Our vacation rental in Encino, California

Folks, if I can give you one piece of vacation advice, it would be this:

Never stay anywhere that’s significantly nicer than your own home.

Because trust me: it’ll be SO hard to leave…

We stayed in the Encino area of L.A., which is in the San Fernando Valley – or just “The Valley”. Tom Petty’s house was just one street along, and the Jackson compound was nearby. We’re told Clark Gable once owned our house, and used to bring his “floozies” to it: I have no way of knowing whether that’s true or not, but I liked to imagine Clark standing out there admiring the view in a silk dressing gown, holding a glass of whisky. (Because Clark Gable would’ve totally drunk whisky for breakfast. And so would I, now that I’m home, actually, if I thought I could possibly get away with it.) As soon as we pulled into the driveway, and got a glimpse of the view, I knew I was in serious trouble. Surely my family couldn’t be expecting me to stay here for two and a half weeks, and then simply pack up and go HOME?

But they were expecting me to do that.

I wonder why they hate me so much?

Here’s the outside of the house, plus some random photos of me posing in my latest Bettie Page dress:

And here’s the inside:

This is the fridge:

I know what you’re thinking. Why so tiny? Don’t worry, here is the spare, right next to it:

What, you don’t have two giant fridges? How do you survive?

Here’s the walk-in closet in the master bedroom:

It was larger than my ENTIRE HOUSE.
By far the best thing about this house, though, was the view:

Oh, how I miss it.

This little rocking chair was where Terry and I used to sit every morning with our coffee:

Every morning we’d sit there. And then, on our second last morning? We were sitting there drinking our coffee, when one of the springs on the chair broke with a BOOOIIIINGG and Terry nearly fell on his ass. And now nobody can sit on that chair no more. Which is just fine by me, because, you know, MY CHAIR.

(That photo of it is now my desktop wallpaper. I actually asked Terry last week if it would be possible to have it blown up to the size of the wall in front of our desks, so I could look at it every day and pretend I was still there. And I wasn’t even joking.)

I really, really miss it.

Still: I guess I have a great excuse to go back?