Bopril

I'll Have the Crashing Waves With a Side of Sunshine Please

The gray is unstoppable. It invades everything, coloring our moods a milky foggy white. It is worse than the biting cold, more dangerous than the whipping wind, harder to deal with than the pelting snow. When it arrives, it takes hold and refuses to let go for weeks and months at at time. The gray is stubborn you see, shunning sunlight and flowers, a balmy breeze and sun-drenched walks on city streets. It's goal...to never let in the light.

But Chicagoans adapt and with time, they outsmart the gray. They outsmart it by leaving. And it is about time that I join them.

On Thursday morning, I'm boarding a plane and heading for sunshine. I'm going to hear crashing waves and feel mist as it flies off the sides of the boat. I'm going to stand and sit and lie in the sun for as long as I possibly can. And Internet, I'm going to remember what the days are like when they are not gray.

 

And best of all? We're going to hang with these two. Beach side, yet again. Forward ho!

 
  

About That Time...

I was on a roll there for a bit - what with my fairly consistent posting schedule and all - and then...chirp, chirp...crickets. Silence. Sorry! Sigh...

I've been around. I've been meaning to post - really, I have - but you see Internet...it's about that time.

That time of year when the need for sunshine and time spent outdoors is so strong, it is physical...god, it is visceral. It's that time when I'd give absolutely everything and anything outside of Hubby and my fur babes to return to sunny CA. I want to ditch the bulky, messy boots for dainty, fun ballet flats. I want to walk down the street, fur-babes in tow - and feel the sun on my shoulder, the wind in my hair.

I want to gaze at a horizon so familiar, I can recall its every minute detail.

The curve of a path, traveled so often, lined with brush, a lush and green rolling hill that gives way to the steepest cliff sloping right down to the urgent PCH below:

 
The feel of a weathered white fence against my hand, my knee, my foot...years of rest and thought and wishing/hoping/dreaming done in its company.

 
And oh, most of all - the expanse of shimmery, rolling calming blue-gray that dances with the sun and soothes all in its presence:

 
So lately, instead of coming here, I've been going there. In my mind anyway - I've been watching the birds swoop up and down, in search of a snack, the dogs, cyclists, runners, walkers, gazers - all mingling on the winding paths that connect beach towns for the entire length of a coast.

 
I can smell it - salty air carried on a crisp wind, and I can hear it - thunderous waves crash mightily, again and again, to create what is - to me anyway - the quietest and most healing sound in the world.

 
Ah, mighty Pacific...what I wouldn't give to stand at your shore. I'd tell you every secret, turn every burden over to you. And I know you'd carry them...just as you always have.

 
As they say, California dreamin...