Our Beautifully Ordinary Life

Since I worked late the day before I didn’t feel a bit bad about sneaking out early (okay, I really didn’t sneak – in fact, my co-workers about pushed me out of the door) to spend Friday afternoon with J and Ava.

At Souplantation. Again.

While I would have been perfectly content to eat soup there for hours we did also go here:

And can I just tell you something? I did not like Sea World.

Maybe the penguins. They were very cute. And the Beluga whales. They were pretty nifty, too.

But that’s about it. It made me feel very guilty about animals being exploited for our entertainment. The shows with the animal performers left me cold and feeling dirty for patronizing the place. Plus – it was crazy expensive.

Ava was thrilled to see a small Sesame Street themed play area with kid suitable rides. Of course we headed straight there and I simply couldn’t stop myself from making several ‘when pigs fly’ comments…

especially when she handed me a tiny Abby Cabaddy doll and asked if we could buy it. I thought ‘sure’ until I saw the $29 price tag. Needless to say she didn’t get it which set off a tantrum of almost epic proportions in my not-yet-napped kid.

Except she couldn’t even finish the tantrum properly because this happened mid-stream:

So I parked the stroller and sent J off to watch a show with performing seals or something. I’ll spare you the 75 pictures of that. You’re welcome.

We strolled around while she napped, waking just in time to walk into yet another aquarium building full of – guess what? – more fish. She was less than impressed (as was I at this point) so we took her to pet the rays. Yeah, ummm no. J and I did though, until we figured out they were really only interested in the $6 cups of food you could buy to feed them with and that they just automatically assumed there would be food to nibble on in that outstretched hand. Creepy, creepy – I did not like.

Dolphins next. Playful, friendly, almost cuddly dolphins, right? Not so much. There was one who took great delight in coming close enough to let you touch him and then splashing gallons of water on you – and I swear that animal was laughing every single time he did it. It was at this point that Ava threw the.worst.fit that I’ve ever seen from her in public or at home. For real, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and fighting us so hard that I finally strapped her in the stroller and parked us both in a corner waiting for her to yell her fool head off for as long as she wanted to. It is the one and only time that she’s ever tantrumed in public that I really, really wanted to disappear into the floor. J conveniently distanced himself  and I don’t blame him a bit. I would totally have done the same if he’d been the one lucky enough to have been present at the start of the fit. I still have no idea what caused it.

I’ll summarize the remaining hours in the park. Even More Fish.

And a whale show. Hated it. She wasn’t thrilled with it, either.

She did tell us how to get to Sesame Street, which was (thankfully) by the entrance, so we let her do a few more rides…

before getting the heck outta Dodge! I suppose I’m glad I’ve been there but I’m happy to say I don’t think we’ll ever go again.

We headed off to Coronado after leaving Sea World. I wanted to see the Hotel del Coronado in person, which I did (National Lampoon style) as J drove past it (Chevy Chase style) before continuing all the way down to Imperial Beach. Our plan was simply to drive until we found something to eat and/or a place that looked interesting so that’s what we did – stopping at a little beachfront farmer’s market right at the Imperial Beach pier.

Oh, it was so quaint and perfect there. We lovedlovedloved it. We ate organic pizza and humongo homemade pretzels from a teeny little shop where the owner makes all the dough by hand. We browsed the little market looking at fancy soaps and organic fruits and veggies and everything in between. There were real live actual functional VW busses around. And surfers! Finally. This is what I imagined SoCal being like.

Ava played on the playground.

And we watched yet another glorious sunset.

The only downside? It was freezing! We only had thin denim jackets on so we left earlier than we would have liked once Ava’s teeth started chattering. I did still manage to get soaked walking along the beach on the way back to the car – guess I kind of forgot about waves and things.

I don’t want to ever live in CA but if I had to I’d want to be in Imperial Beach. A VW Karmann Ghia would also be a requirement for me to even consider such a move. Preferably in pink.

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