A Voyage Back in Time on the Queen Mary

Driving 1800 miles from Illinois to California in three days was quite an adventure.

But how about traveling back in time nearly 100 years in one afternoon?

Don't worry. It's actually a really short trip.

 

Here we are in 1930. It's been nearly 20 years since the Titanic sank, and the Queen Mary is boarding passengers for a trip across the Atlantic (totally illogical, since she's docked in Long Beach, CA, but we're just playacting, here). She's a real beauty.

More than 100 feet longer than the Titanic, she'll make 1001 voyages before her retirement. The most famous actors and statesmen of the day will roam her decks and indulge in the opulence for which she is known. During WWII, she will be stripped down and used to transport soldiers to Europe, and later to transport war brides to meet their husbands.

(Unfortunately, back in 2013, the rooms and dining halls are being used as a hotel, so we can't tour those parts. But we can explore the ship's giant underbelly, which isn't as pretty, but quite fascinating.)

The engineering it takes to make a ship this size run in 1930 is impressive, to say the least.

Impressive, and rather cute, don't you think?

 

There are pipes EVERYWHERE. Big pipes, small pipes, in-between pipes, all intertwining for the length of two football fields. Two of our family members have gone through phases of being obsessed with the Titanic, so seeing what makes the Queen Mary "go" is the next best thing to touring the Titanic's lower decks. Super cool.

Amazingly, all of those pipes are used to push her 81,237 gross tons along by two propellers. You can't tell from this picture, but that sucker is ENORMOUS. I actually felt a little dizzy looking down at it through the water.

And you know what's really amazing? The hull plates on the ship are only 1.25 inches thick. 1.25 inches of steel between 2000 souls and the vast, mighty ocean. Apparently, that's all it takes to hold a ship that size together (barring any unforeseen encounters with an iceberg, of course).

Now that's what I call an anchor. Each of those chain links at the top weighs 224 pounds. 

Aw, is it time to go home already? That was a fun little zip through a slice of history, and a great way for the kids to see up close how boats and ships work. (Or used to work - most of what we saw is all computerized nowadays, and not nearly as cute.) 

Alright, handsome Captain Havarti. Back to 2013. Take us home!

Fun fact: The Queen Mary has three smokestacks. The Titanic had four. But the Titanic's fourth smokestack was a fake. They only put it on the ship for looks.

Another fun fact: Winston Churchill signed the D-Day Declaration on board the Queen Mary. He considered the ship his at-sea headquarters during WWII.

Yet another fun fact: On July 9, 1948, Clark Gable delayed the departure of the Queen Mary for 18 minutes because he was saying a long goodbye to his love interest at the time. (And frankly, he didn't give a damn. Ha! Ba dum pum.)

One last quick fact: I did actually take all of these photos, though I obviously didn't really go back in time to take them. Just a little PicMonkey fun. :)

Long Beach: Aquarium of the Pacific

If you ask Dolittle what the highlight of our trip has been so far, feeding the Lorikeets at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach is right there at the top of her list.

I'd never heard of Lorikeets before we went. They're adorable. They look like miniature parrots. Gorgeous, bright, little rainbow birdies. 

Dolittle and my mom got the little cups of nectar they sell outside the exhibit, and as soon as we walked through the door, my mom got bombarded. 

She was cool with the first two.

Three (there was still one on her hand) got to be a little iffy. Great face, Ma! :)

Dolittle was patient, and finally got to have her turn. 

 

 Aren't they pretty?

I love this one. Little birdie's looking right at her. :)

Dolittle wasn't the only hands-on kid that day. BoyWonder enjoyed petting the stingrays and sharks (or trying to, anyway - his little arm had a hard time reaching far enough into the water). No fear.

Even The Muse, who prefers not to reach her hand into a pool of potentially dangerous creatures, convinced herself to touch some starfish and anemones in a touch pool.

See how proud she is of herself? Also, did you know that if you hold your finger on an anemone's spines, it will close them gently around your finger? Super cool. 

Speaking of super cool, how are jellyfish even a thing? 

So freaking bizarre. And awesome. And mesmerizing. The jellyfish tank is like a living lava lamp.

(Funny side note: Shortly after we saw these jellyfish, we went to another hallway that had a tank of orange jellyfish. BoyWonder pulled on my arm and said, "Mama! Look! Let's go see the hot jellyfish!" I love the way kids see things.)

Speaking of bizarre, check out this little guy: 

It's like God just tossed a bunch of patterned fish parts into a grab bag and pulled this out. I think the poor little fellow's got a major identity crisis on his hands. 

