Arroyo Seco Weekend...

Earlier this year T and I saw this event come across our radar.  Arroyo Seco Weekend.

The line up - YES!

Food?  Wine?  Music?  Not too far?  IN LIKE FLYNN!  As T called it - the Coachella for us old gramma's that can't do Indio anymore.  It was put on by the same folk so we figured why not?  We paid the heftier price for VIP because....old.  When I advertised to the world - The boy was the only other who hopped on the train.  SO - a trio of trouble hitting a new music festival!

I booked an adorable little air bnb for myself and the boy since T decided to save some dough and just drive in and out each day.  It took place outside the Rose Bowl so not far from us at all.

Saturday morning we arrived at our air bnb.  We couldn't check in but the gal let us park there and we headed out.  The walk to the Rose Bowl was about 2 miles.  Took us almost an hour since it's through stop lights, some hills and it was pretty damn hot that weekend.  Beautiful walk though.  Such a lovely neighborhood surrounds the bowl!

They were supposed to open the venue at noon, but got a late start and didn't open until 12:45.  Lots of not happy people standing in the sun waiting to get in.  Lord.

After getting our locker, wristbands, etc  - we had arrived!

We're here!

I of course wanted some grub right away so we hit Dog Haus.  I got me a Soooo Cali Dog and The boy got the White Trash Dog.  Damn delicious!!!

May be the best hot dog I ever had

T had already scored a spot with her blanket in the mainstage VIP.  Some lovely ladies she met coming in joined us - Cheryl and Christine.

These ladies were the sweetest!

Ready to start the day!

I love this picture so much

And of course you have to start with:

Now the bummer was you see the wine glasses the ladies are holding?  $12.  For that little shot of wine.  Oh boy.

 Now that we were all settled and the day was beautiful and we were just chilling for a while waiting for the 1st band we wanted to see to begin, I lay back and gazed at this

Such a peaceful moment

The 1st band we saw was Preservation Hall Jazz Band.  These cats are SICK!!!!!  They were fucking amazing.  So tight. So great!  So much friggin fun!!!!  Bucket list - to actually see these guys in Preservation Hall in New Orleans.  CAN YOU IMAGINE!!!??

Highlight of my Weekend for sure!

Festival pros!

There was a random mini rain which was kind of hilarious.

Random after rain selfie

Next up T and I wandered over to catch John Mayall.  Love this guy.  My camera took a shitty picture so here's one of him off the web:

I mean it's pretty obvi why he was on my list right?  The boy stayed back to watch Live and said they were awesome.

T and I then headed over and caught the end of  Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.  Just lovely!

He was having so much fun!

At this point the booze was starting to hit pretty good so T and I hit up Broken Spanish.  Holy Shit was that Shrimp good!!!  Also the damn Tres Leches weighed like 8 pounds.  So good!

Lil drunk...but so good

T went in for seconds on day 2!

The in between time here is a bit fuzzy cuz you know...booze...but we were back to the mainstage at some point for Alabama Shakes.  They were AWESOME!!!!  Brittany Howard is amazing.  I was memorized by her.  It's like the gods of soul just flow through her veins.  Such an awesome set!!

Last up for the Saturday night extravaganza was Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.  I mean you know Tom right?!  Who doesn't.  But I had never seen him live.  So stoked!!  I didn't get any pics but here they are in case if you've forgotten.

I mean these guys are legends!!  The show was stellar. T slipped out a bit early to avoid the traffic mess and she had just seen this guy last year at Outside Lands (another festival I want to do by the way). Petty fucking rocked!

The walk back was pretty entertaining and long but so much better than sitting in traffic.

Sunday morning The boy and I found a great little coffee joint for breakfast and had a relaxing morning and delicious breakfast!  Thank you Copa Vida!

So pretty!!

We rolled in to the venue around the same time (after a hot as balls walk in) and Andy Grammar had a photo thing promoting his new album.  It was so cute and here were were - so I taught The boy what a Boomerang was.

