It's Been Awhile...

I know, I know, I know. It has been forever since I blogged. Life got too busy...That's all I have to say about that.

I am the proud mother of two, count them, two high schoolers. Wow. I don't even know what to write about that, except that I am extremely young to have any high schoolers!

The end of the school year has been hectic at best. I still love my job, even though it gets a bit crazy back there at the end of the year/getting ready for the beginning of the next school year!

I did sneak away for a few days last week. I went on a girls weekend at Fort Bragg. What a blast. I can't even start to tell all of the fun I had.

I am a prude. I have never smoked a cigarette, much less pot. I don't care what anyone else does, I just don't do it. There was quite a bit of that going on. I didn't know that pot can make people sleep really well, and snore really loudly. I HATE snoring. It really pisses me off. I feel rather cheated when I am sitting in bed wide awake, unable to catch even 1 Z, when someone is sleeping peacefully, yet loudly, just across the room. I must say it is one of the things that gets my goat. It really makes me angry, and just a tad grumpy.

On that note, the second night two of our 4 roommates came in at around 1 am, made tons of noise coming in, plopped onto their air mattress, which squeaked and moaned like nothing I have ever heard before, and then promptly trotted hand in hand off into sleepy land with Mr. Sandman. Shirley and I were wide awake at this point. Shirley is aware of my intolerance for snoring, fortunately she, like myself, is a non snorer. One of my darling toasted roommates snorted loud enough to wake the dead, I flopped over in the bed, then burst into gales of suppressed laughter, as I heard Shirley whisper "Oh, no, you didn't!" I laughed until I felt tears streaming down my face. After about 30 minutes of non stop snoring, I decided that I needed to go out of the room, before I did something I would regret. Shirley and I decided to go down to the beach (at 2:30 in the morning). Since there really wasn't much else we could do, if we didn't want to wake everyone.

We walked the two blocks to the pathway that overlooked the beach. We didn't have a flashlight, and were unsure of how high the tide would get, so we sat on the edge of the pathway, and watched the ocean in the moonlight. This was on Friday night, the night of lightning storms galore...there's another story there, but I digress...We watched lightning over the ocean, we listened to the quiet majesty of the ocean. The ocean noises are beautiful during the day, but seriously, heightened in the nighttime, when all of the world sleeps (and snores...). We talked and laughed and froze our living butts off. But, it was a time I will always remember and cherish, even though I was pissed that I wasn't getting to sleep.

We returned to our room at around 4 am, laid down and tried to doze until the sun came up and we could go back to the ocean. Which we did, when we were awakened from fitful sleep by yet more snoring.

Now, I have to tell you the lightning story...Each night that we were there, Shirley and I headed to the beach to watch the sunset. Friday night, we were heading to the beach to watch the sunset, and noticed a bit of lightning and thunder. No biggie. We got to the beach and were heading towards the ocean when I had the sensation of my forehead crawling. I thought there was a bug on my head, Shirley thought someone had slipped her some pot(OK, Shirley is a prude too...). We turned to look at each other to ask what was on our heads, and lo and behold, our hair was literally standing on end! We took pictures with our phones, if I knew how to download them, I would. It was a little scary, but magnificent at the same time. We watched the lightning from the beach, which I hear was rather risky of us, I guess you could say we walked on the wild side...

We were privy to sights that none of the others saw. We were down at the ocean at an unusually low tide on an atypical Fort Bragg morning. The sun was bright, the sky cloudless, we saw more starfish than we could keep track of. We walked forever and breathed the clean ocean air. We watched boats off the coast, we could see forever and felt so small next to the vastness of the ocean. Two mornings later, we walked in the opposite direction, and sat literally yards away from seals. Tons and tons of seals. The seals put on a little show for us in the ocean mere feet away from where we sat. To our left, on the beach about 100 feet away were 6 seals lying on the beach. I have been to the coast many times, but never in my life been as close to the wildlife as I was Sunday morning. We sat for an hour on the rocks, until our butts could stand (or sit) no more. We walked away a bit sad that we were heading home.

Monday morning, I woke up, my first thought was to walk the beach...oops, nope, I'm back home and back to reality.

I love the ocean. I feel so peaceful, rested and alive when I am at the coast. I'm fortunate that I live in a place where I can easily reach the ocean in a matter of hours. I wish I lived closer, but, I love where I live too. For other reasons, this is where my dear friends are, the people who have cared for me, the people who love me and want the best for me.

I'm getting a bit sappy, and I am tired from being back in the real world for the last two days...