one last word, v3

People Magazine has this new feature thing on the last page of their magazine.  On the last page, they have a new feature called the last word (so clever!) where a celebrity answers a few questions on the last things they've done.

So even though I'm not a celebrity or anything, I'm going to go ahead and answer the questions.  Because, why not?

1. The last time I was starstruck - well, I have to say that I don't have too many opportunities to be starstruck.  Because I live in a little one-light town in the country where I have only seen one actual live celebrity, Lili Taylor (among 500 other things, she was in Mystic Pizza and Say Anything - two movies that I love).  I was behind her in the grocery store.  It was a little shocking, but she bought rich people food. Anyway, a week or two ago when I was in LA, I saw Seann William Scott right in front of my face and he smiled and was adorable and I felt a little flustered.  I guess that counts.

2. The last thing I lost - Well, I wouldn't exactly say lost, more like, left behind.  I was in the city at the sweetest hotel ever, and I left my iPod charger by accident!  Annoying!  So it's not technically lost, but kind of.


3. The last book I read - Man, I am in the middle of reading a goofy but hilarious book - "Are You There Vodka, It's Me Chelsea," by Chelsea Handler, and this book called "Expecting Adam," by Martha Beck, which is about expecting a child with Down Syndrome.  I have about 500 books on my "to read" list that I keep adding to, but don't seem to making much of a dent on...


4. The last vacation I took - Well I just went on a little getaway to California with Kara.  I'm kind of liking California. This time I went to LA - Marina del Rey and Santa Monica.  It was awesome.


5. The last dream I had - Oh, I dream every night.  But then I usually forget all of the great details by about the time I brush my teeth. All I know is that last night's dream was a good one.


6. The last time I was scared - Well I was a little scared the other night walking by myself.  It was so so dark, and I walk in this one section that doesn't have sidewalks.  I was scared that a car was going to come by and hit and run me, then like, I'd be all laying half dead, bleeding out with a pneumothorax in the weeds but nobody would find me til morning, when it would probably be too late to save me.  Overactive imagination much?


7. The last big splurge - I guess that would be for my good living room - like I bought a nice little pile of furniture.  But guess what?  Now I have no more furniture to buy!  And that right there is some very good news.


8. The last person I told I love you - That would more than likely be Alex.


9. The last time I got mad - Last night I got a little mad.  But I got over it.  I am currently still over it.


10. The last thing I regretted - The last thing that I regretted would have to be pressing send on an email. I sat there for about 15 seconds before pressing send, having a mental debate with myself.  Then I did the typical, fuck it, whatever move, and pressed send.  And then of course,  I was thinking wait wait, wait!  But I couldn't take it back.  Which is pretty much the definition of regret.

3 years

So three years ago today, I decided to start blogging.  I was looking back at that first post, wondering what I was thinking - inserting myself into this odd world.  Accidentally coming across my old journals and diaries prompted me to try the blog thing.  Looking at them made me remember how much I liked to write, to get things down, to get things out.  It made me remember stuff, stuff that I had forgotten was important, or relevant, or interesting.


I was kind of sick of forgetting stuff.  There are tons of years of memories of things that are somewhere in my brain, buried deep or floating around near the surface, but obscured by my current life. More than likely I won't fully remember those things, those experiences, those moments because I have nothing really to remind me of how I was feeling during a certain time period.


When I read any post that I have written here, I know exactly how I was feeling.  I can see my mood, my feelings in every single post.  I don't believe others can see my mood, necessarily, which is OK.  Because no offense, but this thing is mostly for me, I write here for my own reasons.  I don't ever try to be cryptic or anything.  Sometimes it may work out that way, but that's only to protect something that I half need to get out and half want to keep to myself. 


Anyway, it's kind of neat to look back and watch how I grew more comfortable with this process, with this interesting way of exposing myself to potentially a whole lot of people - some people that I know, and plenty of people that I will probably never even meet.  Great people, interesting people, kind people.  Some people that I actually think I could be friends with in real life.  Typically, I am really a very private person and to be honest, I'm not all that great at being open with most people. I've found that writing often gets me to be a little bit more real, even knowing that there may be a little audience out there getting a glimpse of what's inside this crazy brain of mine.


