I get why raisins are made in California now

On Saturday I was at the beach. It was incredibly hawt. I spell it like that because 1, I have a college degree and therefore I'm allowed to sound like I don't, and 2, there was a surfing competition going on and, well....it was hawt. Ya dig?

I was foolish and didn't wear a swimsuit because I wasn't planning on swimming. Look. I grew up going to the Oregon coast every summer, and nobody swims in that water unless they're wearing a full body wetsuit. But in California, people lay out on the sand and get skin cancer??? With swimsuits on. They never actually get in the water. This is a thing! Well, I got a nice sprinkle of freckles on my face and legs, and saw some dolphins, which reminded me to shave my legs later, and saw some cool surfing tricks all while getting shriveled up by the sun. Conclusion: California is an excellent place to turn grapes into raisins (it's not a metaphor).

Here is what it's like to road trip with my younger siblings. The scene is thus: we're trapped in an enclosed space for 10 hours. Ellie has to empty her bladder every hour or so. They need snacks every 20 minutes. I bring all my library books and a box of Dramamine. We play the license plate game for a measly 10 minutes until one of them cheats and the whole game goes down the tubes.

I started to write this in my phone somewhere between Nevada and California, and welp. That's all I have to say. WELP.

Bad Ideas I Have Executed & Then Immediately Regretted Thereafter

1. Eating no less than four (that's right, FOUR) whole wheat muffins on a road trip to California [this very road trip, as it turns out], far from any rest stop.
2. Jumping off of my best friend's trampoline onto a "tower" of silky pillows because I thought it would be like a waterless slip-n-slide. That was the 14th sprained ankle of my childhood and also the worst. My mother made me take crutches to church, which was just about the most humiliating thing for a 12-year-old girl. Don't forget the orthopedic socks. Er...sock. It was all wrapped up in a nice Single 5ever Package. Although nowadays if I had crutches, I'd milk it. As I mentioned in my last post, I don't get embarrassed easily.
3. Creating a Spanglish email address for myself in 10th grade which would follow me into oblivion, or at least the age of 25. My dad likes to pronounce it incredibly poorly, just so I know how foolish I look to universities and banks. "Pelly-Ree-Jo-Jo-Runner." To be clear, I'm not a male redhead and I can hardly call myself a runner. /end
4. Stalking a friend of a friend of a friend (bless the internet for giving me this capability) and then accidentally liking one of his pictures which was 58 weeks old. The fear I have of repeating this mistake is only equal to the fear I have when I'm locked out of my apartment, my bladder is full, and my keys are buried at the bottom of my purse. These fears are real and are not to be challenged.
5. Listening to the song "Taxi Driver" at least 50 times in a row so I could memorize the lyrics and impress my friends at a birthday party I was going to (you don't have to listen to it, guyz, but really, the entire song is made up of band names, so that's cool). I actually walked around the block where the party was being held like 5 times, the song on heavy rotation, until I'd burned all the words into my brain. I mean, I know the lyrics now and that's great but I can't add that to my resume. And the only memorable thing about that birthday party was the cake made of doughnuts. Bless it. 

Things we said to each other while on this trippity-trip ("we" mostly meaning Ellie):

Ellie spilled a bunch of pencil shavings all over her seat, and said to my bro: "Don't talk to me now, I'm in crisis!"

My dad was channel surfing in our motel the first night and kept landing on novelas (Spanish soap operas). He paused on an especially flamboyant one and my mom said "I can feel a swear coming on..."

We drove through a wicked rainstorm between St. George and Arizona. Most people were pulled over with their hazard lights on, but my dad kept plowing through. The lightning and thunder were so intense that at one point Ellie said "Can we please turn on a movie?! When I'm doing something other than lightning I'm like 'YAYY!'" Lightning is a verb now, you animals.

My parents were discussing where the nearest Costco was so they could get gas. Ellie chimed in from the backseat: "Hey! Hey guys we should go to Costco and get smoothies. I mean since you guys are talking about Costco."

Caleb started to spit for no reason. Well, I guess he's a 12-year-old boy, so that's reason enough. Mom said "Cal why are you spitting?" {silence} "NO SPITTING!" Familiezzzz.

Ellie, to my mother: "Mom, just put some chips in this cap." {As she extends her upside down baseball hat to my mom} 

"No. I'm not going to put food in something you'll put on your head later."

But everyone knows Ellie rarely wears hats. She basically uses them for storage purposes, the same way she's used anything with a concave opening since the age of two. 

Ellie, on the way home (we were all on our last legs, mentally, if you know what I mean): "Can we just throw Caleb out the window?" 

But really. We did have a good time. Lest you think the entire trip was like that. Just don't put us in a car for very long or we'll start muttering death threats and throwing Cheez-Its (the second thing actually did happen).