AudreyPodrey.com

Hanna is headed our way and is going to cut our stay here short by about 18 hours. We would have left early tomorrow morning, but now we are going to leave around 2 o’clock this afternoon.

It’s a little too bad - an extra day of playing in the ocean would have been fun. But i am pretty much ready to be back at home in my own bed anyway. We will be housing 9 additional people in our house for 2 nights. It will be quite a full house.

I’ll miss the beach. It’s been good to us for once. There were no blobs of hydromedusa or anything floating in the water. I had no experience of little crabs getting inside my suit. The waves in the ocean were soothing (except for the two times i got tumbled and somersaulted). I think i’m still a “lake person” instead of a “beach person”, but the beach is a nice place to visit, too.

Day 3 of the family beach trip. It is absolutely marvelous.

There are 11 of us: Seven Shulls and four significant others. It is a merry group, and there is absolutely no expectations put on anyone. You want to sleep all day? No problem - no one wants to know where you are or insist you participate in any particular event. There is just a general acceptance and respect for the fact that this is everyone’s vacation.

The house is awesome. It’s got plenty of room to sleep everyone, and a spacious, open common area where everyone tends to congregate. There is also an ample deck, which faces the ocean and is shaded in the afternoon. It is extremely pleasant to just sit and feel the ocean wind on your face and listen to the waves. As the day progresses toward evening, you may even need a sweatshirt.

The beach itself is of course beautiful. It is a quarter mile walk from the house, maybe a little less. It’s not crowded, as we are past the peak season. The water is warm still, and even though there have been red flags posted, we can still wade in and get splashed by waves. Walking on the beach, searching for pretty shells, and exclaiming over the interesting creatures we find on the sand - all of these are things i have loved doing.

Today is the first time i’ve bothered to get on the computer. I checked in with work, and it appears to be functioning okay without me. Which is good - i don’t have to feel guilty about not being there, and can continue to just enjoy the week.

I don’t think i can remember the last time i took a full week off from work for simple relaxation. I’ve done this beach trip with the Shull family two previous times, but both times i only took a day or two off to make it a long weekend. Usually i spend my vacation on bridge tournaments, again generally for long weekends. This just feels so extremely luxurious, and i love it.

This week is also different from my own family’s vacations. I mentioned the fact that there is no pressure to perform in any way (my family does have a fair amount of that, intended or not). The biggest difference, however, is the copious amounts of alcohol. Beer and wine are consumed with gusto, and by everyone. After the first day, and we didn’t arrive until 4 pm, there was an entire trash bag filled with empty bottles. It’s pretty awesome, actually.

And now i think i’ll go sit on the deck some more, in the afternoon shade, prop up my legs and read for awhile. I’m reading a beautiful book called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I’m sure i’ll be writing a review in the next couple of days.

Went to the ocean for the first time yesterday. Got in the water, and it was nice floating over the waves. Then lance noticed there were lots of small jellyfish-looking entities in the water. I hadn’t noticed, but as soon as i saw them i started to freak out and felt itchy. I immediately wanted out of the water. Once on dry land, we were both still itchy - i looked inside my suit and saw sand, and figured that was why my skin was irritated. And then the sand moved.

Little crabs were all in our bathing suits!

Others in the family had been swimming without this complication, so i’m wondering if we were just coincidentally swimming in an area where there was a concentration of them. Not sure. But the story is now that i went to the beach and got crabs. Now all i need to do is dine at Dirty Dick’s Crab Shack and the trip will be complete.

It was probably a fluke, but i think i’ll stick to the pool from here on out. I’m definitely more of lake person than an ocean pereson.

(For anyone confused, these little crabs were ACTUAL crabs, and should not be confused with crab lice, aka crabs.)

This morning’s run might be the first time i’ve ever motivated myself to run while on vacation. Usually the temptation to just relax is too great, but i overcame it and did my scheduled 3 miles. The beach is flat, so it wasn’t a hard run, and i got up early so the heat wasn’t too bad. And the beach breeze helped considerably as well.

One thing i did was try and figure out how my pace compares between early and later parts of the run. I ran exactly 15.5 minutes in one direction, then ran back to the beach house. It took a little over 16 minutes to get back, so i’m a little slower on the backside. Not too surprising, i suppose, since you tend to have more energy at the beginning. For me, though, the first mile is the hard one. Once i’ve settled into a rhythm i feel pretty comfortable, especially with a nice easy flat place to run.

My foot didn’t bother me much today, either, i’m happy to say. (-:

So, i’m still on track with the training. It’s going to get a lot harder before the end, but i think i can do it!