On the Road Again, Just Can't Wait to Get on the Road Again...

"Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet." African Proverb

This will be, I swear, the last post on birthdays. I realize anyone out there who might happen to read this and doesn't know me will soon decide I am a materialistic lunatic. Not that they would be wrong, but its a bit harsh to judge someone you've never actually met. However, Hubster has clearly outdone himself and I want to thank those who bothered to comment (why aren't more of you commenting?! Why?! I see, from my Site-Meter, you're out there! Why DON'T YOU SAY SOMETHING?!!- Um, excuse me. Sorry about that. Don't mind her, she's a materialistic lunatic, remember? Hmm.) on Hubster's great deeds. Because of said weekend, he has officially received an upgrade from Hubster to (drum roll)... Hubelicious. Because if we can't take made-up words created by Beyonce and warp them to fit the English language than what good is a booty-shaking popstar in the first place? For the time, until the word (or the person) annoys me or it just becomes too difficult to type (did we mention, besides materialistic and crazy, she's also lazy?) Hubster will henceforth be Hubelicious.

This is more about the beach trip anyway. It finished as brilliantly as it started. The glory of Carolina beaches is too great to say. We went out again Sunday, later in the day, in the non-melanoma inducing time (not quite as romantic as in the gloaming, hmm?) of three-ish and stayed out for a while. The beach was not nearly so busy and crowded more with families than the other sort. There were people everywhere, lounging in chairs, kicking a soccer ball, chasing babies out of the water, chasing babies away from the water, throwing frisbees, and, a few, venturing into the ocean. We went out twice and not for very long.

The waves were not the fun, friendly waves as before. Something in the atmosphere had changed and these waves, well, these waves had attitude. They were big, burly waves. These waves must have been God's bouncers, picking swimmers up by the trunks and heaving them bodily and with full force straight back to the pebbly beach. "And stay out!" They shouted as innocent swimmers, water-clogged, hair matted to the head, knees and elbows scraped and bleeding, heaved themselves to their feet and headed straight back out again. Or so Hubelicious and I did. Several times in fact.

Hubelicious devised A Plan, clinging to the idea we only needed to cross an invisible border where the water would even out and the waves rock us gently in their motherly warmth. The waves did behave with some motherly manners I grant you- the kind of mothers you see smacking their children in super markets, screaming "I'll give you something to $&#*#&@ cry about!" Over and over we tried Hubelicious's plan, wait til the tidal wave knocked you on your tail, come up sputtering for breath, water stinging your eyes, and then run! run! run! across the invisible border. Of course "running" in the ocean is more an imitation of Tom Cruise doing a slow-motion dive, minus the explosion in the background. So while Hubelicious would take off yelling "Go, go, go!" and would successfully gain several yards of water, I would lag behind, sputtering, start laughing at the absurdity of it all, laugh harder in that insane way when you know you shouldn't be laughing and so you want to laugh five times as much, until the next great wave picked me up and slung me to the beach. Hubelicious tried but could not get us to that miraculous point. Truthfully, I don't think it existed. At one point, before, I got flipped upside down, shoved under water, ON TOP OF and OVER Hubelicious, who must have had his face dragged across the ocean floor, I recall asking, "Why are we the only people this far out not on surfboards?"

After that we decided to stay on land and after while, take some pictures. Hubelicious is quite the photographer (I think) and has a very nice camera (a birthday gift, two years ago, from, we shall call her, Wifeilicious) that he uses all the time. Seized with an artistic moment, he insisted on getting a number of shots under the pier, and from the pier. I carried the bags and tried to look like a cool, aloof photographer's assistant, minus the hair plastered to the head and the scrapped elbows and knees and the freckles. You can imagine how successful I was, but Hubelicious did get some fantastic shots.

There's more of the trip to report and I plan to- none of it including birthdays and all of it including fun things like where we ate (how will you sleep from the excitement?) and our visit to the USS North Carolina battleship- don't worry, there's pictures (it could be worse- it could be a slideshow). For now, I'm going to start dinner and gloat over the fact we've only been home a few hours and I've already done all the laundry AND unpacked the bags AND tidied the house AND noticed all the dogs smell vaguely of urine and kennel perfume (that rank sweet baby powder smell- yummy!) and will all need a bath tomorrow. It's been a productive day to say the least.

Ansel took over a dozen pics (we had over a hundred to show from this three-day vacation) and I'll leave you with a few:




At some point I might mention knitting. Otherwise will have to change the blog name to NeighborRambler or NeighborCrazyPersonWhoYellsAtThePeopleBotheringToReadHerBlog. I think its best to stick to knitting.