One short day
Sometimes, you have an absolutely perfect day... the kind of day that just boggles your mind at how things come together so fluidly and fill your chest up with happiness. The only bad thing about these days is that they're too short. They end almost before they begin, and you're left trying to hold onto the memory with the perfect clarity of that moment, even though that memory begins eroding almost immediately.
So Thursday.
Thursday didn't begin perfectly.
Kat and I woke up in our hotel room after a grueling day at Disneyland the day before. I love Disneyland, I love Disney World, but Disney parks are exhausting and best taken in small doses and broken up by trips back to a hotel and long, lazy lunches at fancy restaurants. Since we only had one day at Disneyland, we really only had the luxury to take the long, lazy lunch at Cafe Orleans, and both of us were exhausted by day's end, getting back to the hotel around 9:30 and mumbling to each other as we browsed Tumblr on our phones and drifted off to sleep.
When I woke, my stomach felt tight and heavy, and I knew immediately that my uterus was being the Worst again and that my period had started. Still, I decided that I was going to brave through. Kat doesn't drive, and so I had to take charge of getting us from Anaheim to Santa Barbara. Of course, there was no rush, but we did want to leave the afternoon open for wandering around Santa Barbara and visiting the beach and the evening open for some smoking (because it was my first time getting high voluntarily and we just wanted to make sure nothing else would need to happen after I'd taken my first hit). SO. After a leisurely breakfast at Denny's that left my stomach feeling tighter and worse than it previously had, we set out for what should have been a two hour drive at the most.
The GPS on my phone had us take the highway north and then west, and I, not knowing the region at all, figured this must have been some sort of route around Los Angeles, which was fine. by. me. Los Angeles traffic is a pill, as I was reminded when trying to merge onto our westerly highway and nearly being hit by a speeding orange demon car in the process. The pain in my abdomen was growing worse by the minute, to the point where I was having trouble concentrating, and when Kat pointed out that the GPS was trying to take us to Massachusetts for no good reason, I was kind of done. We stopped at a gas station where I wreaked havoc on a bathroom, took some pain meds, and beat the GPS into submission before continuing on our way.
The drive ended up taking way longer than I intended, thanks to two more stops along the route, but we finally got back to Kat's house and relaxed a little bit--Kat smoked, I zoned out to a Mel Brooks movie her boyfriend put on, and once we were better-rested, we headed out for further adventures.
And that was when the one short day began.
Santa Barbara is one of those towns around Southern California where all the celebrities and rich people live and then commute down to LA for their Important Things, and it shows. The downtown is lined with these charming little shops that you can tell have an average item price that's more than you make in a month, but it's still fun to visit them and look around and ooh and ahh at the pretty things. Kat and I parked in one of the structures and decided to walk along the main street to the beach, which ended up being somewhat foolish on my part--my bad ankles still haven't forgiven me. Still, it was a nice walk, with a cool breeze blowing from sea, and we ended up in front of the city fountain, which featured dolphins and was apparently sculpted by someone named "Bottoms" (Kat wasn't sure if it was Bottoms or Butts until we got to the fountain; I'm still sort of sad that it wasn't Butts).
Dolphin Bottoms.
We'd been to the docks the last time I was there, so it wasn't anything new or revolutionary, though the weather was much nicer this time... last time we walked down to the docks, it was about 50 degrees out and rainy, so having it be about 70 and partly cloudy was amazing. A few tourists were milling about, but the crowd thinned significantly once we got past the waterfront restaurants and towards the few shops there, one of which was a sort of mom and pop candy shop place, where we stocked up on saltwater taffy, caramel-seasalt fudge, and really huge Smarties, all of which we carried farther down the dock to enjoy.
The place was full of enormous seagulls, but more excitingly, pelicans. I've not seen a lot of pelicans at Massachusetts beaches (I'm pretty sure it's too cold up here), but in Santa Barbara, they were everywhere, most of them toward the younger side of things and most rather enjoying that they were models for gawking tourists like us.
.
.
Seriously, these things were supermodels. Kat managed to get less than a foot away from one, and it didn't even faze him in the slightest. And then, instead of walking away? They strutted.
The pelicans had limited appeal for us, though, because of the slowly fading light and our desire to grab some dinner before heading back to the apartment. We walked back to the dolphin fountain to catch the tram that runs back and forth between the main street and the docks, and a woman was waiting there as well. She had a cardboard sign tied to her backpack, which generally is an indication of homelessness, and she was carrying the cutest little puppy I'd ever seen. I mean, it must have been a chihuahua puppy because of how small it was. When the tram arrived, she showed the driver some papers claiming that the puppy was a trained service dog, but the driver was skeptical (because the thing looked barely a few months old; that's not old enough to be a trained service dog) and wouldn't let her on. She got his badge number and his supervisor's name before storming away, and Kat and I had to fill out incident reports, as did everyone else on the tram.