I of course was already hungry so I grabbed a bowl of Ramen from Ramen Hood.  Holy shit so damn good.  I didn't care it was almost 100 degrees outside - this was fucking delicious!

But of course since it was ass hot - I saw there was a Dairy Free Ice Cream place!!!  Thank you Baby Love Sweetery!  So of course:

I got Coconut Raspberry and Strawberry!

We then met up with T who was chilling in the 3rd stage tent listening to NK Band.  These guys were awesome!!!!  It was one of the bands I wanted to check out and was so glad we did! I ended up jumping up to rock out a few times as captured below.  The brass section was hella awesome!! 

Seriously - some of the best brass I've heard!

I can't not dance....

After rocking out we wandered over and caught a bit of Alice Smith who was lovely.  Didn't catch a picture but she's rad:

They had a couple of art installations around but not too many.  An "Idea House", a red line, some sculptures that looked like giant peanuts. 

They had places you could make flower headbands for $25. (I was so tempted)  There was a really cool painted up car.  Yummy lemonade stands and random vendors.

After wandering the grounds we headed back to mainstage.  But not before The boy and T got some chicken and waffles from Fritzi Coop

Eyeing their food made me hungry so I grabbed myself a pastrami sammich from Wexlers Deli.  Wasn't super impressed.

Around this time the sun was baking down and all the shady spots were taken.  So the three of us would trade off standing it shade spots, in front of fans blowing mist.  Anywhere to try to not melt.

Hot. As. Balls.

Up next was Andy Grammar who I adore.  I like some of his music but it's his happy, peppy performance that I love the most.  The viewpoints weren't the greatest where we were sitting due to trees but we did bop along and enjoyed the set.  He's so damn happy!

After this, T stayed back to watch Fitz and the Tantrums while the boy and I headed over to catch JamTown.  The tent was packed but we got a good spot (in the damn shade) straight back behind the sound guy and they were AWESOME!!!  I'm so glad we came over!  Jamtown features Donavon Frankenreiter, G Love and Cisco Adler.  They had all kinds of other musicians come and go throughout the set and it was so rad.  I didn't catch any good pictures but here they are:

I mean you can just tell right?!  They were fucking fantastic!!!!

After this we wandered back over to catch Weezer.  Now this was my only musical disappointment.  I friggin love Weezer and have never seen them live.  T and The boy are also huge fans.  But sadly something was up with their sound and you could barely hear them!  It sounded all most muffled.  I was super bummed.  We still rocked out and sang along but it wasn't what I had hoped.  They were all dressed like Guns & Roses which was pretty rad though.  Here's a pro shot from the web:

At this point T parted ways with us since she wanted to hit up The Shins and we were sticking around for Mumford and Sons.  The boy was hungry again so we hit up Gus's BBQ for what turned out to be some fucking amazing BBQ Pork!!

Mumford put on an amazing show.  He had not seen them live, but I had at Coachella one year and was so damn excited to see them again.  They were so great!  At one point the singer had the crowd all put up their phones with lights and it was such a beautiful site!  I didn't catch it well with my phone but you get the idea:

Mumford is one of my favorite live shows.  So beautiful, so into it, so on it!!!  I love every second.  Danced.  Screamed along the lyrics to some of the faves.  It was amazing and a perfect end to the 2 days of great music!

A very long and tired and painful walk back to the bnb because I'm getting friggin old and The boy was introduced to midnight festival snacking.

Probably my best midnight spread yet!

