mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

eternal lethargy

I DID NOT HANG TEN, NOR ANYTHING ELSE

The person who suggested I take a surf lesson during our recent trip to San Diego may not have known me very well. I do not particularly like the idea of being WET and COLD and DROWNED and surrounded by DANGEROUS JELLYFISH. But we had a great time on our weird, whirlwind, for-no-real-reason trip anyway. Nora chatted her way through the friendly skies in a window seat, enjoying the superlative pseudo-scientific copy in the SkyMall catalog. When we landed we rented the most ludicrous, stupid car, which she is still talking about.

2009-Dodge-Challenger-Brilliant-Black-Crystal-Pearl

Except our rims were way more iced-out the ones in that picture. We felt like drug dealers.

If it weren’t for the planned excursions out of San Diego, we probably wouldn’t have even needed to get a car. Our downtown hotel was right across from the bay and all of downtown is strangely close to the airport. Day 1 we just ate and drank and swam in the hotel pool. Day 2: got on a boat and had a beer before noon, which is very important boat behavior. Also toured the USS Midway Museum. Here are the highlights of that:

1. It is sort of amazing that our Navy was using that antiquated hunk of junk up until 1992. All the dials and switches looked like a 1970s Radio Shack or stuff you’d find in your grandpa’s basement.

2. Nora sat in many cockpits. She filled out a quiz on aircraft carrier facts (using knowledge gleaned from the audio tour), and presented it to some grizzled old veteran to “earn” her “junior pilot wings.” The guy went the whole nine yards with presenting her with this plastic badge—they faced each other, saluted, did the handover, three steps back, more salutes, blah blah, and I think he was a bit taken aback at how seriously Nora took the whole thing and how stiff and for-real her posture and salutes were.

3. Nora also made me go in some virtual-reality fighter-pilot ride where you are strapped into a small box that proceeds to spin around and barrel roll and generally make you quite sick. Maybe it’s not really supposed to do that if you “fly” it properly, but where’s the fun in that? I started out as pilot and Nora as gunner, but I quickly cracked up at the controls the first time we rolled (I believe I was sobbing, “FIX IT! FIX IT!”), so she had to take over.

The next day we got a behind-the-scenes tour at the Safari Park. Fed a giraffe some leaves and learned all about what sex maniacs rhinos are. Our jeep-thing visited the main stud rhino, in his own enclosure because six of his bitches were pregnant already and he needed some downtime. We saw all 5000 pounds of rhino chilling in a muddy pond, eyes half-closed, looking like he was wondering when the Safari Park was going to run cable out to the pasture so he could get his NFL Sunday Ticket, and the keeper rattled her bucket and told him we had apples. For a while it didn’t look like the rhinoceros was interested in apples, but then he seemed to reconsider and lumbered to his feet. We took turns tossing apples into his giant gross mouth and I got rhino saliva on my hand, but it was totally worth it because how often can you say that? Not very often.

After the Safari Park we drove our ridiculous car to La Jolla, picking it sort of at random. Um. Well. The wind in our hair, the smell of wild animal manure on our clothing, the lingering rhino saliva, the absence of stiletto heels for me, a miniature Prada jacket for my child, a Rolex for LT, or a shivering Chihuahua on a leash for any of us—let’s just say we were the grubbiest people in La Jolla. We parked our car all by ourselves (another way you could tell that we did not belong there) and had some really good beers at a brewpub, and then illegally snuck down a gangway between two restaurants to the ocean. There was a sign that said “CAUTION: UNSTABLE CLIFFS” and a little gate, so of course Nora led the way out onto said cliffs. Reward: amazing scenery, sea lions, etc. It was so pretty I almost forgot about the creepy rich people.

It was fun to get away. With an older kid you get to do things like linger at breakfast while she amuses herself by surreptitiously feeding bits of pancake to the koi in the decorative hotel lagoon. (On Tuesday, when there’s no one there but business travelers, the fish must be all like: WHERE ARE OUR PANCAKES.) And I don’t want to be all cheesy about “making memories” (barf) but traveling with kids is much more fun when you’re doing more than hauling them around and buckling them into various seats. Although I still recommend you bring along an enormous  book (thank you, Rick Riordan, for releasing another of your interminable mythological tomes right before our vacation), and an iPod touch or other distraction-device. Because “making memories” aside, nobody wants to talk to their family all the time.

—mimi smartypants, friend to pachyderms.