The Pacific

Yesterday I dropped Jordan off in Oceanside for a couple days with her cousins and then drove up to Costa Mesa for a school/prayer thing. As I was driving up I-5, I looked out to my left and saw the beautiful Pacific Ocean and it hit me that I hadn't seen the ocean once since I moved her last August. What is wrong with me? I've managed to keep myself locked in Riverside and haven't gotten out to see all the beautiful things around me. I got the LA Times this morning, and there was a section on 8 cool places to visit nearby here - desert, ocean, mountains, rivers - and again, I haven't seen any of them. I'm now making a public pledge that I will go someplace new and different once a month, and not Disneyland or Universal Studios-type places, but places with real character. I want Jordan to learn to appreciate the world around her and learn to entertain herself instead of needing an adrenaline rush or a cartoon character to entertain her. She's been giving me the "I'm bored" speech a lot lately and so I'm trying to instill in her that she can learn to entertain herself. She just needs to figure out how to use the simple tools she finds around her to create new and interesting things. We'll see how it goes, and if you have any suggestions of cool and interesting places, let me know!