spring break beachapalooza ::part 1::

I just want to begin by saying I LOVE SPRING BREAK.

Saturday morning we met bright and early at six in the morning outside of my apartment. As I was standing outside, admiring the moon (it was the largest its been in awhile due to its proximity to earth), a man exited his apartment across the street and stood there, staring at me for a full five minutes. In a display of notoriously bad timing, I had watched Halloween the night before with Maddie. I stood poised and ready with my pillow clutched in my fists, ready to start smothering him if he dared to go Michael Meyers on me. Luckily, he went back inside (and later I realized he was probably also looking at the moon) and Claire and Kristen came to pick me up. We barked, howled, and squealed with delight at the idea of our dreams actually culminating into a beach trip and then went to pick up Maddie. We started off the morning with an Einstein's trip (must have morning bagel fuel) and then were off!

Cue road trip adventures. Claire made us an awesome playlist titled California that had a bunch of amazing songs on it, many picked out when she was trashed the night before. This is why, when Mbop came on by Hanson, everyone else in the car groaned while I cranked that shit up and sung my heart out. There were a lot of naps, considering that the night before most of us hadn't slept very much (or at all) due to excitement and (in my case) fear of murder by Michael Meyers. For lunch we stopped at the same McDonalds we stopped at on our way to Disneyland, and afterwards I read The Giver aloud to Maddie while she drove. I had forgotten how incredibly messed up that book is. In the middle of the book, I saw that we were getting low on gas AND we were approaching Baker. Baker, my dear friends, is home of the WORLD'S LARGEST THERMOMETER. I have stopped in Baker many, many times throughout my life, but have never thought to actually document the largest thermometer in the world. This time, I was getting a picture. Which I did as we passed by.



Hurray! We finished The Giver, took some more naps, and it was my turn to drive. At this point, we entered territory that legitimately looked like New Zealand material. We all felt like we were in The Lord of the Rings. There were gently rolling hills absolutely covered with lush, green grass, craggy rocks, and multiple, fairyland-like trees with umbrella foliage. I could feel the magical presence of California. I could smell the ocean air beckoning me toward the coast from hours away.

On a completely unrelated note, at about seven AM I saw a sign that said Something Dining, I can't remember what the something was because, from a distance, I saw it as "VAGINA DINING". This started a game of epic proportions where every word of every sign was replaced with vagina. My favorite was this sign.



Home Baked Vaginas

As we neared the coast, it started to rain. Hard. The wipers of the car we were driving were terrible, so as it started getting dark, I started to panic a little bit. We were driving on a tiny road that wound through the many hills between us and the ocean, large crevices on each side that dropped off into oblivion in the pitch black darkness. Needless to say, my anxiety levels were shooting through the roof. However, once we found our way into Cayucos, I calmed down a bit. The only problem was that our google map directions were leading me astray and I could not remember how to get to the beach house. At one point, I saw a road that I thought looked familiar.



The next day I saw that I had driven us into a lookout that was right by the sea. It was just high tide and pouring rain, so that's why the ocean had come up so far. I finally remembered which way to go and we arrived at the beach house. Glorious, glorious love swelled in my heart as I inhaled the amazing, musty smell of that house. It's a smell that remains on my blanket and pillow even now, mmmmmmmm. We called 411 information to ask if there was a pizza place nearby that would deliver to the beach house, and for some reason the lady was a complete bitch and told us there was no such thing as a pizza place and that we should go to hell if we wanted her to do her job and give us information. Or at least that's how I perceived it. Instead, we were forced to venture out into Morro Bay in search of a pizza place. We found Sabetta's, a delicious, tiny shack that made homemade pizzas and twelve piece garlic bread was only $3. Heaven. We ate in a coma-like silence and then headed back to the beach house to go to the beach in the rain. Unfortunately, it was high tide, so we only got to stand on the stairs in our hilarious beach gear (puffy coats from the closet) and look at the ocean. Just the sight of it though made me so happy, as well as the smell and feel of the rain.



Claire and Maddie walking through the rain. Maddie made a comment that this was pretty much our vision for the rest of the trip...

Speaking of which, we drank all of the beer in the house as soon as we got back, talked for a little while, and then passed out.





