Category Archives: Uncategorized

Earlier this week, bored beyond tears, I happened upon a Travel Channel special called When Beaches Attack. 

And boy howdy am I glad I did. I had no idea that going to the beach ranks right up there with riding shotgun on a Humvee in a firefight in Iraq.

Who knew?

Come to find out, we’ve got stingrays and sharks and killer waves and jellyfish and hurricanes and tsunamis. And let’s don’t forget sunburn. Apparently, the beach is no place for the faint hearted and danger lurks everywhere on the periphery of  our sun drenched paradise, baring it’s teeth and biding it’s time.

Horrors heaped on horrors.

At first I laughed. Then I smirked. But when I realized the Travel Channel was serious I sprang to action, knowing I had to do my part to make people aware and help save lives. Call me Mommy Oceandoggy.

DON’T come to the beach this summer. Just stay away. It’s really not worth it. Consider your life and that of your loved ones- would you rather spend your vacation in a hot tub sipping cocktails watching a mountain sunset or in the death throes of a shark attack? Dinner in cozy, quaint, country restaurant or writhing in agony from a Man-O-War sting? Swimming lazily in the pool or being sucked out to sea in a rip?

Think hard and spend your vacation dollars wisely and please, stay far, far, away.

Don’t thank me, I’m just glad I could help.

I’d like to say that our dogs love us so much they can’t stand to be away from us.

I wish I could say that our dogs are so well trained that a simple, curt hand signal keeps them trotting at our side.

I want to say these things but I’d be lying.

The terrible truth is that hidden deep in the multiple layers that swaddle her and keep her warm, lost in the many hoodies that comprise her winter bikini are the onliest things that keep Cutter and Tug with us when we walk the beach.

And it ain’t Miss Carol.

Miss Carol and me celebrated our 23rd anniversary of wedded bliss this weekend by deciding to completely re-decorate our living room. Actually, originally, we were just going to buy some new furniture but then things spiraled out of control.

Our living room and kitchen and dining room are basically all one big room. It’s where we spend almost all of our waking hours and has remained largely unchanged for the better part of two decades. It’s as comfortable as your favorite pair of flip flops. We’ll call it Surf Shack Chic for lack of a better term to describe the evolution of our fairly inept thematic decorating. 

It had been time for new couches for a while now, so we decided that this was the weekend to go shopping- where going shopping means going buying because neither one of us has very much patience for just shopping. Hence the Surf Shack Chic.

We were going to go and buy leather furniture similar to the leather furniture we have always had in our living room. But then a funny thing happened. We found ourselves looking at sectionals. Contemporary sectionals. And not just any contemporary sectionals, but contemporary sectionals in strange, foreign colors like grey and white and cream and coffee and taupe.

And then another funny thing happened. We found ourselves purchasing a contemporary white leather sectional that is going to force us to completely re-do our living room because otherwise we are going to end up with a living room that looks like Snow White meets a drunken sailor and has illegitimate children and decides she likes being a little slutty. 

Not wanting to descend into that particular dysfunctionality we wasted no time and started with the brick fireplace.

Before.

And, later that same day.

That’s Tug, helping to soak up some of the fresh paint with his back. Thanks Tug.

I’m calling the new theme Annoyingly Beachy for lack of a better term to describe the matrimonial menopause we appear to be going through. The next step is delivery of the contemporary white leather sectional on Thursday. Hopefully we won’t hate it by Friday.

These are the condos across the street that harbor a very close knit community of, um, eccentrics? Most of the 40-some odd units are vacation rentals but the rest are home to the condominimites.

I’m sure the condominimites very nice people. Maybe. But they’re just weird.

There’s the creepy scarecrow woman who walks herky jerky around the block several times each morning and never says hi or good morning and crosses to the other side of the road every time she sees me walking the dogs. I’m not sure if it’s me or Cutter and Tug that smell bad.

Then there’s the old retired couple that wear the same clothes every single day and walk around gossiping to whoever will stop long enough to listen to them. I think they must spy on us locals with high power binoculars.

Then there’s the middle-aged power couple that take long walks striding manfully with clubs in their hands just daring anyone on the island to dare to attack them. They too never say hi.

Then there’s the lonely little woman that will walk up to you on the beach while you’re minding your own business trying to fish and drink a beer and just starts telling you all about her lonely little life as if you really cared. 

