Seabrook, WA 2015 - Day 2

I didn't make a dime

Well, the “laying on the couch all weekend” thing didn’t last long. At 6:30 we drove about fifteen miles south to Ocean Shores for an early breakfast at Our Place Restaurant and Bakery, where we exchanged Valentine’s Day cards and did all the stuff that angers so many single people this time of year. So, instead of telling you about that, how about I focus on the bacon? People aren’t so sensitive about bacon. Well, except for vegetarians... but everything makes them mad. Anyway, my breakfast came with bacon. Imagine if you will, biting into a piece of beef jerky that was left in a cupboard for twenty-three years and when it was found, it was placed on the dashboard of a car in Death Valley for another ten. It was like that. My teeth hurt after I ate it. Oh yeah, I still ate it.

We figured that while we were in town, we should pick up some groceries and, more importantly, coffee. We stopped at the IGA and when we walked in, I almost collapsed to my knees. There, in the meat department, was a large metal washtub filled with ice. On top of the ice, twenty lobsters were piled on top of each other, and they were all alive and silently weeping. I was horrified.

“But wait a minute!” you’re probably thinking. “You just said you ate bacon for breakfast. You are such a hypocrite!” And you’re right, I am. For some inexplicable reason, I’ll eat meat as long as I don’t have to see the process of it becoming meat. So when I saw these poor, freezing lobsters crying for freedom, I decided to single-handedly get them all across the street and back into the ocean. I remembered how in E.T., Elliot rescues the frogs from imminent dissection and frees them from the chloroform-soaked cotton balls while yelling, “Run! I want to save you! Let’s get out of here!” Just as I was about to reenact that scene with my new lobster-friends, I felt Chad’s arm steering me away from the helpless captives. “Let’s go down another aisle, okay?” he said as if he were asking a psycho-kidnapper to "put down the gun, nobody has to get hurt." I know how hypocritical that seems because I would eat one of those delicious lobsters in a second, as long as I never saw it alive. Oh well, what are you gonna do?

The back of the house

When we got back to Seabrook, we took a long walk, following the crushed oyster shell-sidewalks wherever they led. People rode bikes, kids played football at the park, and we stood on a bluff watching families and dogs walking down to the beach. We were tempted to follow, but it was so far away and the couch was so close. We came back to the house watched a movie and when that was over, Vh1 was airing five episodes of Steve Martin hosting Saturday Night Live in the 70’s. It was like the TV was Jambi the Genie from Pee-wee’s Playhouse granting me wishes.

Chad made us dinner while I sat on the couch, reading him questions from Trivial Pursuit cards and watching Steve Martin the genius. After dinner, I asked my phone what time the sun was going to set. How did people know what time the sun sets before phones could tell them? I have no idea. The phone told me 5:39 and it was already 5:34 so we walked to the beach and spent an hour at the edge of the waves just staring. Every now and then we would talk about important stuff like, “What if we just kept walking and committed suicide in the water? How would we do it?” or “What if our plane just crash-landed and was sinking out there and we had nothing to survive—what’s the first thing we would do?” These are the thoughts that the vast and awesome beauty of the ocean produces in us.

When it was dark, and our philosophical minds were spent, we walked back to the house. We stopped at the market for some snacks and now we’re back on the couch, coffee brewed, ready to watch Fury in our pajamas.

Our nineteenth Valentine’s Day together turned out better than I could've wished. Even Jambi, in all his bejeweled glory, could not have topped this one.

Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho!

Rachel