Peach Beach

Since it's mostly my friends and family who read these posts, you probably already know I got back from vacation a few days ago. It was a true beach vacation in the sense that there wasn't much to do besides find ourselves a new beach to hang out at each day, so that's what we did. Shout out to the Bahamian out-islands: each beach was more beautiful than the last, yet we hardly saw another person at any of them. Overall I would characterize the trip as "therapeutic", because I don't feel words like "relaxing" or "nice" really get at the experience: I slept well, I stressed zero, I didn't check my email for almost three full weeks. My blood pressure literally dropped ten points! 10/10 would recommend.

I've been on vacations where beaches were involved, but I've never had a truly beach-centric vacation like that before. One thing that occuurred to me as my thoughts swam dreamily past was that, in all the "summer reading"-type novels I have read - admit it, you know what I mean - I don't think the authors have been entirely honest about the invasive properties of sand.

There was, like, a lot of sand. Everywhere - sand. An infestation of sand, really. There was sand in the beds, sand in the furniture, sand somehow in the dinners I lovingly and (I swear!) hygienically prepared. I would peel off my swimsuit at the end of each day and find I was wearing a swimsuit-shaped garment of sand underneath. Sand was in places it shouldn't ever be and lemme tell you, it was reluctant to be evicted. We had been home three days when Small Fry found sand still in his ear. I'm not even going to tell you where I found some.

Maybe you've been reading different summer novels than I have so this was perfectly apparent to you, but I felt slightly deceived by all those romantic portrayals of beach houses and summer flings. Sand is not just not romantic, it is anti-romantic (some things don't need exfoliating!). And for a clean-floors afficionado like myself, it is also a little bit anti-sanity - if I had to live with it every day and couldn't simply remind myself that it was only a temporary situation, it would be a lot anti-sanity.

I'm convinced the whole reason behind that laid-back "island vibe" people talk about is that if you walk too quickly, you're going to get sand everywhere. Or maybe it already is everywhere and you're (rightly) concerned about chafing key anatomical regions... either way, sand is the driver. Conversely, the reason behind the brisk-and-stressed vibe back home is that if you walk too slowly, you're likely to freeze to death.

Which reminds me: I got a sand-load of feedback from y'all regarding my last post. For those of you who were offended by DH's desire for poor home weather while we were away, you should know that we came back to one of his least-favourite things in the world: shoveling snow. Our first morning home I gave him a cheery, "Morning, dear!" To which he replied, "Shoveling snow can kiss my ass," and slammed the door.

I hope that warms your heart, if not your toes.