In these three years, not a heck of a lot has happened that you would consider major.  No new babies, no new jobs, no big moves, no major life changes.  Just regular, normal, every day life, passing by one day at a time.  Some great times, some sucky times, some boringly average times.

Three years ago...

Three years ago, I had a three-year-old in her first year of Pre-K, a 7-year-old in 3rd grade, an 11-year-old in 7th grade, and a 19-year-old in college.  I was still adjusting to being alone - no babies on my hip all day, every day.  Still tossing around the idea of just one more.  Most of my identity was wrapped up in being a mom, so it was kind of scary.  Like, who am I if I don't have one kid or another attached to my body wherever I go?  I'd had that for the past nineteen years, I think that was kind of a big adjustment for me.


In this past three years I've grown some, learned some, accepted some, rejected some.  I'm OK with where I am at the moment, but I'd like to be better than just OK.  I'm working on that.


I have no idea where this will take me, how long I will do this thing.  I figure I'll keep at it til I have nothing left to say, or til I get sick of putting myself out there.


So, three years.  That's a lot of years.  A lot of posts.  A lot of time... I wonder where I'll be three years from now.

Boss Hogg and a bunch of other stuff

So my sister Ali always lets me glom onto her friendships.  Probably because I am not good at making any of my own.  That's nice of her, isn't it?


Not only does she let me glom, but she usually forces me to participate.  It's good to have a sister like that when you tend to kind of keep to your own little self.


So anyway, a couple of years ago, Ali made me meet a few of her work friends, fellow teachers.  She would force me to come over and hang at the pool and listen to them talk about teaching.  They are some of the best second grade teachers in all of NY State.  They may even have a certificate in a file to prove it.  So, you know, I always sort of sat there and listened to them talking about tier one words and annoying kids and their superintendent and shitty vacation time and how they couldn't go to the bathroom all day long.


But after a while, I kind of realized that I actually liked some of her friends.


Shocking, right??  I know!


So forced pool hangs turned into a few forced get togethers that I actually (!) enjoyed.  I even agreed to let her friend Cheri come to OBX with us in the event that Indi couldn't come.  That is major.  I hate when anyone comes on vacation with us because I like to be able to not wear a bra (at bedtime! sheesh) and feel comfy about it, you know?  If we had new people there, how am I supposed to go braless?  And forget about burping with gusto.  How am I supposed to burp heartily with new people?


So Saturday night we went to have dinner with a bunch of Ali's teacher friends at Cheri and her husband Kenny's house.  Their friend Jackie and her newish husband Junait were there.  Those two couples are my favorite of Ali's friends, and we really like hanging with them.  Cheri is this cute little funny girl with a huge wide smile, and she puts up with my husband's disgusting humor.  Her husband Kenny is really chill and he also puts up with my husband pretending to be a dick.  Jackie is just about a snitch older than my daughter Kara, and she's just really easy to hang around with.  She actually has sleepovers at Ali's almost every week.  Her newish husband Junait is pretty hilarious.  At first he seemed kind of quiet, but eventually he seemed so not quiet.  He's very good with a fake Indian accent.  He actually called my husband a shitfuck in an Indian accent once because he was being a crappy DJ.  It may have been one of they funnier things that I have ever heard my husband be called.  Well deserved though, because really, there is no good excuse for being a crappy DJ in the car.


So the rest of them are alright, some are more alright than others.  One girl's husband is a dick and he gives off this skeevy vibe.  I feel sorry for his wife because she's nice.  Another one I think I could like more if I loosened up - she's nice and has a cool husband who is my type of person.  Not in the way that I am checking out her husband, just in the way that he is cool and interesting.  Lots of times kids are welcome to come along, which I think is really nice.  Brooke really enjoys some of the kids from this group.  Poker usually goes down at these kind of teacher get-togethers.  We didn't partake in poker because I had to leave a bit early to pick up Alex from far far away, which was annoying but cute because he likes a girl.  Also, I suck at poker and I suck at getting the rules.  Alex doesn't suck though and he wins a lot when he plays.  He has a decent poker face.  Obviously.