I have a few take aways from this festival:

• The music was amazing.  The line up was a dream. From Jazz, to Blues to Rock, my GAWD - so right up my alley and everyone was on point!  So great!
• Even though the walk was a bit of a trek it seems to be well worth it after reading and hearing about all the nightmare traffic and lack of signs etc to get out of the place.
• VIP was bullshit.  They over sold it.  There was nothing - and I mean nothing that made it any more special than GA except for the area.  But it was off to the side for both the 2nd and mainstage and didn't even have a VIP viewing area in the tent.  It was also over sold, so the whole point of paying for VIP is to not have to deal with the crowds as much as the GA.  Yes...it's VIP.  I'm a person whining about VIP, BUT - I'm not rich.  I dug deep down in my pockets to buy VIP because I get anxiety in crowds now, and I'm old and tired and if I'm going to pay for one of these festivals I'll pay a little more for that added comfort.  You did not get that at all here.
• The prices of food/drink were really high.  Yes - it's a festival and everything is overpriced but it was a bit too high in most cases for what you got.  Especially the wine.  $12 for that little shot glass?!  And that was the cheapest!  Some went up to $22.  Give me a fucking break.
• The staff was so cool.  Every encounter I had with someone who worked there was pleasant.  We were all baking in that heat and everyone was so cool and friendly.  I was most impressed with the traffic/parking staff folks.  I swear everyone person we walked by said "Have a Good Night!".  So rad.
• All it all it was cool.  The festival has a potential to be really good if they can work out their kinks.  I'm not sure if prices would go up, I'm sure they would, but it's a festival I'd like to check out again.  Although not sure I'd go VIP.

We broke The Boy's music festival cherry.  I had a great time.  I ate yummy food and drank decent overpriced wine (Thanks to T to keeping me pretty tipsy all sat) and I saw some absolutely amazing musical performances!  I also broke my air bnb cherry!  Totes will be doing that again!!

So Arroyo Seco - I hope you work out the kinks but damn I had a helluva good time!

Another hot day at Disneyland...

Guess where I went again?

Yup.

With my 2 favorite Diz-Noids.

The secret?  Go right when it opens.  We got there a bit before 8am when it's due to open.  Rode a packed full tram over and waltzed right in.  It really wasn't too bad crowd-wise.  We stayed until around 1ish when we noticed it was getting really packed really quick.  The perks of being a passholder.

1st we hit Indiana Jones and Taylor informed us of the leprechaun that lives right outside in the planter.  That's right friends - did you know there's a leprechaun in Disney?  Here's his house:

Tiny Leprechaun House!

One of the other fun things about being a passholder is we do stuff we probably wouldn't normally do if we were there for a limited time.  Such as hit up Tom Sawyer's Island!  It's re-opened after being closed for some time and I don't think I've been over there since I was a kid!  So I took a bunch of random photos.

She's so cute

Treasure!

This guy will scared the living shit out of you if you reach your hand in

Mom & Taylor pumping water

I have the best mom

You can spin this thing to make this dude rise up out of the water

Taylor & I chillin

Laundry day

Lovely view

Selfie!

We then had brekkie, so of course when it Rome:

So I'm a child...

We then battled on Buzz LightYear and mom kicked my ass then Taylor destroyed both of us.

Concentrating

The master

Then they apparently have some Star Wars thing set up in what used to be the circular tour of the world thing.  So we visited some friends.

Bobo fet

Chewbacca was so cute

Chewy Cuddles!

I learned of this Beauty and The Beast Rose Cup that I really really want now because it has a rose in it that lights up!!  But - alas it's a super hot item and they keep running out.

Where's my Rose Cup bitch!?

Then mom tried to get a passholder popcorn that they were also out of.  Sigh.  This was around the time it started getting crowded so we ran over to California Adventure to get the passholder popcorn over there which they did still have.  Yay!  So - 1 out of 3.

We then had lunch in the Grand Californian Hotel Bar.  This is a fave spot of mine because not a lot of people think about that so it was totally empty!  YES!  Air conditioned, wine and yummy food.

Topping of the day in the bar!

So we did it right!  A fun half day trip to Disneyland!

Pub & Grub Fail...

You can imagine how super excited I was when I saw an advertisement for a Pub & Grub.

I mean - hello!!!!  FOOD!

Tickets were a bit more than I'd care to spend, but why not!  Let's do it!  Libby and Taylor decided to join as well and we were really looking forward to a Saturday afternoon of entertainment, food, booze, vendors and games!!!

Nope.