Also in the "delightfully bizarre" category, the Weedy Sea Dragon:

 And his funky cousin, the Leafy Sea Dragon.

 Come on! That's just freaking cool.

I'd love to see some of those little buggers in the wild. 

Here are some things I would NOT want to see outside of the aquarium:

These things FREAK. ME. OUT. Little wormy eely things popping straight out of the bottom of the ocean floor is just not right. Not right at all.

I also wouldn't want to cross paths with this guy.

 He's just plain ugly. And scary.

Just wandering around with his mouth hanging out. No thank you.

Aquariums are cool for seeing what kinds of whacked out, mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly strange and diverse life forms there are. For real. Life in the ocean is like one big Dr. Seuss funhouse.

The only disappointment with the aquarium was that the sea otters were hiding. Otters are my fave. So fun and playful. 

Oh well. Those Lorikeets and Leafy Sea Dragons made up for it. :)

Our Sucky Day in Paradise

So at this point, I have like ten different posts written in my head. The only problem with doing so many interesting things is that I don't have time to write about them.

It's not a terrible problem to have.

However, this post isn't about the interesting things (though I'll get to those, soon, I promise). It's about our most uninteresting day so far. Our Sucky Day in Paradise, if you will.

We've spent the past two weeks here in SoCal with sunshine and palm trees, an awesome pool just steps from our condo, beach access just a few steps farther, gorgeous drives up the Pacific Coast Highway, the best gelato we've ever had, and the smell of blooming jasmine wafting through the air. I kid you not, we keep pinching ourselves at the awesomeness of our life right now. Each day has seemed to be more perfect than the last.

I mean, come on. You saw the dolphin story, right? (P.S. If you're not on Facebook, you probably didn't see the e-mail I received that made that story ten times better - it's in the comments of that post. It's worth checking out, truly.)

Talk about a ridiculously amazing trip so far.

But then the other day happened. It was one of those days where everything was "off." We didn't really have much on the agenda, and I let whatever semblance of a routine we'd established totally slide. As a result of that, or the phase of the moon, or the universe's need to balance out our blissful existence, or whatever reason, the kids were ear-piercingly loud, unusually rambunctious, and annoyingly bickery that day. On top of which, the call of "Mama! Mama? Mama? Mama!" was reeled off with such fervency and frequency that I began fantasizing about sticking sharp objects into my ears.

And all of this in our darling little 2-bedroom condo. A little 2-bedroom condo - even when surrounded by palm trees and gorgeous ocean views - is still a little 2-bedroom condo. And that day it was feeling very VERY small.

I finally gave up on trying to salvage any sort of schooling for the day, and decided to do something fun and outdoors. It was a bit too chilly for the pool or the beach. "Let's go letterboxing!" I declared. The kids were thrilled with the idea.

(For those unfamiliar, "letterboxing" is kind of like geocaching - it's a treasure hunt of sorts, where you follow clues from a website and find boxes people have hidden in random public places. Each letterbox has a stamp and a notebook in it. You bring your own stamp, stamp pad, and notebook with you. When you find the box, you stamp your stamp into the letterbox's notebook with a little note about who you are and where you're from, and then stamp the letterbox stamp into your own notebook with a little note about where you found it. Kind of cool. A friend of mine has a whole notebook filled with letterboxing stamps from her family's letterboxing adventures.)

We'd tried letterboxing twice in Illinois, both times without success. We followed the clues, but the boxes were nowhere to be found.

But this is paradise! Everything works in paradise!

Except when it doesn't.

We got to the first letterboxing site, which was at a park. I had told the kids that if, by chance, we didn't find the box, we could just play at the park for a bit. We spent fifteen minutes searching through the bushes where the box was supposed to be, and found nothing. And my promise to play at the park fell flat because there was no play equipment or anything. Just a big baseball diamond.

The stupid letterbox was supposed to be in those stupid bushes to the left. This was the only stupid picture I took on this stupid day. It shows the one moment when there was hope of the stupid day being salvaged. But it wasn't salvaged. It was stupid and sucky.

At this point, I remembered that we didn't have a stamp pad in our letterboxing kit anyway, so we set off to the drugstore to pick one up.

On the way, we passed a library with a used bookstore. Cool! Let's stop and buy a few used books! Got everyone out of the car, went into the library, and found out the bookstore closed 20 minutes before. Drat.

Got to CVS and searched the office and art supplies. No stamp pads.

So we went to Dollar Tree, where I had to fend off fifteen more "Mama? Mama? Mama?"s, as the moppets asked for every other piece of plastic junk they saw (which they usually don't do, really).

We went to find another letterboxing site that had a cool little rhyming clue and got lost. Twice. Google maps has a hard time in paradise, it seems. The directions on the clue didn't help.

