I am always incredibly amazed at how fast wonderful days skim by, and last week was no exception. In fact, the only slow part of last week was the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before we all headed down to sunny Florida. Steven and I amused ourselves with repeated trips to Wal-Mart. I believe we set a new personal record for ourselves: four trips in three days. Quite scary, not to mention tortureous . . . except for the last trip when we went with our friends and I got a kooky straw hat.
The seven of us stayed at a wonderful beachhouse courtesy of Ande Like the Mint and her parents. I was extremely amused as I have always stayed at a condo for previous beachy trips. I’m afraid I’m ruined for life and will stay at beachhouses forevermore. This house was especially cool as there was an elevator installed. We mostly used it as an oversized dumb waiter for all our luggage. Below is Steven preparing to safeguard our loot for the long vertical trek.
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The house was across the street from the beach side (with the house itself located on the ‘bay side’), but the walk to the beach wasn’t bad at all as long as you were wearing shoes. I know this from experience. My feet took quite a beating on this trip, starting with my lack to lather the tops of my feet with suntan lotion. It was an interesting experience to walk around after that. Another morning, in my rush to get a picture of the sunrise, I walked out to the beach barefooted. The driveway to the house is defined by semi-crushed oyster shells, mind you. Walking back over that with ice-cold feet is a bit piercing. There also was an encounter with a rouge sand spur, of which I think there is still a little bit in my heel. Now I bet I could walk over hot coals or a bed of nails and not even flinch. Yeah.
I’m afraid to say that we all committed the terrible crime of trespassing while we were down there. The guy who has a house on beach side apparently does not want indentations of footprints to mar his sandy drive. We bit our thumb at him (who was out of town anyway) and walked on through. Eat our footprints.
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All the previous times I’ve vacationed at the beach, I did so with my immediate family. On this go I was quite amused by all the activities we did. Frisbees, flying kites, skimboarding, chasing after dolphins, all this was fascinating. All the pictures I took attest to this. If somebody moved, I snapped their picture. I was a triggerhappy Carrie with a new digital camera. I was probably the most annoying person on the trip in that respect, but I just couldn’t help myself. It was a great liberty to take picture after picture with no worries of film and development costs; knowing I could just run inside and scoot the picture over to the (rented) laptop and start anew. To be able to immediately look over my work to delete unfocused shots, check for under or overexposure, or just laugh until my sides hurt at the endearing goofiness of everyone . . . it’s just perfect. Ohhhh, the humor of it all.
And now to end this section with a totally inadequate picture of a game of frisbee.
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On the coldest day of the week (Wednesday) we all went into town to eat lunch and play putt-putt golf. I do enjoy the putt-putt, even though I suck horribly at it. I mostly amused myself by taking pictures of others. Here is Ande Like the Mint kicking ass with her kiddie putter.
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We went on quite a few beachwalks while we were down there. That was very refreshing; Lord knows I need the exercise. During these walks, I was surprised at all of the naturalness that was still around on the island. There were always at least a few dolphins just beyond the sand bar; there were sandpipers, seagulls (Mine?), and pelicans in land, sea, and air; and my Lord, there were so many seashells. A former marine biologist major’s heaven. I even saw a dead sea cucumber washed up on the beach. We found something new on every walk we embarked on.
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I mentioned earlier that I went out to get sunrise pictures, forgetting my shoes in the process. Remember? Well of course I had to include at least one of my hard-earned sunrise pictures. I got quite a few, of course, but this one amuses me because of the unknown individual with his hands in his pockets in the foreground. It was fascinating how fast the sun came up over the water and before you knew it, it was daytime and you were out of disk space. Click, click, click.
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I think that every trip needs that one specific moment that defines the entire experience. It is even better if this moment is captured in picture form. Even though not everyone that was there is in this picture, it still, I think, defines the whole week for everybody. It’s a fantastic picture, but goddamn it, Ken snapped it with my camera, not me.
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Skimboarding, though it looked amusing, was not something I was willing to try. I know I would have just fallen down and busted my ass on the hard, wet sand. So instead, I got pictures of other people doing exactly what I feared would happen.
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To a continue a tradition from last year, we created another Mer-Willis, except this time it was more gender-correct with Katie as the sandy creature. We were all rushing to create the sculpture and snap pictures before her boobs cracked.
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We laughed. We danced. We burned. We jumped for joy.
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Proof I was there. Proof that not only did I wear a swimsuit, it was of the bikini kind. Proof I probably shouldn’t. Proof that maybe in reality I don’t think I look that bad or else I would not feel the need to prove anything.
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The week went by incredibly fast, and before we knew it we were thinking, “we’re going back day after tomorrow.”
“Boogers upon heaps of boogers!” thought I. As we watched the clock seem to gain speed before our very eyes, Willis expresses his intense dissatisfaction.
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Before it seemed possible, we were to Saturday, the day before leaving. After a last hurrah at the beach and a scrumptious dinner with a parrot, we were inside eating the rest of the food, playing games, and avoiding the ardurous task of packing. Ken, Lisa, Steven and I sat down to a game of Scrabble. After Steven and I made the play that sealed the game for us, Ken and Lisa played this word.
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And then it was Sunday. Sunday on an island that barely sits in the Eastern Time Zone that has just switched to Daylight Savings Time. Us Central Time Zoners struggled endlessly with the concept. “When do you want to leave? Uhh, 9 am? Do you mean Central or Eastern time? Our time. Our time now, or our time in Central, or our time in yesterday’s Eastern, or the time that is Central now? No, no, our time.”
Though I don’t think we ever got it quite right, we ended up leaving at 9:30 Eastern, 8:30 Central. That’s in Daylight Savings Time for those of y’all who are still confused. And thus began my 12 hour journey across the great state of Alabama, with stops in Dothan, Auburn, and Birmingham until I reached Fort Payne with a sandy suitcase and a confused Renton wondering where his salmon went.
Sorry, Renton. Here in cold North Alabama all we serve is regular ol’ cat food.