Life's a Beach

My daughter and I spent the weekend in Pensacola, Florida on the Gulf side of the Panhandle where my little bro lives with his family. My parents and my sister and her family flew out from California, and my son flew down from Philadelphia for a mini family reunion. We spent time together enjoying the resort pools and beautiful white sand beaches and eating a LOT of food. My brother makes friends wherever he goes, and apparently his friends who own restaurants in town worry that he may starve to death. We were served TABLES OVERFLOWING with sushi and Chinese food that we couldn’t possibly finish. The veggies in Pensacola left me unsatisfied, but the seafood is top notch.

At one of the Chinese restaurants, we witnessed a woman and her daughter ordering pad thai.  *RECORD SCRATCH*

We immediately took arms and chased her out of the restaurant brandishing chopsticks as the owners pelted her with fortune cookies.

We also traveled to nearby Alabama to experience Lambert’s Throwed Rolls. Those rolls were delicious, but what a befuddling experience! The people! The décor! The flying bread!

These Tropickles are worth mentioning. They are fruit punch flavored dill pickles; Kool-Aid dill pickles are a Southern staple at cookouts apparently. The texture was really nice: crispy and firm! However, I won’t be eating Tropickles regularly, because they’re exclusively available at selected Walmarts in the South. And also they taste terrible.

My kids were probably 2, 3, and 4 years old the first time they visited Pensacola. We were living in California at the time, where the sand is brown. During our first encounter with the Florida shore, my oldest silently squatted on the sand and put his face really close to the ground. He gingerly poked at the beach with his finger. “Is this SUGAR?” he asked with such sweet wonder that it made me laugh and tear up at the same time. It really does look like sugar.

This trip was different now that the six cousins who were there ranged in age from 9 to 20. My oldest nephew expressed nonchalant interest in my recent writing. “Is all of it true?” Perhaps he didn’t QUITE believe that one of Albert’s farts penetrated layers of wood, insulation, carpet, and plaster. Astonishing and preposterous! And also TRUE. “Are you going to blog about this?” he asked me. Depends. Does the thought of being written about makes a 15-year-old excited or terrified? He’s sweet and handsome and plays tennis like a rock star. He is not at all interesting. Sorrynotsorry.

My brother is quite a different story. While discussing this here blog, my sister-in-law informed me that my brother LEAVES HIS CLIPPED TOENAILS ON HIS NIGHTSTAND!! We are less than two years apart in age and arose from exactly the same gene pool. HOW COULD THIS BE??

I think my bro is great. If you are familiar with us both, you will know that we share many similarities, including a propensity for extreme and sometimes objectionable silliness. But when it comes to feet, we are of divided kinship. He’s disgusting. Remember when TV channels were changed manually before remote controls? OUR fancy TV didn’t have a dial, but a toggle that my brother could lie on the carpet and reach with his crooked, long toes to change channels. And when he sat shotgun in the car, he would take off his socks and put them RIGHT IN FRONT of the air conditioning vent. All his nasty vaporized toe jam particles most certainly triggered some damaging epigenetic code. Our whole family is a little “special” thanks to him. I’m definitely going to save up a jar of toenails to send to him for his 50^th birthday.

I loved seeing the cousins connect and enjoy being with each other EVEN THOUGH I caught all sorts of grief for summoning them out of the ocean in the evenings. It is NOT unreasonable for me to be afraid of being eaten by a shark. “Jaws” was released when I was eight years old. My mom tried to reason with me that sharks are very big and cannot fit in a bathtub or swimming pool, but I knew that she was not a dependable source of shark facts because of Jabberjaw. Sharks can go anywhere. They don’t even need to be in the water really. So sharks could definitely be in a swimming pool or my bathtub. Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk.

Florida’s warm Atlantic waters are home to the most shark attacks in the United States. Especially AT DUSK when I would beckon my family out of the water. Drones spotted three sharks just feet off Pensacola Beach on 4th of July weekend just a month before we were there. And then there’s this footage of a Hammerhead chasing a stingray on the SAME BEACH we were on THE DAY BEFORE WE WENT HOME.

Yet still my kids were like, “Really, Mom? You’re afraid we’re going to get eaten by a shark??” Sharks feed at dawn and at dusk. I don’t care if “sharks don’t like to eat people.” You are Chinese food. Or in the case of my nephews and niece, you are Fusion Cuisine.  I am confident that you guys are delicious. “There are lots of other people in the water!” Well, say a prayer to Jesus for those sorry folks, because their moms definitely don’t love them and are not at all concerned if they get eaten by a shark.

Travelling and family and sharks can be stressful. (Not listed in order of stressfulness) But devoting time and energy to sharing experiences is well worthwhile, especially after leaving the beautiful beach with all limbs intact and successfully digesting buckets of fried okra and sweet tea. Invest in the effort! And get out of the water at dusk. Love you! *mwah*

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