So often I forget that no matter what misfourtune, bad day, or piss-poor turnout of the best laid plans befalls me, I can walk for two minutes to Sunset Cliffs at sundown. Out here, none of that can get me, no matter how hard it tries. I won’t forget that anymore.
After coming home tonight from the cliffs for the first time in a long time and a good chat with a great friend – after a beautiful sun-day of laundry, hot coffee while standing barefoot in the cool morning sun (it’s the hippie gene, sorry), delicious sammiches with even more delicious company, painting, and blueberry bagel beer – I was struck with the idea that I know is my ticket to dreamland. I don’t want to share it yet. (You wouldn’t expect a new mother to pass around her still-slimy baby to an internet of strangers, would you?) But I will tell you, it’s going to keep me awake tonight, and you wil see it all
MAY 11th, 2009
JAVA JONES COFFEE
9thand MARKET, DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO
7-10pm
And you will be leave all toasty-warm in the soul, I promise. 
So much for my “Dark and Lonely” period.
So we come to the second part of this blog, which was going to be me, waxing bitchy about turning 30 in some days. But being down about this really isn’t coming that easily. Yes, I have grey. Way too much. I have wrinklies. My skin is more like a tyrannasaurus’ armpit that a baby’s butt. But I have packed a shit ton of living into the last 10 years. Thus beginning the “FUCK YEAH, MY LIFE!” list:
Look, that’s my real haircolor. (Look at all the little things you can learn.
I was 20ish in this picture. I had done some things. Learned French and Italian. Gone to France and Italy. Traveled throughout western Europe all by myself at 19. Camped in a vicious lightning storm in Venice, and was nearly arrested and kidnapped there. And gone to my first Motley Crue show. But that was nothing compared to the next 10 years.
This list is for me, a concrete list of the things that I’m proud of. So if you think I’m just tooting my own horn, I’m not doing it for you. So scram.
First thing was the Motley Tour. 22,000 miles in a 1968 Mustang with a girl I barely knew. 33 states and Puerto Rico. Hung out with rock stars every night. Cuddled a baby tiger backstage in North Carolina.
Next, took care of my sweet, amazing ailing grandmother for a year. Leaned what it means to really love someone. Got my first tattoo.
Moved to Hollywood with Laura, that girl I barely knew and now know extremely well. No job, no place to live. 5 days later, a job, a place, and a new favorite restaurant: Hollywood Thai. That place had a sign only in Thai, horrifically delightful karaoke, and the most intoxicating smells in the universe. Worked at Nikki Sixx’s Record Company Americoma Records in on Sunset Boulevard, up the street from the Whiskey and all the other hangouts of all my idols. We were in charge of fan mail, so we took home oodles of it and spent hours leafing through Motley Crue’s fanmail. We sorted out the amazing (for better or worse) ones to take back and give to Nikki. We were also responsible for creating flyers to promote the label’s bands and taking the nightly business-card contents of Nikki’s pockets and entering them into addresse files. I had Ozzy Osbourne’s handwritten phone number.
We worked at a crooked telemarketing company that sold shitty computer supplies. Our boss was childhood friends with Randy Castillo, an amazing drummer once with Ozzy, most recently with Motley Crue until stomach cancer forced him down. Dave introduced me to Randy one night not long before he died at a Carbon 9 show at the Gig on Melrose. He was so pleasant and friendly. We hung out for a while, exchaged “great-to-meet-yous” and parted ways. I got home and there was a transexual on my couch. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Randy died not long after that, and Dave invited us to the funeral. I saw my idols burst into tears. I sat through services among them. I saw my first lifeless body. I stood behind Ozzy Osbourne to pay respects. I wandered around Forest Lawn with my heart in my stomach.
I wrote for a Music magazine called “Rock City News”, a Hollywood Institution of sorts. I typed up the local venue schedules and wrote reviews. This paid nothing except I was invited into the dressing room at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, the dressing room of dressing rooms in the world or Rock’n'Roll. Stupefication followed. That alone made it worth putting up with all the editor’s bullshit, smelly dog, and stifling incense that he thought covered up the smell of the pot he never shared with anyone.
I got into a relationship that nearly physically killed me, and left me mostly dead in most other aspects as well. I am still recovering. So make it a point to ask me to look you in the eye. I miss being able to do that.
To escape it, I went back to school and focused on art and early childhood education. I also started volunteering in the education dept. at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. One of my top 3 passions. I walked in a pool among the most gentle of sharks and little cow-nosed rays, trigger fish and tangs. Horseshoe crabs would scramble across my feet. I touched the Giant Pacific Octopus and it touched me back. I had red sucker marks curling up my arms from a creature that is entirely alien to me yet is more of this earth than dinosaurs, sharks and trees.
I moved to San Diego. To Clairemont, with my best friend and her brand-new boyfriend Joe. Now her husband. I met Jen, and two months later I met my BFAM (brothafromanothamotha) Chris, “The most amazing guy I just met in Ohio” said Jen…though I swear it was only two weeks. Now they’re engaged, and we are all roommates. I became a teacher at a school that, for all its minor annoyances, is the best place I’ve ever worked, giving me all the freedom I could want to teach these kids to be great little human beings, and have made lifelong friends as a result. My job is to encourage peace and creativity, and to administer hugs liberally. Really, I get paid to do that?
I worked with an amazing and dramatic band called Broadsyde first as a merch girl, then as a stage clothes designer of sorts. I mean, I made RAD rockstar cowboy hats and was the embodiement of the Dr. Hook lyric: “I got a freaky old lady/ named Coacaine Kitty/ Who embroiders on my jeans…”
…except I didn’t do or supply cocaine. But I was called “Kitty”. But that was where the designer part ended. Flaky musicians + flaky young directionless artist = not much. So I was a Band-Aid. Which was also a lot of fun.
I bounced around San Diego – to College area, to Hillcrest, back home to Oregon, to Poway in order to be a nanny and live the high life for a while, doing my best to help raise one of the most beautiful little souls in the Universe, Elle. My 3-year-old
bff. She really IS an angel. A real one. Your heart actually feels lighter around this child.
I moved to Ocean Beach April 2007. I moved into the Palms with Chris and Jen 4 months later. In the last 2 years, I’ve met some of the most beautiful, soulful, influential people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. I’ve begun to show my paintings in public and just about everyone is highly receptive. In fact, I’ve run into nothing negative, at least not that I’ve heard. Recently I’ve even sold some, making good money for laying a bit of my soul out for someone else to enjoy. One person that bought one is a fan of Joe Ledbetter. I am also a fan. So now, I am on the same wall as an artist that I myself respect and adore. That Blows. My. Mind.
Joe Ledbetter, “New Morning” How could you not love this??
SO. I ask you. How could I possibly manage to be negative about anything, much less a stupid birthday? I live at the edge of the earth where the sun sparkles daily and tonight the sky was actually smiling at me with the tiniest sliver of silvery moon I’ve ever seen. It’s a breezy spring Saturday night at the beach, where Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” is blaring out a neighbor’s window. I have the gift to be able to spit my imagination onto a canvas. I have friends that make my heart explode with love and happiness every time I talk with them, and a job where I cannot escape unconditional love. I have at least one soul mate, and not in the sense that one would immediately think. Something better. This life.. is only going to get better from now on…to paraphrase. So in short, I can’t be miserable. I’m Cat, and if I died tomorrow I’d be more than satisfied. But really, I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 10 years. 
Though obviously, I have no intention of growing up entirely.
Love,
CAT