San Diego

The three of us went to San Diego at the beginning of the month. The special vacation was technically for Carson's twelfth birthday, but the fact that he is actually thirteen-and-a-half is pretty indicative of the way we run our lives around here.

When Carson was little, he walked on the balls of his feet. With every step his ankles would bend like little shock absorbers and spring him forward into the next step. It was so cute that I would remind myself, again and again as he bounced beside me, to tuck that moment away into the memories of my heart. I was so sure that the bouncing wouldn't stay forever...

Now, I realized as Carson bounced alongside of me through the streets of San Diego, I'm not so sure anymore. He has a literal spring in his step, a smile on his face, and a witty remark in his head almost always. And he is so. so. fun to be around.

We opted to rent a fancy car and drive the five hours to San Diego as opposed to fly. That way we controlled our own arrival and departure times and ended up with a few more hours to play. We hit the ground running! And started with an escape room.

We weren't sure for a minute there, standing at the door to the escape room, that we were in the right place. We had typed it into our GPS, arrived quite early for our appointment time, walked around the block a few times past the stench of baking urine, and then entered a small, old, deserted building in search of suite 301. Up an elevator and down a carpeted hall, we still hadn't seen a soul by the time we arrived at the door and tried the doorknob to find that it was, confusingly, locked. We checked our watches and the address one more time and once we were sure we were in the right place at the right time, we stood in the hallway and called the number listed.

"Hello?"
"Uh, yeah, hi. We have an appointment for the escape room right now... and I think we're here... but the door is locked... we might be lost."
"Oh. Uh. Just a minute... (long pause with scrambling sounds) Are you in the building?"
"Yes, we're in the building, standing in front of door 301."
"Okay. Uh... (More shuffling sounds) Wait, so you made it in past the glass doors? At the front of the building?"
"Yeeesssss....?"
"Oh. Uh... (Long pause) Okay. We'll be right there, bye."

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel a twinge of fear as I realized that the story of a fake escape room drawing unsuspecting victims onto the third floor of a deserted building could be a good one, and my fears weren't allayed at the sight of the disheveled, college-aged boy who then opened the door and invited us in.

Turned out well, though! A case of a couple of unorganized college kids trying to run an escape room. The room itself was a fun one. We solved it quickly, and Carson's brain was an integral part of it all.

Later that night, we went to a movie called Ford and Ferrari. I am outnumbered by boys, after all.

It wasn't thaaaaaat bad.

And then dessert!

We found a cute little Bubble Tea place tucked away in a little hopping corner and decided to try it. It was crowded and the menu was all new to me (I don't even know what Bubble Tea actually is... and, what the heck is a Puffle?! (Carson's eating a Puffle)), I'm trying to make healthier eating choices, but I wanted to be adventurous, and the lady taking my order wasn't super helpful in explaining things, so I ended up hastily ordering a Coconut Mango Bubble Tea with Mango Boba on the bottom. But as I sat and waited for my drink to arrive I thought to myself, you know, this Bubble Tea actually probably has tea in it...

So I pulled out my phone for a little research and, who would have guessed... there is tea in Bubble Tea. So after my delicious looking tea drink arrived, we put it to the side and I got back in line and ordered a non-adventurous smoothie instead. Staying true to values is hard and inconvenient sometimes.

But the smoothie really was delicious, so I don't have much to complain about.

The next day was Sea World.

Carson had never been to Sea World before and, apparently, it was high on his list of 'Things To Do While I'm Still A Kid'. So, really, it was our whole reason for taking him to San Diego in the first place.

He got hold of the map seconds after we entered into the park and within a few minutes had our whole day planned out around showtimes and rides.

Our favorite show was the dolphin show, of course.

Towards the end of the park's open hours, Carson sank my heart all the way to my toes when he said that it was time to go ride the water ride. Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good water ride.

When it's hot outside.

But it was not hot outside, and I hate being cold. I did make a fuss about it and they knew I was dreading it, but instead of sympathizing with me, they laughed at me and pulled me along to stand in the line anyway. Which I did, but I made it clear that this was all an expression of my deep love and devotion to my son.

By the time we got up to the front of the line, we'd watched every single person come off the ride drenched from head to toe. I'm not exaggerating when I say every single person, nor when I say drenched. I'd never seen a more consistent water ride that way. The drenched adults looked grumpy and the drenched kids looked surprised. I looked nervous.

As we loaded into our raft, the worker mentioned something about the 'waterfall finally getting fixed' that day. It was up and running and I prayed that I would be one of the ones to escape it and not one of the ones that went straight through the middle of it.

My prayers were in vain, however. Now, I've been on lots of raft water rides in my lifetime, and there are always waterfalls at some point. But this waterfall was unlike one I'd seen before. It was a sheet of water so thick it didn't even break its form from the top of the rock to the surface of the river, and it spanned the entire width. There was no such thing as escaping. I put my backpack on my lap and hunched over it as much as I could, sparing my belly and the top of my thighs from the torrent. Everything else, however, from my hair to my squishy shoes was dripping.

And I was freeeeeeezing. So were Carson and Brian, I might add. Things got a little less fun after that, but none of us wanted to admit it for another hour. We spent $6 to stand in a family dryer for 5 minutes which felt amazing when it was on, and definitely took the edge off the cold, but it didn't do much to actually dry us out. I was so cold that at one point I zipped my jacket over my wet shirt to wiggle myself free of it, stuffing the whole wet mess into my backpack. It made things better, but I was still stuck with my pants and my shoes. Thankfully we'd done almost all we'd wanted to do, so after admitting that we didn't actually care that much about seeing the penguins (we missed the penguins!), we stopped in at the gift shop to find little stuffed animals for all the other kids and headed back to the hotel.

I'm kind of on this 'pack really lightly' kick which is amazing for the fact that I only had a backpack to carry around, and sad because I was freezing and soaked in my only pair of pants. When we got back to the hotel room, I crawled into my pajamas and sat through two episodes of Jeopardy with a hairdryer in one hand and my blue jeans in the other. We laughed at all the useless knowledge over the hum of the hairdryer and finally my jeans were dry enough to go back out on the town.

To be honest, we were all pretty beat and might rather have stayed in and ordered takeout. But we piled in the car instead in search of the Red Fox Steakhouse and Piano Bar where we had a reservation waiting for us.

Poor Carson, somehow we broke him through the day because as we sat waiting for our dinner he felt sick to his stomach and wasn't sure he wanted to eat at all. Which is very unCarsonlike. He perked up enough to play one of my favorite dinner table games, however, 'What Do They Have in Common'. Pick two random nouns and go around in a circle saying things they have in common. If you can't think of anything, you're out.

Jaguar and banana, for example. They both rot. Both are found in jungles. Both have seeds, of sorts... etc. That one went on for fifteen rounds at least.

The next day we spent on bikes traveling 16 miles down and up the coastline.

Biking is always my favorite way to explore. We ended up at Imperial Beach and had some pretty amazing sea food out on the pier.

Carson heard about clam chowder in bread bowls and was sold.

Carson is going to do great things with his life. He has so much love to give and so much kindness and compassion and humor. He has a gift in seeing all sides to a story and has the courage to sacrifice his own desires when they come in conflict with another's (usually. Sometimes he'll power through with his own agenda and drag someone else against her wishes onto a water ride on a cold day).

He truly, truly is one of my favorite people.