Yesterday we did something else I’ve wanted to do for years: went swimming on horseback, by which I mean the horses went swimming and we, er, sat on their backs. Or, in the case of Terry, the horse went swimming but dumped Terry in the water first, so he got to go swimming too. (He wasn’t hurt – one of the advantages of riding in the water, I guess…)
No photos of this, of course, because:
a) we were on horseback
b) in the water
c) as we rode along the beach prior to our swim, I noticed a little crab scuttling along the sand, and it took me most of the rest of the day to calm down after this sighting of one of my mortal enemies. Later that day I saw another small, crab-like creature ON A FENCE. Climbing. OH MY HOLY HELL THEY CAN FLY. On later reflection, I was persuaded by my parents and Terry that this was not actually a crab I’d seen, but, well, I will leave it to you to imagine how freaked out I was. GOD.
Anyway, after the horse riding, we went to Caladesi Island, which was voted the best beach in the US in 2008. Something else must’ve won this year, but we don’t talk about that. It’s the most perfect beach, though, with gorgeous warm, turquoise water and miles and miles of white sand, which you get to by boat even although it’s no longer technically an island:
Because it’s a state park, they only allow a limited number of people to be there at any given time, and there are miles of beach, so you feel like you have the place more or less to yourself. Which allows you to do stuff like this:
And then we came home and I slipped into something a little less comfortable to drink WINE:
(Yes, I am wearing a hoodie. Because the air con here is always absolutely freezing. It’s actually been a little better this year than on previous trips, but it’s still cold enough indoors to make me have to wrap up, especially in restaurants, where I’m convinced they make it freezing on purpose to get you in and out faster.)
Tagged christian louboutin, florida, horses, I hate crabs, jumping
… because I’m just too busy relaxing and enjoying the sunshine. I am, however, still jumping:
Just not as well as Terry is:
(Taken in front of the Rock n Rollercoaster at Hollywood Studios). I still have another few days to beat him though…
Tagged disney, florida, jumping
 …and as usual, I was just a little bit overdresed for it. Terry, meanwhile, got in some jumping practice:
(Photoshopping courtesy of Terry!)
Tagged christian louboutin, florida, polka dot, retro
 We tried to get the dolphin to do YMCA with us, but at least one of us couldn’t spell…
This was the most amazing experience, and something I’ve wanted to do for years. It was worth every penny, too, and we were in the water with the dolphins for about 30 minutes, which gave us plenty of time to play with them. (Don’t tell Rubin, though: he gets jealous…)
Also, Terry has complained that the last “jumping” shot I posted here wasn’t an accurate reflection of his mad jumping skillz, so I would like to submit the following into evidence:
Let the record show that Terry can, in fact, jump much higher than me. He can’t keep his tongue in his mouth when he does it, though, and I can. I’ll beat him next time 
Tagged dolphins, florida, jumping
So, Neiman Marcus had a sale on…
Whoops.
I also got a Sephora Loyalty Card. You’d think that would be absolutely useless to me given that I live in a country Sephora doesn’t ship to, but nope, I already qualified for the free gift:
(note: that’s not the free gift. The free gift was a Benefit BadGal mini mascara. Sweet.)
Yesterday we took Terry and my dad for their joint birthday treat (they both had birthdays the week before we came out here):
That’s them. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
They did the parasailing at Disney, so I got to see Mickey briefly:
I wasn’t actually drunk at the time. I just looked it.
We also took a train ride, which came complete with sunset, and also: wine. Very cool.
