Let's Go To The Beach, Each, Let's Go Get A Wave

If you read Beachy Thoughts or Bitchy, I Mean, Beachy Thoughts, Part 2, then you know my vacation at the beach was a bit of a roller coaster ride. But when all is said and done, it was a terrific week.

Assholes.

1. I am exceedingly thankful for the use of my parents' minivan. We had a safe, problem-free trip, never worrying whether the latest noise coming out from under the hood was something to be concerned about or just something that needed louder music to cover it up; it purred like a kitten the entire way. It also gave us a ton more room than our Toyota would have, and we had it filled to the gills.

2. No real accidents or injuries! The first time we went to Galveston, my daughter, who was about 6, got stung on the fanny by a jellyfish about fifteen minutes after arriving at the beach. (We were sure she would never get in the water again, but after a paste of vinegar and meat tenderizer was applied, courtesy of the lifeguard, it quit hurting, and all signs of it were gone within an hour.) My son stepped on a sea urchin two years ago while on a mission trip to Puerto Rico which required a trip to the emergency room and caused him a tremendous amount of pain from the spines broken off into his foot (over 50 of them) and the infection they caused, but no sea urchins or jellyfish to be found at the beach this year. My husband did burn himself on a waffle iron at the hotel we stayed in on our way back, but his little blister isn't that impressive compared to what the kids have done to themselves previously.

Husband's sunburned foot.
Somehow, in spite of using sunscreen,
we all managed to burn the
tops of our feet.

3. The first two days at the beach were hot and sunny. The water was warm, the breeze was refreshing, and we were in beach heaven. (Again, I refer you to Bitchy, I Mean, Beachy Thoughts, Part 2, for the reason it was only the first two.)

4. We ate shrimp. Lots of shrimp. Lots of very fresh, deliciously prepared shrimp. When you live far, far inland, the shrimp is never fresh, and while it's still GOOD (it's SHRIMP, after all), it's usually rubbery and a little tough.

In Galveston, they catch it here:

Then serve it here:

Shrimp N Stuff - yum!

We ate it grilled, stuffed with crab, wrapped with bacon, and, of course, fried.

Tender and delicious - Benno's on the Beach

5. My VERYVERYVERY favorite thing to do on the island is to ride the Galveston Island Ferry. It connects a sliver of the Texas mainland to Galveston. You can drive your car onto it and ride over (did it once) OR (the best way) park on the Galveston side and walk on (which we found is much more fun). Either way, it's FREE! You can watch the big ships (you know I like big ships) work their way towards the Port of Houston and (even better) watch the dolphins frolic alongside the ship.

See those crazy people standing at the front?
Several are holding BABIES. Had to stop watching.

Ferry hair.

Dolphin! There were about
a dozen at this spot.

6. Another favorite place to visit on the island is Col. Bubbie's Surplus Center. Located in the historic Strand district, the building is probably over a hundred years old, unairconditioned (we're in Texas, remember) and stuffed floor to ceiling with military surplus. And not just U.S. military surplus, either, but surplus from just about every country you can name that ever had a military. There are uniforms dating back to WWII, Civil War bayonettes, grenades, shells, hats, boots, mess kits, and thousands more items. The very sad news is that Col. Bubbie's is closing after this summer. The real Col. Bubbie passed away about five years ago, and his wife continued to operate the business. She has decided it's time to call it quits and is liquidating everything. (If you are in the market for military surplus, go here and check it out for their online store.) We'll miss you, Col. Bubbie's.

French Foreign Legion hat. The French
have very small heads, it seems.

7. My husband and son accidentally dressed alike one night at dinner and didn't even notice it until my daughter and I pointed it out from across the table.

8. My kids shared a bed and didn't kill each other. Usually, we do the boy bed /girl bed system when we are in a hotel. I took this picture one morning when my son was still asleep (it's a double bed, which means his 6'4" frame doesn't fit on it very well). It made me think of a magician's trick gone bad. You know, when the two ladies are in boxes and cut in half, then the two halves are switched?

