Backsies Is What There Is Not: vacation

Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts

Thursday, July 17, 2014

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....

Monday, July 14, 2014

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....

Saturday, July 12, 2014

We Interrupt Packing For Ten Things Of Thankful

I'm in the midst of finishing up laundry and trying to persuade everyone to pack their suitcases TONIGHT for our vacay to the beach, because we are leaving at 6 A.M. PEOPLE, and there will be no time for it in the morning.

No one has packed a thing.

I, on the other hand, have done about a thousand loads of laundry, bought groceries for the trip, taken the cats to Camp Grandma an hour away, cleaned the downstairs in case something happens to us and my mother in law has to come inside my house while we're gone (and hoping there is no reason for her to go upstairs to the Inner Sanctum, as it is a disaster). I am now taking a breather, lying on the living room couch, having a hot flash that seems to be endless, and missing my Ruby.

1. I guess I'll start my Ten Things of Thankful with that: I'm thankful my downstairs is clean enough for a mother in law.

2. One of Ruby's favorite games is to run up the stairs ahead of me, stop on the landing 3/4 of the way up, and try to grab me from around the newel post. I was trying to capture this fun game on my camera, and I got a picture that I just adore.

Oh, Ruby....

3. My son has decided he is not going to die from his tick bite, so I was able to throw away the tick in my freezer. Hamsters remain status quo.

4. Picked a few more blueberries this week. The season will be over by the time we get back from vacation, so this was my last chance to pick them for the freezer. Once again, I talked my son into going with me, making the deal that whoever picked the least amount would buy the other person breakfast. Guess who got a free breakfast? That's right, MEEEEE! When we finished picking (and he set the time we would finish), I clearly had the most, which was confirmed when our berries were weighed when we checked out. "I don't get it," my son said, shaking his head. "You eat berries constantly as you pick, you take selfies, you text, you answer emails, you check facebook, and I just stand there and pick blueberries. And yet, you pick more than me every time." That's right, College Boy, because I'm a mom and I can multi-task. That's my superpower.

5. I'm extremely thankful for my parents. We drive two old cars, which is not the way you should do it. You should have one newish car and one oldish car, so you always have a decent one. One has definitely been better than the other for some time, but it recently got bumped to second place by the one we think of as the bad car. Then the bad car, which had been upgraded to the good car, started acting up (as in dying while driving it, which is not a good thing at all) and got demoted again to bad car. So now, instead of one good car and one bad car, we have two bad cars. My parents stepped in and told us we could borrow one of their cars for the trip, so we now know we not only can make it to our destination, we can also return, which would have been an iffy proposition with either of our own cars.

6. Another thankful for my parents is they have opened Camp Grandma for the week so our cats have a place to stay while we're gone. The College Boy and I dropped them off there today. Fletcher and Ruby were hiding under the couch when we left, but Pete had flopped down in a chair and made himself at home.

Unhappy campers.

Pete, making himself at home.

7. I received a gift certificate for a pedicure recently. Some of you might recall that pedicures were on my list of things I've never done, because the whole idea of it kind of weirded me out, but I decided to take a deep breath and go for it. I took my daughter with me, and we bumbled through the whole thing together. I will say that I did not know there was such a learning curve to getting a pedicure, and that I am really, really, REALLY bad at understanding anyone who speaks with an accent of any kind, particularly Vietnamese, as it turns out. I can't say I loved the pedicure, especially the part where she trimmed my nails, which, to me, was the equivalent of the dental hygienist scraping my teeth with that evil hook-thing. Nor did I care much for the scalding hot towels she wrapped around my legs. But all the massage stuff was nice. And my piggy toes look beach worthy!

8. I took both of my kids to lunch ("Welcome to Moe's!"), and my son called driver and my daughter called shotgun, and I was left to sit in the backseat. I took full advantage of my position by backseat driving the entire way FROM THE ACTUAL BACKSEAT.

Pilot and co-pilot

Backseat driiiiiving.

9. This one is hot off the press, but I had to relay this thing of thankful. My husband has gotten himself hooked on a British reality show called "Come Dine With Us" or something like that, and he had a couple of questions for Lizzi. I sent them to her via Facebook, and I just got the most delightful message back from her, done as a voice message, with her drunk as a runaway bicycle and having what sounded like a fabulous time with friends. It makes me smile ear to ear to hear that message (and all the subsequent ones)!

10. As we get ready to embark on a family vacation, I want to express how thankful I am for my little family. After almost 21 years of marriage, my husband and I still enjoy being with each other and with our funny, smart kids. We've been through some pretty crappy stuff since the very end of December, but I can now say that it's finally OVER. And we deserve to have a fantastic beach vacation. And if we don't kill each other before the week is over, I'll be back next weekend to tell you all about it.