Epic Fail on their behalf.

The check in staff was super friendly and offered us our map making it sound like it was so much more than it actually was.  We walked in and there was an adorable vendor to the right selling little handmade purses/keychains/etc and ended up being the sole vendor.  Yup.  Just her.  Then we passed 3 food trucks.  There was a stage set up, then off to the left were games, and off to the right was the "All Access Area" which is what we dug into our pockets to pay for.  It was a fucking joke.

The all access didn't start for a bit so we played some of the games set out.  I mean - for such a crappy event I couldn't have been with 2 better sports.  Libby, Taylor and I will make the best out of any situation!

We spent more time chasing the golf ball

Ladder Ball!

Pretty fun actually, I kinda want to purchase one of these

Then we took our hopeful selfie.  We were really hoping the site we saw behind us was more than we saw and we were just missing something....

Please let there be more food....

Nope.  That bare bones you see behind us was it.  This was it from the other side:

Nope

Lord.
Welp - let's taste the teeny tiny amount of samples that we can!  I will say this - the event blew and the amount of vendors in the Bullshit All Access Area was just that - BULLSHIT.  But - the few that were there were great!  So here they are:

First up was Black Market Bakery who I am familiar with and love.  They did not disappoint.  The gal was super nice as well.

There was a delicious caramel sauce at the bottom that you dipped the pretzel in! Yum!

Mini Cheesecake and Smore Sandwich. The cookies on the sandwich were like molasses! So good!

Although the Smore Sandwiches were really really delicious, they were sticky as hell and my friend Mel got it in her hair and made for quite the entertaining "Something About Mary" moment.

I love her

Next up we hit the 1 wine stand.  Multiple wine samples were advertised.  Nope - 1.  And it was Prosecco (which I can't stand) mixed with some red liquor and sparkling water.  It was disgusting. All 3 of us threw away our beverages after a couple of sips.

This smile was before I took a sip

Libby and Taylor tried some of the beers and said there were a couple of good ones.  But nothing stood out.

There was the Iron Press which was serving up these little waffle tacos.  They were pretty good but the staff was having a hard time keeping up with the demand so I only got one.

Yummy little waffle taco

Next up was these little chicken sandwiches.  They had a yummy sauce with a slight kick and a pickle.  I ate like 4 because - hello - there wasn't really anything else to fucking eat!  This place was Two Birds and were popping these out like hotcakes.  Yummy!

These were so good!

There was Shuck Oyster Bar which I was excited about but curious since oysters aren't in season right now.  They were serving these little shrimp sliders.  Unfortunately the slaw was super spicy so I couldn't partake but they made me one without the slaw.  It was actually still pretty good!  But the others had the actual slider with the slaw and said it was delish!

Spicy goodness

There was also this place called Juice Mi that were giving out samples of a bunch of their different juices.  HELLO YUM!  All the varieties were great!  If I want to get me some healthy juice and/or maybe do a juice cleanse, these are the people I'd hit up.  The gal I chatted with was super friendly as well!

Possible 3 Day Juice Cleanse anyone?

And that's it.
Yup - THAT WAS FUCKING IT!

There were a couple more but they didn't have food yet.  Seriously WTF.

So - the three of us meandered over into 4th Street Market which is one of my favorite DTSA hot spots.  (I actually thought the event was in here, so sad it wasn't!).  We just sucked it up and ended up buying ourselves the good food and drink we were hoping to fill ourselves up with at the bullshit event.  Grumble.

But of course - we had a blast.  I adore these two and we ended up spending the afternoon drinking, eating and playing Connect Four!

Now this is fun!

Connect Four!

Seriously so much fun!

Hella good ice cream sandwich!

So in conclusion - Pub and Grub - TOTAL BUST.

Afternoon with two of my favorite people  - SUCCESS!

5 Years Later...

The anniversary is looming.

