6.22.2010

Blame the Fortune Cookie

Everything was going great at the beach until that one fateful night that we stumbled upon a vietnamese restaurant called 'Hu Dat' and received an almost seemingly mean spirited fortune cookie.

It read:

The greatest danger could be your stupidity.

This was Boo's misfortune and the demise of our surf side vacation.

For the day after he cracked that cookie and read its fortune, he missed the exit road off the beach and drove the car off course until the car was buried nose deep in a sandy abyss.

Before the warm fuzzy feeling of a helping hand, we took upon the task of digging out the car from its beach bed, all the while forgetting to maintain our SPF 85 that had previously saved us from severe burn during surfing. We torched our backs into a hot fuscia frenzy that would test the softness of thread count on our hotel beds. I must say they failed miserably on the count.

The sheets, while soft and cool during the beginning of the trip, had turned against us and turned prickly and rough on our sun raped skin.

Aloe vera after sun care gel became our bed buddy as we woke up several times a night to the sting of our broiled backs and arms.

Our burnt backs limited the comfort zone to a belly only snooze and a very careful application of clothing.

Bras, leather car seats, showers, backs of chairs, sunlight, and sand were avoided with the fiercest of conviction.

The beach was now our enemy.

The ferry rides that were once fun and inviting became an open coffin. Like vampires, we huddled near the middle dark of the vehicle, trying to keep from spontaneously bursting into flames while the engine was shut off during the 5 minute crossing.

Then slowly, the pain subsides, the blisters form, and the willpower to save skin from peel marks quickly succumbs to the morbid satisfaction that we got from the little squirt of fluid we felt under our fingernails as we scraped the tiny skin bubbles.

The endless re-application of lotions, oils, creams, and cocoa butter was and is futile.

The skin has no choice but to peel.

While waiting for our karma to turn, our skin to heal, and our auto to be repaired, we pondered the irony of booking a room, on our last days of holiday, in a hotel located above a vietnamese restaurant.

The Blonde is over asian food!

6.21.2010

Dominos on the Beach

The thing I think I love the most about the beach is the sound of the ocean. Its such a large sound that you can rarely fix your thoughts on anything else, even when your world falls a bit.

The second thing I love most about the beach is how the kindness of strangers is beyond anything you will ever get the pleasure of experiencing outside the realm of the surf side communities.

When our car hit soft sand, you can drive on the beaches here in Texland, and lodged itself firmly in place and begged for a rope and a 4X4... we hardly had to look far before a helping hand was reached out to us.

A man unhooked his boat from his truck and pulled us out. We were so grateful and sooo remorseful when he lodged himself in the sand after bailing us out. But yet again, another stranger of kindness came about in a jeep with giant nubby all-terrain tires to pull his truck out. After all that, no one wanted anything more than the feel good that came from 'paying it forward'.

Everyone on the beach has at least once got stuck and had to be pulled out by someone and they seemed more than satisfied just to pay it forward. Exception would be the tow trucks that vulture in on a sand stranded car and offers services in the G range ($1000). But they don't see much action due to the folks with a truck and a kind heart.

The kindness did not stop on the beach.

After we got out of the sand, we drove back to the hotel. On the way, the car burst the coolant hose just as we pulled in for gas. At the gas station, several people offered aid and one of the kind strangers drove us to and from to retrieve a new hose from an auto part store 10 miles up the road. I tried to offer him some small thank you but he refused to take it.

He was just glad to help.

Once we had the hose in place, we were back on the road when only a few miles drive beat our car into submission with a broken belt. We pulled over to let the hell hot engine cool down. Again, several people stopped to offer aid.

We declined thinking we could make it even though majority of opinion was against the odds.

A few minutes later we revved up and tried to engine crawl back to the hotel. The gamble did not pay off and we were teetering on burning out the engine. We spotted a diner and began to pull in when, lo and behold, we spotted a mechanics shop on the next corner. Our car made it the last leg of turmoil road and puttered into the shop just as they were about to close.

The mechanic, who just locked up, re-opened his shop, looked at our car and put us at the front of the line of cars, in the a.m., to have it complete before our noon check out time at our hotel and had a friend pick us up from the shop to drive us back to the hotel 15 miles away.

The car was not ready by noon but that is a story for another day.

All in all, I have to say God was looking out for us. And when I say God, I mean the universe and its energy and how, in some weird way, we are all connected.

We look so often to the sky and a heaven for answers and miracles, when we should just be grateful for the simple gesture of an act of kindness from another human being.


The Blonde likes to connect!

Pics By the Sea































6.03.2010

People Have Been Super Nice

to me lately. It makes me wonder what is up.

While I ponder why so many are nice to me this week, I do not have any pondering needed to understand why so many BP execs are receiving mass amounts of environmental fanatics hate mail at this moment.

Because they deserve it!!

I have been twittering some hater tweets myself.

My panties are more than in a ruffled bunch over this disaster that could have been spared had someone not been stingy with safety.

Now, I see they are floating a full page ad in the Statesman to persuade me off my hate.

Not going to happen you douche bags!!

Let's pick the little puppy ad apart and shoot some rebuttal:

I didn't have the stomach to choke down the bull and copy it to my blog so the following is just my take on the BP ad:

We will get it Done. We will make it right.

HA!!


You will get it done but you will never make it right.

You were never prepared.

Contain and collect the leak but no mention of stopping it. Hmmm....

You brag that you have organized the largest environmental response but you fail to mention the obvious. You created the need for it.

When oil reaches the shore it will be too late.

If wildlife is affected. I hate to tell you but 450 brown pelicans have already died you douches.

Your dedicating $500 million to watch over the environment long-term. Your the last assholes anyone wants watching our marine life and shoreline.

You say efforts wont cost taxpayers but fisherman that are taxpayers will brunt the cost of dead marine life.

And no worries on not letting this happen again. Our criminal justice system has your back on that promise!!

Douche!!

The Blonde is hating!!





6.02.2010

Driving to Dallas

or anywhere else for a man beyond my 8 mile preferred radius causes a few of my blonde follicles to cringe a bit.

It has been 3 months and more than enough commuting in my car to see my steady.
I have logged over 4,000 miles to see this man and I'm worried it will bite me in the bum, down the road some day.

I have to think of the car before the man.

My car is old and although solid as a rock, I worry about the accumulated mileage. All I can think of at this moment is what happens after 6 months and thousands of miles later and the whole relationship goes south. I am left with my car and a huge reminder on the dashboard telling me what an idiot I was for sacrificing my vehicles well being for this.

Not to mention the wear and tear on my wheels.

For the moment, its worth it. The guy is great and very accommodating. He is putting in his half as well. Unfortunately my half is part of a lot less than the part his half comes out of.

I am really considering what is in my best interest right now and whether I personally can afford a long distance relationship while going to school and on a tight budget.

After all, its so much less expensive replacing a man than it is an automobile.

On the other hand, finding a great relationship is priceless.

The Blonde is steering herself toward love!