Back to Reasonable Temperatures

I just spent five days at the beach with my entire family. I’m not sure when the ceremony is where I get my trophy, but I hope I don’t have to take off work for it. While at the beach, I swam a lot. Not in the ocean but in the pool. I got in the ocean once and saw that I was completely surrounded by seaweed and other debris. I felt like I’d just been flushed down the toilet. I’m pretty sure that’s true because I saw my dreams of being a famous musician float by me before being submerged by a big nasty wave.

The condo complex (Is this even the right term? It sounds weird. Oh well.) has a pond in the middle of it with a little bridge where you can go to feed the various fish (carp, maybe?) and, more importantly, the turtles. Feeding the turtles is a BIG deal for us. It pretty much is a close second in our reasons for going to the beach (I’ll leave you wondering at the number one reason…). And by "us" I really just mean my father. He hails from a long line of turtle feeders. His dad used to walk five miles each day to the local bakery just to get day-old bread to feed nearby turtles. My father’s grandfather LIVED with turtles, studying them and, of course, feeding them bread that he baked himself. My father loves feeding the turtles so much that he had already bought at least a dozen loaves of bread a week before our trip. (Good thing it didn’t snow that week...everyone else would have been screwed.)

It’s nearly impossible to have dinner at a normal time at the beach. Because a million other people are thinking the same thing: “Well, it’s 6 o’clock, but I don’t think [insert nice restaurant] will be THAT crowded.” If you want to find a table somewhere besides at CiCi’s, you either have to have a late lunch or skip dinner and go straight into “fourth meal.” We did end up eating at a few nice places, and I did get to eat seafood (one of my goals for visiting a place along the ocean shore). This time I was smart and didn’t buy any crappy t-shirts (although the airbrush was screaming my name…) or even a magnet or a shot glass. The best part about the trip were the naps. Because when you doze on the couch, you get to wake up knowing you’re still at the freaking beach. I knew this not simply because of the salty air creeping through the sliding glass door, or even because of the faint sounds of terror from the kids who thought riding something that slung you up in the air was a good idea, but because I would wake up, look outside, and see my father throwing little pieces of bread to some always-hungry turtles.