I feel it.  My emotions are a bit up and down, I'm in a sort of funk and I find myself extra weepy.  Figured it was time to put it into my blog.  Mom is on edge.  I had a tension headache yesterday and she text me this morning to make sure I was ok.  I know dad and I will talk about it tomorrow on our weekly lunch date and he'll retell the memory of when he drove to the airport in Illinois not sure if he was going to get back to California to a dead daughter.  Harsh?  Yup.  It was.  He's retold that story a thousand times and it still haunts him.  Hell it still haunts me.  I still panic if I have a sudden headache.  I still tear up remembering sometimes.  I still wonder why I was spared.

5 Years ago my life changed.

I now refer to life as BSAH and ASAH.  Before subarachnoid hemorrhage and after subarachnoid hemorrhage.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  I remember standing up from the bicep curl machine at Fitness 19 on Chapman that Wednesday early evening.  I remember the very odd and very painful headache wash over my head causing me to stumble.  I remember actually driving the short distance home feeling like I was going to throw up.  I remember breaking into a sweat and shaking and realizing something was very very wrong.  I remember trying to call my mom 1st but got her voicemail.  Then making the decision that saved my life and dialing 911.  Staring at my phone a minute before hitting send, not sure if I really wanted to do this.  I remember hearing the paramedics come into the house as I was throwing up in the bathroom. I remember the ambulance ride.  I remember the awful ER treatment.  I remember Danelle arriving.  Then my mom.  I remember getting a CAT Scan and I remember the mood changing after that.  Another CAT Scan with dye.  It gets fuzzy.  I'm now in dark room surrounded by windows of nurse stations and my mom is talking to the nurse who just brought her a blanket and pillow so she can sleep on the bench next to me. Then it blurs.  I remember being scared.  Being angry.  Being confused.  I remember my nurses Eva and Maria.  Maria would give me foot rubs. I remember the MRI.  I remember the Angiogram. I remember Libby crying over me.  I remember Robin bringing me a balloon.  I remember Terri's reaction when I was brought back into the room.  I remember my dads face, trying not to look like the color just drained from his face when he walked in and saw me for the 1st time.

Recovery was awful.  Probably the most pain I've ever been in my entire life.  Blood pooling in the base of your spine from your head is no fun.  Nor is landing back in the ER because your gut has been ruined by all the pain meds.

But - I bounced back.  I did water exercises in the Jacuzzi to build my strength back up.  Mom took care of me.  Dad came by almost every day.  Friends brought food and flowers and gifts and kept my spirits up.  When the time came for my 2nd Angiogram all was well.  The Dr. came into my recovery room and said the magic words - "You're perfect."  I'm in the 10% of people who actually survive one of these.

And here I am today.  5 Years later.  A very different person.

There have been some after effects that have come to light. The schwannoma in my head, chillin on my inner ear balance nerve.  I have a specialist watching that via yearly MRI's.  Then my new "condition" that a different specialist is working on.  Let's just say it's like motion sickness on steroids.  He's confident it's neurological and confident the SAH did trigger it.  Unfortunately still dealing with that one and may not ever be able to fly but not ruling it out yet.

But friends - I'm alive.  I'm happy.  I'm grateful every single day.  Having your perspective on life change is a trip.  I've learned to deal with being an empath.  I'm working on living in the moment.  Accepting everything about me and not trying to change anything.  I have anxiety.  I'm very emotional.  I have OCD.  And that's all ok.  I have a therapist that helps me deal with the emotional roller coaster that sometimes comes along with knowing I survived and being ok that I'm not perfect. I'm still finding who I am.  What brings me joy.  But what I've learned so far is this:
Treasure moments.  Cry.  Love.  Hug.  Practice kindness and compassion.  Be a good friend.  Be good to yourself.  Accept your flaws.  Life is so fucking short and none of us know when it's our time.  I'm still learning how to balance everything but I'm enjoying the process.  It's a delicate dance and you'll fall but just get back up and keep going.

I'm surrounded by amazing family and friends and hope to be an amazing person back!

Thank you readers for coming along with me on my journeys.  Looking forward to many many more!