Wednesday, August 29, 2007

it's soooo hot


i know i have shown this painting entitled "number 6" before....but today it has been on my mind. because it is sooo fricken hot. this is a painting of my mom and me at la jolla cove, about 1955. I love la jolla cove, even though the sea lions and harbor seals have taken up residence in the children's pool, just around the corner from the cove. this makes me nervous...i like to swim the cove, but the sea lions and i have a similar shape, and i am very frightened that a shark will want to feast on me. or maybe worse, a sea lion might want to mate!
in any event, september 9 is the annual la jolla rough water swim. my rosie will be racing that. i used to race it and i was very competitive too. one year i got fifth by barely beating Carol Le Beau a san diego news anchor on channel 10. she is a tri-athlete, trained all her life (never had children) and is very fast......

it happened like this (day-dream music)....i believe it was when we were 35 years old. the women's race is a mile around the buoys, some 100 + women start at the report of gunfire, the starting gunfire that is. we all run into the cove and start swimming, the first buoy is nearly 1/2 mile out. there are no rules in the ocean...if someone dunks you, pulls you back by the leg, too bad. carol and i had been the same speed for years. this one year, between buoy one and two a long stretch, we were swimming way ahead of the pack, just the two of us. she swims along side me and locks my arm (with her arm because our arms are rotating in sync)- she didn't mean too, it happens sometimes. so when my arm rotated out, i pushed her away--- it is very annoying to lock arms while racing. she drifted back and locked arms with me again!@ augh! so frustrating!!! grrrr!~! i pushed her back AGAIN, with more force.....and.....i'll be damned she comes back the third time. well, i lost all patience with her, and pushed her aside and with the next rotation of my arm,i had my hand fisted and landed a thud to her head.... (don't worry she had a cap on)! arrrrrgh, i was so pissed i swam extra fast and got away from her. she caught up at the end and we both together ran out of the water, only she stumbled, i jumped over her to the finish line.....

ten years later, i had retired from competitive swimming. i was watching the news, sipping my wine after a very filling meal. (burp) pardon me.
carol le beau comes on .... at the end of the broadcast, she has a little kibitzy thing going with other anchor about what they plan to do for the weekend. he says (deep voice) "ah, carol, i understand you will be in the annual la jolla rough water this sunday." (she nods). "carol, ah, i understand that it can be a little tough out there swimming the mile, not just rough water, eh?" carol: "that's very right, ted"....and she goes on to recount the time (10 years ago) someone actually punched her in the head....she left out the part where she was being totaling annoying by locking with my arm!!!! ugh!
so, i immediately called a family meeting to watch carol le beau....i was soo proud. i said, "see family, i was a great swimmer, i'm the one who caused carol le beau to have crossed eyes."

(....er, for those of you who don't know our newscasters....carol le beau is cross-eyed.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regarding the seals, love has no bounds. Tough broad... You go girl!

fredg said...

Oh dear Lisa, What a wonderful story. Some idot (...me) decided to have our living room & dining room oak floors refinshed so everyday after work I've been moving furniture out of the way and tearing up carpet & padding & tonight I tore up the tack strips & am pretty beat BUT then I read the race to the finish and the good guy, er, lady won!!! Yea!! What a great story. Hey, you don't need to paint at all - - just write these great stories. lol, f

Lisa Bebi said...

my dear fred....why are you going for bare floors? do you have allergies like me?
i wouldn't call you an idiot.....i don't think
anyway, thank you for taking the time to read the blog....yea for winners - no matter how!

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