I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star (22 page)

I REMEMBER SO CLEARLY THE CONVERSATION WHEN
Dean Johnsen told me he had kids. We were set up on a blind date by our mutual friend Matt but couldn’t schedule it for a few weeks (because of his custody schedule, though I didn’t know that at the time), so we just started talking on the phone. A lot. We talked on the phone almost every day before we even met. It was fun and romantic, and I liked feeling free to just talk without being self-conscious that my bangs were greasy, if I spilled sauce on my white shirt, or if I had a booger. It was a very stress-free way to get to know someone. Maybe that’s what it’s like to Internet date. Although I did like the idea that if this Dean Johnsen turned out to be a super jerk, I could punch Matt in the arm, and I would never be able to punch my computer in the arm for a bad fix up, and I knew I’d want to punish someone, not some thing—it’s much more gratifying.

Dean didn’t tell me about the kids or even the divorce for our first few phone dates, and then one night, a few days before our first actual in-person date, he said, “Did Matt tell you about me?” Immediately, my mind went to AIDS. He has AIDS. You see, my house is off what I lovingly refer to as AIDS Boulevard. It’s not
a boulevard of AIDS but a very busy road that is plastered with billboards touting the dangers of unsafe sex. It’s a scary drive to the valley from my house, and since I was single again, I couldn’t help but harbor a fear that I would end up like Molly Ringwald in the Lifetime movie where she got AIDS from sleeping with some bartender one time. Look, those billboards for safe sex work on me: they really freak me out! So, there I am, talking on the phone with my future husband, and he asks me a question like that? Of course I thought he had HIV, and of course I would get fixed up with a really nice, smart, funny guy who also had no immune system. Well, you can probably guess that he didn’t have it (and doesn’t, and neither do I. PSA: Have you been tested in a while? Should you? Yes), but he did tell me that he was divorced. That’s it? Divorced? No big deal. I knew he was older than I was, and I wanted to date someone older since the Peter Pans of Los Angeles had yet to work out for me, and I figured an older man had the likelihood of being divorced. Then he told me he had kids … and that was OK too. I was sort of prepared for that possibility. I mean, you almost want an older guy to be divorced because if he’s not, there could be a weird reason he never married. And if he is divorced, then chances are good he has kids. I admittedly didn’t think it that far through at the time, but I wasn’t shocked or even surprised.

The last bomb Dean dropped was that he lived in Thousand Oaks, California. That may mean nothing to a lot of you, but it is an hour away from where I live. And an hour and a half in L.A. traffic. At first I was silent on the phone, processing. I asked Dean about the Target that was there, right off the 101 highway. He said, “Yeah, we have a Target out here, but the one you’re thinking of is in Woodland Hills. Thousand Oaks is farther than that.” There was somewhere farther than that? I
was
thinking he meant Woodland Hills, which is still far, but about twenty minutes
closer than the suburb he was talking about. Woodland Hills I could stomach. But then he told me Thousand Oaks was actually in Ventura County. There was a different area code for this land he lived in. Now I’m really spinning/reeling/freaking out. I realize I hadn’t even gone on my first date with this guy, I still had no idea what he looked like, but still, I had to wonder how I would manage a relationship with anyone who lived in a different county than me. Until that point, I had a strict rule about not dating anyone on the Westside of Los Angeles, but this wasn’t anything I’d even considered before. Divorce? Whatever. Kids? OK, fine. But an hour-plus commute if everything went the way I was hoping it would go? That was a tougher pill to swallow … an hour? And the kids live there? And so does their mom? And their grandma? And they all like it there? Do they have a lot of friends? What I’m getting at is that I was hoping that these young Johnsens had wanderlust and no friends or ties to the community and would love nothing more than to move with their dad to Los Angeles! Yes, my brain was moving way faster than our relationship was, but I
really
liked this Dean Johnsen, he gave good phone, and we’d already had the STD talk. Well, my fantasy was just that, a fantasy. His kids have all the friends. In fact, they seem to know almost everyone in that town. They play all the sports. They go to a public school, and it’s a really good one, and since their mom and grandma also live there, they are not going anywhere.

Well, lucky for me, I was reading a book in my book club that made my decision to go through with the date an easy one. It was called
Marry Him
by Lori Gottlieb. Someone in my book club knew the author, I think, so we were reading it in hardcover. It was about how single women limit themselves with all their deal breakers when dating. I thought it was a little harsh, but Ms. Gottlieb made some good points, and I thought she might
be right. Most of my single friends
did
seem to be limiting themselves by their prerequisites, and I felt maybe I was in danger of limiting myself as well. So, with this theme fresh in my head, I was willing to give this guy a shot. I had been striking out with guys my age who were geographically desirable, so why not go out with a guy who I knew owned a house and a car, had insurance, and made me laugh? Those items were high on the list I carried around in my wallet of what I wanted in a husband.

So, we finally had our first date. I was dying to see what this guy looked like. If he was as cute as he was funny, I was going to have a hard decision ahead of me. And he was. I liked him. A lot. I didn’t meet his kids until we were serious, though. My first “date” with the kids was at Claim Jumper (their turf). But we sat in the bar (my turf). I brought them cupcakes as per my aunt Teresa’s suggestion to win them over with sugar. Things went really well, and eventually we started having sleepovers in Thousand Oaks even on nights he had the kids. Judge if you must, but we waited until we were super in love, and the kids seemed to like having me and Buckley around.

