goonies never say die

Tuesday, August 24 (continued)

(warning: almost all our conversation from here on was conducted with copious exclamation points. It was just! so! exhilarating! Also, I tried something new with the photo colors and tried to use fewer CAPS!)

The beach! We are on the beach and it is warm and it is sunny with a cool breeze and there is an OCEAN! And holy crap but that thing is fah-reezing! Let's get back out and admire it from the warm sand! We're so happy we're here, but I think that maybe our skin is already burning so let's put on more sunscreen, yeah? OKAY! I think Blake's hair just turned a shade whiter!

We were very excited. The water was quite cold - even RobRob my heartthrob, the diehard, didn't get further in than his waist. Mostly because he didn't want certain favorite body parts to fall off, for I'm awfully fond of those luscious... lips of his... but I digress.

"Blake, strike a pose for the first ever photo of you at the beach! Spiderman then? Okay!"

"Mom! A wave is coming! Watch! I am going to out-sneak it!"

"Maybe not!"

B: Dad! I'm building a sand castle out of sandmud.
R: I definitely think I should get in on this.
B: You know how to make sandmud? You take two handfuls of dry sand, run to the water, swish it around, and BAM! Sandmud!

B: I'm playing Dirty Jobs!
A: Well, you are good and dirty!
B: THIS IS AWESOME!

I wanted to show a friend I was thinking of her on the beach (I have a very similar photo of her with my name in the sand, but she was not able to rustle up a beach-ghost with big feet for her photo).

We eventually grew rumbly in the tummy and decided to head over to the more populous beach and "downtown" (all five blocks of it) of Cannon Beach in order to get some dinner. Our plan: park on the south side of town, get to the sand, walk north, cut over into the shops, find a place Rob remembered, and eat fabulously while paying through the nose for the privilege. About two miles later, we discovered that Blake was ravenous for pizza (which we pooh-poohed) and the restaurant that Rob had in mind was closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The pizza was FABULOUS, especially eaten on the patio, for the restaurant itself was like crawling into the steamy belly of hot hot hell.

By the time we had polished off an entire, none-too-small pizza all by ourselves (with lots of hydrating water all around), it was near low tide, and I was set on seeing the tide pools. Big Blake used to tease me about being Ace Ventura. He would gaze at a macro: scenic vista. I would be absorbed by a micro: a lovely flower or more likely, an animal I had spotted somewhere. The tide pools satisfied some need in me to feel like Diego, the animal rescuer. But these animals would be safe and sound in their natural habitat, saving me from a lot of pesky 'rescue' work, so I could just admire them guilt-free, then walk away, satisfied in the knowledge that they were still safe and sound.

We saw a few starfish, and I showed Blake an anemone "just like Nemo's!" He grew quickly bored, and while I tried to just gaze into a sandy-bottomed pool to see a crab or shrimp or slug or something, he meandered over to a small, barnacle-covered rock that was only about three feet long, maybe about a foot tall, sticking out of the sand. We were foolish and did not immediately grasp a boy's need to play king of the hill and climb on anything that looked remotely climbable.

He took a few steps up while we simultaneously gasped "Blake, DON'T'!" and he promptly slipped on the slimy yet very sharp shells, slicing his leg open in two long, shallow cuts.

Oh, the wailing. It was a tragedy of epic proportions. The sight of his own blood didn't help, and those shallow cuts bled heroically, albeit briefly. Because I love him, I couldn't let him rinse it off in the salt water, which he didn't really understand. Rob and I looked at each other, silently admitting that we were done in the tide pools, then looked towards town. Being low tide, we had a nice long walk ahead of us - easily a mile - while I firmly held the hand of a wounded boy who, though in the depths of despair at his pain and humiliation, firmly held onto his grasp of proper English (which will amuse T the most, I suppose):

"It hurts so badly! (repeat approximately 400,000 times) Mom, I never ever EVER want to go back to the tide pools! (repeat approximately 15 times)"

There were moments of flinging his damaged leg/pride about while limping along, moments where Rob and I simply spoke calmly over his deranged hollering, moments where he briefly forgot the PAIN! THE TERRIBLE PAIN! and dragged his undamaged foot sideways in the sand to see the tracks it made. Upon reaching the car in the deepening dark, I pulled out my trusty first aid kit (don't you have one in YOUR car?!), we rinsed, swabbed with alcohol, blew mightily to cut back the alcohol sting, and bandaged with a satisfyingly big square of gauze held on with satisfyingly long strips of narrow white surgical tape.

