Compounding Doom

The smaller hooligan dislikes elevators.  He takes the stairs whenever possible.  There was no stair option last Thursday on the second grade class field trip to the sea lion caves.

Ugh.  The caves are a roadside attraction on the 101.  You go into a gift hut at the top of a cliff, pay way too much for a ticket, and ride a crowded elevator down down down to a dark sea cavern.  You can look over the railing and see the enormous California Sea Lions quite close up, lounging on the rocks with the waves crashing through the sea entrance.  Very dramatic.  It's hard to appreciate, though, because before you see them, you smell them.  The damp cave air is redolent of fishy sea lion poo.

I don't like elevators much, myself, or caves, or bad smells.  But when the smaller hooligan decided to bite the bullet and go down, I went with him.  Otherwise I would have convinced myself that there would be an earthquake and or a tsunami while he was down there and I could not live wit the guilt if I survived and he didn't.  So we did it.  We have made a pact never to do it again.

Aside from the caves, the beach trip was glorious.  Breezy and sunny.  We went to a lighthouse to watch shore birds, and to the Newport Aquarium, and played on the beach.

Friday, though, both boys had to get vaccine boosters.  The smaller hooligan hates shots almost as much as elevators.  He was very vocal about this.  "A shot is worse than an elevator,"  he said. "Because it actually hurts.  And an elevator does not hurt, I just think that they will break and I will be stuck.  But you know what the worst thing would be?  Getting a shot ON an elevator."