Here’s something that most of y’all didn’t know, we’ve actually been on a little vacation at the coast for the last few days. However, due to our new and improved heightened state of paranoia, I haven’t mentioned that we’ve been out of town and am only mentioning it now because, by the time most of you read this, we’ll be back at home and any attempts to burglarize our house and steal my jewelry collection, full of quality pieces some of which cost upwards of $5.99, will be useless.
Although one time, several years ago, an evil-doer stole these fabulous Mexican-style pottery urns complete with blooming flowers right off my front steps in broad daylight while I sat on my living room couch glued to an episode of Alias. They’re lucky I didn’t hear them because otherwise I would have been forced to put down my bag of M&M’s, jump off the couch, fling open the front door and yell, “Hey! You! Why are you stealing my urns? Why would you do that? That’s just mean.”
I’m sure my line of intense questioning would have caused them to second guess their urn-stealing ways and place the urns promptly back on my front steps.
We’ve been looking forward to our week at the beach all summer long, even though we knew it would mean the first day of school is right around the corner. But we have carpe diemed the heck out of the last four days.
One of my requests this year was for P to provide me with some sort of shelter on the beach because Ma-Maw is too old to expose my fragile, age-spotted skin to the sun for long periods at a time. I can’t undo the sins of my Hawaiian Tropic SPF 4 past, but I can try to learn from my mistakes and the brown spot under my eyebrow that no Oil of Olay can erase.
When we got to the beach the first day, I reminded him that I needed some sort of shade tarp. In my mind I had envisioned one of those cool tent-like things with maybe a Texas flag on the side and some comfortable chairs.
P went all Survivor Season 1 on me, pulled a few things out of his toolbox, and this is what I got.
I’m just going to say that it’s not easy to have the most redneck makeshift shelter on a Texas beach, but I think we managed quite nicely.
Of course, in all fairness, it served its purpose even though I was a little concerned that the rusted rebar stakes might cause the trip to end with someone needing a tetanus shot. And really, we fit right in because right down the beach from us was this fine structure.
From a distance I thought it was some kind of memorial and a memorial on the beach can never serve as the harbinger of good news. If this was a memorial to someone who was the victim of a shark attack, then I don’t know that I want to be within in a thirty mile radius. On closer inspection, it does not appear to a memorial, but rather a white trash totem pole. I’m not sure if you can clearly see that there are some leopard-print underwear hanging from the top but I assure you that they are there, right above the empty cans of Lone Star Light.
The rest of the trip was spent doing all the normal things we do in Port Aransas.
Taking a picture in the mouth of the large shark outside a souvenir shop.
Trying on kicky fedoras.
Feeding a pound of fresh, dead shrimp to a flock of seagulls.
(And I ran, I ran so far away.) (Did you go there? Because I did the minute I typed it.)
The fresh, dead shrimp cost a little more than the old, dead shrimp, but we feel that they’re worth the investment.
Catching baby sharks which caused me to promptly vacate the water because if there’s a baby then there’s a baby mama somewhere nearby.
Be free, little one. Let your mama know we treated you well.
We ate snowcones thanks to the ice cream man that drove right down the beach.
We ate lots of chips thanks to a mama who went grocery shopping with PMS.
And we watched P do his best version of Captain Ahab because he hooked a four foot shark that got away and spent the rest of the trip trying to catch his nemesis. I don’t have a picture of his quest because did I mention the shark hunt was taking place past the second sandbar, also known as where you become part of the food chain?
But I did get a picture of this.
There’s really no other explanation than that’s an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.
And they make me so happy.