Alex wins at a lot of stuff, not just poker.  He's really competitive, especially in sports.  Pretty much all sports except skiing, which he just picked up a few years ago.  He's still new at it, and he flips out when he falls because he doesn't like to look like he can't do it.  It's pretty funny.  He is very deceiving in the way that he looks, people don't expect him to be athletic unless they know him, or know of him from the glory days.  When he was a Varsity starter for soccer or baseball in 8th grade.  Haha Ali.  When he was Athlete of the year possibly more than once.  When he saved the entire season with a grand slam!  Blahblahblah.  Isn't it funny how guys have a binder of their newspaper clippings from high school sports - the clippings where their name was printed, or their picture was in there or something.


I suppose no funnier than the fact that I cart around a huge tub of things from my high school days, a good portion of which are really stupid.  I always say I am going to go throw a bunch of that stuff out, and ugh.  I have such a hard time with that.  There are some things that I will never toss, like ever.  But really I am pretty sure I don't need my pay stubs from the job I had when I was 15.  Or that autographed picture of Boss Hogg.

I shit you not, I have an autographed picture of Boss Hogg.  I'm not sure why I don't have the actual cute Duke's of Hazard guys, or even Daisy.  Why in the world do I have Boss Hogg?  


I believe that is the question of the day.

maybe I SHOULD censor music around here...

So you know, I'm a lover of all kinds of music.  I honestly don't believe in censoring music for the benefit of the kids - I've always kind of considered it a form of art.  Like, almost the same thing if my kid saw a nude painting or you know, that famous statue of the naked guy with the small penis.  What is it, Michelangelo or something?  I can't remember.  ANYWAY I've always been very anti-censoring.  Music, art, books, whatever.  I pretty much feel like if it is relevant, or it isn't like blatantly obnoxious, I am fine with it.  And if there is something that I do find offensive, I just don't put it out there to my kids.  You know, I'll just change the channel, turn the station on the radio, fast forward the tune.  We parents have plenty of control over that stuff.


Also, I do not swear in front of my kids, at all.  I do love swearing, but I know my audience.  And my audience is a very small one without children in it.  Unless if you include the internet, because sometimes I forget about that audience. 


Obviously, rap and hip hop always have a ton of swear words in their songs.  I enjoy a bunch of music from that genre, however I don't usually play it in the car with the kids because it really is very glaringly inappropriate.  Every other word is a bad word, and you can't like, sing along at all without singing some version of Effing effity eff car, g.d. effing gun, em effing drugs, you get the point.  Pretty much every other word is the F word.  And I don't mean "fart."  


Well, so even though I don't believe in censoring, I think I am pretty careful about avoiding the inappropriate tunes.  I'm trying to keep my kids from sounding like a bunch of scuzzy dirtbags for as long as I can.  It's usually about middle school around here before the kids try test out the swearing thing.  


So anyway, I was driving Brooke to school today and a song by Drake and Nicki Minaj came on - Moment 4 Life.  It's pretty inappropriate, for sure.  Normally I would have switched it, but I wasn't paying much attention because Brooke and I were talking about the field trip she was going on that day - she's been so excited, her mouth was going a mile a minute.  It seriously went right over my head, just kind of like light music was playing in the background.


So all of a sudden, Brooke stops mid-sentence and says "There are bad words in this song Mom."  And I was like, "You know, there are some bad words in this song Brooke."  And she goes, "Want me to tell you one of the bad words Mom?  Fuckin'."  And I cringed.  And I was like, shit, how does she know the real F word is a bad word at 6 years old??  Thank you very much Nicki Minaj.  So I don't act all shocked or freaked out because I kind of feel like if you make too much of a big deal about the bad words, those words suddenly become really attractive to a kid, just because they aren't supposed to say them.  So I said, "Yeah, that's a really bad word - you're not allowed to say that."  And she goes, "Yeah, like I couldn't just go into school and say, 'I'm going on a fuckin' field trip today' to my teacher, right Mom?"


And inwardly I was like, omg.  Also, I felt a snitch proud that she completely used the eff word in context.  High five!  No, just kidding.  Kinda.  So I said, "No, no you can't say that word at school, or anywhere.  You'll get in big trouble if you do because it's really inappropriate."  And she goes, "Well what will happen?"  And I said, "Bare hiney spanking."  So she mulls it over for a second and goes, "I know Mom.  I won't say it."  At this point we've reached the crazy stupid drop off line at the elementary school, so I'm just about to kiss her goodbye and she stops and says, "Is 'wee' a bad word?"  And I was like "Wee?"  And she goes, "Yeah, like in the song it says 'smoke some wee.'"  As in weed.  As in pot.  As in marijuana.  


