Outlines Would Require Organization

And since this is the second post I've messed up this month, it's clear that organization is a foreign language to me. I'm trying to learn it. I swear.

Last week, one of my mom's cats had a leg amputated. I have photos of the aftermath. I won't show them to you. You're welcome. I missed my post last week because I was chauffeur and the post surgical nurse the day the cat came home from the hospital. This boiled down to me forgetting what day of the week it was in the churn of waking up every hour to check the poor guy and medicate him every few hours.

This week, after coming home to one of *my* cats being sick (2 vet visit bonus!), my family finally got out on vacation. We had it all planned out. Thursday night, we'd be someplace with internet access so I could take care of everything. And then the weather service posted a small craft advisory. Then they upgraded it to a gale watch. Dangerous wind and wave conditions meant we made our wisdom check and stayed an extra day in a port we hadn't planned to stay in. I bought this:

The weather wasn't going to break in time for our plans to bear out. So we punted and headed away from the bad weather.  It totally messed up our ability to get to internet. We looked for someplace quiet and tucked away where we could hole up and snivel over the fact that we didn't get to go where we wanted.

This is Port Ludlow. We anchored out and listened to the great blue herons, the eagles and the harbor seal (I couldn't tell initially whether it was a critter or an engine trying to start - it was the critter - snorting water out of his nose. Most attractive.)

We would still be there except the boat batteries are doing things that boat batteries should not do  - like trickling off their charge, which we need. So, once again, flexibility was the name of the game. Up anchor and head for someplace with electricity so we could trouble shoot the batteries. Oh. Look. Our first choice is full up for the night - at least we called ahead to find that out before sailing all that way. Second choice. And here we lie on the guest docks in the Port of Everett.

Funny. When I began this pathetically late post, I hadn't thought it was related to writing. But it is. Organization is a great thing, but is it a hill (or a major water crossing) you want to die on? I don't. Flexibility. Second plans. Third plans. Watching the sky, the wind and the waves - or the plot points, characters and motivations - keeps boaters alive and stories flowing.

Sand In My Shoes

by Allison Pang

I suppose it's no great surprise I'm all about the beach. Or the shore, really. (That's a New Jersey/Philly thing, I think. Everyone else says they're going to the beach. We all say we're going down the shore.) And I've actually blogged about it several times here and on my various other blogs, so I'm not sure it's worth rehashing most of the same stories at this point.

But really there's just so much family history at the shore house that of any vacation destination we might choose to go, that's the one I would probably choose above all the others.

And it's not that other beaches aren't nice, but this one is home.

It's not perfect either - but a bad day at the beach is still better than a good day at work, as they say.

Still, I think one of the hardest things to reconcile for my family and the whole vacation thing is how we spend our time. When I go down the shore, all I want to do is chill, at least for the first few days. It always takes my body that long to realize that it actually *can* relax, and it when does, the main thing it wants to do is sleep. Or nap. Or nap on the beach. Or sleep in a chair at the beach. Or in the hammock.

Sounds boring, but I've been doing this enough by now to know that's just how I work biologically. Best thing to do is let me get it out of my system and catch up on that rest and then I'm good to go do other things. Otherwise I end up being crankypants for the entirety  of the week, simply because I'm dragging.

Which is where the differences come in. When the DH goes on vacation? He wants to go, go, go. It took us a while to sort that out, because for him vacation is wasted if we're just sitting around doing nothing...and for me, vacation IS doing nothing. (Or it's doing quiet things, like catching up on reading or sewing or any number of activities that I just don't have the time for when I'm working.) I guess in some ways that going to the shore is more about retreat than vacation - no phones, no internet, no nothing except the sea and the sand and the sun.

But that's the way I like it.