Loose Leaf Notes

1. Because of a camping weekend followed by Yoga Jam weekend and a beach vacation after that, I was away from news gathering for a couple of weeks, but having a break from it didn’t make me feel better. I felt unaware and unprepared. I like to know. All of it. No matter how bad.

2. The ocean at Atlantic Beach NC is a supreme spa with the jets turned on. The waves roll gently like the Blue Ridge Mountains, the water is warm without intimidating breakers, the sand is soft like a big sandbox, and because it’s a southern facing island inlet, you can watch the sunset from the beach.

3. The ocean is my love language. The sun is my psychedelic of choice.

4. We’ve been to Atlantic Beach five times now. In 2021 my blog post was titled “We may as well have died and gone to heaven” and went like this:  When we arrived at the beach it was like being transported to someplace entirely new, a paradise where the sky turned upside down, the clouds hung over a sandbar of light, the horizon spread into eternity and the lava of fiery light spilled and flooded the beach. Every night is a new show. And every day there are new cloud angels floating by.   The ocean water is warm and without the huge breakers that are hard to get beyond without getting dunked or thrown when you go for a swim. I swam for over an hour because the warm ocean brought the Hull Bay girl out in me.

4. The first full day on the beach, I got “sideburns,” meaning the far sides of my face got sun burned because I didn’t spread the sunscreen over that far.

5. Getting jiggy at Atlantic Beach.

6. Didn’t I see this on Twilight Zone?

7. Catch a cloud and sky surf.

8. Into the wild blue.

9. In 2020, I wrote in a post titled The Sea Side of Things: Here at Atlantic Beach there are whistling gulls that trill repeatedly in short bursts as they fly by. The first time I heard them, I thought it was someone’s ring tone, or a lifeguard’s whistle. I brought a beach book, but so far mostly I’ve just been reading menus in search of fried clams, but I think that’s a New England thing.

10. The next best thing to fried clams are the scallops at the local Full Moon Oyster Bar.

11. We told the waitress it was our anniversary, the 5^th year eating seafood there.

12. While we were at the beach my family in Massachusetts had a cookout in honor of my late sister Kathy and her late husband Oz, who hosted a Labor Day cookout for many years before they passed. Last year we lost my brother John and my brothers Jim and Dan died a couple of weeks apart in 2001, so while it was nice to see my siblings in matching T-shirts that my brother Bob and his wife Donna gifted them with, it was sad to see us as only four when we used to be nine. That’s Sherry, Joey, Bobby and Tricia.

13: Look what came in the mail today.  Maybe my computer whiz brother  Bob can superimpose me in (to the left of Sherry as the oldest now) to make five.

____________Thirteen Thursday