And I can’t leave out their mother, the Sheriff. For a really long time my friends thought I was joking and that was a nickname I made up for her, but no. She is an actual sheriff in Ventura County. I feel like a character Paul Rudd would play in a romantic comedy about a guy who finds out the gal he likes has an ex who’s a cop. But it’s not Paul Rudd, it’s me, and it’s not a movie, it’s my life. My competition is Sheriff Barbie. Oh, yeah, did I mention the Sheriff is hot? She has a rockin’ body and long blond hair and is, miraculously, always tan. And she carries a gun, everywhere. When she runs to the bathroom during one of Emilee’s soccer games and asks me to keep an eye on her purse, I have to think twice about whether or not I want that kind of responsibility. She is nice, though, and fun, and we get along really well. I am super
lucky. I’ll take gun-toting police Barbie over a bat-shit-crazy ex who hates my guts and makes it her mission in life to make me miserable. Yeah, I got it good, because I have heard horror stories, like scarier than the
Saw
movies.

Our relationship was picking up pace, and I started spending more and more time in TO (Thousand Oaks). I was getting used to the suburban atmosphere. It reminded me of the Southern California version of where I grew up, yet so different from everywhere I’d lived since. I loved that there wasn’t much traffic, there was ample parking, well-stocked chain stores were everywhere, and it was safe—thanks in part to the Sheriff. People’s lives seemed to revolve around their kids and the community. No one had a nanny, and families ate dinner together every night. Dean told me it was like Mayberry, and after looking up what that was, I have to agree. I especially liked that Hollywood wasn’t a player in this town, and no one cared what I did for a living.

Soon we got engaged and started to talk about where we were going to live. Dean’s job is a five-minute drive from my house in Hollywood, and he only has the kids half of the time; it didn’t really make sense for him to have that commute every single day if he didn’t
have
to. Dean had been driving three hours a day for years, his back hurt, he had 200,000 miles on his hybrid, and I had a perfectly good house that we could stay in on the days we didn’t have the kids. And selfishly, I was nervous about being out there alone during the days that Emilee and Lucas were with their mom. I thought the transition would be easier for me if I got to hang on to a little bit of my old life. So we decided to change nothing. We never moved in with each other. And as of today, we still haven’t. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” my dad has told me a million times. So we didn’t. We lead a very double life. Or we have the best of both worlds, depending on your preferred idiom.

Dean and I fell in love and got married, and I became a stepmom
in a faraway land (fifty-three miles from my house, to be exact). In the deal I got two kids, a crazy long commute every other week, an ex-wife, and another dog! Most people just get a new set of dishes. It’s been fun, and half of the time we have a totally newlywed-like lifestyle. We go out to eat, see bands play, get drinks a lot, see movies, hang out with friends. And the other half of the time we hang out at the local baseball field, carpool to and from soccer practice, try to think of fun things to do as a family between sports, and then collapse into bed, totally exhausted, wondering how we will make it to Friday, kind of like every other family in the world. But it’s awesome! In the beginning, I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know where anything was in that town. I got lost driving home from a drop-off two blocks away. I couldn’t remember the days we had the kids and the days we didn’t. It was a gigantic change for me, but I think I’m kind of getting the hang of it, or at least I’m getting better at hiding the fact that I’m not.

I LOVE ADVICE. I LOVE ENCOURAGING WORDS, AND
my bookshelves reflect this. But I am also pretty certain that most people know more than I do about almost everything. I think I can come off at times as a bit of a know-it-all, but it’s really just a defense mechanism I have cultivated after years of feeling like a total imbecile. I do love learning from others, though, and I want the real experts (about everything!) to teach me. This idea was the basis for my Web series,
Reluctantly Healthy
. It was really just an excuse for me to gather expert advice and share it with the world for free! Instead of paying a trainer or chef or nutritionist to tell me what to do, I can just have a few cameras film the whole session, air it on Yahoo!, and I’m set! Advice for me and the masses! I think I really nailed that one.

Of course sometimes there is advice that no one can help me with. There are just some life lessons that we all have to learn on our own, and those are the hardest. There aren’t a lot of quotes and advice I live by—I forget them too easily, unless I write them on Post-its all over my kitchen—but these have done me
pretty well thus far. And in the interest of sharing the
Reluctantly Healthy
way (minus the cameras and airing it on the Internet), I thought I’d pass them along to you, too.

She was being literal when she said this to me my junior year, I did it, and I got a solo in
The Pajama Game
that I should
not
have gotten because my singing voice is challenged, at best. My co-star had to hum the tune in my ear during the performance, which I later learned was picked up on the mic. But whatever! She was right. I’ve heard “Go big, or go home,” but I like Mrs. H.’s version better. Also, because it reminds me of my audition and how when I left the room that afternoon someone in the hallway said, “Oh my God, that sound was you singing?”

I remember it first coming out of my mom’s mouth when I left for college but have heard it since a lot, and it’s 100 percent right. It ruins everything. I have written this on
a lot
of Post-it notes, in addition to several times in this book already.

She yelled this at me over the phone the morning after I got drunk in college and couldn’t find my eyebrows on my face. OK mornings after.

I actually have no memory of who told me this, but it works … I hear … not that I would know … I mean, you know, it’s just the word on the street … from people who have had stuff done … not me …

Oh, the hours of sweet sleep I will never get back because I lay there just trying to convince myself I could wait until my alarm went off to go to the bathroom.

This anecdote has been censored for the sake of my stepchildren and my dignity. But I would like to take this opportunity to thank that Planned Parenthood nurse. She was awesome and probably saved a lot of lives in Chicago. Hopefully, she still is!

She is awesome, another parent to me here in this big city, and the reason I have good credit and a retirement account and my phone never got shut off.