13: Front Row Seats
1. Here at our Getaway in the Outer Banks of North Carolina mailboxes are shaped like whales and dolphins and oversized crabs, mermaids, and flip flops are stapled to the sides of houses.
2. I’m wondering why the names of towns here sound like horror movie titles: Nags Head and Kill Devil.
3. I love to ride my bike and read the names that homeowners dub their beach houses. So far some I like are Ocean Butterfly, Shifting Sands, September Song, and Finale. And then there are those that play on words, like My Tern, Wavy Daze, Beach Finatic, Fintastic, Sandal Wood (posted next to a couple of oversized beach flip flops) and No Regrets with a wooden egret used for the letter R.
4. I don’t know what is funnier, bicycling down the highway in the Outer Banks carrying a thrift shop tea kettle and pink shirt in a Christmas gift bag or balancing the tea kettle and pink shirt on the handlebars after the bottom of the gift bag fell apart.
5. Said to Joe yesterday morning when I was woke up too early: “Who is that bird trying to impress? It’s using every call in the book.”
6. At night, here at our Sea Cove efficiency apartment, I sneak into the children’s playground to swing.
7. After a beer at a local brewery, we heard THIS in the parking lot!
8. Reading Michael Meade on the beach, every page has something underlined: The trouble with consuming is that people can’t get enough of what they don’t really want. The trouble with a consumer society is that eventually it consumes itself. In becoming aware of one’s natural gifts the need to give something to world becomes stronger than the hunger to consume it.
9. One day we’ll live without clocks / sit in rocking chairs on an oceanfront porch / We’ll write our memoirs / on the backs of postcards / and forget how to drive cars / After swimming like seals all morning / we’ll sip tea at sidewalk cafés / sign autographs for tourists under sky-blue umbrellas / We’ll eat pastry but won’t get fat … Read the rest of this poem HERE.
10. Of course, the ocean is the highlight of the barrier islands (especially when it’s warm enough, like now, to wear a bathing suit each day) but Jockeys’ Ridge dunes are a close second. The dunes, the largest in the east, are thought to be 7,000 years old and are said to be named for the Spanish mustangs from ship wrecked explorers that were raced in the base of the big dune while spectators watched from the top of the steepest ridges. Dune photos HERE.
11. I can never get used to seeing people on the beach walking their dogs on leashes and carrying plastic bags of poop.
12. THIS is the front row seaside attraction we recently watched .
13. What would you name your beach house?
More playing 13 Thursday HERE.
May 26th, 2011 9:21 am
Just saw a lake house here yesterday with the name Dunlookin…I like it : ) I love the Outer Banks…wish I were there right now.
Visiting from Thursday 13~
May 26th, 2011 9:32 am
#7 – they sound like aliens conversing!
#11 – why?
#12 – sigh…the only thing missing on MA beaches!
# 13 – “Orange Sunshine” 🙂
May 26th, 2011 9:54 am
I totally agree with Janet # 7 sound just like aliens!!
I love the poem in #9!!
My beach house name would be “Share Magic”! xo
May 26th, 2011 10:26 am
Mine might be Beachy Keen but if I think more about it, I might come up with a better one.
#13 Because it’s poop. I didn’t grow up with it and don’t see it in the mountains, so it looks weird even though it makes sense to me. The people I saw were carrying their dog poop in see through plastic bags.
May 26th, 2011 11:00 am
Name for a beach house on the beach… Breakin’ Away.
May 26th, 2011 11:16 am
#7 is a new rock band and I was wondering if they really got their rhythm going would they shatter nearby windows? I love where you are and am so happy for you! It really gets your juices flowing, I can see. My beach house name would be “At Last”
May 26th, 2011 11:59 am
5. Said to Joe yesterday morning when I was woke up too early: “Who is that bird trying to impress? It’s using every call in the book.”
I’m so glad you mentioned this. I thought I was going crazy because there’s a bird who has lately been rehearsing every bird call imaginable — outside my open wide in the middle of the night. Around 1:30 a.m. or 12:45 a.m. or 2:00 a.m., I become aware of a few bars of “bob-white, bob-white, bob-white (pause), bob-white” and then “whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will” and then every variation of bird sounds I’ve ever heard, rarely repeating any of them. Until the next night. I thought only mockingbirds copied the sounds of other birds (a mockingbird I could see one time actually copied the sound of a squeaky door). And I thought birds slept at night. While “my” bird sings her night songs, no other bird in the neighborhood says anything at all. What’s going on?
My beach house might get the name I considered for my sailboat: Whynot
May 26th, 2011 12:22 pm
I envy you your beach vacation–and weather warm enough for shorts and swim suits. Though I am surrounded by water, it’s just not the ocean.
May 26th, 2011 8:21 pm
Love the poem in #9. Hope you’re having fun!
May 27th, 2011 8:22 am
I’ve always been curious about the Outer Banks. Now – you’ve told me everything here that I need to ever know…:-)!!!!
June 8th, 2011 11:17 pm
I died at 4! The mental image so perfect, and I hate it when a bag tears apart. Number 5 made me think of our all-night mockingbird. I fell in love with number 9. And 13, I’d name it “Finally.”
January 19th, 2012 5:01 pm
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