move my hand a bit to the right and the pee rolls down my fingers into the cup.

The ffffffffffffffffssssssssssssssshhhhhhh of warm pee pours down into the cup. My mom turns on the radio. The others take odd halting breaths as they try desperately not to laugh.

The cup was nearly full, and I was getting nervous. But at last she was done and I snapped the lid back on. I placed it in a cup holder and glowered at it while Bubbles slumped back into her seat, beads of sweat dripping from her forehead. She was exhausted.

My hand was still damp with pee, but there was nothing I could do as there weren’t any leftover Burger King napkins to go with the empty cup. I held my hand in front of me for the remainder of the trip home, after which I raced to the bathroom and used half a bar of soap on it.

But I’ll never forget how Bubbles turned to look at me, her face faintly illuminated by the glow of lights from the skyscrapers, and sighed, “Thank you.”

That’s love, dudes.

Before this weekend, I hadn’t been home to LA since August. That’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my hometown, and I didn’t like it. So I figure that when I finally made it down there this weekend, it would be all sunshine and perfection.

It was pretty good. Went to a wedding. Saw Darien, and finally got to hang with Bubbles and Buttercup. Had lunch in Chinatown. Hit up the very cool and speakeasy-like Eagle Rock Brewing Company. Inexplicably came home with an entire suitcase full of new lingerie. Got to see my niece a few times and play the ukulele for her in person instead of over Skype. I played her some Beach Boys tunes. She dug it.

It wasn’t a perfect weekend, but it felt pretty damn good to walk down Colorado Boulevard in Old Town, rip from Burbank to Westwood at eighty miles an hour, and see palm trees clumped casually like old friends on every street corner. In fact, the only part of the weekend that was bad was today. When the, like, one big rainstorm LA gets every year decided to hit.

The 405 is bad on a good day. It’s a nightmare when you’re hydroplaning at 30 miles an hour. The Grapevine is a good way to make your arms sore even when it’s warm out. As we got close to the summit and buckets of water were pouring down, I had to nervously keep an eye on the snow on the side of the road and hope the temperature didn’t get any lower. It bottomed out at 38, thank goodness, and we managed to get over the Tejon Pass without hitting any ice.

But snow! Huh. That was improbable.

The rain continued. We had to make a pit stop at some random fruit stand I’d never tried stopping at before. The bathrooms were immaculate. I thought that was as improbable as it was going to get.

We stopped for food and gas. On our way out, I did a double take. It was a former boss. WTF? Not someone I’d really bother to stop and speak to, but what are the odds that we’d be there at the same time? I had nothing to say to that person and they likely had nothing to say to me. I was glad that I didn’t appear to be noticed from the other side of the gift shop because really, is there any reason to speak to someone when the only things you have in common are sharing the same former employer and making the same pit stop on the I-5?

The rain finally cleared up before we went over the Pacheco Pass, but even then we didn’t get through without seeing a car on the other side of the highway completely engulfed in flames. A fire truck was roaring down the highway toward it. The fuel tank must have been ruptured, because I’ve never seen a car burn like that that wasn’t on a movie set.

And now I’m home, and except for Loki still being at the kitteh hotel, everything is normal again. And after so much abnormality, the normality feels abnormal. What does it all mean? Nothing. Just that if life is going to be improbable, it’s probably going to be improbable all at once.

It’s back. Oh, insomnia, you heartless bastard. I thought I told you not to come around here no more? Ambien was supposed to be the bouncer, but he seems to have gone on a coffee break, so somehow insomnia managed to crash this brain-goo party.

Too much is swirling in my head right now. I miss my cat. I try to ignore the little burgundy box with brass fittings sitting on the bookshelf, and when I do notice it I try to distract myself with clever little musings that Ripley is now Schrödinger’s Cat, immortal and safe in her quantum state of . . . ashes. It doesn’t work. In ten hours it will be three weeks since I felt her heart stop beating. I can still feel her grow cold under my fingertips.

I don’t miss my old state of mind with regard to the meaning of life and the universe and all that, but I wish I was a little farther along in my process of rebuilding a worldview. It sure would be useful right about now.

It’s been too long since I’ve been home to L.A. I miss the beach. I miss the sun. I miss House of Pies in Los Feliz on the way to an adventure, and I miss Canter’s on La Brea at three a.m. after a night out. I miss salsa that clears your sinuses. I miss not having to wonder if it’s warm enough to wear flip-flops outside. I miss having family there that would be sincerely happy to have me visit.

I’m stressed about the future. I need to find a new job. I didn’t think that in addition to family stress and the evil attack of the cancer on poor little Ripley that I’d also find myself suddenly unemployed, even though I’ve been doing as much as I was able to show that I have a lot to offer the company. Despite my efforts I’ve been wedged firmly between the Scylla and Charybdis of apathy and frustration.

I can sympathize a lot with German Shepherds. They’re smart and eager, and if you put them to work they can do amazing things. But if you lock them up in the yard and just give them a ball to chase once in a while and never let them do more, they get bored. Then they get frustrated. Then they get grouchy. Then one day they bite. That’s what happens when you go crazy from being cooped up. In the end, the owner of the German Shepherd just sees a crazy, useless bitch. But the owner rarely, I’ve found, recognizes that they created the situation by stifling potential.

