In Which We Meet a Pelican and an Artist

The girl could barely believe her eyes when she saw the artwork emerging from the sand. We watched the artist as he worked with a paintbrush, his fingers, and a small shovel. After we toured the wharf which included viewing jellyfish in the dark and catching a crab smaller than a fly, we met a pelican, who apparently could not fly.

Or maybe, since there is a place that rents fishing poles on the wharf, this pelican prefers making friends with fishermen to plunge diving. He/She did not seem the least bit shy about posing for a photo.

At the end of our morning, the sculpture looked like this:

Two California girls in sunglasses.

Tomorrow is the last day with the girl. She's thinking of another beach day. Tonight she's creating a whole new world with the toys. We found a bag of free form treehouse pieces, and she's adding to the original structure. I can't wait to see what she does with them.

Just Hanging with the 10-Year-Old and the 90-Year-Old

"Sometimes adults think they can bribe us with sweets," said the 10-year-old as she devoured a cup of cookies and cream ice cream.
Not that I was trying to bribe her. If I wanted to bribe her, I'd bribe her with the promise of playing a board game.
"Oh," I said, "I guess I'll bribe you with green beans then."
"That would never work," she said.
"I was joking," I said. She can be serious, this girl. And she seriously doesn't care for vegetables. But I'm not pushing it. Tonight's dinner was fish, baked potatoes, bok choy, sliced tomatoes, watermelon, and cantaloupe. The girl found out she likes baked potatoes. She was so exited she called her mom. Adorable, right? Then the girl and the 90-year-old debated which was better, sweet potatoes or regular potatoes. They didn't agree.

Last night over dinner, the girl told us that she'd heard being an adult sucked. "Not at all," I said. The 90-year-old agreed.
"You get to be your own boss," my mom told her. And somehow that segued into how she and her twin sister went off to live on their own in Baltimore when they were only 17. Which segued into how they eventually rented a very stylish apartment from a retiring prostitute they knew. Only she couldn't think of the word. "Sex. Girl. Worker," she said.
"Prostitute," I said. The girl took this all in and then we circled back to growing up and going to college and working. Welcome to my dinner table where we have multi-generational discussions about potatoes and prostitutes.

And speaking of circling,  I told the girl I liked the circles she'd made with all the toy animals. It's called "The Night of the Dances" she said, and informed me that the humans are dancing too. They are.

My mom gasped with delight when she saw the toys when I first set them out for the girl. When all of the kids are here, they play in the "family room"/garage so my mother doesn't get to see what's going on out there--and I guess she doesn't remember the toys from when my own girls played with them. Her delight breaks my heart a little. It makes me think of one of the patients in the nursing home where my aunt resided her last couple of years. This lady often carried a baby doll, cradling it as if it was real. My mom stands over the box of figures and furnishings that haven't been incorporated into the girl's scenes, handling them, whispering to herself.

I think this little scene might be her creation.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to be the middle child?" the girl asked as we walked to fro-yo.

Fro-yo and girl at twilight

"You have to learn AND you have to teach,"she said. I said I guessed that was an opportunity.
"It's an opportunity, AND it's a problem!" she said and then laughed uproariously.

Well, it's certainly an opportunity to be at Grandma's house by yourself where you can be an only child for a change and take over the kitchen island with a box full of toys that once belonged to your aunts.

This girl is an animal lover, and as you can see, she has been well-loved herself.

She's a good beach walker and treasure hunter too.

And I found the largest heart, so far, for my collection. Yes, I did.

My Monkeys, My Circus

What my front hall looked like until just a few minutes ago.
Six people have more that six pairs of shoes.

What a lovely visit it's been. Giraffes have been fed....and we've managed to keep our shirts and our pants.

Wings have been spread.

Goats have been gotten.

There have been castles. There have been bridges.

And speaking of spreading wings and crossing bridges, the little granddaughter is staying a few more days. She's been instructed to take a shower, drink water, eat protein, and be good. And I've got some plans for myself. I think I'll shower, drink water, eat protein, and be good.

Day of the Awesome Pants

I'm not sure how we got onto the subject, but I asked the girl if she had a favorite expression, and she told me she liked to say "Awesome pants!" My current favorite happens to be "Cool beans!"

The photo above does not do justice to how completely filthy our pants got today. How did we get so dirty? We climbed over this fence.

I should, of course, add that we were invited and, in fact, assisted in climbing over this fence by an uniformed environmental scientist who was surveying the area for snowy plover nests. The girl and I walked up to the fence to read the sign surrounding a portion of the dunes and struck up a conversation with the young woman with the awesome pants job. The girl and I then went on our way to hunt beach glass, but upon our return, the environmental scientist called to us and told us she'd found a nest with an egg in it, and did we want to see it?

Of course we did. As we marveled upon it, I asked why the egg was left untended. "The bird will return to lay a couple more eggs," the scientist said, "but won't start incubating them until all the eggs are in the nest. That way they all will hatch at the same time." She also told us that once the plover chicks do hatch, they set right to work hunting for sand fleas. They do not need to be fed by their parents. "They look like little cotton balls on legs," she said. "The first time I saw one I was hooked!"

As the girl and I walked back to the car, we saw a pair of snowy plovers dashing across the sand. We speculated that maybe they were the parents of the egg. And we talked about what an awesome pants job it would be to walk around in the sand dunes looking for the eggs of an endangered species.

