Birthday Weekend

Because my birthday fell on a Monday this year, and because M would be at camp when it came, I planned to celebrate on Saturday, with a trip to the beach and to my favorite restaurant, El Camino.

Saturday started out gray and rainy, and I didn't feel all that well, so I spent the morning cleaning house ('cause doesn't that make everyone feel better?) and getting M all packed up for his week away.

Finally, after a late lunch, C finally motivated us all and we headed toward the beach in the late afternoon, gray skies and all.

When we got there, the sun peeked out of the clouds, and we remembered that gray days are pretty great days to go to the beach, because hardly anyone else is there, and you don't have to bother with annoying things like sunblock.

We also decided that Reid State Park has the best waves for body surfing.

Last week when we went to Popham with my niece, she and I swam out a bit, and then discovered that as hard as we tried to swim back toward shore, we weren't getting anywhere.

We finally broke through, but not without mentally writing the headlines, "Two former lifeguards swept out to sea." It turns out this was a rip current, and we should have tried to swim out of it, parallel to the beach, but since we were between two masses of rock, that might not have worked.

After a couple hours on the beach, we headed to El Camino, where the kids behaved themselves and ate their dinner, despite it being close to bed time and despite the fact that they didn't serve grilled cheese. I must have been too tired and hungry to think to bring in my camera (and now that I have a big giant camera, I would feel kind of conspicuous taking pictures in a restaurant). Suffice it to say, the food was amazing and the atmosphere fantastic. Yum.

Photo by Z.

Swimming in the ocean must have pushed me over the edge with the cold I had felt coming on Saturday, because I felt terrible Sunday morning. Here I am making a picnic lunch, wearing the security blanket sweatshirt I bought in New York City when I was eight months pregnant with M and expected the weather to be a lot warmer than it was. I only wear it when I have a dirty job to do (like painting or gardening) or when I feel like I need a wearable hug.

We dropped M off at camp that afternoon. It seemed so, I don't know, monumental. Even though he's been away from home plenty of times to stay with friends and family, this is the first time he's been away for a whole week with total strangers and no way of knowing what he's doing or if he's having fun. I'm guessing he is. I mean, look at all the canoes.

For my birthday, C made me this camp stool. I've been wanting a whole set of these for a long time, and have been looking for vintage ones. This one is a lot bigger and more luxurious than anything I was thinking of. Now we just need four more.

E and Z keep wrapping up random things from around the house and giving them to me as gifts (and sometimes taking them back immediately). E also had us stop at Goodwill on the way back from taking M to camp so he could buy the piece de resistance, a framed picture of ducks flying over a lake, printed on layers of glass so that it looks 3-D. It's somethin' else.

On my actual birthday, I still had a cold and I had a dentist appointment and I had to go to work, so it wasn't nearly as nice as the weekend. But C made me dinner and a blueberry-rhubarb (bluebarb) crisp, so that was nice.