A Daddy Daughter Date

After my dad's first day back at work, we decided to go to our favorite mexican place for dinner. I pretty much predicted the text he sent me... there is only so long you can last without Taco Surf, and dad had been away for almost a month.

Fortunately for us, Taco Surf is about a 45 second jog from our front door. I know this because I never just walk there to meet people, I'm always running too late. I have no shame. Taco Surf, in my opinion, is a top notch mexican food joint; complete with multi colored chips, ridiculously good salsa, and plenty of vegetarian friendly options (as far as mexican food goes.) I good part of my child hood was spent gradually being able to see over the table from the booth seats and coloring the paper place settings with the crayons that the pretty waitresses provided me and my sister.

It just so happened to be poring that Monday so dad and I decided to drive down the street and find a parking spot even closer to the restaurant.

Bad idea.

I forgot to mention that Taco Surf is located on Main St. in Seal Beach. There's never parking on that street. We ended up parking at the beach and sitting in the car waiting for the rain to take a breather so we could run for cover. We were probably equidistant to Taco Surf as the cottage is but in the opposite direction. 

I was in riding boots, yoga pants and one of cubby's old shirts (don't judge). My dad was in his work clothes. 

"Alright on the count of three we're going to run for it." Dad says.

"Run for where?"

"OnetwoTHREE!"

Annnd the sky opens up above us and really lets it dump down.

Too late. I obediently swung open the door, blindly slammed it behind me and ran laughing across the street realizing how unavoidably soaked I was getting. The sidewalk on the other side was swamped with a huge muddy puddle but I didn't care, my boots are meant for that stuff.

I finally made it under some sort of cover and turned around to realize my dad had hesitated. He heard the rain increase and stayed put. 

I watched him get out and fumble with the keys trying to lock the door in the torrential rain. Our car only locks from the inside, on one door. He proceeded to run, like I did, towards the muddy puddle. His shoes are not as cool as my shoes so he attempted a last ditch run-and-leap. It failed, there was quite the splash. 

Our cover was not the awnings of Taco Surf, rather the garage of a law office overlooking the ocean, a half a block away. So we planned our route and ran through the alley, down the street, hopping from awning to awning all the way to our trusty little Taco Surf. 

Heads turned as we opened the door. Honestly! I guess everyone else carries jackets and umbrellas with them when it rains. What squares. We were still laughing, literally dripping as we walked to our table in the back.

We ordered without the menu, and scarfed the chips by bad habit.

I ordered a veggie taco and enchilada.

Dad ordered tortilla soup, a veggie enchilada, rice and beans.

We both had never had the enchilada (shocking).

I've determined you can go wrong when ordering vegetarian there.

You can tell the Kauai got to him... what a local.

Something I should note about my dad and me. We both can talk. For a long time. And be totally serious and opinionated. About anything. 

I can be a bad thing on nights when I have a bunch of home work of job work to do because we're both easily interested in anything. And we get distracted talking about things that don't pertain to anything of particular use.

For example?

Our dinosaur cell phones!

Mine is actually not that dinosaur, but it certainly has battle wounds.

His, I admit is pretty dinosaur.

I even took pictures of them.

The nail polish was a boredom stunt in my dorm at Davis. I thought it was cool for about a day.

My phone is sort of precious. It connects me with those who I'm closest with. And I don't mean that because i'm a socialite who constantly has to be connected to 30 people at once. 

I mean it because I can call my older sister two thousand miles away and vent about life and my little grievances and joys, and gossip about our family, and catch up on each other's life for hours all because of my trusty little cell phone.

I can call my mom on a whim to ask her how to make butter-cream frosting when I forget. Or the directions to anywhere in Southern California. (Joel calls her MomQuest.) Or call her for much needed weekly mom-talks when I miss her too much I can't handle it. Because of this little phone.

When I lived in Davis, this phone was my life-line to Cubby. I perfected my thumb texting skills because of the ridiculous amounts of texts we sent when we lived that far away. I also wore the space bar out with all that texting.

My phone also took a dive in a gutter in a bad biking-in-the-rain accident in Davis last winter. I found it in three pieces, gasping for air in dirty overflow puddles. I rushed it home and laid it by the heater in between cloths and resurrected it a week later. It worked like a charm!

It matches my dad's personality, in a very endearing way.

Dad's phone isn't precious to me, at least. But it is cute because it has manly features that dad likes. Like shockproof, water resistance, navigation and the like.

...

I've officially failed the non-rambling mission of this blog.