May Mayhem Part 1: Fun, Heartbreak, and Spring Cleaning in San Diego

The Fun Part
Three of my guy friends (Sam, Matt, and Chas) and I drove down to San Diego. I kept a road log for the first few hours of the trip, but it turned out to be too boring to stick with it for the whole 10 hours. Highlights from the log include 3 minutes after leaving our condominium, "Sam asks, 'Matt, are we there yet?'" and 5 minutes after picking Chas up from his house, "Chas asks, 'Are we there yet?'" The boys also argued about where to get cheap tacos. Apparently, Taco Time and Taco Bell are too expensive (what?) so we went to Wendy's for burgers. We finally got on the highway 2 hours after we intended to leave. The guys are rarely talkative, so the drive was quiet except for my singing along with Matt's "San Diego '09" mixes.

I'd never been to Southern California before. I assumed it would be warm and we'd go to the beach every day. I was surprised how cold it was--I was in sweatshirts every day. We went to the beach a couple times anyway. One day we went snorkeling, and the water was freezing. We had wetsuits, though, so it wasn't too bad. However, I had a panic attack because the water was so murky that I couldn't see anything! While I was sitting on a rock trying to calm myself down enough to swim back to shore, a seal breached about 2 feet from me. Later someone told me that the water is murky during pupping season, and that's when the sharks come to eat the seal pups. I don't know if that's true, but it would have kept me out of the water if I had heard it before we went snorkeling. We spent some time watching the seals and their pups. Matt and Chas played Frisbee. It was windy, so Matt decided to throw his Frisbee out over the water to see if the wind would carry it back to him. I laughed for 20 minutes and took pictures while Matt and Chas stood on the beach hoping a wave would wash the lost Frisbee to shore. It never came. Silly boys.

I loved spending the week with the boys. We went to the zoo. Like the seals at the beach, all the animals at the zoo were having babies, too. by gorilla was especially cute and social. I wish I had gotten a picture when it pressed its face right up to the glass in front of Matt. We also saw a polar bear that showed off for all the visitors. He knocked his food dish into the water, dove in after it, put it on his head like a hat, and swam around for the crowd. We also went to the San Diego Temple, drove to Los Angeles to watch the Dodgers and Padres play a boring game, played Settlers of Catan about 2 dozen times, and drank orange juice that Matt squeezed from the fruit in his aunt's back yard. I watched them play tennis for hours and fielded the tennis balls when they played baseball/softball/wiffleball (I don't know what to call the game since they played it with tennis balls and a wiffleball bat, which they mangled and eventually broke). I spent hours reading or watching What Not to Wear while I waited for them to wake up in the mornings. One day I got impatient and woke them all up. I walked into Sam's room, and said, "Sam! Get up!" "Why?" he said. "Because I said so!" Five minutes later I was surprised to see that that had actually worked and he was in the shower. On the last night with them, I sat quietly watching them eat dinner at Claim Jumper, engrossed in whatever was on ESPN, and felt a surge of affection that resulted in me paying for everyone's dinner. I can't imagine anything better than a quiet life with people you love.

The Heartbreak Part
I won't share the gory, rip-my-heart-out-and-spew-blood-everywhere details. Let's just say, I told the man of my dreams that I love him (or something to that effect--I'm being a little melodramatic here), and he said he is "content with our current level of attachment" as friends. I mean, I knew how he felt--I saw He's Just Not That Into You. Still, sad. I decided we could stay friends, although I'm reconsidering now that I know he's planning to ask out a good friend of mine. Ouchy. (FYI, said heartbreaker is the short balding man in the snorkeling picture.)

The Spring Cleaning Part
After the boys drove back to Utah, I stayed in San Diego to help another friend clean her grandma's house. A month earlier, her grandma was in a car accident and broke her hip. She was finishing rehabilitation soon, but because she lives alone a social worker had to inspect her house to make sure it was suitable for her to come back to.

Problem: Grandma is one of those Depression Era children turned pack rat. We're talking empty ice cream cartons filled with neatly folded plastic bags and Tylenol from 1978. The house was so crammed full of junk that Grandma couldn't clean it, so dust mites infested the curtains, spiders spun webs in every crevice, and ants had made their home in the refrigerator and died either of cold or because they tried to get out when the door was open and got crushed when it closed. We wore gloves and face masks for all the cleaning. (Incidentally, face masks were in short supply at the stores because of swine flu.) One of my jobs was to clean the ant mausoleum. Here are the before and after pictures. And, yes, all the black stuff is ant carcases. It was so pretty after I disinfected it.

Current song: Eric Clapton, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"