I Lied to You When I Said the Water Was Fine

I am sick. I came in late to work b/c it was absolutely necessity to start the morning off w/ a trip to Target to pick up cold medicine, Kleenex, chap stick, and orange juice. And I blame my terrible, dreadful illness on the shit-drenched (I know, I said that, and it’s really really gross, but I think it’s most likely true) waters of the Santa Monica area beaches. Why was I swimming in the cesspool to begin with? Likely question.

I finally decided this weekend that it was time to buckle down and learn how to surf. I’ve had in my possession for some weeks now “the big green monster” which is my brother’s first surf board, it’s a “ten-sixer” and it’s green, hence the name. It’s been chilling on my balcony all this time but I was honestly kind of afraid of it cuz it’s like 4 times my size, so when Greggy told me last weekend that I can inherit his current board cuz he’s moving on, I jumped on it. It’s a “seven-sixer” (I kind of sound like I know what I’m talking about, like I’m kind of vaguely cool, right??) and much more manageable for a small fry like me.

Meredith and Dorothy are learning to surf, so Greggy and I met them out on Sat morning. I was out there for a couple hours. I didn’t technically ever stand up, but I did catch many waves and come close. I also got bruise #1 of the weekend, which is a super-hot purple little guy on my right rib. Darkened quite nicely overnight on Saturday. I went out again on Sunday, but this time by the time I got to the beach Mere and Dorothy were heading out and I was w/ a friend that actually knows what he’s doing, and I wanted to let him have his fun, so I rather went it alone.

I got my ass handed to me, I kind of got raped by the sea. Yes, it was pointed out that you would’ve thought the waves were actually big, but I won’t lie, they really weren’t. I still got knocked off and around so many times that my head started to spin. Finally, when one wave knocked me off at the end of an attempted (used loosely) ride, and kind of just hammered me right into hard-packed sand up in the shallows, I said enough. I was sitting there contemplating how badly the sand burn felt on my left-ass felt and how I had like 2 pounds of sand in my swimsuit bottoms and how I had 2 gallons of seawater creeping through my sinuses, and I said f’ it, I’m out. At that point, sitting there in the ½ water, ½ beach, I wanted someone to come pat me on the head on scoop me up and carry me some place warm and dry.

Moving on though, this is apparently how it’s gonna work. I’ll go out, and I’ll have fun, but I’ll get back home coated in sand, orifices saturated with dirty water, and bruises and sand/board burns taking over my body. But now I feel like I have to commit and that this is something I really want to tackle, so I can’t let it go. Also I can’t lie, it does kind of make me feel a little bad-ass having all these minor injuries. So I guess unless I get eaten by a shark I’ll have to stick with it... By the way, at the end of y-day my friend got out and I went over to meet him cuz I’d gotten out like 10 min before and he was like, “Oh there you are. I couldn’t find you at all. I figured you’d either gotten out or drowned. Good thing you didn’t drown.” He said it so nonchalantly. Like, had I drowned, wouldn’t have been so big a deal. I beg to differ.

Anyway, so to recap, to complete the circle: a) sara “surfs;” b) sara gets shit tons of water up her sinuses which are like crazy little water traps b/c even though she’s a swimmer she apparently doesn’t know how to blow bubbles in the water; c) water is infested with lots of icky stuff; d) icky stuff gives sara sinus infection and possible ear infection too; e) sara is sick. The craziest thing is that, early prediction, f) sara goes surfing again next weekend and remains sick. Sara!!! Stop!!! You’re killing me! Or you…or…however you’d say this if you’re talking like a big giant herb in the third person.

But let it be known that I do expect to be in tip-top shape for my birthday weekend so will be guzzling OJ and water like a fiend and sleeping like crazy and doing everything I can to be in shape and prepared to drink enough to make myself sick again next Saturday. I’m truly a go-getter.