Then there’s the two kinda eccentric-looking guys with the little teeny tiny pocket dogs that are always dressed up in cutesy little outfits. I don’t have any problem with teeny tiny cutesy little dogs, hell my sister has one, but they have their place. Like a suburb or a city somewhere. Down here on the island you need to have big, athletic, dogs. Like labs. Like Cutter and Tug.

Then there’s the guy that’s always standing out in the parking lot next to his car talking on his cell phone and smoking. I don’t even want to know what’s going on there.

Then there’s the completely normal, cute little newlyweds. But they moved out.

I’m not real sure what kind of cosmic confluence brought all these eccentric (where eccentric equals weird) people all together under the same communal roof and I wonder sometimes on how the condominimites are changing our island.

Then I get another beer and turn up the music.

A woman stopped by Miss Carol’s office at the hospital yesterday. She was looking for Miss Carol ’cause she had spent the weekend with some old friends that had mentioned Miss Carol and me.

Come to find out, she had visited Don and Ann, a couple we haven’t seen in several years, people that we used to party with back when Miss Carol was bartending at the BAJA. Friends that we had, unfortunately, fallen out out contact with. Christmas card folks that no longer swirled about us. You know. 

Friends that had slipped off the radar screen of our daily activities until a stranger came looking for Miss Carol to pass on their best wishes. And then it all came zooming back to us.

Back in the day, Don and Ann lived in Carova Beach, which is a fairly inaccessible stretch of beach in North Carolina and home to some of the coolest people I have ever met. Carova is a tight knit community down on the Outer Banks. They have each other and a Life Saving Station and that’s about it.

The people  there are extraordinary. Truly independent. To this day, you have to run the beach at low tide bringing with you everything you need until the next trip out. We consider ourselves lucky to be included as friends.

Miss Carol and me met Don and Ann, and CJ and Pam, and Art and Darylin, and Bob and Debra, and others when we bought land down there, becoming one of them, at least vicariously. We admired them and their spirit and dreamed of building a home in Carova and joining them.

But we didn’t. Or haven’t. Yet.

But, ya know, things keep rolling and people and friends ebb and flow and times change and before you know it Miss Carol is working at a hospital and bringing home a story of old friends and an old dream and you wonder anew.

Granted and accepted. I am a cold weather weenie.

By February, when the season is at it’s seemingly endless, most wearisome bleariness, my abject hatred for winter and everything wintry flares like an infection.

I’m over it.

I’m over the 20 degree weather.

I’m over walking the dogs in the 20 degree weather.

I’m over being bundled up like the Michelin Man while I walk the dogs in 20 degree weather.

I’m over the icy, keening, howling NE winds coming off the ocean and being bundled up like the Michelin Man while I walk the dogs in 20 degree weather.

I’m over the relentlessly dry, itchy, skin caused by the icy, keening, howling NE winds coming off the ocean and being bundled up like the Michelin Man while I walk the dogs in 20 degree weather. 

I’m so over it.

Thank God it doesn’t snow here or I’d completely go off the rails.

This is a meme from Dooce (www.dooce.com- I know, I know I should be able to do the link thing, but it’s not working). She was nice enough to allow commentors to answer on their own sites and link from her. I don’t normally do things like this because they feel like stuff that goes on at a baby shower, but I’m in a weakened state. Besides, dooce is cool.

So here goes nothin’

What are your middle names?

Miss Carol’s is Ann and mine is Leon.

How long have you been together?

Almost 25 years, we’ve been married almost 23.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?

We met on a job site and didn’t start really dating until the job ended, about 2 months.

Who asked whom out?

Miss Carol had the gun.

How old are each of you?

Miss Carol is 52 and I’m a very young 51. Definitely a cradle robber, there.

Whose siblings do you see the most?

Um, about the same. Miss Carol is one of 12 and I have 3 brothers and sisters.

Which situation is hardest on you as a couple?

Getting me to leave the island.

Did you go to the same school?

No. I went to George Mason and Miss Carol attended UVA.

Are you from the same home town?

No. I grew up in Fairfax while Miss Carol’s privileged childhood was spent in Mount Vernon. I only dreamed of dating rich Catholic girls. 

Who is smarter?

Me and I tell Miss Carol every chance I get.

Who is the most sensitive?

Miss Carol. She cries at movies. Jeez.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?