9. Beach sand is a wonderful exfoliant. The bottoms of my feet have never been smoother!

10. I got a butt crack picture to add to my collection!

We also had a fantastic trip home, but I'm already to #10, so you'll have to wait to find out what we did later this week. Don't forget to check back and read all about it!

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Bitchy, I Mean, Beachy Thoughts, Part 2

Three days ago, my beach vacation was sunlight and sand and warm ocean water.

And then it wasn't any more....

The many "scattered" and "isolated" thunderstorms that have skirted around us all week have dropped trou on us.

Wednesday, we were downtown by the harbor, trying desperately to see a ginormous, ocean-going, cargo ship (okay, that was ME trying desperately; the other three in my group could care less and do not understand my boat fetish). We were on a pier that had an excursion boat and restaurants and such, and as I looked down along the channel, I could see that, approximately 3 blocks away, it was raining onto the water. A woman who worked for the excursion boat came up alongside us at that time and announced there was a waterspout where the rain was falling, but it was dissipating. 

Two things about that:
1. Call it a waterspout if you will, but it's still a tornado, and those of us from Joplin get a little twitchy when told there is one only about three blocks away.
2. Upon hearing it was a waterspout, my daughter proclaimed that was how the sharks fell on the land in the movie "Sharknado" just as raindrops the size of saucers started falling on us, and we scurried to the car.

The rain had stopped by the time we reached our motel, but the day was over halfway over, making it silly to pay $25 to rent an umbrella and chairs on the beach, so we looked for shells instead. It's a terrible year for finding shells.

A rather sketchy bunch moved into the room next to us, and they TOOK OUR CHAIRS from in front of our room. We were pretty convinced one of the men had a prison-made tattoo (that coming from the two Orange is the New Black fans), so no way were we going to ask for the chairs back.

I sunburned the tops of my feet in a perfect flip flop pattern. Even though it was so faint that I couldn't detect it, I seem to have gotten some sun on my feet whilst wearing flip flops. That pale flip flop line then burned when it was exposed to the sun. And yes, I had put sunscreen on the tops of my feet before going out.

My boobie sunburn is now peeling. While I cannot feel pain (good thing) or the opposite of pain (not a good thing), I CAN feel itch. What up wit dat? 

I was aware there had been an influx of seaweed this spring and early summer, but there's always SOME seaweed at the beach. It hasn't been that bad, actually, although there are piles of it rotting up against the seawall, giving off a sulfur smell (odor - it's an odor; "smell" is too nice of a word). Early Thursday morning, my husband and I got up early to walk on the beach and watch the sunrise. We crossed the seawall and saw a bank of seaweed that stretched across the shoreline. (Seagulls, the rats of the sea, were having the times of their lives on that seaweed.) There was no wading in the shallow waters as the surf rolls in. The water was rough, pitching and churning, and there were dark clouds and thunderheads to the south and west. We walked on the soft sand, the wall of seaweed between us and the water. Not the same.

Worst invasion of sargassum ever. EVER.
Record breaking. Historic. 

Since Thursday was to be our last day at the beach, we planned to spend every bit of it at the beach.

Problem #1: A wall of seaweed over two feet high
Problem #2: Rain. Wind. High surf. Lightning.
Problem #3: Did I mention the seaweed?

We walked over to the beach. The wind was so strong off the water that my son could play frisbee by himself. He took a camp shovel and dug a trench through the seaweed to the water. YES, IT WAS THAT HEAVY AND THICK. Then he wheedled and begged me to look for shells with him. He helped me through the seaweed canyon he had forged and into the water, the formerly warm water but which was now quite cold and where the seaweed that was washing in immediately started wrapping itself around my ankles. It was scratchy and made my ankles burn and itch. The water was so churned up by the high surf and storms that I couldn't see my feet, which freaks me out. The seagulls were all over the place, soaring above us, sitting on the seaweed wall, wading in the water.