We all slept like the dead that night.

Wednesday, August 25

B: Mom, remember how I cut myself in those tide pools? I never ever EVER want to go back there.
A: Tough shit. We're going back now.
B: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
A: BLAKE. One of these days, we will probably visit tide pools again, but don't worry. All that sharp stuff is covered up with water. We couldn't get there if we wanted to. Did you want to?
B: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

After a leisurely breakfast at Astoria Nugget #6: the Columbia Cafe, we stopped by at the wreck of the Peter Iredale, which Blake confidently proclaimed was what remained of One-Eyed Willie's ship. We packed a lunch and headed back to what we now called "Goonie beach" and to the tide pools where I held Blake under and made him appreciate their beauty.

Haha! Just kidding. We went to the beach but stayed very far away from the dangerous tide pools and were careful to point out how deeply submerged they were by now. Still, B elected to picnic on a sandy hill about as far away from the threatening and suspicious pools as possible. He proceeded to throw sand about with abandon but had the good sense not to complain about his slightly gritty meal. I was not as mature.

I put together our kite (thanks Grampa Steve & Grammie Patsy!), started flying it, and promptly landed it on a cottage roof, cutting my thumb badly in my frantic (and vain) efforts to not, in fact, land it on a cottage roof. Blake came running up and declared it a bad kite that flew poorly, to which Rob wryly pointed out the user error.

I told them to go fly a kite, for I had a book to read. On the beach.

The fun of very deep sand and an energetic father.

Ah, this is so comfortable! I think I'll just sleep here, sans arms and legs. They were weighing me down anyway.

We were here! Sidenote on Rob's t-shirt: he theorizes that Blake's ironic retro t-shirt of choice at 32 will probably be of a first generation iPhone.
Scary!

Our magnificent hosts. Between their generosity and our packed lunches/brekkies, we saved hundreds of dollars, making the only really shocking part of the vacation our gasoline and ice cream bills. Did you know that you cannot pump your own gas in Oregon (or New Jersey)? They give you a tongue-lashing, which isn't as nice as it might sound to you weird ones out there.

Thursday, August 26

Heavy sigh. Gotta get back in the car to drive again, away from the lovely Oregon coast. Blake alternated between gazing out the window, snacking on Goldfish, and singing along loudly to the Looney Tunes theme song, blessedly with headphones.

Once in southcentral Washington, we drove into some of the most alarming dust storms I have ever seen. Visibility was as bad or worse then a hard Montana blizzard, with the benefit of drier roads (sorry for the dirty windshield - I Photoshopped as best I could).

Isn't that crazy?! Had I needed microdermabrasion, I would have rolled my window down, but Blake's sand throwing had essentially scrubbed my face clean already.

I just realized that I had indicated this installment would mention the vacation discipline. OK, FINE.

We had to stop at Costco for Rob to pick up some sunglasses to snap onto his new frames (new prescription = unending awe at how sharp and clear the world around you is! it is amazing and kind of cute!), and Blake, as always, was mesmerized by the large TVs showing some action movie he generally wouldn't be permitted to watch at home. This time it was Avatar. When I told him Dad was done and it was time to go back to the beach, he hotly told me he wasn't done yet, and I mildly told him that we weren't in Oregon to watch movies in Costco. He took my hand and sullenly walked towards the car with us, pausing for a moment to take a swing at me with his foot.

A: Oh no, you didn't just do that. Blake, what is the discipline for kicking your mom?
B: (muttering) A spankin'.
A: Yep. I'm afraid we love you too much to let you disobey, and when we drop Grammie Perrine off, we'll need to address that act of rebellion before we go to the beach. I'm sad you made that decision.

The lesson? It's absolutely no fun to discipline your kid on vacation. It would absolutely be even less fun for all of us should he learn that all our carefully taught rules and guidelines go out the window when on holiday. Consistency is really hard. The results are proving (slowly) to be really really REALLY worth it.

Also, don't kick your mother. The old mule might kick back one of these days.

Next installment: an awesome wedding, because we did it all on this precious last week of summer!

Side note: for those who have asked if I have stories about them that I'm holding back out of love, no. Very generally, the stories with the most hair-raising or knee-slapping appeal are about people who only read my blog if they suspect (or have been tipped off) that I've written something about them. Really. I'm totally sincere on this one. I don't have any good stories about you.

Or you.

Seriously.