A Millennial takes her Boomer parents around Los Angeles 🌴 & a Target run [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

How are you doing? I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty grody as I sit down to write this. I started feeling like I had a sore throat on Monday night, and by Tuesday I was full-blown sick. My Covid test was negative, which was a relief, since a sore throat was how it started for me last time. I guess I just have a regular old cold or virus or something.

At least I didn’t get sick until after my parents left Los Angeles. If you’re not a premium subscriber, you missed when I mentioned in the paywalled portion of last week’s newsletter that my parents were visiting me and my husband, Ross, last weekend. It went well! Of course, their flight landed in the middle of rush hour, so it took them an hour and a half to get across town to our place. My mom said that if she had to drive in traffic like that everyday, she would k*ll herself. (You can see where I get my flair for the dramatic.) Of course, almost no one who lives here actually does that commute daily, because people try to live near where they work, or work near where they live. But people who visit L.A. are always so eager to make declarations about the traffic and how they could never live here after choosing the worst possible drives for themselves.

My parents are both 75 years old (they were high school sweethearts), grew up in inner city Newark with working class parents and now live in my small, rural hometown in New Jersey. We have that classic Boomer/Millennial generational divide, plus, frankly, some class differences that come from me having a very different (upper middle class) upbringing than them. For instance, they think people’s obsessions with their pets is weird, because they grew up with stray dogs running around their neighborhoods, while I have four to five pieces of art in my home honoring my cat. They go to Catholic mass every Sunday, as they have my whole life, while I sleep in or go to brunch. But they hate Trump, love my husband, and have good senses of humor, thankfully, so we have a lot to work with.

They also love wine, so on Friday, we took them wine tasting at Malibu Wines, which was surprisingly fun, even though I drove, so I didn’t drink. It was a gorgeous day and we sat outside and caught up and had lots of little snacks. My dad proceeded to drink two flights of wine, got very silly, made my mom buy Ross and me a very overpriced bottle of sparkling rosé “because everyone deserves to have an expensive bottle of wine at least once,” then fell asleep in the car on the way back. I drove them to Ivanhoe for dinner and we had burgers, which everyone was mostly sober for by then.

On Saturday, we went to Santa Anita Park, which is a horse racing track. My dad has always been a big fan of horse racing, and goes a couple times a year, usually with my godfather, sometimes with my mother. He also always watches the Triple Crown races on TV. In recent years, I have had more mixed feelings about horse racing, especially regarding how the horses are treated, but it makes my dad happy, and he’s 75, you know? I’m at a very “live and let live” place with my folks. I have to admit that it’s nice to be outdoors all day, and as far as gambling goes, it can be pretty low stakes, a dollar or two to bet on each race if you want. We all won at least one bet, but overall, didn’t do too well. The people-watching at the track is always priceless, though. We saw twentysomethings getting drunk in a variety of different hats, a bachelor party that must’ve been 30 deep, all white dudes, and a man who had a shirt with a very long diatribe against Joe Biden on it. I always wonder about people who wear their political opinions like that, whether on a shirt or a bumper sticker on their car. Discussing my political opinions with strangers is literally my nightmare.

For dinner, I was trying to steer them toward Casita del Campo, so at least they could say they had some Mexican food in Los Angeles, but they ended up wanting to go to Otoño, a Spanish restaurant in my ‘hood. They’d never had tapas before, and I think it might’ve been a little too out of their comfort zone. I think they ultimately had enough to eat and said it was good, but it was a stressful process (for me) to get there. My dad is a very picky eater, and it’s hard for me to even know what his preferences are day to day. He pretty much sticks to American and Italian food, but there are even limitations to that. Also, he orders his steaks and burgers medium well, which feels like I’m being stabbed every time I hear it.

It strikes me as funny how there’s this role-reversal once your parents hit a certain age, that you sort of start to “parent” them, driving them around to activities you think they’d like and making sure they have food they can eat and calming them down when they start to fuss. My dad joked that I was trying to tire them out with activities, like little kids.

Sunday, we started out the day with the obligatory taking-of-the-parents-to-the-Huntington-Gardens that is the rite of passage of all Angeleno adult children of non-Angelenos. They were surprisingly reluctant to get an early start, so we only spent about an hour and a half there in the Chinese and Japanese gardens before we had to go across town for our timed tickets to the Academy Museum. I have to say, the Academy Museum is a great place to take your parents if they are any kind of movie fans. They had Sam’s piano from Casablanca (smaller than I expected!), the horse head from The Godfather (less bloody than I expected!), and David Bowie’s costume from Labyrinth (less of a bulge than I expected!). Mostly, though, my parents seemed to like watching the movie clip montages that they projected all over the place and pointing out which ones they recognized. They got tired after two floors of the museum, though, so then we went back to our place and played three-quarters of a game of Scrabble before it was time for our dinner reservation.

Finally, we ended their visit with dinner at the Hippo, my favorite restaurant in L.A. that also happens to have mostly Italian food (a win for my dad!). They liked it a lot! I even got them to try the shaved brussels sprouts salad that they were initially side-eyeing, and they ended up really liking it!

We dropped them off at their hotel, and now they’re in Palm Springs for the next few days, because my brother and my cousin and I have all been there a bunch of times and my mom wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I hope they’re having a good time and relaxing. One of my favorite things to do in Palm Springs is nothing, but my folks aren’t very good at that. They always need an activity. I hope they enjoy themselves.

