I’m back from vacation. This was, in fact, the first vacation in years that didn’t involve house-painting or familial obligations or staying in this fetid hellmouth of a city, and although there is a certain relaxation in making your elderly parents shuttle you from one outlet mall to another, I’m glad we finally had the opportunity to spend five days away from anything that might potentially remind me of NYC or Sears appliance deliverymen. Also, no scary tattooed ex-convicts darkened our door.
Five days of sun, water, booze, eating, and card games. I brought two books with me and didn’t read a single page. I have a few breached writing deadlines. I also have the darkest tan I’ve had in years. (My genetic tests told me I have Middle Eastern ancestry and a lower-than-average risk of melanoma, so I figured what the hell.) Indulged in gluttony and sloth, which I consider two of the lesser Deadly Sins.*
There was never a bad time (well, minus the nerve-wracking traffic jam on our way to the airport yesterday), but highlights included body-surfing the scary-but-not-deadly waves, finding a conch shell just as the waves spat it out, playing frisbee WITHOUT SHAME (and falling down in the water with only some shame), eating North Carolina peaches**, walking out to the beach at midnight and discovering bioluminescent plankton everywhere, and looking over at N as we bobbed in the ocean and seeing a look of supreme relaxation and happiness that perfectly mirrored mine.***
Oh, also, watching a drunk NY cop be denied boarding at the airport last night — that was pretty great too.
fIREHOSE: Sometimes
*Although, when you find yourself sitting on the beach at 11 am drinking cheap white wine straight from the bottle, you do start to feel a little like CC Deville.
** North Carolina, I have somehow neglected you in my southern journeys, and I am filled with remorse — your peaches are merely one outstanding feature of your statehood and I will return for more.
***CHEESY BUT TRUE.
Stroke me.