See how high that wall of seaweed is?
For perspective, the college boy is nearly 6'4"

A raindrop hit my shoulder. Or so I thought, until I didn't feel any MORE raindrops. I looked at my son and said, "Is their seagull crap on me?" He looked, grinned, and confirmed. One of those assholes had crapped on me. I scooped up water in my hand and threw it at my shoulder while my son kept telling me I had missed the spot. 

Asshole.

I slogged through the seaweedy water, buffeted by the high winds, my ankles burning and itching from the seaweed, seagull crap somewhere on my bathing suit strap where I couldn't see it, and no shells, when I informed my son that I was DONE. We walked back to my husband and daughter, taking the route through the soft sand rather than the water (I SAID I was done and I meant it). And we gathered up our towels and blew back across the seawall to our motel. And I got in the shower in my swimsuit and doused myself with body wash, paying particular attention to the vicinity of the seagull crap.

Face of someone who will go home from
five days at the beach with no tan lines.

The only good thing about all this is it will make it easier to leave tomorrow. Besides that, I have a TERRIFIC adventure up my sleeve for the trip home. Stay tuned....

Beachy Thoughts

Beachy thoughts from Galveston, Texas:

There is always more sand. Even when you think you have washed, swept, brushed, picked or wiped every grain of it off, there's still more sand.

I have a parlor trick, just like my friend Kristi does! Well, not the SAME trick; she balances toys on her head for her granddaughter. Mine is actually more practical. I was sitting in the edge of the surf, picking up little shells, but with no pockets in the ol' swimsuit, I had nowhere to put them. Then I came up with a brilliant idea: I put them inside my swimsuit top, inside the bra part of it, under my boobies. Here's what makes this brilliant: I don't have any feeling in my boobies, so I can't tell that there are little shells in my suit. When I returned to our beach umbrella and chairs, I reached in and pulled them out, dropping them into a plastic bag to save. Only hitch was when I got back to the motel and took off my swimsuit. As I was making sure all the sand was brushed off of me, I found a little tiny shell stuck to the underside of my boobie. Didn't feel a thing.

Fish are jumping all over the place in the water. Silvery, trout-ish in shape, maybe 10-15 inches long. Don't know if that's what all the fishermen are trying to catch from the rock jetties, but if it is, then they're doing it wrong, because my daughter was in the water when one of them jumped out of the water and landed on her boogie board. They were both terribly surprised, then the fish flipped back off into the water. 

No matter how bad I think I look in a swimming suit, I still look better than at least 75% of the other beach goers.

I have big damn hair in Texas. It's wildly curly and the consistency of a brillo pad, and I really don't know why I bother to bring my straightening iron with me when I come here, as it just isn't going to happen.

This reminds me of a trip we took to Florida when my daughter was 6 months old and my son had just turned 4. The first time I washed my hair there, I couldn't find the bottle of conditioner that I was just SURE I had packed. All week, my hair kept getting wilder and curlier and there was nothing I could do about it without conditioner. Finally, the night before we left, I had had enough. I remembered reading a hint once that you could use mayonnaise as a conditioner, so I thought I'd give it a try. Of course, we didn't have any mayonnaise, but we DID have Miracle Whip. Practically the same thing, right? I slathered it onto my hair, let it sit there a bit, then went to the shower to wash it out. And I washed and I washed and I rinsed and I rinsed, and I still couldn't get all that greasy Miracle Whip out of my hair. And the longer I stood under the hot shower, the more my hair smelled like hot salad dressing. Eventually, I gave up. The next morning, as I was packing our bags, guess what I found in the toiletries bag? You guessed it. A bottle of hair conditioner.

I can't cross the causeway onto Galveston Island without playing this song, which is one of my all time favorites. Listen....