Missing Friends On a Different Coast

Am I going to get emotional? Most likely. It's in my blood and part of my brand. This is probably going to be the last of my California posts, mostly because I'm out of pictures and think I've really stretched the word count on this one. You know when you have a trip that so far exceeded your expectations that you just don't know how to handle it? That was this trip.

I didn't go into it thinking that I was going to have a crappy time. I thought it was going to be a nice six-day vacation sandwiched between two trips to New York City, but it ended up being so much more. The only appropriate way to end off a week of wedding prep and a busy day in LA was to go an hour down south and spend the day with my old roommate.

This summer, everyone sort of dispersed. One of my old roommates lives in Australia now, another in Ohio, and the third all the way in Southern California. There was no way in hell that I was going to miss out on seeing my best friend when I was going to be only an hour away from her new home two weeks after she officially moved and on her birthday. Things could not have lined up better and I cannot get over the timing on this.

She ever so graciously picked me up an hour north of her apartment at six o'clock in the morning (YOU HEARD ME RIGHT, SIX O'CLOCK) to avoid traffic and maximize our time together. Naturally, despite it being six a.m. and us barely scraping the surface of our lattes, we didn't shut up the whole hour drive, just chatting and watching the sunrise ahead of us. How many people are going to leave their houses at five in the morning to pick you up and hour away and then drive another hour back down south? I don't even like driving myself anywhere at five in the morning, let alone another human being, especially one that talks as much and as loudly as I do no matter what time of day.

Since I had to be at LAX sometime around seven that night to catch my flight, instead of staying stagnant in one city for the entire day, my friend and her boyfriend decided to take a trip up the coast to avoid the standstill traffic that would inevitably happen if we had just waited to leave the Carlsbad/Oceanside area at 5:30. After a quick (well, not really that quick because the service was slow) breakfast, a stroll around the area, and a few minutes to sit/lay down to recuperate, we were off to scale the coast until we got up to LAX.

First up was San Clemente, which ended up just being a quick pit stop to see the ocean from the train stop. I'm a big fan of looking at water, just not actually touching it or the sand. There's something so relaxing about watching and hearing the waves. I totally understand why babies and children find them so soothing. I also hadn't realized that I'd never seen people surf in real life. I've seen it on TV, but I was absolutely mesmerized by the surfers out on the water, even if the waves weren't that great. Still have no clue how they stay on their boards and swim through the waves and don't have to plug their noses, but hey, good for them.

We ended up in Huntington Beach, which is not the beach pictured above. We really only stopped off in Huntington so we could go to the bathroom and get a funnel cake, which served as my friend's pseudo birthday cake for the day. I mean, it had ice cream and whipped cream piled on top, it wasn't  just your standard funnel cake! We also drove through both Newport Beach (couldn't find Seth Cohen though) and Laguna Beach, which sparked a lengthy conversation on reality TV shows and vloggers and I still cannot explain why I am so fascinated by watching people's vlogs but catch me watching them all of the time anyway.

The beach in question is actually Manhattan Beach, the last stop on our coastal excursion before I had to head back to the airport. My friend and her boyfriend were convinced that this would have been my favorite spot of the day and damn do they know me well. We had dinner and watched the sunset and lollygagged to avoid going to the airport, or maybe that was just me...

As much as I wanted to go back to New York and as homesick as I was for the east coast, this was a trip I just never wanted to end. You know when you see a friend you haven't seen in a while and you pick up where you left off and it doesn't feel like you were apart at all until the impending reality hits you that you don't live in the same apartment unit anymore and can't just walk down the hall to talk to them? That's what I was struggling with. I mean, I'm still feeling it, especially since it's officially a week since I've left.

When we all parted ways in May after our lease ended, I had set plans. I was coming back up two weeks after and would see her then, then we saw each other two weekends in a row in July, and then I knew I was coming in October to her new neck of the woods. And now...there is nothing planned, no date in question to look forward to. Just like the rest of my life at the moment, it's a series of question marks as to when I'll be back on the west coast and I kind of, sort of hate it.

Did I cry saying goodbye at the airport? Damn straight I did. I cried about three times in LAX last Monday and I'm only partially ashamed to admit it. I mean, it was a little embarrassing, but I'm a weepy binch sometimes and I hadn't been able to cry all weekend so it was bound to happen, right? Much like a small child, I had some lemonade to calm me down and ended up writing blog posts and calling my mom to get the crying to stop. You gotta do what you gotta do, am I right?

Also, this picture had no place in any of my other posts, but I just needed to share a picture of me and my family. The amount of times I point at trash bags and trash cans and announce that they're my brethren is honestly astounding and probably not even funny at this point. Don't think that'll stop me though. It's my recurring joke that I will never let go. NEVER!

Also....congratulations! We've made it to the end of my lazy and unfocused content! We should be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. Or at least, back to the somewhat regular content. Who knows with me, let's be real. Hope you've enjoyed my first New York and California journeys! If not....YIKES. Sorry!