Ugh.  I definitely went straight home and switched around the playlists on my iPod.  Hearing a sweet little innocent voice saying fuck and weed, and grasping that they are bad things to say made me rethink the censoring of the music in front of little ears thing.  


Six year old kids have no business knowing about wee.

what would Jessee do

What Would Jessee Do?
That is the question.


The other night I saw this comedian on TV, and he was doing this sketch about how his 18 year old self reacted to situations vs. how his 25 year old and 40 year old self would react to the same situations.  It was really funny, and it really made me think about myself, and how my reactions to things have changed over time.


So I took his questions and applied them to me - 18 year old me, and 40(42!) year old me.  

1. Someone encourages you to have a drink (or substance) that you don't like or want:
WWJD?
18 yr old self - Take it and either drink it or pretend to drink it.  I was always so worried that I would look like a baby or not cool.  I did some really dumb things because of that, and many a plant ended up downing a glass of rum.
40 yr old self - Say no thanks.  If I don't want something, I feel no pressure what-so-ever to fit in at this point in my life.

2. Your boyfriend or girlfriend was acting distant:
WWJD?
18 yr old self - Be pissed, then probably turn it around and be distant back to him.  Because who does he think he is anyway??! 
40 yr old self - Talk.  Ask if something is up.  Try to work things out. 

3. Someone gossips about you, true or not, it's not nice at all:
WWJD?
18 yr old self - I would be devastated.  But I would so act like I didn't care, and nobody would ever see me cry over something like that.   
40 yr old self - I would be mad.  I would either A: get to the source, and confront them.  I hate confrontation, but I would not let anyone talk crap about me without speaking up.  or B: I would give the evil eye every time I saw them and never speak to them again. (I'm guessing it would be B.  I might talk big, but I really am not so good at confrontation)

4. A guy asks for your number, but you are already committed to someone:
WWJD?
18 yr old self - I probably would give them someone else's number, because I never wanted to hurt anyone's feelings.  Actually, I did do that once.  But the guy was so freaking ADORABLE, I couldn't even tell him I was dating someone else.  Then he called and found out I gave him a fake number and he came to my work and confronted me about it.  Then I went out with him because I couldn't even help myself.  But that's a long story.
40 yr old self - I would say "Do you know how old and wrinkly I am?? Thanks anyway, but someone's already stuck with me."

5. You get stuck behind an old fogey doing about 15 in a 55 MPH zone:
WWJD?
18 yr old self - Probably fume.  Then ride his tail, then pass him on a double line.  I am ashamed to admit I was obnoxious like that.
40 yr old self - Seriously, I would chill and wait it out.  I don't sweat the small stuff anymore.  I usually create these little scenarios in my head as to why they are driving so slow, and honest to Cod, I usually smile about it.

6. Someone is really rude to you, and it's uncalled for:
WWJD?
18 yr old self -  I am sure I would just stand there and do nothing.  I would take it, I had no guts to stand up to people who were mean to me.
40 yr old self - I would definitely (and I have) speak up.  I would also say don't be rude to me.  And in a rare occasion I could possibly give them the finger behind their back but I would never admit it.   Then I would go home and replay the incident in my head 87 times and come up with brilliant things that I should have said in the moment.

7. You trip in front of a large group of people and fall flat (FLAT) on your face with two plates full of food that ultimately go flying on the floor in front of you (not that this has ever happened to me before.  well, maybe.):
WWJD?
20 something yr old self - Lay there for a second while your mortified husband laughs so hysterically that someone else's husband feels sorry for you and helps you up.  Then slink away, far far away.  And hope you never run into that same group of people, ever again.  And hope that if you do happen to run into one of them, they don't recognize you standing upright.
40 yr old self - probably the same thing...

one last word, v2

People Magazine has this new feature thing on the last page of their magazine.  On the last page, they have a new feature called the last word (so clever!) where a celebrity answers a few questions on the last things they've done.

So even though I'm not a celebrity or anything, I'm going to go ahead and answer the questions.  Because, why not?

