Um, okay, clearly there are some misconceptions about how I'm spending my week "on vacation." A few of you seem to be under the rather hostile delusion that I'm living some kind of easy-peasy-life's-a-breezy kind of existence down here on island.
So that you might carry on unjealous and a little more grateful about your own sad, sorry lot in life, allow me to clear up a few key points under which you are falsely laboring.
1. Most importantly, I am not down here gallivanting with my beloved girls or, better yet (sorry girls) some hot cabana boy. No. I am down here with my parents. My dad and his wife. I am a thir... I am a non-teenaged girl, and I'm on vacation, alone, with my parents. Any one of you who doesn't tilt your head slightly to the side and make that "aww" face is a heartless bastard.
2. Yes, I've gotten to spend a little more time in the sun this week than I might normally. But an underdiscussed side effect? I have these weird elbow-crease tanlines from where my arms are slightly bent when I hold my book in my beach chair. It's a real thing people. Look it up.
3. As I mentioned, no girlfriends, no boyfriends. Which means there's no one to document my super cute beach outfits. My dad tried, apparently. My dad, also apparently, does not quite know how to work the iPhone. I call this series "Daddy's Thumb":
4. I like birds. I like all kinds of animals. I am a known animal lover. But the birds on this vacation have been kind of a buzzkill. First, there are a lot of scenes like this:
You do not have to be a Hitchcock fan to take one look at that picture and know something's up.
I believe, from sheer size, this one is their leader. I call him the Birdfather. It's not clever, or even very funny, but that doesn't make it any less fitting.
He is freakishly big and he makes me very, very uncomfortable.
And lastly, there's this little fellow, who has broken my heart so thoroughly that he may very well have ruined this beach for me forever.
He has one leg, you guys. One leg. I can't look at him without hearing strains of Sarah McLachlan.
5. It was sort of windy one of the days I think.
6. And the water is sort of cold. In a refreshing kind of way, but still. Chilly.
7. For many years now, my dad - the man who brought me to this beach as a baby and back nearly every year since, the man who taught me to take it like a man when each summer I would burn to a crisp, peel off a few layers of skin, then carry on bravely and uncovered with sunscreen - has been warned by some kind of stupid "skin doctor" that the sun can, like, kill you. Or something. So this is what a day at the beach looks like for him now:
He's boldly declared that all bets are off when he turns eighty and he's marching right out into the broad daylight with a burger, a cigar, and some baby oil, but until then, look at him. I mean, that's humiliating. For me.
8. Everyone says seafood isn't that fattening, which is true I guess in theory, but what that theory leaves out is that seafood also isn't any fun to eat without a trough of drawn butter, a few beers, and some hush puppies. Plus opening crablegs is a LOT of work, but doesn't seem to burn hardly any calories. A full seven days and I may come back downright pudgy.
9. Those same people are probably the ones who say that sand is a good exfoliate. Not true. I've probably never been in more dire need of a pedi. And a wax. (That sand gets in some inexplicable places.)
I feel like I could keep going, but I think you get the picture and I trust you will all ease up a little on me. Your prayers and wellwishes are appreciated. I need to go lay down.
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