The next day, we woke up late and then went down to the beach. We frolicked in the surf, clambered over rocks, fake tide-pooled (fake meaning most of the pools had no creatures in them, they were just pools of water that I was obsessed with checking), and made sandcastles. Specifically, we made sandcastles of MIDDLE EARTH.



We always joke that Maddie lives in Mordor, I live in The Shire, and Claire and Kristen live in Isengard. A majority of our morning was spent creating these works of art and chasing birds, barking. We also created Minas Tirith by placing a small piece of wood on top of a rock. By this point, the tide was coming in and I was getting super wet, so we headed back up to the house and showered and hung out, videoing us doing stupid things for awhile. Then we went to the store. The best part of our storeventure was that we decided to send Claire back in for the alcohol after we were done buying all our food. She first went to get toilet paper, which we also needed, so as not to seem so suspicious. Then she went for the booze. Approaching the register, she smiled sheepishly and said, "Whoops! Forgot something!" The cashier looked at her suspiciously (not surprisingly, considering who forgets alcohol?). She searched Claire's ID forever trying to find her birthdate, obviously wondering if it were a fake. Claire finally got away from her evil eye, however, and we took off. Maddie and I were joking that, if Claire had come out of the store with a police escort, I would GTFO and crash into any car on my way out.

By the time we'd gotten home and put away our groceries, it was 2:30 and still raining.



So of COURSE we started drinking! In probably one of the proudest moments of my life AKA an entire day, I spent EIGHT HOURS drinking. STRAIGHT. We started out with playing King's Cup (our favorite game, of course). After all of the Coors were gone, we started in on the Mike's (which were also being sipped prior to the game) and then decided to go on a drunken beach walk.



Hats were essential. Maddie was the only one without a hat :( But it's okay, because her hair is so luscious. We started out on our walk and had many adventures. We ran through the waves, traversed rocky territory, zig-zagged a lot, waded through a river that had appeared due to the heavy rains, and then played on the Cayucos Pier.







Basically this is what our drunken walk entailed



Plus this



After playing on the pier for awhile, we swung on the swings right by the pier and then headed back to the beach house. Once we'd arrived home, we started to drink again. This time we specialized in Screwdrivers, or as Michael Scott calls them, Orange-Vod-Juice-Kas. We had a couple of heart to hearts out on the porch in the rain while smoking, some of which were about topics I will not divulge. But they were amazing. I can't remember anything past my second drink after my second shot. All I remember after this point is waking up at three in the morning wondering why I was in my pajamas and why there was sand in my bed. Apparently, we went on another drunken walk at midnight to the beach when the tide was high. Even though it was high, that did not stop me. I plunged straight into the ocean, screaming, "I LOVE YOOOU!!!" and Maddie had to retrieve me. At one point I also apparently toppled over like a pine tree being cut down in the forest when allowed to walk on my own. We also went to bed at 10:30 (it had been an exhausting day of drinking).

The next morning was a morning of recovery. I felt so sick after our eight hour binge that I seriously stayed in the same spot for several hours. We watched Animal Cops straight on through the morning, which I believe is one of the most entertaining shows on television. At one point there was a kitten stuck in a drain that was hilarious. It was just staring at us from the depths of the television. They got it out by suctioning its forehead with a vacuum and dragging it out. Another cat had been impaled on a metal rod. Oh the memories of Spring Break (don't worry, both survived). We finally decided that maybe we should leave the house, if only to get greasy hangover food, and headed out to Morro Bay.

In Morro Bay, there's a road along the bay called the Embarcadero. It's mostly a tourist attraction, which is why I like it, but I've grown up walking that same street for most of my life, so I always have to go back to it. We ate lunch at a delicious place called Rose's that serves the best garlic fries. When we first entered the restaurant, however, we could not find the waitress for the life of us. It was pretty awkward with us just standing in the middle of the restaurant.



Maddie just checked out of that awkward situation. It was hilarious. For the rest of the trip and for the rest of our LIFE we made fun of her for it. We finally did find the waitress though and got to eat our delicious fish and chips and GARLIC FRIES!!! Yuuuuum! Our waitress hated us though. After the food, we walked some more and visited some of my favorite spots like The Shell Shop, where they sell thousands of shells and tacky shell figurines. We talked about liberating the sea lions that live in the cramped conditions of the "Morro Bay Aquarium" and blowing up the smokestacks that tower over the city. We finally reached my favorite place, THE SHIP PARK!!!