Tomorrow, though, the thing I’ve been looking forward to most about this trip: swimming with dolphins, yay! Meanwhile, a good time is being had by all:
But especially by me and Terry:
Tagged christian louboutin, florida, jumping, sephora, shoes, Things I Bought
This morning we got up early and watched the sun rise:
Needless to say, I’m really, really happy to be back…
Tagged florida, jumping
I think I may have managed to conquer the packing. It took most of the day, though, because according to my Twitter, I first started to “think about” packing my suitcase just before lunch yesterday. Here’s what I had by 10pm:
 packing fail In fairness, though, that goldy/bronzey thing is my makeup bag, and it took me a LONG time to pack IT, because that’s just my travel makeup bag or The Travelling Makeup Bag, as I think I will call it from now on. THIS is my real makeup bag. I mean Big Ass Box:
 The Sephora Case o' Doom Distilling the contents of this into that was a long and arduous task, and I guess the fact that I found it hard to leave the comfort of my computer chair, where I spent many a pleasant hour yesterday reading blogs, tooling around on Twitter and doing anything, really to not have to pack, made it even harder. Like, look, this is Pinky:
 My main man, Pinky Everyone say, “Hi, Pinky!”
Haha, I made you speak to a stuffed rabbit! Hee!
Pinky is my travelling companion. Well, other than Terry and my parents, obviously, but none of them are pink, and they don’t like being squeezed when I’m scared the plane is going to crash, which is all the time. So Pinky is like a kind of stress toy. He stands in for Ted, who doesn’t vacation with us. (He’s just at that age now, where he’s all, “You guys are lame, I want to party with my friends!” He’s going to Goa this year, apparently.)
(Note: Pinky came free with a handbag I got, and didn’t actually have a name until a moment of stress somewhere high above the Atlantic one year, when he was named in a hurry. And clearly I suck at naming things under stress. Another reason never to have children - I’d probably give birth and name it “Screamy” or “Bloody” or something.)
Anyway, several hours later, I ended up with a packing win, of sorts. This is one side of the case:
 Suitcase: one side of Pretty full, no? But look! Here is the other side:
 Suitcase, other side of Lookit all that lovely space! Space which I will be able to fill up with… oh:
 "Take meeeeeeeeeee!" He’s going to stay with Terry’s mum while we’re gone. He will be treated like a small, furry Overlord there, and will eat much better than he does at home. But I will miss him, and every time I look at his little face, I want to cry. So, moving on, let’s weigh the suitcase (minus dog) with the handy gadget Terry bought for this purpose:
 The Weigh-In You can’t see from this photo, but it came in at about 14 kilos, which gives me 6 kilos of shopping to bring back with me. Yay! I win! Although not really, because GOD, shoes are heavy, and I might want to buy shoes… If I do, though, I will also have access to The Shoulder Bag With a Face:
 The Bag With a Face Seriously, it has a face, no?
 Ahhhhh! It’s drooling at the thought of all of the lovely shopping it will carry. Or maybe it’s just planning to eat my head when I go to sleep tonight, who knows?
And with the packing of TBWAF (which is actually much bigger than it looks here and is a bit like a Mary Poppins bag) I was finally done:
 Phew! Time on completion:
 whoops So it’s a good job I don’t have to get up, like, really early tomorrow or…. oh.
Now I just need to take stuff out, put it back, add more stuff, remove stuff and then, at the last minute remember that whoops, I haven’t actually packed any knickers/sweaters/bikinis/delete-as-appropriate, and we’re good to go.
Anyway, our flight is early tomorrow morning, so we’ll be staying with my parents tonight, because they live closer to the airport, and also, because it means we can mess-up someone else’s house when we get up at stupid o’clock tomorrow, rather than our own. Assuming we make it there safely, then, I’ll see you on the other side!
 "Buh-bye!" Ted is waving goodbye. Also: is clearly drunk. GOD.
Tagged packing, pinky, rubin, ted
Today Terry decided to follow up his “eating a giant burger” stunt by eating a scorpion:
Tagged Terry
Twenty kilos. That’s my luggage allowance for my trip to Florida. Twenty. Kilos. And actually, that’s the UPGRADED luggage allowance: the airline only wanted to give us 15 kilos each (!), but my mum realised that would send me insane, so she very kindly paid for the upgrade. To twenty kilos. Aaagh!
Now, I could probably deal with it if we were going anywhere else but America. But the thing is, and I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but I like to shop. A lot. If previous trips are anything to go by, I’ll probably buy 20 kilos worth of stuff while I’m there. This makes packing difficult.