That done, we got off a stop early because Kat spotted an antique shop she wanted to visit. I'm ambivalent about antique shops: on the one hand, I like finding whosits and whatsits that might lead me to Narnia or something, and the smell of antiques is intoxicating; on the other hand, antique shops nearly always have creepy dolls that appear to be possessed by Satan, and I am not a fan. But I am a fan of Kat, so I sucked it up and went antiquing. And it was a fun store! All sorts of silly, kitschy things, nothing that we got overly excited about (or that sent us to Narnia, at least unless our memories have been wiped of that time) but plenty that made us smile. Things like vintage clothes, metal signs, typewriters, and fancy boxes.
My favorite of the signs.
It was only once we left the antique shop that Kat realized she was no longer carrying our bag of candy. We figured out that we must have left it on the tram, but since we weren't able to find the specific car we'd taken, we gave up on hunting it down, and Kat repaid me for the missing fudge by taking me to See's and buying me (and herself!) a few truffles there. In exchange, I dragged her into Teavana where we sampled iced rooibos concoctions that were more fragrant than I realized tea could be.
From there, we returned to my rental car and drove it down a few blocks to more docks (native Santa Barbarians can probably label these more specifically; I just saw "docks" and "more docks"), though these were the location of Kat's favorite restaurant, Brophy Brothers. We put our names in and headed down to the beach to entertain ourselves during the 40 minute wait. Having arrived just past sunset, we were treated to a dazzling sky, slowly fading to a purply black from more vivid colors. The tide had just finished going out, and the sand was littered with seashells of all shades, with sandpipers digging for a meal, and with trails of footprints, ours included.
.
Perfect sunset to end a perfect day.
Dinner at Brophy's was a relaxing, if noisy affair. On one side, the windows were open to the bar, and raucous music and laughter spilled out under the (largely unnecessary; I wanted a breeze!) heat lamps. On the other side, fishermen were still loading the day's catches onto trucks, adding a mechanical din to the cacophony. We shared a plate of fried clams, and then I enjoyed some exquisite calamari while Kat dug into a bowl of peel-and-eat shrimp.
.
.
A magnificent feast.
The day ended back at the apartment, with me using a bong for the first time (apparently, I'm not bad at it) and episode after distracting episode of South Park. And also lots of tortilla chips.
I have a lot of feels attached to that day, but I don't want to write those down just yet. I just want to preserve this record of the day, so I can look back and smile.
So Thursday.
Thursday didn't begin perfectly.
Kat and I woke up in our hotel room after a grueling day at Disneyland the day before. I love Disneyland, I love Disney World, but Disney parks are exhausting and best taken in small doses and broken up by trips back to a hotel and long, lazy lunches at fancy restaurants. Since we only had one day at Disneyland, we really only had the luxury to take the long, lazy lunch at Cafe Orleans, and both of us were exhausted by day's end, getting back to the hotel around 9:30 and mumbling to each other as we browsed Tumblr on our phones and drifted off to sleep.
When I woke, my stomach felt tight and heavy, and I knew immediately that my uterus was being the Worst again and that my period had started. Still, I decided that I was going to brave through. Kat doesn't drive, and so I had to take charge of getting us from Anaheim to Santa Barbara. Of course, there was no rush, but we did want to leave the afternoon open for wandering around Santa Barbara and visiting the beach and the evening open for some smoking (because it was my first time getting high voluntarily and we just wanted to make sure nothing else would need to happen after I'd taken my first hit). SO. After a leisurely breakfast at Denny's that left my stomach feeling tighter and worse than it previously had, we set out for what should have been a two hour drive at the most.
The GPS on my phone had us take the highway north and then west, and I, not knowing the region at all, figured this must have been some sort of route around Los Angeles, which was fine. by. me. Los Angeles traffic is a pill, as I was reminded when trying to merge onto our westerly highway and nearly being hit by a speeding orange demon car in the process. The pain in my abdomen was growing worse by the minute, to the point where I was having trouble concentrating, and when Kat pointed out that the GPS was trying to take us to Massachusetts for no good reason, I was kind of done. We stopped at a gas station where I wreaked havoc on a bathroom, took some pain meds, and beat the GPS into submission before continuing on our way.
The drive ended up taking way longer than I intended, thanks to two more stops along the route, but we finally got back to Kat's house and relaxed a little bit--Kat smoked, I zoned out to a Mel Brooks movie her boyfriend put on, and once we were better-rested, we headed out for further adventures.
And that was when the one short day began.
