The Nana and moving day

Today is moving day -- again!

It's hard to keep up with my nomadic lifestyle but to recap we've been staying with my grandma (aka "The Nana") while figuring out where exactly we should live in the Bay Area (read: waiting to see if I got that one dream job. Wah-wahhh. With that offer off the table not only can I now breathe easier, but I can live practically anywhere in the region.) Since all our earthly possessions are just down the street in a public storage locker we decided to stay local in Walnut Creek and recently found an adorable one bed/one bath apartment in the heart of the downtown area, which means I'll end up spending copious amounts of money window shopping and imbibing often at Nordstroms slash H&M slash all the other cute stores and restaurants that are basically 500 ft. from my new front door. (In the inimitable words of Rachel Zoe: "I die.")

Though I'll only be one freeway exit away from my nana, I'm a little sad about leaving since living here for the past three weeks has been more hilarious than I expected. Why? Because I realize, staying here, that my 84-year-old grandma is essentially the Fruit Cake Lady:



Perhaps everyone's grandmas are like the Fruit Cake Lady and it's just dawning on me now, but there is something highly comedic about a sweet old lady who tells it like it is. No nonsense, no bs, no concern for political correctness. I guess when you get to a certain age you simply don't give a damn anymore -- and I love that. The shock factor is magnificent.

Take last week when hilarity ensued in the form of her two shitza-poo puppies, who she took out in her car to run errands with. As nana was in TJ Maxx cruising the home goods aisle, one of the puppies ended up getting into her container of medicine in the front seat and ingesting all 30 pills. The dog (of course) needed its stomach pumped and all my nana had to do that evening to describe the day's events was plop the empty, chewed-up, orange pill bottle on the dinner table with her shaky hands in front of J and I. This was followed up with a comment from her about the "damn" dog being suicidal.

And this is how it's been. Over the last three weeks my nana has uttered dozens of gems, but unfortunately I can only remember a few that made me laugh out loud:

On methods of eradicating Bluejays from her garden:

"If I had a shotgun he wouldn't be so happy, plopping around in that bird bath. We've got too many Bluejays in my garden."

On Justin Bieber's performance on the Today Show:

"Who is this Bee-bur person? He looks like a little girl. Frank Sinatra would be turning over in his grave if he could see this."

On Christina Aguilera's performance on the Today Show:

"Well I don't know about you but I think she looks like a tramp. Who wears their underwear outside their pants? A tramp..."

On Marilyn Monroe:

"She was pathetic."

On sleeping with a 12-gauge shotgun (my late grandpa's gun) next to her bed every night:

"I hope I never have to use the thing. I've never shot a gun before, but the world is a dangerous place. You never know."

On an obese young women in a tight, short dress walking past our lunch table:

Muttered under breath: "Oh honey. That dress is doing absolutely nothing for you."

On whole-milk ice cream she insisted I eat:

Me: "This scoop probably has, like, 1,000 calories in it..."

Nana, after a brief pause: "So what. It's milk. It's good for your skin."