After starting over and following the directions three times, and ending up in the same wrong place three times, I gave up. Cue the whining and dramatic upset from the youngsters in the backseat. Everyone is hungry, hot, and tired. And frustrated that we've now had four dud letterboxing experiences. And now it quickly approaching was rush hour.

So we went home, having spent most of the afternoon accomplishing nothing but purchasing a $1.00 stamp pad, which was probably manufactured by some poor kid in Indonesia working for pennies a day. (Which, of course, just added guilt for complaining about my First World sucky day on top of the sucky day.)

I mean, it's not like we just survived an earthquake, or had our car break down on the freeway, or lost all our money or anything like that. We still had plenty to eat, everyone is healthy, and we aren't living in a war zone. We're in paradise, for crying out loud! No, this was just a normal, run-of-the-mill, mundane sucky motherhood day.

But those days really do suck. Those days when it seems like no matter what you do to try to make it better, it all just falls apart. At least if we'd survived an earthquake, we could say we survived an earthquake. Mundane, sucky motherhood days give you nothing to show for them. No triumph, no sense of accomplishment, nothing. Just general suckiness.

I was kind of hoping those days didn't exist in paradise. But they do.

But every day after that sucky day has been fabulous again. And if you're going to have a sucky day, you might as well have it with palm trees and sunshine. So paradise still wins. :)

Sunsets, Surfers, and a Stunning Dolphin Sighting

*If this is your first time seeing this post, please be sure to read the comments at the end. It makes the story ten times sweeter. :)

Last night, we decided to go watch the sunset over the ocean. Since our condo is just steps from a scenic overlook, that was easy. I grabbed my camera on the way out the door, thinking I'd work on my sunset photography skills.

As we walked down the path toward the water, I realized I'd forgotten my cell phone. No biggie, I thought. Havarti had his phone.

When we got to the overlook, I could tell it was going to be a gorgeous sunset. So I decided to run down to the beach (a bit of a hike, with LOTS of stairs) to get an unobstructed angle.

"I'm going to run down and take photos from the beach," I said.
"I want to go!" cried the kids.
"No, stay here with daddy," I replied. "We're not going in the water, so you guys would just be going down the stairs and back up. I'll just go by myself."

They agreed that it didn't sound as much fun not going in the water and stayed put.

As I left the family behind, I remembered again that I didn't have my phone. No biggie, I thought. There are lots of people here, and what could possibly happen going down to the beach and back?

As I descended the stairs, there were a couple of surfers way down in front of me. I may or may not have chased them down like a crazy person to take some photos I thought would look cool.

Like, totally California, right?

So here I am surreptitiously photographing random strangers with their surfboards, when suddenly I notice something popping out of the water out in the surf.

My first thought was "Jaws," but quickly I saw that there was more than one.

And then one popped right out of the water! Not Jaws--Flipper! A whole pod!

Um. Yeah. Awesome. We were totally blown away. 

And by "we," I mean me and Random Lady Next to Me on the Beach, because I stupidly told my family to stay behind and hadn't brought my cell phone (which turned out to be a pretty big "biggie"). Gonna be wracked with guilt over that for a while.  

We bonded a bit, Random Lady and I. She lives around here. She said she'd been walking the beach, thinking about her friend who had recently lost her son, and then these dolphins showed up. She felt like it was a sign and wanted to share the experience with her friend, but she couldn't get any good photos. So she got my e-mail address and I sent her some. Kinda cool to be a part of a stranger's special moment.

Random Lady said she sees dolphins here fairly frequently, but they don't usually come that close to shore and don't usually stay that long. We watched them for a good half an hour. If I'd known they were going to stay that long, I would have asked to borrow someone's phone and told Havarti to get the kids down there. (Then again, everyone on the beach was trying to capture the moment on their phones, and it would have been extremely rude to ask someone to borrow their phone at that particular moment.)

They came REALLY close to the shore. Like, right where the surfers surf. Barely beyond the breakers. I could have run into the water and swum to them pretty easily (if it wasn't so cold and I wasn't terrified to do so). 

I tried to get some photos that showed how close they were:

Dude, check it out! He's catchin' a wave!

 Oh, he totally bailed! Harsh, dude.

 But seriously, look at where the sand is. They were right there in front of us.

RIGHT. THERE. So much guilt for my family missing this. But really glad I had the camera. (Though I really wished I had a telephoto lens. Could have gotten some amazing shots with a little more zoom.)

Oh yeah, I did end up getting some nice photos of the sunset, too. :)

These days in southern California keep blowing us away. What a crazy amazing life.