journal entry 51, 1984-This was a group entry written by me, Jenni and Amy.

Indiana Jones, Mel Gibson, Billy Idol, Steve, the guy on the Blistex commercial, the soloflex guy, Huey Lewis, Robert Plant, Roger Daltery, the black guy on the cover of our math book, dude, dude’s bro Mike, Bryan Adams, The Chippendale’s guys, the 8th grade tuesday computer class, Pete Barsh, Ted McCinley, Bret Capouch, David Oliver, Scott Baio, The Fall Guy and the guys in shorts ont Don Henely’s video are all MASSIVE BABES!!!!!!!!!

journal entry 52

Mr. Fahl (our science teacher), Tim Conway, Mr, Ferlely, John Travolta, Andy Appel, Mark Vantil, The 8th grade tuesday computer class, J.R. Ewing, anyone who speaks retardation (a language made up by Amy and Jenni), Ralph Nader, Richard Simmons, Howard Cocell, Walter Chroncite, Dick Biandi (local dj), Ghandi (Ghandi????), Jimmy Carter, Amy Carter, John Phillips, A little kid that rides Jenni’s bus and Prince are all LOOSERS!!!!!!!!

I would list entry 53 which are the TOTAL, TOTAL LOOSERS!!!!!, but most of them are kids from our class. I will tell you that Alfred Hitchcock, and all American science teachers made the list.

But, before I go, here’s journal entry 15.

Billy Idol is so cool, but the only people that like him are me and Jenni. But that’s okay, Jenni and I both know the truth that William Broad is AWESOME!!!! Even my mom likes a few of his songs, Mony Mony and Baby Talk, but she still doesn’t like him.

One more. They’re just so good.

?-?-84

Poor, poor Spunky the reindeer. He started out as one of Santa’s reindeer and ended up in the bottom of a river because he was carrying drugs illegally into Miami and was murdered by the mafia.

My mom just sent me an eleven pound box with memorbilia. Most of it I threw away, but there were two journals with embarassing hilarity. Here the first of many installments that will make me laugh and be mortified all at once.

11-30-84 (this would make me 13)

If I could be anyone in the world, I would be someone who owned alot of beach property. Because beach property goes up in value and I could build a hotel or a condo on the water. Then I could make more money until I’m up to my elbows in money so I could do whatever I wanted to.

I just heard on the radio that there are record temperatures in Chicago. City workers are going door to door to bring the elerdery and infirm to “cooling centers”.

It’s been a hundred and twenty degrees here for the last month. Where are the city workers? I want to go to a cooling center.

If anyone reading this sent us a antique looking wooden plaque for our anniversary that says “Happily Ever After. Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be”. Thank you. There was no name or card.

That is all to report….except…..

did you guys all hear that I bought a wet suit.

I just bought a wet suit off of ebay.

You know what that means…….

Unfortunately, we’re home. Murphy the dog has an appointment with the vet to see about removing her glaucoma swollen tumor eye. I wish I had a clever, funny, interesting entry in my grasp, but I don’t. I have a load of clothes to put in the drier and a Eurovan to clean. Naturally, I’m sitting on the couch watching television. Andy is playing hockey and then we’re playing poker tonight. By we, I mean Andy will be playing poker and I will be hanging out.

This trip to Malibu was fantastic. I think we could have stayed much longer. Did you know that many campgrounds and RV parks have wifi now? The only reason we came back was, our pet sitting roommate went to New York until Sunday. We thought about taking off again on Monday, but then decided that the responsible thing to do would be to take care of some boring life stuff and make some money before we go on the road again.

*update to update written last night

We may be leaving again Sunday night.

Murphy the dog has an appointment with the vet to have surgery to take her big swollen eye out.

The surfing lesson went great. We even rented boards and surfed the next day. I’m much better than I thought I would be. My paranoia of murky water is much diminished with a full wet suit and reef shoes. We’re leaving for Vegas sometime tonight. Yahoo weather forcast still has the Vegas thermometer icons as exploding and burning. Never a good sign.

My hair is dirty with salt water and sand. It’s sticking up and sticking out. People pay big money to have their hair look like this.

I really don’t have anything to say, but I feel like I have a a wireless connection and a electrical outlet so I should try hard to come up with something.

We spent all day at the beach watching the surfers and occasionally going in the water. Now we’re sitting outside at the restaurant formerly known as Malibu Chicken eating hummus and betting the four o’clock games. Tonight we’re meeting Lainstar and her beau and spending tonight and tomorrow at The Standard.Last night the WallMart parking lot, tonight, a swanky LA hotspot. We are people of extremes.

Surfing lesson delayed until Monday. The waves were just too “gnarly” for the beginner likes of me. Sam our guru wave guide who looks like Brad Pitt in his grizzly adams phase, or for all of you baseball fans, a blond Johnny Daemon in the same said phase, said so. He said Monday would be better and less crowded. I was really relieved because when we went upstairs to get Sam for our lesson, looked out the windows and saw the breaking waves I got a little nervous. I mean really, this morning I was giving myself props for swimming out twenty five feet and putting my head under. These waves that we were looking at were three times as tall as me. The owner of the surf shop (Sean) was yelling things like “SICK!” and “WHOA DUDE!” every time they would crash down and seasoned surfers would fly thirty feet into the air and then crash into the sea.

