Nature Calls (No, Seriously!)

A week ago we took our first venture to the beach to see the ocean and enjoy a relaxing evening walk.

I wasn't expecting to fall in love.  (Isn't that what they always say--don't look for love and love will find you?)  But I fell hard, right into the soft sand.

The beach was amazing.  And breezy.  And beautiful.  And peaceful.  And quaint.  And clean.  And I suddenly imagined myself sitting there for hours and hours, eating frozen custard and reading gossip magazines and averting my eyes from men in Speedos.  

We walked to the water and let the waves tag our feet, and instead of the familiar painful frozen shock that travels up the ankles and into the neck, the water was comfortably cool.  People had told us that the Atlantic was warmer than the Pacific, but I had to find out for myself that it was true.  

It's true.

When the sky was beginning to darken, we walked back to the car and drove home and talked about how much we true-love-always loved the beach until the garage door opened to swallow our car safely inside.

Then we all used the bathroom and checked our email and started talking about the beach again.  And again.  And again the next day.

It was like we could hear the beach calling to us.  

"Come back," it pleaded.  

"Hurry," it cried.  

"Go and buy a bunch of gear at Costco and return to me," it sang.

We heeded the call.

There's no school tomorrow because it's election day.  (Woot!  Woot!  No school!)  And since we've been dangerously obsessed with the beach since we left, we're all heading back tomorrow, our earliest opportunity.  

We're going to pack a cooler with trans fats and partially hydrogenated oils.  And diet drinks.  

We're going to carry towels and chairs and pails. 

We're going to build castles and declare war on each other. 

We're going to vow to abstain from the boardwalk shop that sells fries by the bucket, right up until the moment we buy two of them. 

And right before we bid farewell, we're going to run in slow motion along the water's edge like David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson.