Disgusting New Year's Metaphor

Oh, you guys. I have the most disgusting New Year metaphor ever. It’s positively DRIPPING with sentimental ooey gooey BLEGH of inner meaning. So I absolutely have to interrupt the current Sluts, Schemers, and other Shockingly Interesting Women on the Bible series to tell you all about it!

I didn’t get a vacation this year. I was supposed to, the entire family was supposed to go to St. John for my parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary. My father’s Stage IV colon cancer diagnosis put the kibosh on that (for now, there’s hope we can do it in 2012), yet circumstances in the form of multiple dogsitting income gigs throughout 2011 and Hollywood basically shutting down between Christmas and New Year’s all conspired to allow me to take a mini vaca to the amazing Casa Laguna Inn in Laguna Beach for a few days between the holidays.

As soon as I walked into the room, I knew that this was absolutely the right thing to do. I was very well taken care of (they upgraded me to a balcony with a partial ocean view and the TUB! The TUB, people! I took a bath every damn night with that TUB! It was AWESOME! THANK YOU, CASA LAGUNA INN!)

I love Laguna Beach, I really really do. It’s closer than Santa Barbara, and the beach is awesome. I haven’t been here since my birthday in 2007, and Casa Laguna is further south of Laguna Beach than that adventure. But turned out to be absolutely fine. The Inn is located close to Victoria Beach, a pretty much hidden beach and only known to locals and people staying at Casa Laguna, since they include helpful printed directions about how you can walk there.

So walk there I did.

We all know my End Of The Year custom is to go down to the beach and toast the sunset, preferably with tequila. Normally, it’s Santa Monica Beach, but this year, it’s Victoria Beach and no tequila (no glass on the beach, no beachfront bar in sight, and it’s 3:00pm in the afternoon.)

But here I am on the beach, and in search of an adventure. So I decide to head north, to see how far I can get, and see what I can see.

There’s plenty of nifty beachfront housing, and even an old lighthouse? Tower? Something? But I continued on.

There’s a lot of rocky coastline and tidepools, and plenty of signs saying DON’T PICK UP ANYTHING YOU IDIOT! (paraphrasing)

And I came across a patch of coast where the tide was coming in and out in a somewhat irregular manner. So the challenge was to take your shoes off, dash across the wet sand (which would suck your shoes off if you still had them on) before the surf came back in to get you wet, yet have enough time to put your shoes back on to climb the rocks and get up to the next part (You can’t climb these rocks in your bare feet. You absolutely cannot.)

So I slipped my shoes off, dashed across the sand, put the shoes down on the rock, got my right foot into one shoe, and then... WOOOOSH! Here comes the water, and grabs my left shoe! It’s gone! MY LEFT SHOE IS GONE!

“SERIOUSLY!?” I yell uselessly at the water. I see my left shoe bobbing far out in the surf, tossed back and forth by the currents. I’m so pissed, I forget to take a picture (so you’re just gonna have to trust me.)

What am I gonna do? Walk back to the Inn with one shoe? That’s going to be uncomfy. Casa Laguna supplies a BUNCH of things – a gourmet breakfast, a nightly wine and cheese reception, bathrobes, hair dryers, ear plugs, Q-tips, umbrellas for inclement weather,

Himalayan sea salts for the awesome jetted bathtub (and so so much more) – but I think a size 7 ½ left shoe is out of their paygrade.

I watch the shoe bob and bob on the surf. My right shoe in my hand. Both feet in the sand and my legs getting soaked by the surf.

And I wait.

I wait.

In truth, I’m waiting because I don’t know what else to do just yet. I’d like to think that waiting was my instant Grand Master Plan To Get My Shoe Back.

But in all honesty, I was standing there because I didn’t know what to do next.

Until I realize that if I keep spotting the shoe, and watch the waves, there might be a chance the waves would deposit my shoe back to a place where I could snatch it.

So I wait.

And wait.

Maybe two minutes. Probably shorter, just felt like two minutes.

Lo and behold, the tide returns the shoe practically to the same rocky place where it grabbed it away in the first place. And I grab it.

I am officially back in double shoe business! Yay me! I don’t have to limp back to Casa Laguna! Yay yay me!

So here’s the disgusting metaphor part – 2012 is going to be the year of Not Panicking.

2012 is the year of knowing that even if life/fate/God/Whatever Higher Power You Believe In throws you a curveball, or snatches something that you really really need right out of your hands…

Your first response is to wait.

(Okay, your first response can technically be yelling “SERIOUSLY!?”)

But THEN, wait.

Wait and watch.

Watch the landscape, then make judgments based on what you see. 99% of the time, it’s probably not as bad as you think. And if you simply wait, you can get what you needed back.

Yes, it’s a simplistic metaphor, and I reserve every right to say THAT METAPHOR IS COMPLETE BOLLOCKS! should events of 2012 sock me in the gut.

But then I’d probably go back to Casa Laguna to shake it off. Or shake my fist at the sun setting over Victoria Beach.

We shall see.

Happy New Year everyone. And if you ever get the chance to visit Casa Laguna Inn, I highly, highly recommend it. They are awesome awesome folk. :)