Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

The beach house

Day One: Rainy Arrival (Saturday, July 24)

My family, The Gryphon and I were all going to stay in a beach house that we'd rented in Stone Harbor. The Gryphon and I had agreed to pick up the key, because we thought that, living the closest, we'd get there first.

What we didn't anticipate was that, besides getting the car packed for two people and dropping my dog off at the vet's (at which time she got distressed and jumped on me with such force she left ugly bruises on my left leg), I would also have trouble with my cell phone.

The phone was almost exactly a year old, since I'd had to replace it just before Otakon last year. I suppose that's about the life of the battery; the phone was neither charging fully nor even turning on. So we stopped in the Verizon office, where someone in the repair department took the battery out, put it back in and it worked. While I was there, I purchased a new battery, just to be safe.

After we got on the road, my dad called from his cell phone to tell us he was also on the way. We agreed that whoever got there first should pick up the key and let the other person know to go straight to the beach house.

Awhile later, we heard from Dad that he'd picked it up, having skirted around most of the traffic.

The beach house was a little cottage with a screened in porch, small living room, dining room, kitchen. After we claimed a bedroom, The Gryphon and I took a nap. When I awoke, I went to the kitchen and unpacked the food we'd brought and then unpacked my clothes in the room we'd chosen.

I found it somewhat amusing that all the clothes I hung in my closet were blue. It was like Lucy Van Pelt's closet.

My sister and her fiancé arrived a little later in the afternoon. She claimed a bedroom for them, and I sat on the bed chatting with her while she unpacked. One of the key topics: the ugly dress she had to wear to a friend's wedding later that week. The color was one we'd never even seen before: celeron. I guess they called it "celeron" because "slightly puky celery color" sounded bad.

Finally, my brother and his wife arrived. I gave him the leather fringed jacket that had once belonged to my dad and which I'd once used as a Halloween costume. I had Dad's permission to give it to my brother if he wanted it, and he did. He told me, however, to stop calling it the "gay cowboy" jacket if I wanted him to take it off my hands.

I also handed over the bag of hippie clothes to my brother's wife, in hopes that she'll be able to use them for maternity clothes. These were all clothes that no longer fit me, since I've lost about 55 pounds. It's a sign of how much you've lost when your old clothes could double as maternity clothes.

Mom was already in town, staying at a separate place, she and Dad being divorced. We spoke on the phone and she promised to come by later.

While everyone was getting settled, the Gryphon and I walked to the local Mom and Pop grocery store to pick up a few kitchen necessities like milk and bread. Our shelves were already somewhat full with things like soup and spaghetti. At my sister's suggestion, we'd all raided our kitchens at home and brought along food to share. This strategy would prove pointless later in the street, when we decided we'd rather buy food at the grocery store than subside on spaghetti and soup.

While we were cooking a quick dinner, Mom came over for a visit. We found out she'd had a rough time getting there. Her car had broken down in a small New Jersey town, and she'd had to have it towed to a garage, who gave her a rental to use until it was fixed. The new car, which was slightly larger than hers, made her nervous, and she took forever to, say, back out of a driveway in it.

We tried to make Mom feel better by giving her the birthday presents we'd brought along, her birthday having been the week before. As promised, I gave her an envelope full of pictures I'd taken of flowers. She likes to use these pictures to do drawings and paintings. I also gave her a J.C. Penny's gift card to buy new clothes, a gift from me and The Gryphon. She's been losing weight on Weight Watchers, and I wanted to encourage and support her. I also gave her a little necklace I bought during the State College arts festival by a church that was selling jewelry and gifts by international artisans.

My sister gave Mom a beautiful set of chimes to hang on her porch. My brother gave her an intricate, beautiful original art piece by a friend of his. She loved it all.

Dinner was turkey sloppy Joes, salad and spinach. Afterwards, we sat in the living room, read and talked. It had been a rainy day, and were actually expecting a lot more that week. In fact, according to the reports I'd seen, it was supposed to rain pretty much nonstop until the very morning that The Gryphon and I were due to leave for Otakon.

By nightfall, the rain had tapered off enough that Dad, my sister and her fiancé, The Gryphon and I walked down to the beach to spot crabs.

Sure enough, as soon as we got to the beach, we trapped a small crab with our flashlight beam which stared at us for long moments before scuttling off. We hoped to find more but never saw another that night. We joked that first crab had rushed off to warn the others.

We dipped our toes in the ocean, but the breeze was chill and the salt water stung my freshly shaved legs. As we meandered back to the beach house, we joked about 1950s movies like The Blob and came up with an idea for a movie called The Crab, where anyone who accidentally steps on crabs gets avenged by a huge king crab which towers over buildings and crushes seafood huts with its huge claws.

That night, I had several strange dreams. I was reading American Splendor by Harvey Pekar, and I dreamt that I was kvetching to him about how some editor had changed my article and made it idiotic. He told me my story was so fascinating that he was going to make it into his next comic.

The second dream I had was that I was once again married to my ex-husband, or at least a guy who looked like him. In the dream, I had no memory of a second wedding, which I found rather odd. I also managed to remember that I was dating The Gryphon. So I made my choice: I marched up to my ex-husband and told him I wanted a divorce.

In the final dream, there was some sort of sporting event going on and a bleacher full of penguins were watching. All the penguins had small noses except for one, Berke Breathed's Opus. He was hurling insults at the opposing team. Instead of being two-dimensional drawings, the penguins all looked like 3-D animation against a real background.

Perhaps I dreamt about penguins because the room got so cold overnight due to air conditioning.

Little did I know, as I drifted through my penguin dreams, that rain would not be the only inconvenience we'd face that vacation. The worst, as they say, was yet to come.

More from my Summer Vacation:

August 4, 2004 - The Poopdeck

August 5, 2004 - The Beach at Last

August 6, 2004 - Wetlands Hippie

August 9, 2004 - Intermittent Fun

August 10, 2004 - Overture to Otakon

August 11, 2004 - Delicious and Good Day

August 12, 2004 - Costumes and Tuxedos

August 13, 2004 - Grand Finale

August 16, 2004 - Denouement

August 20, 2004 - More Vacation Pics

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

Musings Index

What do you think? Share your thoughts
at Alyce's message board (left button):