i’ve been here, at the hospital i work at, for eight hours already. and yet… i have four more to go. i think. the math’s a bit foggy at the moment.
and i plan to blame my complete lack of photos on the fact that i’m working a long day. in what will be a series of long days.
argh.
see, i normally don’t talk about my work. or rather, i try not to talk about my work. it’s embarrassing to me when people decide they have so little to say, or they think themselves so void of interest, that they talk on and on (and maybe on and on) about their job. sure, it’s where a lot of us spend the majority of our waking hours. and some of us had to go to school to work where we do. so, it’s a big deal. but… well. i just don’t hold with the concept of defining oneself by what one does for money. does that make sense? i mean, i’ll totally talk about something funny or gross that happened at work, if i think it will entertain people. and, as an aside – i think both moi and birdman can attest that i maybe have the trump card when it comes to gross stories. but anyway. i try not to talk about the minutia. the fact that i only took one day off from work, and yet it looks like i was gone for a week. i have, essentially, four inboxes, and they are all rather full. still. see? kinda boring.
my point is – you are not your job. and neither am i.
having said that, because i came to work early, i missed a knitting event being held at a pirate-themed tavern. oh, i really wanted to go. i hope they have another one. because nothing would thrill me more than some knitters knitting like pirates. or whatever. and because i came to work early, i left my camera and laptop at home. but it’s okay, because i didn’t take that many pictures. and i took absolutely none of moi, which is abnormal. but i did photograph each of her dogs. one of which, i hear, has decided to moon over me. it’s nice.
so, thursday, i get on the plane. instead of knitting on a sock like i wanted to, i read an entire magazine. because while i’m not adverse to talking to people on a plane, i have criteria for doing so. i mean, apparently i have criteria. because when the guy with the blue-flowered backpack sat down next to me and instantly started asking me questions about what i was crocheting (different skill, asshat) (yeah, it’s kinda snotty to cop an attitude with someone that maybe knows nothing about yarn and whatnot, but still), i tucked the sock away and picked up my esquire. and almost immediately realized why i never buy esquire. largely, i don’t buy it because it’s a men’s magazine, and despite what the innernets say, i’m totally not a guy. but it featured a cover story on john edwards, and i was rather interested. i still don’t know jack about john, because the article seems to interview – in depth – everyone but edwards. too bad.
and if you’re interested in his run for the presidential nomination, google him yourself. that’s just how i roll, apparently.
when i got to the baggage claim at LAX, i was a bit stunned. my bag was the first one out the little chute. that never happens. it’s usually next to last, although i’m not sure why. anyway, moi picks me up, and we whisk away to her fabulous house, which was so full of books i though i was going to cry. and hardwood floors! books and no carpet are my favorite!
and the bed! my favorite! and the built-in bookcase! and the dogs! the one – this would be biscuit, who is counting the days until my return (yes, that’s a joke) – does this growl-y thing when you do something she likes. and her sister, bean, is just the sweetest.
eventually, we made our way to a wine bar for dinner. it’s called primitivo, and… well, it’s my favorite. my wine was yummy, the food was yummy, the conversation was yummy. shortly after dining, i fell asleep. because dudes, i had been up since four p.m. the day before. i was tuckered out.
friday was disneyland. but not before something between breakfast and lunch. now, a few and sundry words about disneyland. i used to live off ball road, which is the main road ouside the disney compound. there will be no ball jokes, i’ll tell you that right now. but, for four years, that’s the area i called home. i could see the matterhorn peak from my bedroom window. when they would do their fireworks every night in the summer, the best view was from the top of my bunkbed. the offramp from the freeway to get to disneyland used to run behind the fence of my best friend’s backyard. that was a little weird. i mean, it was a chain link fence, and her folks tried to dampen the noise of all the cars going to the happiest place on earth by growing vines over said fence. it didn’t work.
anyway. so, i lived in anaheim. close to this fabricated place, and in the middle of serious gangland. i think i may have already mentioned the gunshots i could sometimes hear at night. when you telll people you lived close to disneyland, they will always say, “oh, so you went all the time! that must have been fun!” and no, we did not go all the time. if my friends and i were allowed to partake in a theme park, we went to knott’s berry farm. it was cheaper, which means it was do-able on your allowance without having to ask your hippie parents for money, then having to hear about how the mouse was a corporate entity and couldn’t we do something a little less mainstream with our saturday? plus, and this is the odd part – going to knott’s did not require crossing any huge, ugly streets where people did not always stop at the red light. i can’t even tell you how may people were hit at that major intersection that we’d have to cross to walk to disney. it’s weird because knott’s is in buena park, and it was a two-bus jaunt from my house. but, we didn’t have to cross any streets to ge to those buses, and the second one dropped us at the buena park mall, which was next door to knott’s. my friends and i went to knott’s frequently. disneyland, not so much.
anyway…
disneyland. i meant to make moi drive through my old neighborhood, but that didn’t pan out. largely because disneyland now has its own freeway exit, which kind of bypasses the need to drive near my former home. and also because i had a hard time figuring out where the hell i was. i moved away in 1990, so it’s changed a lot since i was last there. i mean, i’ve visited friends and all, but usually i’m able to get to their homes without having to get too close to disneyland. since i’ve been gone, they’ve built a whole other park. not to mention a new parking lot. i seem to recall a strawaberry field where the lot is now. no joke.
and we had a blast. i love watching people, and i was doing a good job with keeping my catty comments to myself. shameful really, since i bet moi coulda topped most of the snotty things i was thinking about people. not all people, just certain folks here and there. i told moi about how my aunt jenny worked at disneyland for one or two years, as a character. in one of those hot and stuffy suits. oh! – remind me to tell you about how i had to wear a winnie-the-pooh suit once for work. it was amazingly hot inside that suit, and that was in seattle. i can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to wear one in southern california in august.
so. the rides are what they are. all of them lived up to my expectations. after careful consideration, my favorite has not changed. i have always loved space mountain, and i still love it. heaven would be five rides on space mountain every day, with breaks to knit with silky alpaca yarn. running a close second is the haunted mansion. i thought about this for quite a long time. because i really love the haunted mansion. the first time i remember going, it scared the living daylights out of me. sure, i was maybe six at the time. but it was truly creepy. and it always had the air conditioning. but it was my favorite for a while. then i grew a few inches, and was allowed to ride on space moutain. such is life.
this is really long-winded, so maybe i’ll stop here. still to come are more mouse droppings, cupcakes, and maybe a little chat about pooh bear. if i remember.
thanks for stopping by.