So I thought I would be clever. “I will pack a capsule wardrobe!” I thought. “I’ll make sure everything goes with everything else, and I’ll only need to take two pairs of shoes, one flat, one high – and one of those pairs I will wear to travel in, thus giving me even MORE space in my suitcase! Go me!”
My chosen colours for this capsule wardrobe: navy, white, red. Because I like dressing as a sailor, obviously, and I wish I was joking about that.
But then I went shopping. And on that shopping trip, I found The Best Swimsuit in All The World. It’s retro. It’s polka-dotted. It’ll work either as a swimsuit OR as a top. It’s… black. Which, obviously, is not navy, red or white. And because I have an aversion to wearing black and navy together, I won’t be able to put my whole “also wearing it as a top” plan into action, because all of my shorts etc are navy.
Now, the sensible person would just have put the swimsuit back at that point. “No!” she would have declared. “No swimsuit! For if I buy it, I will also need to take shoes, shorts and maybe a little cardigan to go with it. And also what would be great would be a skirt. And thus my capsule wardrobe will be ruined! Ruined!”
But I’m not the sensible person, so obviously I bought it. And also… some other stuff.
Basically, then, I’m screwed. And yes, I know they have shops over there. I’m well acquainted with those shops. A little TOO well, actually. But I’m one of those people who just can’t pack light. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s true. I tried to do it when we went to Tenerife last December, and that’s how I ended up with a suitcase filled only with black tops, and absolutely no warm clothes whatsoever. And that’s also how I ended up going to Zara 16 times, when we were only there for 14 nights.
I don’t know, I think I just like to Be Prepared. You know, like a Boy Scout? I know I can shop when I get there (and I’ll be getting all of my toiletries etc there, so I don’t have to take them with me), but I just can’t STAND the thought of going somewhere and not having a wide choice of outfits at my fingertips. I worry that something will happen that I will be sartorially unprepared for. Like… maybe someone will invite us to the opera, say, and I’ll only have shorts and t-shirts with me. Or I will have to climb a mountain, but won’t have the right shoes. These things COULD happen.
Realistically, of course, I know that I’ll be wearing shorts and a tank top for the next two weeks, and everything else will remain unworn. But until we leave, I’m going to be practicing putting on all of my clothes at the same time, so I can travel in them and leave my suitcase empty. And also researching how much it would cost to post twenty kilos worth of clothes back home from Florida…
Tagged packing, Things I Bought, Travel
I fail at blogging yet again this week, folks, sorry: it’s the same old “Wah! Getting ready for my trip, wah, wondering how the hell I’ll get all that STUFF in my case, wah, workity-workity-work. Wah!” thing again, but I do have this delightful question from Yahoo Answers to share with you:
Wow, Slutty Pineapple fails at LIFE, doesn’t she? Auditioning for World’s Worst Parent Award, perhaps?
The link to this was sent to me by Lucy, who correctly deduced that it would make my head explode. Happily, though, my faith in humanity was restored somewhat by the answers to the question, most of which made the point that ol’ Slutty there shouldn’t really be breeding if this is her approach to parenting. I did get a kick out of this one, though:
This person had also clearly taken a beating from the Stupid Stick:
I’d like to think our friend McPineapple is just your common or garden troll looking for attention, but sadly, barely a day goes by without the question “Can I dye my new baby’s ginger hair?” cropping up in my search referers, so there are actually people in the world who would do this, and that’s why you should need a licence of some kind to have children. I mean, seriously, can you even IMAGINE putting hair dye on a little baby’s head?
Oh a happier note, though, Kristabella sent me this:
Awesome. And also true. So all you Slutty Pineapples better watch it…
EDIT: Since posting this, “Slutty Pineapple” has contacted me to say this question was supposed to be a joke. She says: “Thanks for putting my question on your site. It was a joke, I have nothing against red-headed people. I apologize. I googled my yahoo name, and that was the first thing that came up. Peoples’ comments were rather entertaining.”
So it was a “joke”. Oh, my aching sides!
Tagged Gingerism
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