Santa Barbara Adventures

I've made up my mind. Starting today, I'm no longer a Los Angeles resident. Buh-bye Prius-driving hipsters that cut you off and then give you the finger! I'm done with all y'all because I'm moving up the coast to Santa Barbara.

Yes, I know. I need to work out the long term details (note to self: buy lottery ticket) but in the meantime I might just refuse to vacate my hotel.

And why should I leave? This room has got a super comfortable bed. The shower has fantastic water pressure and one of those awesome massaging shower heads. There's free breakfast, and when I walk outside, my hotel is somewhere in the picture you see above, so clearly, it's breathtakingly gorgeous. Thank you for borrowing money from China giving me a tax rebate check, U.S. Government!

Seriously though, I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this weekend. It feels really good to be here. I've blogged several times about how much I adore Santa Barbara, but as I drove up the coast this afternoon, I realized that this trip is the very first time I'm coming here just to relax. For the very first time, I'm not here primarily for a conference or for work. I'm just here to have a little getaway with la famille.

Although the beaches here are incredibly picturesque, I've never done more than stick my feet in the water. Truth be told, even when I go to the beach in LA, I never get in the water. Heck, I'm not even one to lounge around on a blanket in the sand. And it's all because I put on a swimsuit and say, "There is no way in hell that I am going out in public looking like a fat cow, especially when Halle Berry might jog by."

However, I decided at around 5 AM this morning that I'm over it and it's all because of my kids. I overheard them chatting in their room last night about how excited they were to come here and how they really wanted to go to the beach but probably wouldn't get to, "Because Mommy thinks she's too fat to go."

I felt really bad when I heard that because I try to be really positive about my body around them. They see me sweating like a maniac to that Jillan Michaels DVD and they know I go and run at the park almost every day. I don't say, "Mommy's exercising because she's fat." Nope, I tell them it's because exercising is what healthy people do and because I want to have more energy to keep up with them. Clearly though, my sons are no dummies and they know me better than I think they do.

With all this in mind, this morning I said, eff it, I'm going to the beach and instead of wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I'm gonna wear a swimsuit!

At first I tried to track down my old swimsuit but I seriously could not find it. The poor thing probably disintegrated from lack of use. Sooo, I had no choice but to take myself swimsuit shopping. EEK!

I don't have to tell you how traumatizing the lighting in the dressing room is. It makes you want to cut to the front of Hollywood liposuction line! But, I persevered through trying on about two dozen different swimsuits and I finally decided on a very cute RED number. I'm still shocked that I picked something that's not so-called "slimming" black, but I figured if I was going to go for it, I'd be damned if I was gonna do the stereotypical black swimsuit with slimming tummy panels that fits so tight you can barely breath.

In the morning the plan is to go check out the Santa Barbara Mission -- I'm pretty excited because I've never been to a California Mission and this one is old-school, founded in 1786! After that, we're heading to the Rose Cafe for lunch. Any die-hard Depeche Mode fan will certainly recognize this place. (Hint: look at your Exciter CD and then look at the back of this photo on the right side.)

Then, in the afternoon we're going to either Butterfly Beach or El Capitan Beach and my new red swimsuit will make it's debut! I already bought a trashy beach book to read and if the writing gets too tedious, I can work on my list of things I want.

Trust me, "I want to move to Santa Barbara," is going to be somewhere near the top!

Frozen Peas and My Knee

I'm sitting around with a bag of frozen peas on my left kneecap. Clearly the end of the world is upon us.

One of the consequences of last Thursday's lengthy, rage-induced run is that I've killed my knee. It began bothering me a bit on Friday, and of course the solution my dumb self came up with was to keep on moving. It's like the Daft Punk sample of Kanye West's "Stronger" turned on in my brain and all I could think of was:

"Work it harder
Make it better
Do it faster
Makes us stronger"

How much harder, better, faster, stronger? Since Thursday, I've jogged twice more, done step aerobics and sweated my way through a Violet Zaki DVD that makes you do about 7,943 squats and lunges. Stupid, stupid, stupid! (Picture me banging my head on a concrete wall.)

Last night I woke up twice because the pain was bothering me. I took some Advil and, unfortunately, it didn't make a bit of difference. I spent most of today limping around the neighborhood looking bitter and geriatric. I mean, it took me half an hour to walk to pick up my sons from school today because every time I put more than a little weight on my left leg, bolts of pain shot through my knee.

On the way home after school, my youngest refused to walk up our hill. He claimed that his legs didn't work and so I needed to carry him. Of course I wanted to know who the heck was going to carry me since one of my legs actually seemed like it didn't work for real.

Guess which one of us ended up getting a piggyback ride???

To distract myself from the pain of hauling a 32 pound child up the hill on my back, I attempted to think about what an awesome hair day I was having. And then I remembered that that wasn't actually true since my hair was sort of resembling a rats nest.

Sooo, I came home, called my sister and complained about how I'm getting old and my body is falling apart. Seriously, I never had aches and pains like this back in the day. She was pretty sympathetic although she thinks I just need new running shoes.

I responded by launching into a complete pity-party about how my knee's jacked up but I'll never know for sure since 1) I don't even have a doctor, 2) I only went to the doctor when I was pregnant and 3) I haven't been to a doctor since my six-week checkup after my four year-old was born -- and what's wrong with me psychologically that I never go to the doctor? I told her how I'd even taken a bath in Epsom Salts just like an old lady.

She says, "Well my trainer at the gym says you 're not supposed to put heat on knee aches. You're supposed to ice it."

"Ice it?" I was skeptical. I thought heat makes things feel better.

"Yeah," she said. "Put a bag of peas on it. Heat is what old people put on their bodies to make themselves feel better."

And that, my dear friends, is the tale of how a bag of frozen peas came to be resting on my knee.

America: Home of the Fatal Tummy Tuck

I just ate a clove of garlic and downed some NyQuil so this is going to have to be the most quickly written post in the history of this blog.

I took my temperature and it's 100.1. My body aches. I have a headache. My eyes are red... no photo of my jacked up state is gonna be posted. I'm not trying to "keep it real" to that sort of level.

In fact, I wouldn't even be posting except for Nablopomo. Yeah, I'm just competitive like that so I've dragged myself into an upright position and I'm sitting here typing. Ugh. I hate getting the flu.

But I have to just say that I feel so horrible for Kanye West. I was talking to my mom and sister earlier today about his mom's death and it's just awful. I'd be a wreck if that happened to my mom.

I keep thinking about how in pictures his mom wasn't even big. She looked just fine. She didn't look like she was in her teens or 20's. Nope, she looked like a distinguished black woman in her late 50's.

But nope, even educated, capable women are made to feel like they're nothing unless they have a flat stomach and some perky boobs. We're all responsible for that, not just that allegedly crooked surgeon she got caught up with.

I'll tell you, I've thought about getting a tummy tuck. And then I think about getting my badonkadonk up to run instead. If that doesn't get me the flat stomach, then guess what, I guess I'll just have to learn to live with control top panty hose, corsets, girdles... seriously, I would not want to die and leave my two kids and husband alone.

Plus, I've never had the $$ for plastic surgery so that's always squashed that idea.

And with that, I have to go keel over and wrap myself in a blanket. I hope I feel better manana and I hope you don't get sick too.