Whale Watch

“Ack I look awful!” I blurted-out after snapping our traditional selfie at the beginning of today’s whale watch outing with Little. I immediately regretted it. I’ve been trying to counter a lot of negative self-talk lately but that was a big whoops, saying it out loud, in front of a tween. I chastised myself internally for openly criticizing my appearance in front of her, something I feel VERY strongly about not doing and thankfully is rare.

“I look worse!” she countered, and I cringed again. In the moment I *should* have said “You look great and I look like I’m ready for an adventure!” (looking greasy all covered in sunblock) but I didn’t. Quite honestly in the moment the oppressive heat may have scrambled my feminist-mindset as I was extremely distracted by it. At one point Little said “This heat is outrageous!” Excellent use of the word I thought.

Next time – positive self talk only.

I have a vague memory of going on a whale watch as a kid. Was it through school? Is that possible? It rained and was cold and we saw no whales as I recall. But friends and relatives both went on whale watches this summer and saw an unusually high number of them. They had really spectacular experiences, so I was hopeful that Little and I would have the same luck.

It took quite quite a while to get out to where those beautiful beasts swim (maybe an hour or more?), and once we got to them, there were two rather far off in the distance, and instead of buzzing off and looking for more, the crew kept us there.

I kept a promise to myself about being friendlier with strangers and chatted with two young women sitting next to us on the bench. One said she’d been on a whale watch the previous year, and when I turned to her and said “This is a kind of boring” she replied “Yeah when I went before they would stay for about ten minutes and then move on to find more whales if they weren’t very active.”

Alas, we stuck with these two vaguely active whales, and we did see a few arched backs and tail fins come up, as well as some exhales. So certainly more interesting than my childhood experience!

Little spent some time inside the boat once we started to return home, and once we began to dock I joined her and said I hope it wasn’t too disappointing (since the whales weren’t really close or active).

“I wasn’t disappointed at all!” she said.

We got out of the oppressive city heat for a few hours and did something new. Great for us both!