I love the ship park. We played there like bosses to the extreme.



AHAHAHA I love this picture of Maddie. She loved that whale.



This picture is so amazing, especially with that bird in the background. Epic.



Strike a pose. I love these dolphins.



Love.

We basically just frolicked there forever and loved everything ever. After we played at the park, we went back home and spent the rest of the day recovering in front of the TV some more. I did not drink anything because my stomachache got increasingly worse as the night went on. The night ended in me curled up on my bed super sick :( But the good news is that THE MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM was the big event planned for the next day!



Coming soon! SPRING BREAK BEACHAPALOOZA PART TWO! DREAMS COME TRUE!

for the better

I still need to post Spring Break adventures, but I'm in the process of drawing little comics of some adventures that did not get documented with photographs (which is surprising since we have 34028222 pictures...or something like that), so it will take a little bit longer.

In the meantime, I'm going to complain about how tired and depressed I've been since returning from the ocean. It's not surprising, this happens every time I leave, but it's still disconcerting that I am so quick to revert back to my unrefreshed, pre-Spring Break status. It has to do with several things: my own feelings, my job, classes, the amount of work that needs to be done for the former, and my inability to change. I've been trying to change a few things about myself that I felt like I was accomplishing for awhile. However, I realize now that I was just ignoring primal instincts born into me by my genetics and I don't like that. Some things are back now, and maybe even worse than before.

I hate that. I dislike things overcoming my willpower so easily. I especially dislike how I've been feeling as of late (and by as of late, I mean as of yesterday and today. Spring Break was completely amazing, though in a different way than last year). I just don't like myself today.

I'm not a quitter though. I do not give up easily if it's something I know I can continue to work on, so I'll do just that. Even though it will be hard, I realize now that I can't just shove it away. I need to confront it and TAME it. So that's what I'll try to do. It's like New Year's Resolutions all over again, but I suppose I needed a reminder. I need to be the lion-hearted girl I promised I would be at the start of this year. Now that it's spring, my mood will automatically begin to lighten with the sun, which is a good start. I just need to boost that with my own willpower.

Sorry for this incredibly boring post, I just needed to write down some of my feelings and reassure myself that I can keep going with school and work and I can become a better person than I am today.



I want to go back to feeling this good.

we're back!

My friends and I just got back from our beachventure spring break!

There was limited internet access there, which is why I haven't said anything in awhile, but as soon as I have time then I'll write a huge, detailed post filled to the brim with pictures of our adventures.

sitting in the back seat...waaay back there

Since I spend possibly 42% of my life on Twitter, I noticed that Rebecca Black has been trending for the past few days. I spend the remaining percentage of my time alternating between Tumblr and Facebook (and sometimes even studying and playing pokemon), so I've also noticed that this same girl has been the star of many memes. Wondering why she was being so popularly mocked all of a sudden, I investigated. The answer is this music video. If you can call it that. It looks more like the awful home videos of epic sagas involving dragons (which were really just me swaddled in a large duvet cover) that my friends and I used to make in jr. high, only with more weird, auto-tuned singing.

I can tell you up front that this may be my new favorite music video because of how incredibly AWKWARD it is. She sings facing the camera THE ENTIRE TIME with an uncomfortable smile plastered to her face while she tries to sing through her lips and teeth. The fact that she chose to have her face rendered in that awful "pencil drawing" format that you can do on paint programs is unfortunate. Like my father realized one Christmas when he did that to my entire family's faces for our card, it really brings out everything unflattering about your features. In Rebecca's case, it makes her look like she's forty and has a double chin. There are many unanswered questions in this video, such as why is she trying to decide what seat to sit in when there is only one seat left? Why would she take the bus when she knew her friends had a rad convertible, kicking in the front seat and sitting in the back seat? Why couldn't she think of a better term than just sitting in the backseat when the front seat people are "kicking"? Why does she assume we need help with the days of the week? Honestly, there's a part where she sings out the fact that thursday comes before friday, and saturday and sunday come after. Maybe she needs help herself. The lyrics are incredible, the "partying" unrealistic (especially since it's a party for twelve year old, come on now), and basically the entire video is just...amazing.