1. The last time I laughed: It's actually pretty sad when you have to think hard about when the last time you laughed, isn't it?  I'm going to go with last night, when Megan accidentally dropped her dad straight to the floor with a well placed  karate kick to the groin.  Poor guy.  Unfortunately, I laughed til I cried.  It was hilarious.  I'm mean.

2. The last time I hosted a party:  I believe the last actual party I officially hosted was a little super bowl party.  Complete with home made pizza, wings and yummy dips.

3. The last thing I bought for my home:  The last thing I bought for my home was a living room.  Like, a couch, chair, coffee table, end tables, lamps, etc.  It might seem like a bit of a large purchase, but it was a good deal!

4. The last celebrity crush I had: Oh man.  I have a love triangle crush on Stefan and Damon from the Vampire Diaries.  I can't help it.  I want to make out with both of them, not at the same time.

5. The last country I visited:  Well, technically, the last country I visited was Mexico, like, forever ago.  I think I was 16.  It was great.  The next country I want to visit might be Greece.  I think I need a passport.  I better get on that.

6. The last thing I cooked:  The last thing I cooked would have to be last night's dinner, which was this crockpot masterpiece with chicken and prosciutto and onions in a wine sauce on bow ties.  Yummm.  It was such a good easy meal.  I am actually in mid-cook of peanut butter cookies as we speak.  They smell so great.  I may or may not be fighting salmonella at this very moment.  How can you not eat the cookie dough?

7. The last sport I picked up: Hm.  Is weight training a sport?  I'm not very sporty.  Oh yeah!  I've been running a little and I haven't been hating it!  It's very exciting.  I need to build up some endurance though because I can't go very far before I have to slow down and walk a bit.

8. The last prank I pulled: Wow.  I can't even remember.  Maybe I will stand behind the door and scare one of my kids.  That could be funny.

9. The last tattoo I got: I've never gotten a tattoo.  I might though.  I'll keep you posted.

10. The last TV show I watched: Well, SpongeBob doesn't count because while I may have been listening to it with half of an ear, I wasn't technically watching it.  I may have chuckled once or twice.  But I believe the last TV show I actually watched and paid attention to was International House Hunters a few nights ago.  I really feel that I deserve a vacation house in Belize.  

Don't we all?

motor boating with your eyes. oh, we know.

So I went to this doctor appointment a few weeks ago.

You know how as a girl, you can totally tell if someone is motor boating you with their eyes?  Well I think I was doing that.  Sort of.   But it wasn't my fault!  I had no control over it.

See, the doctor walked in, and I was seated in such a way that I was face to face with his crotch.  Like, he's a tall doctor, and until he actually sat down across from me, I was completely staring him in the pants.  And really, I felt very uncomfortable.  Because guess what?  He had a dribble right there on his pants.  Very noticeable and very inappropriately placed, I might add.


Ugh.  It's like when someone has food in their teeth or a massive mole on their face, and that is all you can focus on.


So all the while, I was sitting there making a concentrated effort to not look at his crotch, and it felt so obvious.  He was talk, talk, talking himself up, and I was barely hearing a word he said because I was so busy thinking about how obvious I must have looked.


Fairly recently, I made the revelation to Alex that women absolutely know when you are checking out their boobs and not their face, and he was shocked.  Shocked.  Then we did a little play-acting so I could prove it to him, because he didn't believe me.  I was all like, "What are you, a moron?  Your eyes are totally focused directly on my chest!"


So now he's mortified, because there are just far too many women with boobs to ogle in his work environment, and here he thought he was doing the ogling all discreetly.  Thank Cod he has me to look out for him.

Not exactly part 2. Instead, all over the damn place. Roll with it.

I was going to finish up with a play by play account of my little jaunt to the West (still not sure if I should be capitalizing the W here.  Someone help me.) coast.  Wait!  Just wait a second here.  Let's just delve into the rules of English for a moment.  I was trying to not make this a long, boring post but damn, here we go again... 


Why do I feel the need to capitalize the W in west but not the C in coast?  One would wonder how my brain works.  I claim to be a lover of words, and I can't grasp this simple little thing of capitalization.  And just in case you were wondering, I can't type the word capitalization without having spellcheck automatically fix it for me.  Every. Damn. Time.  Oh don't be so high and mighty!  You try to spell it fast and correctly without spellcheck!  