Anywhere local. Not to sound snotty but there are so many great privately owned restaurants in VB we don’t do chains. The Baja Cantina is a fave right now because they have the best fish tacos on the planet.

Where is the furthest you have traveled as a couple?

One of Miss Carol’s brothers is a Jesuit priest in Mexico and we’ve gone to visit him a couple of times. I wish I could be more like him.

Who has the craziest exes?

What are exes? Did I mention we’ve been married for 23 years?

Who has the worst temper?

Me. I get angry at the weather.

Who does the cooking?

Miss Carol, otherwise it would be the same 3 meals over and over again until she killed me.

Who is the neat freak?

Me. Miss Carol calls herself tidy which is a kind of messy that means you can find things.

Who is more stubborn?

Miss Carol.

Who hogs the bed?

Our dogs Cutter and Tug. It’s pathetic sounding, but you haven’t lived until you find yourself sharing a pillow with a snoring Lab.

Who wakes up earlier?

Me.

Where was your first date?

Sitting and drinking on the hood of Miss Carol’s car at National Airport in DC watching planes take off. 

Who is more jealous?

Miss Carol. I am some kinda catch. For octogenarians.

How long did it take to get serious?

Instantly. For me anyway. Miss Carol always thought it was just a passing lust.

Who eats more?

Me.

Who does the laundry?

Miss Carol. If I have to do it I’ll just put blacks and whites in all together. I’m diverse that way.

Who’s better with the computer?

Miss Carol manages an IT department at a hospital so she is.

Who drives when you are together?

Me. Unless I’m drunk.

Oceandoggy had been noticing on his frequent walks with the dogs that the City seemed especially virulent in their sign erections.

So he decided to count them. To count just the City signs that were along his mile long daily path. You know, the stop signs, the street signs, and such. 

It took several weeks because oceandoggy either kept forgetting until he came around the final corner and said, “oh shit, I forgot again”, or because he would start counting and then his mind would wander, working on cures for cancer and renewable, inexhaustible energy, and prosperity and intelligence for all. 

It was tough. But finally he got his count.

91.

Thass right.

91 City mandated, carefully constructed, and meticulously placed, signs in the half mile oval of a quiet beach side residential community. 

91.

Seems a little extreme, perhaps even a trifle overbearing to oceandoggy but he is the first to admit he neither works for the City where signs appear to be the new currency of the realm nor is he a traffic engineer. 

Not to mention the volumes it speaks of oceandoggy’s life that he has the time to not only count signs, but take pictures of them, and write about them.

He’s not 60, he’s friggin’ 59.95.

Sorry about the photograph. Miss Carol took it with her CrackBerry Storm or Tempest or Hurricane or something and it’s beyond oceandoggy’s feeble 21st century skills to correct. Just pretend he’s napping. He’s old.

Oceandoggy has himself some old friends. Not only old as in dirt, but old as in as ingrained and inveterate as a tattoo. And, boy howdy, am I glad. This weekend Miss Carol and me went to Rick’s birthday down in Knott’s Island. It was a hoot.

Living in a small, close community with friends and people you have known for centuries and decades maybe isn’t for everyone but it is for us. Granted, you can’t bullshit them anymore, but if your truck hasn’t moved for a day or two they’ll come lookin’. It’s nice. And Rick’s birthday week was an affirmation of that.

First, the blast in Knotts Island and then later in the week a party at The Baja, our favorite bar. Always the same folks, our friends. It’s a warm, familial kind of thing.

Happy Birthday Rick.

Take a nap.

Long before there was a cutesy name for it, Miss Carol and me would take little, teeny, tiny, vacations near to home. Mostly because we’re lazy and don’t want to go anywhere but also because they’re fun.

This is how it works. Pick a city close to you, book a room, make dinner reservations, take off early on a Friday and go. It’s always fun getting out of school early.

And then go bar hopping, have a great dinner in a place you’d normally never go to and, after all that, head back to the hotel room for some adult style fun, rockstar fashion.

And when you awaken, hung over and satiated, greasy and lubed, you can just drive home- no taxi’s, no annoying flights or security checks, none of  the hassle normally associated with travel and vacations.

Another big bonus is that you don’t have to pack anything but a toothbrush, and you’d be amazed the number of places you pass by each day, thinking gosh, golly, we really need to try that place, or go there, but don’t.

Unless you’re staycationing.