Andy got to surf some though since we already had treked the boards to the beach. It actually wasn’t as bad as it looked from the store. Sean said just to bring the stuff back when we were done and didn’t charge us for the rental for today.

I am also happy to report that I’m more comfortable in the water, with pretty much no panic….dare I say dolphin like. Alright, not that comfortable, but a girl can dream. I even dove in and swam out and crashed through some waves while Andy was surfing. The throng of little kids in wet suits romping around the surf like shining, black seals inspired me.

Now we’re back at the restaurant formerly known as Malibu Chicken betting the seven o’clock game. I think we may go back to the safe haven of the Oxnard Wall Mart parking lot for sleeping tonight after dinner and a movie.

Surfing lesson….today.

I tried to get Andy to postpone it until tomorrow. He said in a wise and sagely voice, “You are ready”. When I told him I was afraid, he said, “Is it the kind of afraid that your scared but really excited, or just scared”. I said, “Does not compute”. Afraid to me, is just afraid. The only reason I’m doing this is that intelectually I know it will be fun, but later, after the afraid part.

Yesterday, I went full on swimming in water where a few times me feet couldn’t touch. After the afraid part, it was pretty fun. The first time the water swelled up and I realized that the bottom of the ocean was out of my reach, I got a little panicky and started to hyperventilate and frantically dog paddle. Andy kept repeating that it was okay and that the water was coming back down.

He was more patient today. Yesterday I reminded him of the “mountain bike incident”, and told him that I was probably more fearful then I was letting on. “The mountain bike incident” involved me not acting as scared as I was. He was at the bottom of a practically vertical drop saying “Come on, you can do it”. It ended with me screaming and all the way down, sure that I was going to die. Crying a few tears when I ended up alive and punching Andy, HARD, in the arm. For the record, “the mountain bike incident” was totally my fault. That is why it worked out so much better yesterday when I admitted my irrational panic to my understanding and loving husband instead of trying to grit my teeth through it. I even felt like I could have stayed in the water longer.

At least I don’t think I look like the kind of girl afraid of the ocean. That counts for something right? The good part about all of this is that I’m the kind of person that needs some time to warm up to certain things, but once I do, I’m completely in.

We are in Malibu. I was ever so brave to confront my irrational fear of water that I can’t see the bottom of and go into the ocean past my butt. I even crashed through a few breaking waves. Today was supposed to be my surfing lesson, but it has been postponed until tomorrow. Yesterday the guy at the surf shop said we could park in front of the shop on Pacific Coast Highway and no one would hassle us. We we’re hesitant to park anywhere overnight because there are signs everywhere strictly forbidding it. Since he was in the know, we took his advice.

Unfortunately, PCH is LOUD, really loud. On top of that since we were trying to be somewhat stealthy, we didn’t pop the top up, which is normally my bed. Loud traffic and sleeping in a cramped space didn’t make for the most ideal of sleeping situations and we both woke up bedraggled. I was so worried that Andy was going to jump up out of bed, refreshed and renewed and yell, “Let’s go surfing!”.

We’re eating breakfast at the place below the surf shop that has free wi fi. We found a campsite up in the mountains for tonight, and our friends are coming tomorrow where we have reservations at the swankified Standard hotel.

More hydrotherapy (and sunscreen) to come later in the afternoon.

We’re out.

Actually we still have to drive across town to get Jason the cat’s special cat food but then…..

We’re out.

Into the Southern Cali wildfires we go.

We are leaving for Malibu tomorrow.

Andy played poker all day yesterday. When he was done and I asked him if he could do anything in the world right now what would it be, he said “play pinball”. This is one skill I have heard about, and have never witnessed. We went to Gameworks next to the MGM on the strip.

I had no idea that he was a bona-fide, pinball wizard. He even had fans. A 20 year old kid called his friend who was playing some other game to come over and watch Andy’s wizardry. It was a Soprano’s pinball game. He played over an hour on one game and had the all time high score with something like 330,000,000 points. I guess that’s what happens when your a natural genius and spend four years of college in the quad playing pinball instead of going to class.

I’m covetous of my husband’s smart brain. But, he told me yesterday, he’s jealous of my ability to eat just about anything and not gross out, so, I think we’re about even….don’t you? We were talking about eating bugs and that it was strange that our culture didn’t evolve eating them. The thought of eating bugs didn’t gross me out, and I thought that maybe I would even try it.Maybe I’ll just put some sugar in a jar and trap all of ANT INVASION 2005 for a snack on the road.

Time to start packing.

I’ve been doing stuff, some of it interesting, and some of it not so interesting.

But right now, intstead of writing about it all, I’m going upstairs with my cute husband. We are decadently going to watch illegally downloaded episodes of Six Feet Under and The 4400 in the middle of a weekday.