inlarough

[inlarough]

Who dis?

My name is Saber. I love cats, flip furniture, have nails covered in chalk paint and just moved to LA. I don't think I'm ready to say that I am a - what do you call people from LA? Los Angeleans? Lost Angels? Los Angelenders? Los Angelins? If you are from Chicago, you’re a Chicagoan, (which I'm not). If you’re from Colorado, you are a Coloradan (which I wouldn't say I am anymore), and if you are from New Zealand you are a Kiwi, or a New Zealander (which I say I am all the time but it makes my boyfriend grumpy and roll his eyes - one of my favorite pastimes!) I am a little bit of all of those.

       My Mum is a New Zealander and my Dad is an American. They call each other Kiwi and Yank (adorable) and we refer to our little nuclear family as the AmeriKiwis, cuz we are a mix of the two.  However, I and much of my family feel that where you live greatly influences who you are. Hence, my Mum is now an AmeriKiwi rather than just a Kiwi. And so I for a while was the ChicagoKiwi. Lately I have been calling myself the CaliKiwi. Los Angeleskiwi doesn’t have the proper alliterative ring to it; also I keep going up to the Bay Area to bother my boyfriend’s family because it is SOOOO pretty there and also I’m kinda scared of desserts  no deserts. Not desserts - those are great, but deserts (more on that later). So CaliKiwi it is was. 

     However I don’t feel that is really correct either. I spent almost 10 years in Chicago, and eighteen in Colorado (technically Greeley - but we traveled a lot all over the state - so I say Colorado) and they are huge parts of me. Chicago helped me understand that I am an animal just as suited to a concrete jungle as the wilds and mountains of Colorado. And I am still finding “winter” and “the cold” in LA to be totally adorable and hilarious. 

    I get it - everyone’s “cold” is relative. And I think that our body temperature preferences are just like feelings,  and should be respected and everyone is entitled to their own, BUT I just did 10 years in the home of the polar vortex and temperatures below Antarctica and grew up in a state where snow boots were a constant necessity for one’s Halloween costume every year.  My boyfriend and I ventured out to Walgreens (across the street luckily) when the kind of dark and snow that everyone on Game of Thrones was talking about showed up. We are the kinds of very privileged idiots who did that because we were lucky enough that our jobs were like “Don’t even think about coming in - we don’t give you benefits and would rather shut down until the White Walkers go home rather than go into legal battles with you because you froze to death on your way here and your popsicle ghost found an attorney to sue us for enough to build a monument in your name.” Colorado on the other hand, is a perplexing state where my cute fairy costume had a little bit of a punk edge to it because I had to wear huge furry snow boots, a beanie and fingerless gloves (you try unwrapping and eating the good Halloween candy in mittens -this was a necessity since Mum would later divide it up so that Chase [my little brother] didn’t get the short, Smarties/Tootsie Roll-and-other-crap-candy end of the stick.) Yeah, my fairy was much more Sugar Punch rather than Sugar Plumb. It was great when I got into Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter later on because boots made sense on an elven archer and cloaks and robes are nice and toasty! Oh, also there is the fact that genetically speaking I’m Scandinavian as hell (Irish/Scottish/even more Scottish/You can barely understand what I’m saying cuz I’m so Scottish/German).  My body stores excess energy as padding around my thighs and middle and makes sure that I could run in the snow and chase sabertooth tigers for DAYS with my muscular-as-fuck legs. According to all the women in my family, my body doesn’t bother with boobs until the uterus has something fertilized in the works. This means we are aerodynamic up top and sturdy on the bottom, and if we are moving we generate a ton of our own heat and stay plenty warm. We are arctic survival MACHINES, just don’t ask me to do more than walk in a muggy Chicago summer because I will burn alive from the inside.

    So yeah, I do ok with cold. And LA’s “cold” is real cute!

    So I feel like I’m not “from Los Angeles” now. Also, shhhh! Don’t tell people but I technically live in Glendale cuz it has trees and I am poor.

  So then who or what am I? I solved it the other day on a run on a blessedly beautiful 70 degree LA day!  I am a Colo-Chi-Cali-Kiwi. I’m a little bit of everything. But that’s a lot to say, so I did the natural nerd thing (I’m a huge nerd by the way, you should know that now in case the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings references weren’t enough to tip you off earlier - there will be many many more) cuz I’m a huge huge nerd. I pulled a Hermione Granger (see, told you!) and looked up a magical creature that is comprised of many other things. My research (which was really just double checking because I have way too much technical information about magical creatures stored in my brain - but I HATE being wrong so I double check EVERYTHING) found a creature described as “a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail” (exact description of me before coffee) which fit the bill pretty well. But there was a secondary definition that I really loved (yes, as I said, nerd - I like looking at all the definitions, wait till we talk OED!). A Chimera is also “an unrealizable dream”. Call me crazy, call me impractical, but I think there is something stunning in that. To me that is something endlessly contradicting, something lofty, something difficult, something to be strived towards, something just marvelous. That sounds like me, a thing of multiple homes and worlds and countries and temperatures and passions. And shouldn’t we all want to be an unrealizable dream? Isn’t that kind of the special and magical thing about dreaming? Should’t you shoot for the “unrealizable” dream.  So, I am a Colo-Chi-Cali-Kiwi. Or you can call me a Chimera for short.

[inlarough]

Welcome to In La Rough

In La Rough is the story of LA, lost furniture, a towed car, injustice, creativity, determination, heavy purses full of tools, and obsession with pets.