Dana’s July 4th started MUCH
earlier than normal – typically she’s the last one up (but to be fair, she’s
the only one of us that has a 9-5 job during the summer… or any time… so she’s
taking advantage of being able to sleep in).
But today she’s heading down to the pier to swim and hang out with
friends’ family, Leah and her son Noah – they’re picking her up at 8! I may be up, but I sure don’t want to be
dressed by then – and they’re coming from their home, so they had to get up
even earlier! We say our goodbyes to
Dana (they were long and tearful), and we get ready for the beach.
I love going down to the beach early in the
morning, love the air – so we get some beach time in, and about 11:00 Dana,
Leah and Noah join us. They went to the
pier (the longest in the gulf) and saw people fishing – one guy caught a shark
– but you can’t catch sharks, so he cut it lose before Dana could get a close
up pic (the one she did get wasn’t bad though).
Before coming down to the beach they had gone to swim in the pool near
the pier – Dana kept saying that it was at the end of the pier, and I’m still
not really clear on where the pool was, and Dana is sleeping right now so we
won’t ask her.
We teach Leah and Noah the wonders of the
papasan raft (they fold to the size of an ipad, they blow up in seconds, and
they’re easy to get into, very relaxing.. we could sell these). We’ve seen other creatures in the water –
jelly fish are out there (but as Logan said only 2 people got stung, so that’s
nothing).. but every time I put my hand in the water and something jelly-fish
like touches it, I jump and scream, and I’m not a jumper or a screamer. People near us have a net and they’ve been
catching things in it and looking around the water and pointing at other things
– makes me uneasy because we are very near them, and sometimes they point
toward us like, “there it goes to eat up those ladies!”… but turns out that
they’re catching electric rays – little sting rays about the size of a frying
pan that shock you when you touch them.
This Einstein that has one in the net KEEPS touching it and laughs each
time, “Oooh, it got me… ohhh it got me again…”
-- Well STOP touching it. Patti
gets to feel the shock herself because she STEPS on one! Squishy AND shocking.. ugh!! Dana had talked about stepping on something
squishy earlier in the week, and we all say (in turn, as is our way), “Hey
Dana, maybe that’s what you stepped on.. “
About 10 minutes later Dana turns to all of us and says, “Hey guys,
maybe that’s what I stepped on.. “… Um….
Yes… we just said that. To you. Ten minutes ago. You were here for that. Remember?
Oh yah. But she was just saying
that she agreed. As the week goes on, it
becomes one of our lines – if there is a little bit of quiet one of us might
chime in as if we have something important to say, “Hey guys! Maybe that’s what Dana stepped on .. you
think?” -- And again, we acknowledge that this is only
funny to the three of us (even Dana isn’t amused), but we’ll laugh each time
(mainly *because* Dana isn’t amused).
Our plan for the day is to avoid 4th
of July traffic – could be crazy because the fireworks are going to be down on
our beach, and we’ve read news reports on the internet about what roads are
going to be closed and we just don’t want any part of that, so we’re doing our
meal out early in the day and then going to make up a batch of rotel dip for
“dinner”. Honestly we eat enough at our
one real meal of the day to sustain us – we do not go hungry down here, that’s
for sure. Leah had said that they needed
to leave about noon to avoid the same traffic that we’re trying to avoid, but
they end up extending that a bit, and the three of them walk down the beach to
Sea-n-Suds for lunch. It’s just a
“block” or two from us. The rest of us
decide that we should be thinking about getting ready too and we head up and
“scrub ass and wash hair”. Amy loves
this saying now, we’re picking up all kinds of “southern” – this family near us
was going to head to lunch, but the dad was hungry now, he just wanted to go to
a place where they could walk in like this, because if they had to take the
time to scrub ass and wash hair, it was going to be 3:00 before they ate. And he’s kinda right – it’s about that time
by the time we scrub ass and wash hair.
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| Dana with Leah and Noah |
We head to Steamers again – we liked it
because there was nothing fried on the menu, and that seems to be the going
thing down here. When other tables get
their food delivered it just looks like a big tray of brown fried things. We also didn’t want to go some place new
without Dana and come back and tell her how it was the best place that we’d
been so far, and she really missed out (see Dana, how we’re thinking of
you?). And this next part is for Dana too – I find it
completely unblog-worthy, but Dana insists that it go in the blog and she wasn’t
even there for it. While we were
waiting, I look down at my hands and notice how dry they are – like sea salt
dry, you can see the white cracks, the skin is tight, I’m desperate for some
lotion. I had just taken my lotion out
of my purse and Amy and Patti were also sans lotion. So I used another natural lubricant to
moisturize – the liquid butter that was on the table. Just a dollop will do ya… and it was
effective. But now Dana is trying to
make the butter catch on as something we say – she insists that the only things
we say repeatedly are the ones that make fun of her (not true… but hey, maybe
that was a ray that Dana stepped on..)…
It’s just like “fetch” – just not working. (Mean Girls reference alert). So there.. it’s the “butta” story. It may recur.
