"I'm drinking coffee while I'm there! Vacation B!"

...is what I assured Stella as she waited for her flight to leave for Puerto Rico and I sat in my car outside the HEB in 30 degree weather.

In another dimension I’d be on a plane over… let’s say Cuba at this point, on my way to San Juan, Puerto Rico to spend the weekend in the presence of two legends- more on them in a bit. In this dimension, I’m sitting under two coats of self tanner at my mom's house not knowing if the poo I smell is my tanning skin or Max, our new kitten.

And I’m writing about it. Why? Because when I leave the country, I write about it despite my firm belief that people, on a good day, only give about 1/16 of the fuck you want them to give when you post something. But I’m a writer - and if I didn’t write it down, by next month I’d forget I even ever went to Puerto Rico - so I write. 

Today I get to write about NOT leaving the country- 

(Quickly: I keep forgetting PR isn’t really leaving the country since its US territory, blah, blah, etc, I KNOW, OK? It’s a long enough plane ride to count, plus Spanish is one of their official languages and any place I get to speak Spanish = foreign.)

-because my flights were cancelled. I was surprised, however I shouldn’t have been. For the last two days all I heard about from the news and my dad was FREEZING RAIN, WINTER STORM, TAKE COVER EVERYONE!

Now, I have zero patience for news/weather drama breathlessness so I ignore as much as I can, plus I am biologically programmed to dismiss every worry out of my dad’s mouth, THEREFORE this morning found me smug in the mistaken belief that the winter storm BS was blown way out of proportion. It wasn’t. KVUE and my dad were right, I was wrong, and am now rescheduled to fly tomorrow morning. From Austin to JFK. AND THEN from JFK to Puerto Rico. (The reasonless demon deep in my brain needles me with a hot stick pin and reminds me that if I had moved to NYC like I’d semi-planned to for the last year that my trip would be cut in half. Shut up.)

And so I sit in my double tanner coat, full of an incredible pizza I totally wouldn’t have HOMEmade if I’d flown because, duh, I’d be in the air now, and think of the two reasons I have for scheduling this trip, last minute, using miles, in the first place: 

Sheila Waldron and O’Shea Jackson. 

You might have heard of them by their stage names: Stella & Ice Cube.

The Stella of it all: It my best friend’s birthday! (Shhh, don’t tell her I told you, she hates that.) We’ve missed lots of each other’s birthdays over the years, but this one happens to have very special circumstances- She will be working in Puerto Rico! I’ve never been! We’re going surfing! And dancing! And I’m eating mofongo and tostones and serenate de bacalao and drinking pina coladas and coquitos and coffee! (FYI, you know how to tell if I’m in vacation-mode? I drink coffee for fun.)

The Cube of it all: He’s Doughboy. He’s at the top of my list of favorites based on little more than his voice and his vibe. I haven’t seen all of his movies or collected all of his albums, I don’t even know personal details or gossip, but I did watch Boyz in the Hood many more times than I watched Young Guns II (which was seriously A LOT) in high school. Anyway, he’s in the movie Stella’s working on, and I don’t need to meet him, but man it’d sure be cool if I did. I basically plan to hide behind a light and watch him work from afar and possibly try to grab a tea from crafty if I see him headed that way. I don’t put actors on a pedestal often (except for Michelle Rodriguez. I love her too, in the same Ice Cube way, but I don’t want to meet her because I’m afraid I might actually kiss her because I like her so much and then I’m pretty sure she’d hit me which would be equal parts cool/embarrassing. Okay, 60/40.), so stay tuned for my adventures in awkward. Like, if I get the opportunity to meet Cube, I’ll probably hide in the bathroom- this is something I would do. 

The tanning lotion has stopped making me nauseous which means its time for another coat. In the meantime…