Keep in mind that when I say amazing, I mean awful. But that's what I love.

dreaming of the sea

School has been really difficult for me lately. It's the season of midterms and I have a lot of them. In the next week and a half, I have three tests in ecology and evolution (which I HAVE to do well on), physics (which I also have to do well on), and family consumer science (which is more of an annoyance, really). Then I have a twelve page paper due by Wednesday, though I have to post a draft of it by Monday, a physics assignment due monday, a project that I need to complete for family consumer science, and about six elementary school novels to read by the end of spring break. So I'm a little bit on the edge of a mental breakdown. To complete this, I have also been bitchy and emotional, unconfident and second-guessing myself. I hope it's just because I am not getting enough sleep and spend most of my free time either doing homework or procrastinating doing homework, which makes me even more irate. At the end of this week and half of Hell, however, there is a light. There is...

SPRING BREAK

And just in time, because I'm about to snap. The best part about this spring break is that I'm going to California. My family owns a beach house that has been a solid part of my life ever since I was two weeks old in a small surfing town on the central coast. I've not been there since I started college, however, and it's been killing me.



I'm literally dreaming about the ocean. Every night I have vivid, sensory dreams about the beach. I can smell the piles of seaweed and the salt in the air, I can feel the grains of sand and the frigid cold of the surf, I can see the silver glint of the sun on the waves and hear the sounds of snowy plovers, gulls, and sandpipers. I feel dizzy and heartsick when I think about the ocean, and the thought of seeing it and frolicking in the waves is enough to help me push through this week and a half.



The path down to the beach. I've always thought that it's the most beautiful thing in the world. When at the end of the path, you can only see stairs descending into nothingness. When something descends into nothingness, you know that the ocean is near. Either that or some shitty grassland, but we're not going to Nebraska (that was harsh).

In the morning the air is thick with fog, but it lifts by about eleven. It's not a sunny or particularly nice beach. It's usually overcast and there are piles of seaweed buzzing with sandflies everywhere. But it's my beach and I adore it with every ounce of my heart.











I can't wait to go tidepooling and dune jumping in Montana de Oro. I'm going to take so many pictures, fall in so many puddles of water, get sopping wet and be covered in terrible rashes. It's going to be amazing.



I love going for sunset walks and then, hours later, going for midnight walks while plowing into the surf (not too far though, because that's when the Great Whites are out).







Digging through these old pictures of the beach is making me so excited for our trip. My heart is swelling. I am so drunkenly in love with the ocean.

To pass the time, however, I indulged in another thing I'm in love with.



Which is also interfering with my studies. I'm not a very responsible student this week...

friday night

Friday nights can be one of two things for me. They can either entail me coming home from school exhausted, watching internet TV until midnight, and then crashing OR they can consist of me going to a party, where I get wildly drunk and terrifying/hilarious things happen.

Since I had just recently watched the Glee episode about alcohol (which also had a fifteen minute party scene in it that made me thirsty for tequila), I was in the mood for the latter. So we decided to party it up at Raphael's house. This is the story about how Otter became a sad drunk, illustrated with shitty comics for your entertainment.

We all arrived at nine, and our friend Kit brought a bottle of orange vodka that had been sitting around since the end of finals (i.e. four months ago). We decided to have at it and take some shots before we started in on the PBR (decisions, decisions).



Left to right: Otter, Raphael, Maddeh, Kit
Not pictured: Kriz, who was also present but only until the end of King's Cup

Kit had bought a myriad of fruit-flavored vodkas for our "end of finals party". Orange was the last one left because it was terrible. It tasted like what I imagine the pesticide Agent Orange tastes like, because it is poisonous and has the word orange in it.



After which, we decided to play DRINKING GAMES. The first up was King's Cup, our go-to game because, usually, the table we choose to play on has limited bouncing capabilities and thus games like Quarters and Chandelier are out. King's Cup is one of my favorite drinking games to play (besides Chandelier and Beer Pong) because of its many confusing rules. Especially the "make up your own rule" which switched from me not being able to talk unless it was my turn (torture, considering how loud and obnoxious I am), Raphael not being able to look out the window (which she was obsessed with because she wanted to make new friends), to something I can't remember, to having to swear every time you said something. Towards the end of the game, the requirement was that you had to chug an entire beer every time you had to drink. This resulted in me having to chug three beers in under five minutes at one point. Kit tried to help me out with a chant he came up with.



