You guys.
Today I came home to the greatest news. Apparently
ULOL’s mom thinks she’s getting kind of scrawny. So what did she do? She gifted our house
with nacho supplies: a quart of queso, refried beans, a 5 lb. container of sour
cream and an industrial size bag of tortilla chips.
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| I saved this picture as "Heaven". |
I’m straddling the line between pure bliss and a queso induced
coma. On that note…
Tuesday 9/11
There’s this thing called “morning”.
Usually it only happens on work days, but apparently it can rear its ugly head
during vacations also. Learning all the things all the days! Lucy somehow
managed to sleep past 8am, which I chalked off as miraculous. The itinerary
I’d loosely put together said Tuesday was picnic-on-the-coast day. Lucy bribed
me into consciousness by reminding me Better’n Butter still existed. After I
consumed half the jar with a spoon, we hit the ground running. Running in
approximately a hundred different directions.
Convinced that everyone should
love French-Vietnamese fusion sandwiches (AKA banh mi), I made the executive decision
that we’d pick up sandwiches to bring to Seaside. Turns out banh mi is best if
you really enjoy cheap pork and/or spicy things. The vegetarian option, which Lu ordered…not so much.
She also got an iced Thai coffee which tasted a little bit like chilled shoe
polish. Obvs I ended up drinking that, because my palate is less than
discerning.
Since this wasn’t my first adventure in Seaside I figured I knew where we were going. I figured wrong. We were somewhere near
Tigard before I realized the ocean probably wasn’t further east. Lu used our travel
time to read autowin posts out loud and speculate about who Riese is addressing when she says “you”. We listened
to every 80s song ever. We also nearly ran out of gas.
We rolled into Seaside around noon, loaded my backpack and
headed for the shore. We had optimistically packed books and a blanket. Here’s the thing: picnicking on the beach is easier said than done. The sun
was shining in a way that made you believe in summer, but the wind warranted flannel and mittens. Also, as soon as we staked out a lunch spot and pulled out our sandwiches,
the seagulls swarmed. You guys, seagulls are gnarly bastards! They make
all sorts of horrible sounds, and I think maybe the entire species has some
sort of mange. Not to mention the fact that they are fearless little mongrels. I
gave them my meanest G-face and they just snapped their nasty little beaks. Under
that sort of scrutiny I inhaled my sandwich in about five second. We were up
and moving again before feathered hell broke loose.
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| Picture courtesy of Kate Raynes-Goldie |
There’s something about the ocean
that makes me act like a five-year old. The air feels so thick and gritty. It gets
stuck between your fingers and all tangled up in your hair. I wanted to take
off my shoes and feel the wet sand between my toes, but also the thought of
things between my toes makes me squeamish. I spent the next hour or so
frolicking about, chasing broken sand dollars and running away from ankle-deep
waves. I was an airplane, and an adventurer and the last unicorn! Lucy spent
the majority of this time sitting in the sand, watching in a (hopefully)
bemused fashion. When I finally talked her into running amok, we were dizzy
dervishes spinning parallel circles around each other, singing Disney songs and
just being. Sometimes it’s so necessary to just be, you know?
When we couldn’t feel our fingers
anymore, we wandered down the touristy drag. We walked and ate fudge-dipped
pretzels. We played with gift shop trinkets; Lu bought postcards for all the
people she loves. We got hot coffees and sat curbside, finally shared a
jelly-filled donut.
When I was 11 years old, and too
young to realize Stephen King novels weren’t written
for pre-teens, I read The Green Mile. One of the characters on death row
theorizes that maybe heaven isn’t a place, maybe it's a memory. Maybe heaven is returning to a perfect moment and living
there indefinitely. I think if heaven meant sitting on a curb near the ocean
with the sun in my face and Lucy nearby and sugary glaze eternally melting on my
tongue? I’d be ok with that.
But we’re still alive, which meant
we couldn’t outstay our welcome. Eventually we had to pack back into the Biscuit, drive back to the city and Real Life. I got us back to my house with only one near-death
experience. Thus began the flurry of anxiety and overwhelming feels, prelude to A-Camp. See,
I still hadn’t really considered the fact that I needed to pack and clean and
make sure That Cat was equipped to survive my absence. I’d also forgotten my
complete inability to make decisions, which makes choosing a place to eat
dinner absolute hell. We ended up in a sushi restaurant between a beauty salon
and a law practice. For the record, neither of us got food poisoning.
The nervous energy and big heavies
started somewhere between Seaside and bedtime. Not even an hour long season
finale Dance Moms extravaganza helped (although that summer sound stayed stuck in my head for days). Somewhere around midnight I regretted ever
hearing about A-Camp. I didn’t want to leave Portland. I didn’t want to meet
new people; I didn’t want to feel far away from Lucy or lose the weird idyllic
reality we’d almost captured in Seaside.
We had to wake up at 4:30am for ULOL to drop us off at the
airport, like the incredible roomie she is. Cue a lot of crying, fidgeting
and worrying while Lu slept. I finally drifted off around 2:30, t-minus two
hours until A-Camp. Fuck.
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| California, here we come... |
That’s all for now, sleepy kittens. I hope you all have big
plans for Friday night!
Many miles of love.
-b
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