I've been bad, not posting. I've also been bad, not cleaning. I haven't been in the basement in the last two days. But, I've been to the beach both those days. I need to get the kids out of the house and it was beautiful so I figured it took me 16 years to accumulate the junk, two days off won't kill me. Today it's going to storm so I'll go down again, after I clean the house and go food shopping. The beach yesterday was interesting...
The sea was rough, churning up life from it's bowels that normally aren't seen. Baby star fish struggled as the surf swept them up on the beach. The children thought they had found Patrick, many running to their parents, star fish in hand shouting "Mommy, daddy look I have Patrick!" The poor creatures, just wanting to get back under the rock they came from. Occasionally a larger one appeared and their would be shrieking from the person who felt so lucky to find it.
My daughter was one of the culprits keeping the poor things from their home. She raced to the shore catching sea water in her royal blue sand pail, then carefully sprinkling sand at the bottom and finishing the creation with a single small perfect mussel shell. Then she went on her hunt. Determined to find herself a friend for the day. Within a few minutes she came racing back with a small one no larger than a Clementine orange. It wasn't anything special, just the run of the mill reddish star fish. A few minutes later she came back with two more, gleefully placing them in her bucket announcing she now had three new friends! Her final capture was quiet unusual, he (she insisted it was a he) was bright burnt orange and no larger than a silver dollar. How exciting it was to her and her new found beach friends. They looked in the bucket, occasionally one of them trying to poke them. My daughter would yell at the human intruder and say "leave them alone, you don't get poked at by some big finger in the sky do you?" How carefully she guarded her treasures, proudly showing them to everyone around us. After a while she got bored and decided to leave the bucket in my care, carefully placed in the shade so they would not "boil" in the sun. Then off she went back to the sea. A few minutes later she came back so excited I thought she might explode! Hand behind her back, "Mommy, Mommy, look what I found!" And she quickly pulled her small hand from behind her back and there is was a star fish, but this one was a whopper! It was bigger than her hand, it's arms hanging over, curling up. My daughter started poking at this flaming orange spot on the star fish and I freaked! "Honey, stop poking the poor thing in his eye!" "EEEEEKKKKK," she screamed "that's his eye?" Then she tried to put her eye up to the star fish's eye to see him better. After a few minutes of carefully examining him, I told her she really needed to return him to the sea, so off she ran merrily to carefully place him back in the crashing surf.
Out of no where, a haze swept in like a cool satin blanket. Then the big threatening silver black clouds quickly filled the sky. I told my children we needed to pack up and move out before the storm hit. Panic struck the entire beach. I have never seen so many people pack up the beach gear so fast. With in a minute, it seemed, the bulk of the beach had grabbed their things and started running for the exit. I told my daughter is was time to set her new friends free, without a complaint she carefully walked down to the shore line and placed the bucket in the water, gently tapping it she told the wondrous sea creatures to be free and go home to the moms. We then gathered our things like any normal day and walked back up the beach as it started to rain. Now the tourist were panicking even more, fighting and running to get to their cars. Where were they going to go? It was only raining, not thunder or lightening. What was the big rush? Most of them were still wet from the ocean, so they got a little wetter from the sky?? We slowly walked around the mob and made it back to our car. I put the kids inside just to be safe from the crazy tourist. I carefully packed our things back in the trunk, cooler first, then the chairs, followed by the two bags, one containing towels, the other with the snacks, then the cart, thank goodness for my cart, it made it so much easier trekking back from the beach and it prevented fights over who was going to carry what! Finally, the boogie boards fit in. I closed the trunk, climbed in the car and sat with my children and we watch. Three fender benders and a fight broke out, the cops came to straighten it out. Over a few cars I notice a group of young kids smoking a bong, how brazen they were, right in front of the cops and all the tourist, like they were all alone on an island and no one could see them, apparently everyone, including me, ignored them. Finally I saw our chance to sneak out away from the crazy tourist! While they all went straight, I turned left and quickly made our "secret" escape home, I was local so I knew the back way and off we went home for the day to recover from our glorious day at the beach.
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