Santa Barbara is one of those towns around Southern California where all the celebrities and rich people live and then commute down to LA for their Important Things, and it shows. The downtown is lined with these charming little shops that you can tell have an average item price that's more than you make in a month, but it's still fun to visit them and look around and ooh and ahh at the pretty things. Kat and I parked in one of the structures and decided to walk along the main street to the beach, which ended up being somewhat foolish on my part--my bad ankles still haven't forgiven me. Still, it was a nice walk, with a cool breeze blowing from sea, and we ended up in front of the city fountain, which featured dolphins and was apparently sculpted by someone named "Bottoms" (Kat wasn't sure if it was Bottoms or Butts until we got to the fountain; I'm still sort of sad that it wasn't Butts).
Dolphin Bottoms.
We'd been to the docks the last time I was there, so it wasn't anything new or revolutionary, though the weather was much nicer this time... last time we walked down to the docks, it was about 50 degrees out and rainy, so having it be about 70 and partly cloudy was amazing. A few tourists were milling about, but the crowd thinned significantly once we got past the waterfront restaurants and towards the few shops there, one of which was a sort of mom and pop candy shop place, where we stocked up on saltwater taffy, caramel-seasalt fudge, and really huge Smarties, all of which we carried farther down the dock to enjoy.
The place was full of enormous seagulls, but more excitingly, pelicans. I've not seen a lot of pelicans at Massachusetts beaches (I'm pretty sure it's too cold up here), but in Santa Barbara, they were everywhere, most of them toward the younger side of things and most rather enjoying that they were models for gawking tourists like us.
.
.
Seriously, these things were supermodels. Kat managed to get less than a foot away from one, and it didn't even faze him in the slightest. And then, instead of walking away? They strutted.
The pelicans had limited appeal for us, though, because of the slowly fading light and our desire to grab some dinner before heading back to the apartment. We walked back to the dolphin fountain to catch the tram that runs back and forth between the main street and the docks, and a woman was waiting there as well. She had a cardboard sign tied to her backpack, which generally is an indication of homelessness, and she was carrying the cutest little puppy I'd ever seen. I mean, it must have been a chihuahua puppy because of how small it was. When the tram arrived, she showed the driver some papers claiming that the puppy was a trained service dog, but the driver was skeptical (because the thing looked barely a few months old; that's not old enough to be a trained service dog) and wouldn't let her on. She got his badge number and his supervisor's name before storming away, and Kat and I had to fill out incident reports, as did everyone else on the tram.
That done, we got off a stop early because Kat spotted an antique shop she wanted to visit. I'm ambivalent about antique shops: on the one hand, I like finding whosits and whatsits that might lead me to Narnia or something, and the smell of antiques is intoxicating; on the other hand, antique shops nearly always have creepy dolls that appear to be possessed by Satan, and I am not a fan. But I am a fan of Kat, so I sucked it up and went antiquing. And it was a fun store! All sorts of silly, kitschy things, nothing that we got overly excited about (or that sent us to Narnia, at least unless our memories have been wiped of that time) but plenty that made us smile. Things like vintage clothes, metal signs, typewriters, and fancy boxes.
My favorite of the signs.
It was only once we left the antique shop that Kat realized she was no longer carrying our bag of candy. We figured out that we must have left it on the tram, but since we weren't able to find the specific car we'd taken, we gave up on hunting it down, and Kat repaid me for the missing fudge by taking me to See's and buying me (and herself!) a few truffles there. In exchange, I dragged her into Teavana where we sampled iced rooibos concoctions that were more fragrant than I realized tea could be.
From there, we returned to my rental car and drove it down a few blocks to more docks (native Santa Barbarians can probably label these more specifically; I just saw "docks" and "more docks"), though these were the location of Kat's favorite restaurant, Brophy Brothers. We put our names in and headed down to the beach to entertain ourselves during the 40 minute wait. Having arrived just past sunset, we were treated to a dazzling sky, slowly fading to a purply black from more vivid colors. The tide had just finished going out, and the sand was littered with seashells of all shades, with sandpipers digging for a meal, and with trails of footprints, ours included.
.
Perfect sunset to end a perfect day.
Dinner at Brophy's was a relaxing, if noisy affair. On one side, the windows were open to the bar, and raucous music and laughter spilled out under the (largely unnecessary; I wanted a breeze!) heat lamps. On the other side, fishermen were still loading the day's catches onto trucks, adding a mechanical din to the cacophony. We shared a plate of fried clams, and then I enjoyed some exquisite calamari while Kat dug into a bowl of peel-and-eat shrimp.
.
.
A magnificent feast.
The day ended back at the apartment, with me using a bong for the first time (apparently, I'm not bad at it) and episode after distracting episode of South Park. And also lots of tortilla chips.
I have a lot of feels attached to that day, but I don't want to write those down just yet. I just want to preserve this record of the day, so I can look back and smile.