We're ridiculous (and I love it)
Walking through SF with fresh eyes
Oh hello there!
How was your week? Aaron and I only have one week left in the bay! I can’t believe how fast it is going (and weirdly slow at the same time).
This whole moving-around-every-month-to-a-new-place experience has me walking around the world with fresh eyes like a kid again. Noticing the small moments. The big feelings. A sense that life is beautiful and ridiculous at the same time. Definitely some kid table energy there.
Ridiculousness is very important to me.
As a recovering perfectionist and perceptive person, I have a tendency to take life too seriously sometimes. I wonder if I developed my sense of humor at a young age to balance that out — to be fair, my life had some serious things going on growing up, but humor helped me maintain a healthy sense of the ridiculousness of it all. Not in a cynical way but in a hopeful way.
For me, laughter is a act of hope.
It helped me survive AND thrive. It led me to light and happiness in dark and lonely places.
Our Bay Area adventure has been everything BUT dark or lonely thanks to wonderful friends and gorgeous places, but it definitely has it’s share of ridiculous moments. Since we all need a little ridiculousness in our lives, I decided to collect a few silly moments to make you smile (or maybe even chuckle).
Rachel’s ridiculous moments of the month
Note: As some of these events happened so fast, we don’t have visual documentation of everything. But I’m a visual person so I included some “imagined” references to help set the scene.
TWO HOUR PARKING
On our way to Reno, we passed through a long stretch of nowhere. After hours of listening to podcasts and audio books trying to keep ourselves from getting sleepy, we spotted on the side of the road multiple (MULTIPLE!) two hour parking signs. You know, the parking signs that are usually outside businesses? Outside places with actual things to do?
We wondered about the poor (or maybe cranky) sucker who has to enforce this rule on a (probably not) regular basis. A trucker sleeping on the side of the road? “Wake up, buddy! It’s a two hour limit on weekdays. Nobody else in the world wants to park here but rules are rules.”
DON’T GO CHASING WATERFALLS
Speaking of Reno, we stayed one night in what seemed like a decent hotel and slept like people without a two hour limit. The next morning, after we packed up, we thought it would be a good idea to do one last bathroom run before the long drive. I went. All good. Then Aaron went and suddenly the sound of a waterfall hitting the toilet filled my ears. I thought, “Either Aaron has the bladder of a freaking camel or we have an actual waterfall in our bathroom.”
I ran in and saw that, as Aaron washed his hands, a gallon of water gushed from the fan above the toilet. Yes, dear reader, we had an actual waterfall in our bathroom.
We busted up laughing because if that had happened a few minutes earlier, Aaron or I would have been sitting underneath that waterfall. As Aaron likes to say, “Can you imagine?”
That would have been a whole new way to “take a leak” (I couldn’t help myself).
OLD BERTHA
One evening, we were walking along the water as the sun set. It was relaxing and beautiful and, on our way back to the hotel room (not the Reno one), we felt like all was right with the world. Until…
“Watch out for old, Bertha!”
A security guard flashed his light on us. “Imma walk you back.”
We must have looked confused (we were) because he explained, “Don’t walk around here at night without a light. You have your dog but Bertha could eat your dog protecting those babies. Her nest is right around there.”
We looked around for we didn’t know what.
He continued, “That raccoon is a menace. She’ll push you into the water!”
(I’m not kidding. He actually said that!)
We expressed our appreciation for walking us back. And when we were almost to the hotel, only then did he say, “Oh, by the way, there’s also gangs who hide in bushes around here to rob you.”
Thank goodness we returned safely. Gangs…no problem. But Old Bertha, she’ll push you right into the water!
A FEW OTHER QUICK DOSES OF RIDICULOUSNESS
Fake cat: Our dog Annie has decided that she can’t go to the bathroom while being watched by this fake cat, so every night, we have to find a place the cat’s glistening all-seeing eyes don’t touch. And though she is terrified of this thing, it has become her nightly ritual to seek it out so she can stare at it and take forever to go to the bathroom.
Roof menace: The roof of our AirBNB lines up with a neighbor’s back yard due to a hill. One day we were chilling in the living room and we hear a THUD on the roof followed by a scramble between something big and something small. A bit terrified, we ran outside and timidly said, “Hello? Anyone there?”
This is a reenactment of what we saw:
The neighbor’s dog peered over the edge at us after his jaunt with a squirrel. He does this every few days but we can’t seem to catch him with our cameras. If we do manage to snap a photo, you’ll be the first to know.
And the last ridiculous thing is we were told we look like movie stars which of all the ridiculous things, is probably the most ridiculous. It didn’t stop us from walking around like we were in a music video for a few days though.
Thank you for reading my ridiculous stories. I hope they made you smile.
One more thing that made me smile was that I got to paddleboard in the ocean for the first time ever this week. I was a bit nervous because I’ve only done lakes before because…you know…Utah, but we chose a good chill spot and it was wonderful.
Thanks for sitting with me this week AT THE KID TABLE.
Your ocean-fear-conquering friend,
Rachel
“She’ll push you in the water!” 😂
Awww, glad y'all are enjoying the adventure!