Welcome to Paradise

Well, I went to the beach.  I am really, in my heart, a mountain person.  Lush green forests and misty mornings and woodland creatures and all that; it lets my soul breathe.  Heals the heart.

 

Don't you feel better?

But when we’re talking about people’s happy places, most folks seem to pick the beach.  This includes my mother, and more specifically her bosses, who have a beach condo down on the gulf shore in Florida that they very generously let us use.  It’s a lovely place and you can look right at the water and hear the waves crashing and all that.  It’s pretty, and time with my mom is priceless.  Being on vacation where I get enough sleep and don’t have any pressing things to do is also priceless, and it was great.

But it’s still the beach.

I was a fat kid with what my grandfather called thin skin, meaning I escalated from freckles to blister burn in about two minutes (I got this from his side of the family).  I was also fully equipped with the utter impatience necessary to properly misapply sun tan lotion.  My parents were from an era where spf 4 tanning oil counted as sun protection, and no one knew anything about skin cancer.  (To paint a picture, my mom still wears nylons, even under long pants in the heat of summer, if she hasn’t had any sun, so her toes look tan in her high heel sandals.  Her toes, Reader.)   I love to get messy, so I’d go dig around and make drip castles and stuff, but I’d rather have mud all over me than sand.  And sure, the ocean is right there but…then you get all wet.  But, fine, there’s a sand situation, so you go in and splash around and

Plus, sharks.

handle it but…it’s all salty.  So then you get out and the sand all sticks to you again because you’re still wet.  My mom and sister are thicker skinned than me, they can tan like it’s a sport, and they did….so there wasn’t much for me to do besides hide under a towel being hot, sticky, sandy, and burnt, in my fat kid bathing suit.

  

As an adult, I have much higher level sun screen application skills, but the essence of the beach is the sand and the salt water and I still have a fat kid bathing suit.  The beach is not my favorite.

Those dolphins are pooping.

All you beach fanatics just calm down, you’re allowed to have your soul sing when you’re standing in the surf and I’m allowed to have better things to do.  I like being near the beach just fine, it’s very pretty sometimes, and it’s fun to think that there are just big ole fish out there, living their fishy lives, while I get to listen to the calming sounds of God’s toilet continually flushing.   

I also have a better idea of things to do there than I did as a child.  Here’s my adult-person list of what to do at the beach: 

     - Not go to the beach  

     - Wonder if those people are swimming or drowning  

     - Listen to the white people in the house band at the beach bar down the street sing Purple Rain 

     - Decide to go to the grocery store later  

     - Eat another Heath Bar mini  

     - Feed the crows leftover french fries, creating a crow/seagull turf war (also all birds have high cholesterol now)  

     - Vaguely remember having ever had a tan at any point in the past, then immediately Google skin cancer  

     - Take an after-breakfast nap

Mom would add to this list, “watch a Nicolas Cage movie on network TV” and “fully commit to the pursuit of fried shrimp unless—is that an Italian restaurant?”  Our vacationing life is just exhausting.

Be safe, Reader.
But don't google-image "skin cancer,"
it's terrifying.