Friday, 17 February 2012
It’s been awhile since I approached a weekend with such anticipation. It’s not that our plans for the weekend are of the over-the-moon special, monumentally colossal, we’re taking another year off variety (although that would certainly be an idea worth considering) but instead that since returning to the 9 to 5 world, it is clear to me that while in this space, every 3 day weekend will be, by its very nature, a monumentally colossal event to anticipate and celebrate. A day off that is not a Saturday or Sunday? Hand me a Kleenex, I think those might be tears of joy.
We are road-tripping to Seabrook, a “new beach town” on the Washington Coast. According to one of Gina’s best friends, it is SUPER CUTE and we know what a recurring theme that is in our lives. It must be SUPER CUTE or it is generally not worth our while. And frankly, there is little about the older towns on the Washington Coast that could be considered SUPER CUTE. Not that I have been to many – well, any – of them recently but I’m pretty sure this Seabrook is the cutest thing around.
Now I grant you that upon first arrival, you might just be thinking Welcome to the Magic Kingdom. My first impression unearthed memories of that classic Spielberg horror movie Poltergeist, wondering just how many burial plots had been desecrated during the construction of this perfect, fairy tale suburb. But that impression lasted no longer than it took to get the keys to our cottage and step inside – this place screams SUPER CUTE and the closer we looked around our setting – walking every footpath and inspecting every property around the community, as we are always wont to do – the more I thought to myself Goodness, this really is quite the cute community, and not the cookie-cutter collective you might first think. If tonight brings a good night’s sleep with no evil grinning clown under the bed and no static on the television, then I will be comfortably able to say that this Seabrook is a Winner.
Saturday, 18 February 2012
It’s 6 am and I am awoken not by a gnarled tree trying to grab me through the window but by the sound of silence. Too much silence. Not from outside the cottage, where the wind is howling like a Category 3 hurricane gaining steam, but from inside the cottage, where there is not a single hum. The refrigerator is silent, the ceiling fan is silent, the bedside alarm clock is silent. The only thing inside this cottage that isn’t silent is Gina, who is sounding the alarm about the power being out. Great. My morning cup of coffee and thus my joyful start to the day is at serious risk.
Now it’s 7:30 am and the howling continues, only this time it is us, howling with delight that coffee is on, kids, and so are we, back on the grid, that is, our lights and brewer coming to life and not a moment too soon. We are city dwellers, the kind whose power only goes out if we forget to pay the bill.
Today’s agenda is simple: eat, walk, work on projects, repeat. And by projects I mean creative stuff, stuff that involves words and pictures and glue sticks and quiet time. This is the kind of weekend where spreadsheets are left at home. The kind of weekend where there are more items packed in the cooler than on the jump drive. The kind of weekend where what little schedule we keep is driven by our appetites and the sun; whenever either comes knocking, that’s the door we answer first.
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Yesterday’s wind storm is gone, replaced by scattered showers and gathered clam diggers. There must be upwards of a thousand people out here on the beach digging clams. Razor clams, to be exact. When I was a kid, we used to dig clams with a shovel but these people are all armed with “clam guns”, metal-looking tubes with t-shaped handles welded to the top. I have a feeling those may not be the only guns this crowd is toting by the looks of the hundreds of 4×4’s parked out here on the sand, noses pointed toward the sea, gun racks toward the shore. Folks out here are definitely built Ford tough.
All of the clamming sparks a brief lesson in marine biology for Gina, who wants to know what the difference is between a clam and a mussel and an oyster, all of which she likes to eat but none of which she could identify on a high school biology exam. I do my best to explain using nearby props, a pinch of imagination, and a rudimentary knowledge gained from a few years collecting mud samples out in Puget Sound. Neither one of us should probably try to explain what we learned today to a second grader lest we cause them to drop a notch or two on their next standard aptitude test but really, who needs to know such things beyond the fact that oysters make pretty pearls and clams are slimy and taste like sand? This is why children go to school and study books while adults rent super cute cabins and drink wine, because we are older and wiser and all we need to know we learned in Kindergarten.