So I know I have literally tens of readers every day who would love to help me with this issue that plagues me like, well, the fucking plague.  For the love of Cod and all of the Baby Cheeses, what is the rule?! (See how I did that?  I capitalized Cod and Baby Cheeses.  I know how to capitalize proper nouns, yes I do!)


OK, phew.  Now that I know I will have someone help me, I feel much better and I can wipe the sweat from my brow.  I can't wait to know the rule you guys.


Oh shut up, I know I am a word nerd.  


Sorry, that was rude.  I've been very fresh today, haven't I?  Sorry.  We don't say shut up in this house.  My kids think the "S" word is shut up.  I think telling someone to shut up is pretty rude, so we've always considered "shut up" a bad word(s).  We say please be quiet.  Even if it is screamed PLEASE BE QUIET at the top of one's lungs like a lunatic, it sounds much nicer and more polite than shut up, don't you think?


Want to hear some other weird bad words in our house?  Besides the normal bad words that everyone already knows I mean.


Pee.  I blame my mom for this because we weren't allowed to say it growing up.  Oh my Cod I am my mom! (If you're reading this mom, that wasn't exactly an insult.  It was more like an exclamatory revelation!)  Anyway, I know pee is very acceptable in every other house in the universe.  You might wonder what the replacement word is, and I will tell you.  It is "wet."  You can bet your ass that people look at my husband funny when he says, "Be right back guys, I have to wet," to his co-workers.  I told him maybe he should say "Take a wetter," to sound a little more socially acceptable.  I think it works.


I know my son sneakily says pee.  I've heard him on several occasions. *sigh* There's only so much a parent can do these days...  


Also they think the "F" word is fart.  Yes, yes, I know that fart is also socially acceptable.  I just always think it sounds kind of crass.  Not that we often sit around discussing bodily functions.  And not that I am judging you for saying the "F" word.  I mean really, I say a lot of real, normal bad words, and I am totally fine with that.  I love bad words.  I love to swear.  In fact, I often sound like a truck driver when I am out of kid-range. There's just something about those words though.


When I was a little kid, I was all embarrassed that we weren't allowed to say pee or fart (Ugh I swear I am cringing writing that.  I've been conditioned.  Just like Pavlov's dogs!  But not really.).  My sisters and I thought we were all rebellious when we said those words.  We'd be like saying them all in a whispered tone so Mom wouldn't hear.  We'd be like, "Ew.  Somebody farted."  then we'd look around nervously to see if Mom heard us.


Hm.  I have to be honest here.  I'm not sure how to wrap up this post.  And I am really not sure how the topic of this post changed so dramatically.  Welcome to my brain guys.


Maybe I will wrap with this - I'm not going to write a play by play of the rest of my getaway like I said I would because I really think that it might be a little on the boring side.  Not the getaway, the getaway was not on the boring side at all.  It was on the awesome side.  But you know, it was awesome to me -- I grasp that it probably isn't awesome to you.  So I will save you the rest of the long-winded, awesomely boring details.


EXCEPT one.  I have to tell you all one detail, because it is like, the best detail ever!  And I can't not share it with you.


We saw Stiffler!!  Yes, we were face to face with Stiffler at LAX, and he had eye contact with Kara and gave her a little cutie smirk.  And he was scruffily and adorable.  That may have been one of the highlights of the LA part of the getaway.  When Kara pointed out that he was standing right in front of my face in a hushed and furious whisper with her eyes, I was all, omg!  A real live famous person!


It was very exciting.  I controlled myself though.  I acted very nonchalant, when inside I was having a mental flashback of all of the hilariously inappropriate things Stiffler says.  Kind of like when you die, you have a mental flashback of all of the highlights of your life.  So I'm definitely not the kind of person who would ever just mosey up to Stiffler and say, "Loved you in American Pie, dude."  But I did love him in American Pie, and I thought he was really funny in Role Models.  I've always been pro-Seann William Scott.  It was really cool to see him in person, like just a normal guy in an airport.


I'll also include a couple shots from the rest of the LA trip, just because.

Got Kara laughing at Killer Shrimp

The streets of Marina del Rey

Beach feet

Lunch in Santa Monica

The Santa Monica Pier

Beach

The pier

So there you go.  Officially wrapped.

a couple days in review

So I mentioned before that Kara and I were heading out to California for a few days.  So I was MIA because I was hanging West coast style, yo.