Anyway. Unemployment. I’ve been working on getting myself a promotion for some time, and the timing felt right to try to make it materialize. It backfired. The short version is that I explained that after 3+ years in the same position I was ready for new challenges. Then I got fired. I didn’t hear the words “you’re fired” so much as hear that my boss agreed I was ready for something new and so my last day at work would be next Friday. That’s how you fire someone without saying “you’re fired.” It was a pretty slick coup de grace, I have to admit.

I don’t take it personally. At no point did anybody promise to be Virgil on my journey through the nine circles of corporate hell. I know I was on my own in trying to escape a dead-end position. Any efforts to do well at work had to be based on altruism. That’s rough. Even with a decent paycheck and benefits it’s hard to stay motivated when I know the career potential is identical (zero) regardless of whether I am awesome or I am mediocre. All I had to do was fill a function just well enough not to be a disruption. If I’m not interested in filling that function any longer, well, that’s a disruption. Fair enough. It just would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

So that’s the only part that rubs me wrong — the disillusionment. I truly believed what the organization said about being all about the people, man. Finding out that you’re as disposable as any other schlub working at any other company that thinks of employees in terms of the roles they perform and not the achievements they are capable of is a bit of a letdown. I think in the future I’d be safer working someplace without such lofty Utopian aspirations. Then I can’t be disappointed when they don’t live up to them. I mean, who can, really? I see that now.

But the main point is . . .

. . . oh yeah. So some company treated me like obsolete software. Whatever. I think I’m worth more than that, so I need to figure out my next move and make it like a rock star.

Maybe, like Peter Gibbons, I need to leave Initech behind and get a job slinging a shovel at a demolitions company. Fuckin’ A, man.

Maybe I just need to accept that I’m horribly overqualified for any job that I can manage to get an interview for, but horribly under qualified for any job I’d actually want, and the answer is to give up and work two part time jobs, one at Anthropologie and the other at Peets’ Coffee. I’d have awesome clothing and free wi-fi whenever I needed it. Do I require much more in life? Not really.

Maybe I need a Room of One’s Own and five hundred pounds so the ideas screaming to be let out of my mind can finally escape.

Mostly what I need is a fucking break. In so many ways. I’m ground down. I look it. I can see it when I look in the mirror. I’ve accepted that the universe isn’t fair, and that sometimes no matter how hard you pay your dues sometimes you don’t get a return on the investment. So I have to remember the words of the great Sarah Connor: No Fate But What We Make. Whatever happens next, it’s going to be done on my terms for once. I’m done bowing to Authority for no real reason, and I’m done being a tool for others’ purposes when there won’t be anything in it for me.

If anything, all this shit piling up on me all at once is making me appreciate the good things I have going for me. I have the most awesome boyfriend in the history of the universe. I have good friends who like me for me, with no preconditions to acceptance. I have a remaining cat who has an epileptic hamster in his skull instead of a brain yet despite this is an utterly lovable furball. I have sisters who stick by me thick or thin, and two best friends who I know have my back no matter what. I have a lot more than many people, and I have a lot to offer.

I have tried to get a leg up in the world in various ways, only to be swatted down. Maybe I’ll stop trying to beg for carrots and instead try helping others with whatever it is they’re trying to make progress on. Little stuff like that matters. Whether I’m writing my sister’s English essay so she can focus on Physics or just bringing some brownies to work because I know they make this one dude there like 5% happier, I have a lot to offer the world and I won’t stop handing it out to people who appreciate it. It’s vicarious accomplishment, but it still feels good. For those who don’t appreciate it, I’m just going to have to start setting credit limits on altruism. I only have so many hours in the day, and I’d rather invest where I’ll see a more meaningful return.

Anybody have an opening with benefits and decent pay that will let me just make the world a better place without self-sabotaging organizational nonsense getting in the way?

It’s very much a Southern California thing, and totally an L.A. thing. Yes, I’m talking about Chinese food and donuts. Most places in the world sell donuts in donut shops. We have those too back home, but why bother when you can go to your local mom-and-pop California-style Mandarin joint and pick up some quality orange chicken and lottery tickets while you’re at it?

This food combination seems bizarre to non-Angelenos, unnatural even. But contrary to the hissy fits thrown by those of you who object to the co-mingling of stir fry and pastries, we are so not nuts. It’s absolutely delicious and makes perfect sense. Give it a shot sometime. Chow mein, broccoli beef, and kung pao chicken is so much tastier when you polish it off with a nice bear claw. There is a downside, which is the 72 hour coma induced by consuming your body weight in carbohydrates. But the twenty minute sugar rush just before you pass out makes it all worth it.

Replicating this dining experience will be difficult for you foreigners, but try mapping out your neighborhood to try to find a Chinese place (preferably not a chain store) and a donut shop (ditto) that are close together. You can at least get take-out and try it out at home. But for those willing to go the extra 400 miles, I’ll be happy to head up a field trip any time you like.