Two lives at the end of the night.

Well, I went to Los Angeles! And I had a really, really nice time. Aside from my sick that had me blowing my nose and coughing the whole trip. That was dumb. But the trip! Joe met me at the airport on Friday afternoon and we stopped for donuts before basically spending the rest of the night in his apartment (save for a quick walk to the Albertsons behind his building for some medicine for my entire immune system). I hardly ate that donut and I miss it. Oh, we also went out for dinner at some point and I got mashed potatoes. Wild night, for sure. To prepare for our inevitable tour of Clueless locations, I made us watch Clueless before falling right asleep. The next day, Joe took me to The Museum of Death and Baja Fresh. Both were delicious, sike, I couldn't even taste the burrito and that might be the second saddest thing that happened to me on this trip. I wish I still had the rest of that burrito so I could eat it now :( But, okay, so then Joe went to a wedding and I stayed behind and tried to remedy and nap myself better, but none of it worked. It was pretty nice having that evening to, like, pretend that I live there, though; what with how I had an apartment and went to the store like I knew what I was doing and stuff. I play House wherever I go!

Of the list of stuff I wanted to do, we went to two of the ten milkshake places altogether, we didn't make our way to Disneyland or The Loved One :(, but we saw all of the necessary Clueless things (well, maybe not the correct mall for part of it?) and that was maybe my favorite. Also my favorite? When I talked about wanting tator tots and they suddenly were there, and when I mentioned maybe wanting to do karaoke and we suddenly were there! I have magic powers in California. But I'm not even writing in order of when stuff happened anymore, wait. So, New Year's Eve, and really my whole time there, was pretty relaxed. We went to Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where the tombstones are enormous and most of them had faces (we also saw John Candy's thing at another cemetery the day before and it made me a lot sadder than I think I let on), and then to The Satellite for a Henry Clay People show (it was exciting and sad!). I spent that night and the next morning and then that night hanging with Joe's best and oldest and favorite friends (at a party and then tator tot lunch and then dinner/karaoke, respectively) and that was nice. It was also nice when Joe helped me sing a One Direction song at karaoke. And he showed me a giant Peter Pan statue on one of the days. That was terrifying.

I'm not really making any sense now. The days are jumbled and whatever! But then I had to come back home and Joe had to go back to work and he took me to the airport and I somehow managed to save my crying for when I was in my aisle seat on the airplane and trapped by the shining seatbelt light. I'm sure anyone who noticed me crying thought I was very normal. The six days I was there were great, and I was nervous that they were going to race by without me (because that has a tendency to happen to me because my brain is dumb), but they didn't, the days lasted as long as real days should (though, maybe I would go back and make my last full day there start earlier than the 3pm we started it?), but then it all went away as soon as I hopped into my dad's car on the other side of my flight. It was a weird shift from feeling like the trip had been as long as it was to the trip not having even happened. I mean, obviously, it totally happened and I have physical proof it did, but then I was in my dad's car again (he dropped me off that Friday, too) and it felt like no time had passed at all. And that made me sad. And I've cried a bunch since being home because of things and also now I have to, like, do stuff. I finished school and went straight into the holidays and this trip and now I have to be real and start my life and bluh.

California was nice, though!

the second-to-last picture is from Joe's phone and the last picture is from Joe's Instagram!