What Now

Hello! I hope no one is offended if they tried to call or e-mail me last week. Steve and I went on a trip to Myrtle Beach, so I was kind of out of pocket. I wasn't ignoring you, I promise. We just needed to get away for a few days, and we did. It was nice.

The trip went really well. We stayed in a nice place called Carribean Resort & Villas, which was one of the last hotels on the shore before you get to the private sea-side houses (one of which I'm going to live in one day...hopefully) and it was much nicer than I was expecting. I thought that Myrtle Beach was just another cheesy beach town like Panama City, FL. Not that I'm saying Panama City doesn't have merits, but it is kind of skeezy in places. :) We were there from Tuesday to Friday, so we even missed the weekend traffic. It was quiet, with things winding down from the tourist season, but we did manage to get there right in the middle of the Biker Convention. Fortunately or unfortunately, none of the bikers asked me to be their old lady, but there's always next year!

I got up super early on Wednesday morning to watch the sun rise over the ocean. I couldn't find anything on TV that would tell me what time the sun was supposed to come up, so I finally just went down with my chair and waited it out. It was beautiful, and I got a lot of nice pictures of the sun coming up. I'll post a few here later on. I watched the sun come up, took pictures for myself, took pictures for an elderly couple who wanted to be together in front of the sunrise, and collected shells. There weren't that many nice shells out this time of year, at least not ON the beach, but I found quite a few I liked. I'm a scavenger. Don't judge me. It wasn't all lovely, though. When I was getting ready to go back inside, I felt something hit me, but didn't think anything of it. It was only later, when I was putting away some clothes, that I noticed that a sea gull pooped on me and that is what I felt hit me. I mean seriously, there were only about 6 seagulls out there, there were dozens of people, and it pooped on me. Figures. I also managed to get attacked by a fairly unusually large wave. Steve was watching me get into the water, and I'm not kidding when I say that the biggest wave I'd seen all day rose up righteous and body slammed me into a bed of broken sea shells and drug me along. It probably didn't take that long for me to get free and get back on the beach, but it felt like I was tossed around for an hour. I had sand and crushed sea shells in places that I didn't realize I had, enough sand in my bathing suit bottoms to build a castle, and I don't know how I did it, but the top of my suit was filled with tiny sea shells, too. Steve was laughing at me when I finally got out and struggled back to our beach chairs, but he stopped when he realized I was bleeding from two very abraded places on my left leg. Those hastared shells were SHARP. I managed not to bleed on too much, but I stayed out of the ocean after that. We spent the rest of our outdoor time that day in the pool and in the lazy river that our hotel had. I am also not sure what kind of seashells got into my suit and on to my skin, but they stuck tight and wouldn't come off. It took me almost two showers to get all of them off. I was still finding pieces of the shells in my hair over the next two days!

Wednesday was also the one year anniversary of when my father died, and I don't know what it says about me, but I was glad not to be at home. I spent that morning thinking about him while I walked on the beach. It made me think of the rare times my family got to go on vacation, so they were good thoughts. It helped not being at home where the memories were much less pleasant, even though I probably should have been near my mom and sister. I got to grieve for him in my own way, so I'm not sorry.

We spent the rest of our trip just relaxing, eating, and shopping. I finally got to go to a World Market and a Ripley's Aquarium! We also ate at a place called "The Melting Pot" which was nice, but kind of expensive. I joked with Steve that it was probably the only time I could ever convince him to cook his own dinner. :) It was a really nice trip and I think it helped being away from things for a few days. We got some important talking done, which was good, and we just used the time to try and have fun together, which we did. It was a good trip.