We share the Royal Reds again – yum! I get the crab legs boil, and I wanted the
potato salad instead of the slaw because the last time we were there I didn’t
get it, and it was really good (sampling others’) – but the waiter seems
confused, and I am in turn confused. I
want to substitute, but he words it as an “extra” side – so what ends up
happening is that I paid extra for the potato salad, but didn’t get my slaw,
and not just a little extra to make up for the sub, like full price for the “extra”
side, but then they subbed out the slaw too.
It’s weird. Patti gets the shrimp
(can’t go wrong) and Amy gets the lobster with scallops St Joque (or something
like that). She wins because that
lobster looks amazing. My crab legs take
forever to eat, but we’re on beach time – and it gives us plenty of time to
people watch.
We’re sitting outside and Amy
and Patti are disappointed if “normals” walk down the street toward us – they love
commenting on the people who look a hot mess with their mis-matching clothes,
drifter looking boyfriends and underwear hanging out. Something else we notice while we’re sitting
here is that these people can’t parallel park.
It’s a disaster watching them try!
And two people even had the passenger get out and direct the parking and
it was STILL a mess – we’re literally covering our face waiting for the
impact. Is this a southern thing? These people thought nothing of having the
passenger get out and direct, and these were NOT tight spaces that required
special attention, this was just your average parallel parking job and they
were NOT up for it.
The people sitting next to us were recently people that we were watching and talking about - two guys and a girl, and then girl sounds just like Pennsatucky from Orange is the New Black. My back is to her, so it's eerie - same accent, cadence, phrases.. I'm a little spooked by it. Patti and Amy can see her, and they say that her mannerisms are similar as well.
I finally finish that pile of crab legs and
it’s about 5:00 – fireworks at 9 – and we head back before things get
cray. Dana has been back for a while and
done some dishes and cleaned up (yay! Thanks!).
We hang out and watch some tube.
I’m not sure if you realize this, but relaxing on the beach, in the sun,
with the water and the waves can be very exhausting – it takes a lot of down
time back in the condo to recover from our morning.. by 7:00 Patti is champing at the bit for the
rotel dip (I prefer “champing” although I know many people say “chomping”… “champing”
is more fun to say).. I fire up the
crock pot and we get our dip on and then head down to the beach. None of us brought any red, white and blue
clothes and we’re feeling a little “less than” compared to our neighbors who
have been wearing flags on and about their bodies all week. People have their doors decorated with flags,
they wear flags on every part of them (swim wear, shirts, bandanas) – and we
are lacking. To make up for it we decide
that we can each wear one of the colors and be red, white and blue together –
Dana misses that memo and dresses in green.
Patti dons her red and white bandana for her “Patriotic Patti” look –
she’s stylin.
The beach is beautiful at this time of day
and it’s a fun atmosphere down there as everyone is getting ready for the
show. We get spots on the wooden
loungers, take some silly pics on the beach (the people in the chairs behind us
offered to take our picture, but we said “what fun would that be”). I included the many faces of Patti for your viewing pleasure...
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| Red, White and Blue |
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| Red, White and Green (Italy) |
The fireworks were shot from a barge out in
the gulf, just down the beach from us. We had the perfect spot, beach, friends,
no traffic home.. just a really nice evening.
I put together some of the video from the fireworks and posted it to
youtube if you want to peek at it. It gets better toward the end – I got their “finale”. http://youtu.be/_ETX7sUpTf8
After the fireworks we hung out for a bit,
but Patti and Amy head up to the condo.
Dana and I decide to take advantage of being down on the beach at
night. We’ve been meaning to come down
for crabbing, but gravity keeps getting in our way – we sit down, and it’s
really hard to get up and go down there.
We try to copy the methods that we’ve seen others using, but we have
absolutely no idea what we’re looking for, where to look or how to look for
it. Should we be in the water, at the
edge, just above the water line on the beach?
And I know we’re looking for ghost crabs that are small, but are they
like ant size? Will we know it when we
see them? People just seem to be
walking along with their flash light apps on their phones on. There is a couple coming our way that seems
to know what they’re doing, so we ask – oh yah, just look for them along the
water’s edge, and if you see one you shine the light in their eyes and they
freeze. They had just seen one up the
beach, so we head up to see if we can find him – and we DO! We were so excited to find one – I used the
light on my phone to hold him and Dana recorded and took pics ... which won't load. The video is cooler anyway –
here’s the link: http://youtu.be/vhgm95VqMo0 -
So we’ve seen one – and then Dana spies
another one, and TEEENY TINY one that is like the size of a head of a pin (like
a really big pin, but the kind that you would use to mark a spot on map), I
have no idea how Dana saw him because he’s barely big enough for his own
eyes. So that’s our crabbing adventure –
Dana wants to go back and look for more later this week, so we’ll see how that
goes.
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