Santa Barbara, take 3

Third time’s a charm, right?  RIGHT?  I sure hope so.  We’re back in Santa Barbara for our third visit in three years and I’ve got every finger crossed (not my toes, though… y’all remember how things go with my toes?) that this trip is…. what?  I was going to say “a raging success.”  But I think I’ll settle for “not too shabby.”  I was actually struck with some anxiety yesterday afternoon as I was packing our things, feeling like I was just waiting for the other shoe to fall.  Broken bones the first trip, nasty flu (well, for the boys and me) the second… why on earth did we decide to tempt the fates and come again?  But when I voiced my fear to Jason, he just scoffed (of course) and said “what, you think there is, like, some kind of hex over you?  Some weird voodoo thing with you and Santa Barbara?”  To which I answered, “ummmm, yeah!”  But it helped.   I went to book club (to discuss The Brothers K, btw — now one of my all-time favorite books– but more on that some other time) and by the time I got back I was feeling calm again.  Not confident.  But calm.  Come what may.  Santa Barbara, Schmanta Barbara.

This morning the boys were excited, everyone was healthy, my toes unbroken.  And I’m happy to report that ALL of those things are still true, we are safely tucked in to our hotel room, and Jason and I are sipping tea while the boys saw some serious logs on the fold-out bed.

Getting here was not all fun and games, I’ll admit.  Jason forgot his license and let me tell ya, TSA was not amused.  We were still allowed through but not without the full-body-pat-down, bag searching, and copious checking of Jason’s wallet for his various other forms of identification.  It was a slog.  But we made it to our gate just in time to walk onto the plane (which, I’ll admit, is how we usually roll at the airport anyhow) and we breathed a big sigh of relief.

The flight… well, we’ll give the boys a C, C+ tops.   All of that quality time with our friends at TSA meant we didn’t have time take the boys to the bathroom before boarding. And so we had quite the desperate moment during take-off (read: when you can’t get out of your seat) when Isaiah was crying and carrying on, kicking the seat in front of him, because he had to pee.  Jason and I do not handle moments like this well.   We both panicked.  We almost had him pee into his own bottle before I remembered a spare diaper at the bottom of my backpack, which had been sitting there since Isaiah potty trained back in December.  Jason literally just shoved it down his pants and told Isaiah to “drop it in,” which he dutifully did.  Hallelujah it was only pee.  Sigh.  It didn’t start the flight well.  Gryffin rocked it, coloring and watching “Backyardigans” but Zeebo was difficult from start to finish.

I then managed to get into a big fight small dispute with the guy at the rental car agency and was still fuming over the final cost as we stepped outside.  But as soon as we felt that brilliant Santa Barbara-breezy-and-72-degrees weather, we both just shrugged as if to say “eh, what’s done is done.”    Since then, the boys have gone swimming twice here at the hotel (once with me, once with J after he finished working), we drove around our old neighborhood and got some amazing Mexican food from one of our old haunts.   Not too shabby for night one.  We’ll take it!

La Super Rica on Milpas

It’s good to be back!