I just got back from busy, sunny hotter than shit, two week trip in SoCal to reunite with the family. Crazy town! Look, get a bunch of Mexicans who haven’t seen each other in a long time, it is going to be chaos and LOUD. Yes people, this is our speaking voice. Loud and louder… unless you are my father who watches his novelas at volumes only dogs can hear.
I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I should have (as usual) and carting around the DSLR everywhere is a pain in the ass. Of course I regret it later to here is a hodge podge of phone, camera and stolen photos from the family. Pic spam will ensue!
So without further ado, here is most of what happened, was seen, etc.
My place to stay fell through the day I was leaving. Stressville galore but thankfully we had some friends bail us out and fuck if I don’t owe them my right kidney. You try looking at hotel prices in the middle of Comic Con, it would be more than your kidney.
We arrived at the beginning of Comic Con and were not able to see, do or partake in any of it. I am not bitter. Nope.
Got to meet with my ladies Tania, Michelle (and their respective nuggets) and Paige for quick hellos over grub. Always nice to squeeze up on my ladies.
Goal #1 – get there and give Chewbacca a lopping. My hair was in a sad state of affairs and luckily Jason & Eryc were more than happy to oblige. Off it went… two days later I am back to respectable, purple and edgy conditions. And who can beat Jason giving me a good boob squeeze while whispering in my ear, “I just grabbed your boobs in front of your Daddy”.
A small gathering at the beach and got to see tons of my cousins. This is just a very small fragment of my awesome family… bunch of wonderful, colorful people! It was great catching up with them.
Got some solo, quality time with these awesome people. Damn I miss my sisters already.
Reza and I boned out to Mexico to spend the rest of the trip in Baja with my sister Liz who was awesome enough to put us up. We were later joined by the rest of the Garcia posse. I love Liz, she doesn’t mess around, is an awesome host and cook and always manages to make us feel spoiled and right at home. She lives right on the beach which is a blessing and curse cause she has the influx of out of towners renting condos in her building. One night was a massive clusterfuck in the form of a building jam packed full of people from Mexicali, who seem to think the elevator was a clown car (lol, typical Mexican stereotype). They shoved in it so much that they broke one of the two elevators, the building blew a fuse somewhere and we were without power and water for several hours. Did I mention we were on the 12th floor? JOY. Dinner by grill and candle light it was. Funny enough there were some outlets that worked and yes, we had no power in most of the place but the wifi router still worked. PRIORITIES. Adventure time! Still, the views did not disappoint.
I knew there would be some downtime so I packed up a couple art supplies and still managed to churn out some of my favorite drawings to date.
Bee, Reza and I did a lot of beach time and despite my efforts to stay whiter than white, I failed. Reza came home looking like the damn Coppertone girl.
Trip didn’t come without some downsides in the form of family drama, one of which was butting heads with my Father whose middle name should be “No Es Cierto” (it’s not true). The man loves to argue with us about the validity of things. He asked us questions, we answer and it is quickly followed by “no es cierto”. He loves to contradict us about shit he knows absolutely nothing about and it makes me insane. I just can’t chuck shit up to “that’s just the way they are and you need to let it go” when it comes to anyone. Our relationship has never been the best and as he gets older, he only gets more crotchety and complicated. He is price tag obsessed and living in Mexico for such a long time, he has become completely out of touch with the cost of living in the USA. Everything is “too expensive”, he makes rude comments about people, makes comments about everything we spend on, going anywhere with him was a production about prices and if we took him to eat it had to be cheap or needed “lime and chile on it” as far as he is concerned. I just feel like nothing I do pleases him. Mom has become very vacant in her stare, like the life has gone from her eyes and it was very heartbreaking to see. She has become very forgetful and absent minded which is scary since Grandma had really bad Alzheimers. We have brought it up and denial is very present there. As much as I hate to admit it, they have never been the same since my brother passed away. It makes me angry because he was never around, never called them, yet here they are, destroyed over his absence. I get the part about parents mourning a child, but they need to move on and enjoy the life they still have. It’s like he took a piece of them with him… motherfucker. All of this paired with my impatience was a ticking time bomb waiting to happen and it was probably for the best I cut out earlier despite my wishing to be around so I could spend more time with Bee and Liz.
Lots of FaceTime sessions with my favorite dude. It really sucked traveling without him even more when were in Mexico cause I know he would have loved it so much. Thankfully I had wifi and was able to have lots of conversations with him. The man is my prozac.
Our homie Adrian came down from LA with his buddy Joe and there were some awesome conversations, beach and taco times. I love sharing the insider guide to Mexico with friends cause when we do it, we do it right, dammit. Although, I have come to the conclusion that I just can’t drink anymore. The very few times I drank rewarded me with a full on headache the next day. It’s just not worth it.
Lots of hanging out, walking around looking at curios. I also scored some Dia De Los Muertos souvenirs and was hella inspired for the next round of pieces I want to make one of which is another annual, limited batch of sugar skulls for the shop. Mexico never disappoints.
I came home with a very small amount of things, like Day Of The Dead loot, my lock of hair, a quartz from Liz and this awesome case for my glasses that Bee brought me from Japan. How she knew I needed/wanted a new one? Who knows but it matched my old phone case perfectly.
My god, the eating…. freshly made churros, gorditas, tacos of all kinds. Pair that with Liz’s amazing cooking? I am going to have to live in the gym and eat plants for the next few months to undo it. It’s not like I get that business on the regular anyway but lets just say I have some work to do. I had to steal that beer and banda on the beach photo from Bee, that is some classic Mexico right there.
Reza got a lot of family and cousin time. It was really nice to expose her to family and all the Spanish. All things considering she did pretty well and everyone ate her up. She did get overwhelmed and bitchy though which was a tap frustrating at times.
On our last night we had dinner at a cliffside joint called Splash that’s between Rosarito and Ensenada. Fish tacos at sunset? Hell yeah. I will never tire of Pacific Ocean sunsets. I still can’t believe I let Reza stand out on that rocky edge by herself. But that shot? So worth the anxiety.
And just like that, the two weeks came to a close. I did my best not to have a full on ugly cry when saying my goodbyes with Bee. It’s always the hardest part when it comes to these things… but we were also so ready to be home with Josh and the cats who cannot be happier to have us home. I slept like the dead last night. Tasty!
I have a lot more photos and a couple videos over on my flickr set if you are so inclined.
