My day at the beach

I had been craving a beach-side getaway for a long time now. I couldn't get anyone else but Julia and her friend to come with me. It was just as well. I love to daydream - due, I think, to Pisces Mercury, Rising, South Node, and 12th house Sun. What better place to do that than near and in the Gulf.

I love to swim in the Gulf; to feel the swells, to feel weightless and vulnerable - yet safe, and pick up shells with my toes. I love to hear the sea gulls, and potentially see dolphins swimming - which has happened on a couple of beach-side vacations. I love the smell of the sea and to eat a good seafood dinner that evening, feeling satiated and a little sun-burned. My hair goes back to the wild and I get a cave-woman feel.

Yesterday, I drove 2 hours and 50 minutes to get to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We set up our stuff, and then immediately jumped in the surf. We weren't in there long before being ousted by what appeared to be small, needle-like quills that embedded in our bathing suits. I thought, at first, that we came into contact with jellyfish, but that wasn't the case. They felt like tiny needles and we picked them out as best we could, but then we had to completely take off our suits and shower. It was disappointing.

We ate lunch, shopped a little, and then went back to the beach to play. Julia wanted a hermit crab for two years now. I have told her "no" to that too (see the hamster story), but her birthday is on the 15th and her color-coded birthday list has that item at the top, in the most wanted of the colored items. We got two of them and all the accessories that a hermit crab could ever want for (assuming it never wanted to live in it's natural habitat and do what it naturally would do). Their names are Lola and Shelly.

The beach is still a wonderful place to be, once the sun came back out and the drizzling stopped, and once I got over the fact that I couldn't get in the water. We saw many come out of the water in the same way we did. We tried to forewarn some, and we told others that it wasn't jellyfish that stung them. I wonder what that stuff was. None of the locals I asked knew.