Summer Break

Catalina is overpriced, congested, smoggy, the water is freezing, the scuba diving sucks, if you want a spot on the beach you pretty much have to get there at 6am, there's a distinct smell of sewer and seaweed every other block, the fish bite so hard they draw blood, there's constant landslides/the threat of getting killed by a falling boulder, the tiny engine-powered golf carts are louder than God, everything closes before 10pm, the locals are surly, the one donut shop sells out of everything good by about 5:01am so if you want a goddamn long john you're pretty much going to have to camp out for it overnight like you would Justin Timberlake/Bieber tickets, and my whole family gathers there all at once, one time a year, which somehow always manages to be the exact same moon-alignment that makes all the women in my family (which outnumber the guys 7:1) go into their special womanly time ALL AT ONCE, which means utter, and complete hormonal horror for at least half the trip.

That being said. . .

I CANNOT WAIT TO GO!!!

Yes, it's not perfect, but there's something time-travel-y magical about it and there isn't a single place on earth I'd rather be come summer. Maybe it's because I've been there every year of my life, or maybe it's because there's no work to be done, just beaching and eating and hiking up and down to places we've see seven hundred times but seem just as gorgeous every time you get up above the golf-car-smog-layer. Or maybe it's because even though all together my family and friends resemble a grounded flock of geese (not a flying flock where they're all pretty and making v-formations, but like a flock of geese when they're all sitting by a pond and flapping about, and honking, and squawking, and running into each other, and all trying to be the leader of the group until one just gets pissed off and flies away and then all the others see it and go noisily chasing after it . . . ok, so maybe its not the best analogy now, but you wait until I get the first barbecue on videotape), they're still so fun to be around, and it's so nice to see everyone in the same place all at once.

(Oh jesus, now I'm tearing up again. I better not be getting my period for the third time this month or someone is gonna have to pay! And it'll probably be James!) (Because he's a cat and doesn't care a wink if I yell at him, he'll wait til I'm done and then roll onto his back so that I'll rub his belly while he bites me.)




Hello lover.

If it were possible for me to make sweet love to this island you better believe I'd do it. And then I'd "forget" I'm supposed to keep my diaphragm in for at least six hours after takeoff and wind up with little expensive, crowded island babies. But they'd be cutest little island babies you've ever seen!



(**it may seem like I just gave Catalina a really bad rap, but I'm leaving out a whole lotta shit. Like how it has the inexplicable draw of making my brother strip naked in a public lunch place, how the friends I bring sometimes end up contracting VD two nights in, how at some point in the journey over someone is going to throw up, and how every single year, without fail, both my sister and I will spend so much time in the sun (read: anything over 5 minutes) we contract the HIV on our feet and hands.)(And yes - I still am SO EXCITED about going! The HIV is a small price to pay for relaxation.)