I'm so gangsta.  I'm actually so gangsta, I have no idea if I should capitalize the W in the word "West."  Yes?  No?


Anyway, we flew out Saturday afternoon and got in at around dinner time.  So we took a taxi to our hotel in Marina del Rey, and when we pulled up, I was thinking, hm.  This doesn't look like the pictures on the review site.  But you know, we were tired, so we rolled with it.  For about 11 minutes.  Because when we got to our room, I was thinking that this definitely wasn't the hotel on the review site.


I don't need luxury.  But when I go away I like to be comfortable - at the very least, equally as comfortable as I am in my own home.  I was not comfortable.  In fact, I thought we may actually be on the wrong side of the tracks.  Are there tracks in Marina del Rey?  I don't know, but if there are, we were definitely not on the right side of them.


So, I set out to figure out what the hell happened to my well thought out plans of relaxing in a luxurious comfy bed in a sweet room looking out over the Pacific.


What I discovered was that I accidentally booked a hotel from hell, the hotel with the practically same exact name as the place that I meant to book.  The place I read the reviews on, checked out pictures of, etc.  (I'm an admitted review freak)  So I called a taxi.  And I called the original hotel and hoped for the best.  And then, we got the heck out of dodge.


We ended up in the good, comfy, cozy place.  The place on the right side of the tracks.  Ah... cocktails in the lobby/bar area.

The room was nice, the bed super comfy.  After a light meal and some cocktails at the hotel bar/restaurant, where I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that I ended up with the best tomato soup that I have ever eaten (and may or may not have actually licked my bowl) in my life, we settled in and just hung out in our beds for the rest of the night.  

Tomato soup from heaven, and a burrata salad... yummmmmm

The next morning we took our time being lazy in the room, and ended up getting out late for a little breakfast at this place called Joni's.

It didn't look like anything special from the outside, it was actually in a strip mall, but it had good reviews for the coffee and breakfasts, and supposedly, it's a favorite of the locals.

So yeah, the coffee was great.  Strong, but great.  And the breakfast was ridiculous.  They must have thought that I looked like I needed something to eat, because I thought I ordered a little egg sandwich on a croissant, and I ended up getting a massive egg sandwich on a croissant, hungry man's style.  There was no way that I was going to finish that yummy beast.  Kara's was equally as huge - too bad we didn't just share!

This croissant is actually on a dinner plate.  It literally took up 3/4 of the plate.
Who knew you could even get a croissants that's about the size of my head.

So after we were chatted up by this older local guy at Joni's who tried to get us to take a ride with him down to the pier, we walked.  We made our own way down to the pier, thank you very much.  It was just a couple of blocks away, and even though it was crazy windy, we went down to check out the ocean, which was gorgeous.

Crazy windy hair like this the whole time.

We didn't spend too much time down there because it was super windy and actually a bit chilly.  I was glad that I had a decent coat with me.  We stopped in this little boutique and Kara found some cool funky tops that she loved.  After a bit, we made our way into Santa Monica to this place called the Third Street Promenade, where there are three blocks of great shopping, all in this closed-off-to-cars street.  There were tons of great shops, and Kara loves to shop, so we spent a looooong time there.  We only made it half way if you can believe it!   We wanted to get back to go to this place called Killer Shrimp for dinner, and we had a tip from the hostess to come at a certain time so we wouldn't have to wait for a seat, so we decided to come back to the Promenade to finish shopping the next day, and we figured we'd also check out the Santa Monica Pier then too.

So I really have to go eat some sushi because I am starving and I might eat my arm off if I don't get food in my belly, like, right now.  So I'll wrap this up here, and continue tomorrow with... dinner at Killer Shrimp.  Stay tuned...

lie to me

One of my escape, what else can I say

I'll play dead and you can stay

And I'll help you kill your time

If you help me kill my night

And maybe one day get it right

Go ahead and lie to me

I'll believe in anything you say tonight

Go ahead and lie to me

Write "I love you," while I sleep

And hide it for another day to find

I will not confuse this with something true

Only that what gets us through

And I wonder down the line

When both of us are fine

Yeah, my  mind wanders there sometimes

I don't mind playing the fool, no

I don't mind playing the fool