Well, beloved readers, after 2 years here at attribute I am saying good-bye. Why, you ask? Oh, how sweet of you. That’s a great question...I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I ran out of thoughts and opinions for the moment, a block of some sort. Maybe I’m lazy or perhaps life is crazy; I have other things I’d like to manifest. I don’t like deadlines, especially redlines. One thing that I know for sure was that hearing all of the lovely feedback I got, from all of you, made me feel like people could actually understand me on some level. Relating to what I was going through, month after month: From family affairs to love affairs, travel, adventure, champagne, old friends, new friends, Rabbi’s and cigarettes...I’ll bow out not so gracefully with this:

On Rituals and Change.

I have certain rituals. I like them; or maybe, rather I like having something to distract me from life, while I sit in my apartment or alone at my bistro table in the evenings pondering the very same thing I am trying to be distracted from. They help me to channel my inner 1940’s ingénue. Tools if you will, for my imagination.

One of my rituals was smoking cigarettes: I quit last month for my 29^th birthday. Now, if I get the need to puff, I purchased an electronic cigarette. Yes, you heard me right. I noticed them at my local gas station, these e-cigarettes eyeballing me every time I would go in there for a chocolate bar (another one of my rituals, eating chocolate…) so I bought said e-cigarette, with a refill pack for $9.99 on top of my initial $19.99 investment for the future of my lungs like I was sending them to Harvard.

I also went ahead and substituted chocolate with a chocolate protein bar, only 200 calories, 8 grams of sugar, 3 carbs and all the taste. Hey, it’s L.A.! We have to keep up, I actually like the things; they’re extremely tasty with a light crunch and zero remorse.

So here I sit, a 2010 version of the 1940’s movie star I’m trying to channel, with my e-cigarette, my protein bar and my laptop playing yoga chants and Paul Simon. Thank god Joan Crawford isn’t alive today, because if she were, she would probably beat me over the head with a wire hanger right out of my boudoir; steal the Champagne out of my hand and my remorse-free chocolate bar would get all mangled. God rest her soul.

As another ritual, my friend Scarlett and I take a daytrip summer adventure every year to pretend like we’re those two ladies in that movie in a car with scarves, except we never drive off a cliff. Well, we met a nice retired man named Herb on the pier in Malibu last summer. He lives in the mobile home community to the right of Paradise Cove. He wore a Bacardi Rum trucker hat and glasses similar to those of JT Walsh in A few Good Men …and topsiders, yeah topsiders…My kind of man.

He had a huge smile on his face when he saw us, so of course we needed to have a picture with him because it’s not everyday you run into a guy with such an all around true, sophisticated style, like that.

These things need to be documented for my grandchildren…men like these are a dying breed. I actually have on my refrigerator, the picture of Scarlett and I running down the pier he took of us. His first Digital picture shot.

So happy he was, like a naive blonde, the kind in those late-night Cinemax movies…or Rock of Love. You know, the ones who just smile and laugh and think everything’s ahhhhwwwwwesome.

I’d say we were onto something. After we took the picture we showed it to him and he just about damn near shat in his vintage golf-pants, he seriously could not understand how the image appeared on the screen as it did. I love Herb, or anyone who’s never heard of a digital camera before. He thought the iPhone was a futuristic, at-home, blood pressure machine that he may or may not have seen, in Total Recall. Oy, Gevalt!

I haven’t run into Herb since, but I’ll never forget him and I’ll never forget you, attribute Magazine. You are like Herb with your Bacardi hat and topsiders, in the way that you inspired me to express my excitement about life and certain things.

I hate saying goodbye. So I won’t.

I will just tell all of you out there to stay beautiful.

Live beautifully,

Love the moment. Each and every one of them, because if you do, you will never look back and have a bad feeling in your tummy, you will never need mental Mylanta.

Live in love of the rituals, the smiles, the golf pants, the long drives and plane rides; the sad times and the kind of happiness that makes your cheeks hurt as much as Heidi Montag’s probably do... (Redline that!)

Life is truly the best movie ever, if you stay present and tune in to the little things around you. If you pay attention beyond the obvious & give people a chance. If you’re never “too cool” for anything or anyone you will never miss out on amazing experiences that you will look back on and be so thrilled about; in the form of the memories and experiences that shape you.

No regrets.

Someone loves you.