Sea Adventurers

       While I can't pretend that I've been completely deprived of social interaction for the last five weeks, I must admit that my days and nights feel a little lonesome at times. I love my great grandparents and they are as wickedly funny as they are intriguing, but living in a senior community has given me an immense appreciation for the youngsters.

To put it lightly, I find this horrific.



       Mom, Chris, Andrew, and Mookie moseyed on out to Anaheim for a Disneyland experience this week. Of course, everybody wants a thrill, but sweaty throngs of headache-and-sneeze-ridden young families and I don't tend to make friends all too easily. Sooo, I was not in the least disappointed to sit this one out. The way I see it, all California has ever been good for is its coast. And Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent. No, not him. His accent.

      

       All my life I've had a love affair with the Pacific Ocean. Our family has flocked to the beach at least once every year since I can remember to see Grandma and Grandpa and, just as importantly, to see the ocean. During a recent trip to New York I encountered a short glimpse of the Atlantic, and unfortunately it simply didn't do the water justice. The west is really the best. There's just something about it - its dusty blue shade, its mountainous waves, its ability to be abominably beautiful even on the dreariest of days - that does my soul good.

       I have enjoyed many pleasant dreams, as well as a plethora of savage nightmares, regarding the ocean. Gillian Holloway, Ph.D. states in her publication The Complete Dream Book - a personal favorite of mine - that the ocean "is associated with the unconscious elements in life, things that are very fertile and powerfully alive but which are a bit foreign to our everyday perspective." Depending on the circumstances in which you are dreaming of the ocean, it could mean that you have been thrust into a particularly challenging situation that you're struggling to deal with (for example, if you are swept out to sea) or that you are enjoying a transition in life despite its mystery and uncertainty (if you are on a positive voyage across the ocean) or even that "you are dealing with a situation that has brought you to the edge of all that seemed certain" (if you are standing on the shore and gazing out). To be clear, I'm not into all the hocus pocus skit skat skoodle doot flip flop flee horcrux jaguar pagan worship mumbo jumbo generally associated with what some like to call "dream reading," but I hold the firm belief that many dreams are extraordinarily symbolic and often key in helping us to figure out what's going on inside our own heads. If nothing else, I would strongly recommend writing down dreams immediately upon waking up. You could learn a whole lot! Thank me later, if you please.

       That's all beside the point. The point is that Mom and Andrew came up to rescue me for the day today! We ate lunch at El Indio, AKA the best Mexican restaurant known to mankind (I literally have to close my eyes and savor the sweetness of living upon taking my first bite of beef taquito every time I visit) and then Mom dropped off me and Andrew at Torrey Pines Beach on her way to the San Diego temple. OH! Sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you. The sand. The salt. The sea. The...smell? Pah! Who cares? So worth it. So. Worth. It. We are Sea Adventurers, and we explored the exotic ocean wildlife in a maze of tidepools. Relish in our findings:

       Today was a marvelous day. Sometime soon I think I'll have a couple of those Russians down for a visit, and hey! Why not you, too? My best suggestion at this time is to book the next plane ticket to San Diego. The airlines can thank me later.

Happy sea kayaking!