Four Generations Inhabit Margaritaville

It's grand daughter week here--a repeat of our inaugural week last year. Except that it's not a repeat at all. The girl is a year older and a mile taller. And it's so very different now that the great-grandmother is living here. An 11-year-old's top vacation picks probably do not include shuttling to a neurologist to discuss memory problems and dementia, nor a trip to the podiatrist to consider the ravages of bad circulation and the clipping of a well-weathered set of toenails, but these are among the things we've done. I've held to my own fitness and sanity maintenance schedule as well, so the girl has accompanied me to the gym for yoga and line dancing. Yet to come, she will see a session of t'ai chi chih where she will hear all about the chi--kind of an amazing thing for someone who is 11. If I had heard the word chi at 11 when I was growing up in a town of 3000 people in Iowa, I might have thought it to be a nickname for a cartoon animal from far-away Mexico.

Of course, we've done other things, too. The girl is a devoted beach walker, and the beach glass harvest has been plentiful with the added bonus of dolphins leaping in and out of the water when we raise our eyes from the sand to the sea.

We've added to my collection of heart rocks and lugged home other found treasure.

Part of the delight in bring home these treasures is the reaction from my mother. An inveterate trash picker when she was able to walk the streets of Baltimore to seize gold watches, amethyst rings, fine china, original art, boxes of clothes, and countless other useful things, she exclaims on anything we bring home as if it's the wonder of wonders.

There's also been swimming in the ocean.

That tiny speck of a head is the girl.

And there's been swimming at the yacht club (which I can no longer afford to be a member of....but a contract is a contract, alas.) And in any event, the sky looked like this.

One of the generations here in Margaritaville is here only nominally. M has a canvassing job this summer and works ridiculous hours with an insane commute. We miss her. Her absence and the girl's constant presence point out to me the similarities in their demeanors--sunny, talkative, anything but shy. I would not describe myself as such. The girl's father needs solitary time, as I do, and as my other daughter, C, does. We're fun. We're funny. We can party, but we don't seem to possess the same ease. When I told C that M was canvassing this summer and had to accost strangers on the street and ask them for money, she told me  how she had once volunteered to clean up bright orange vomit rather than stand on the dock and call out to passersby that there were still tickets available for the boat's next cruise. Yeah. Totally phobic about bodily functions, I would have elected to simply jump off the dock.

So here I am again. With history repeating itself and my own little extrovert at my side. Sometimes life is incredibly kind.

Where do you, dear readers, fall on the extrovert/introvert scale? Clean up vomit? Ask strangers for money? What would you choose?

The Margaritaville Child Labor Report & Why I Am Going to be Cremated

It's so nice to have an extra pair of hands. Last night after dinner and a stunning sunset walk on the beach, I put the girl to work. The garage cabinets were installed yesterday, and it was the granddaughter's job to put my five million photo albums into one of the new cabinets.

 Even a ten-year-old knows excess when she sees it. Yes, there are many wonderful memories that are contained those books, but I feel saddled by the bulk of it all. And the fact that Mr. Ex took most of the photos. I have no desire to look at even a single photo of the man. This Thanksgiving I will begin to lobby my daughters to weed through and save only the photos that are still relevant. Rather than connecting with people at social events, Mr. Ex hovered on the edges behind his camera. We have photos of everyone who ever crossed our path. Do we really need them? I say listen to the ten-year-old.

This morning as we wait for the "blind man"--the guy who will be installing the blinds, we built (it was a pre-fab kit, mind you) a garden bench. The girl got to see her grandmother wielding a power drill and an allen wrench. Everyone should have a drill/driver, in my opinion. Handiest gadget ever. The bench is now successfully installed next to the hose by the back door, and there is plenty of room for three grandchildren to sit and be blasted free of sand and beach tar by their grandmother. Plus the bench is pretty gorgeous and can be moved to the patio for parties. And can I say again, how wonderful it was to have an extra set of hands?

The next project coming up after this break is a potting table. More about that later.

Oh, and the surgery on the kid's bathing suit was successful. The lining was snipped out, and a half cup of sand freed from its confines. Hello, bathing suit manufactures, are you listening?

More about the beach last night: The was a dead dolphin lying on the sand. Sea gulls were dining. I spotted it first and warned the girl. She took it in stride, and even was willing to look. Maybe a bit less squeamish than I. I delivered my standard wisdom. "Good for the seagulls; bad for the dolphin." And then we talked about how maybe it wasn't actually bad for the dolphin. Maybe it was sick or injured. Maybe it's time on earth was just meant to be finished. As we walked back to the car and saw the carcass a second time, another beach walker paused near the animal, hands outstretched, and appeared to offer a prayer. The girl and I stood silently atop a dune and honored the moment.

I've delivered the good/bad analysis of  death and animals eating other animals numerous times in my tenure as a mother and grandmother. It's a little trite, and I'm relieved that I have elected to be cremated so none of my children or grandchildren, will say,"Bad for mom/grandma; good for the worms."

Beach Walk/Human Behavior

The most direct walk to the beach from my house requires a jaunt along a busy road before reaching the more serene portion of the neighborhood. Walking back single file to keep our distance from the traffic, conversation was a challenge. "I can't hear everything you're saying," the girl said. I tried speaking  a little louder. "I think humans have an irresistible urge to speak just when its noisiest,"she said. "For some reason, we want to add to the noise."

It was a good walk. Wildlife spotted: Two different yet to be i.d.'d large-ish birds. (Only one was "successfully" photographed.) A possum as big as a dachshund.