I don’t have too terribly much today to share with you, on account of being busy with my parents and then being sick. But here are two things I watched/am watching that I enjoyed:

- The Birds (for rent on Prime Video). After visiting the Academy Museum and seeing a lot of Hitchcock artifacts, like the Mount Rushmore backdrop for North by Northwest and the original storyboards for The Birds, Ross was in the mood to watch a Hitchcock movie, and I thought The Birds would be the most fun one. I saw it so long ago that I only remembered the telephone booth scene, and he had never seen it at all. It was actually a lot better and less hokey than I expected! Ross said that the main problem was just that the technology didn’t exist at the time to fully execute on Hitchcock’s vision, and it’s true, some of the scenes where the birds swarm people are not, uh, stunning in their realism, shall we say. But I think the movie does a good job of creating stakes out of “what if a bunch of birds went crazy lol.” Maybe check it out if it’s been a while!

- The Real Housewives of Potomac (Peacock). Ross and I were so in desperate need of a new show that one night I decided to throw on episode one of this Real Housewives franchise, because I had heard it was great but never got around to watching it. I always thought of Potomac as one of the newer Housewives shows, but did you know that there are now SEVEN seasons?! It is very daunting to start a new series with seven seasons that everyone tells you that you have to start watching from the beginning. Anyway, we’re on season two now, and it is a great show. There’s some really good, old-fashioned Housewives drama, there’s strained marriages, there’s fabulous parties, there’s even a twenty-seven year-old who I don’t disapprove of being on the show, and that’s saying something (controversial, but I generally don’t think anyone under 40 belongs on a Housewives show). It also has one of the worst tag lines in Housewives history (“Word on the street is, that I’m the word on the street.”) It’s really, really great.

Alright, what do you say we do A Target Run?

A Target Run

Let’s pretend that we’re just two friends strolling through a Target on a Friday morning, trying to placate our various mental illnesses with big box shopping! Here’s what I’d throw in my cart:

- Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. The Reese’s seasonal candies are always lit as hell, and I think the eggs they have around Easter time are the best ones. They just have a much higher ratio of sweetened peanut butter to chocolate than the regular cups, and I think the peanut butter is where it’s at.

- Lip Smacker Lip Balm Party Pack. Just because you’re 36 doesn’t mean you can’t still buy Lip Smackers. There is literally no law against it! Snap up the Coca Cola or Hello Kitty pack if you’re in the mood, too, why dontcha?

- IRIS 6-Drawer Storage Cart with Organizer Top. I recently bought this portable, plastic set of drawers to store my makeup in, because it had outgrown its case, and I love it! It’s unobtrusive yet stores a lot of shit. I think it would be a good find for crafters and artists as well. Target is a great place to buy plastic things to store your crap in.

- Soap & Glory Hand Food. I love Soap & Glory products, which come in fun packaging and usually have this very particular “pink” scent that they say is rose and bergamot, but doesn’t smell overly floral to me. I would not bring this hand cream into an office, because it smells too strongly, but it sits on my nightstand and is a delight when I remember to put it on.

- Cheez-Its. You may disagree with me, but I love just a classic Cheez-It. I don’t fuck with all the other varietals. Maaaybe I could do a white cheddar one once in a while, but that’s it.

- Essie Good to Go Top Coat. My secret to not smudging my nails while they’re wet is using a super quick drying top coat. I like this one by Essie a lot.

- Olive & June Nail Polish. While we’re talking about nail polish, did you know that Target carries Olive & June? They’re my favorite brand for solid colors. A great color selection, and good staying power.

- Tony Moly Aloe Sheet Mask. You can never have too many sheet masks, right? I love these ones by Tony Moly, especially the aloe for hydration or after I’ve been in the sun a lot. (I also love the cactus mask for when I have breakouts, but Target doesn’t carry that one.)

- Code Names. I love this game! It is family friendly (ages 10 and up), although we didn’t play it with my parents, because I think my dad, in his seniordom, would’ve struggled with it a bit. It’s a team game that involves giving clues and making connections between random words. We even played it online with friends during the early days of the pandemic.

- Telestrations. This is like a formalized game of telephone, with drawing. I love this game because depending on your crowd, it can get as raunchy and inappropriate OR family friendly as you want it to be. (It comes with prompts, but we usually make up our own.) It’s most fun to play with a big group, but you can play with as few as four people. 

- Goodles. This is just Kraft mac n cheese but with a lot more protein and nutritional value added, so you don’t have to feel as guilty about eating a whole box to the face.

- Starburst Jellybeans. Fuck a Jelly Belly; THESE are the best jelly beans that money can buy. I can’t fathom the personality disorder that would cause someone to rate these lower than five stars. This actually isn’t for you; it’s a reminder to myself that I need to stock up.

Alright, I think we’re ready to check out! No, I’m not doing self-checkout, I think it’s a scam and it always secretly ends up taking longer than a cashier because of the errors.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter! Don’t forget to like, comment, and share this newsletter if you’d like–you can use the buttons at the bottom or the top. You can also upgrade to a paid subscription if you want extra content–there’s a special button for you at the bottom of this email!

Until next time—don’t forget to parent your parents.

Love,

Liz

XOXO