At one point I almost choked because I felt like I was going to vomit and he switched it to, "Don't you barf, just chug that beer".

After King's Cup, we decided it was high time we played Beer Pong. Unfortunately, we only had a little, round table to play on.



(it looks like I'm not wearing pants in this picture, but I promise that I am. Plus, this is just a poor rendition of actual people anyways)

So we had to go on a search to find something bigger, or something to make into a table. I was feeling quite resourceful at this point, considering how trashed I was. I decided that it made sense to assume that Kriz had a large plank of wood on her room because she's an art major.



Instead I found a box, which I reasonably thought we could use to lengthen the table somehow. Meanwhile, Kit and Raphael had gone on an adventure to find ping pong balls and cups. I was extremely disgruntled that I had been left behind because I LOOOOVE adventures, but Maddeh talked me down and instead distracted me with a cigarette, which we went outside to smoke. While outside, we met Raphael's downstair's neighbor JEFF who we discussed philosophy with. Or something. I can't really remember. All I remember is him asking if he could party with us, to which I responded "YES" and to which Maddeh responded (wisely), "I don't know, you'd have to check with Raphael". The other two members of our crew returned with a beer pong kit that was a total rip off for what it consisted of: two ping pong balls and twelve plastic cups. This would have cost maybe five dollars at any normal store, but since it was 2 AM on a friday night, it cost them ten dollars at the 7-11. I'm actually not sure how much it cost, because I think every time Kit told us how much it cost, it went up by a dollar.



First teams were Kit and I verses Maddeh and Raphael. At that point in time, I was actually doing really well. I'm amazing at Beer Pong until my alochol levels increase exponentially. For some reason, I had sobered a little and was able to sink a few cups with great ease. Kit was also really good at it, so we were kind of annihilating. Until we were down to the LAST THREE CUPS. We asked for a re-rack and then it was almost impossible to get any of the balls in. Raphael and Maddeh were doing their damndest to distract us.



Since we were only 50% male on my side of the team, Kit was convinced that we had to act 100% to distract the other team. This involved pretending to have penises (in my case, anyways). After awhile though, I got bored by this and instead just started to dance.



My dancing involved quite a bit of gyration, which was really, really hard to keep up if the other team was trying to line up their ball perfectly.



Eventually, Kit sunk that last cup (at this point, I was too gone once again to throw correctly) and we rejoiced by doing a victory dance and high school musical high-fiving. Then we switched teams. I joined Raphael on the other side, and together we failed. Failed pretty hardcore. It was also at this point that something shifted. I started feeling inexplicitly sad. This stemmed from my previous, competitive anger that the game had instilled in me. By the end, when we had lost and had to drink a keg's worth of beer each, I started to tear up.



All I could think of was, "EVERYONE HERE IS FRIENDS BUT ME" while I bawled. It was uncomfortable for everyone.



I felt really, really bad about it. I thought everyone hated me. I was absolutely sure that Kit and Maddeh had hightailed it out of there because they'd gone outside for a smoke and hadn't returned. Raphael sat with me and assured me that they all loved me and we had drunken heart to hearts. Even though it was embarrassing, it was still nice to know that they cared about me enough to stick through the tears and to comfort me in my sadness.

After the crying fest, we watched Ratatouille. I don't know why really, because we were all pretty bored by it. Also, Raphael made a comment about how Linguine looks just like a friend we knew in high school and now I can't unsee it.

Anyways, at this point we were all bffs and happy again.



I had cried all my drunkeness away and drank two gallons of water while I was trying not to cry 45 minutes earlier, so at 4:30 AM, Kit, Maddeh, and myself all headed out. I dropped Maddeh off and then crawled into bed to pass out around 5.

All in all, I would say it was a successful evening. Now we'll just see if it ever happens again, because I might have scared everybody off with my tears. It's strange, because usually I'm a terrifyingly happy/obnoxious drunk who is intent on reaching the forest and who gallops around on her knees.

The rest of the weekend was spent recuperating with my otter half, Natal, while eating junk food and watching Hoarders, Rugrats, and 30 Rock. And what a great weekend it's been :)

Now I just have to find my camera charger so I can take pictures again...