Whoops! It’s summertime and I have summer brain which, for me, means a lot less writing and a lot more hanging out with Eve and Lola. I like to say that I work on writing about 2/3 time during the school year and 1/4 of the time in the summer. This summer in Seattle has been particularly lovely weather-wise, and the girls and I have had a ball taking advantage of the city’s attractive parks and water everywhere.

I realized, though, that my last post was fairly gloomy and I thought I’d better update my status lest you think I’m moping over here.  Au contraire – Eve went off to a week long sleepaway camp last weekend and Bubba left for a conference on the East Coast on Monday (yup, sucks to be him), so it’s just been Lola and me this week and it has rocked. Monday we decided to blow out of town, hopped a ferry with the dog and took off to wherever we wanted.  At one point, after the biggest damn ice cream I’d ever seen, we veered off the road and found a mostly deserted beach full of driftwood and a clean public restroom.  We walked the shoreline finding dead jellyfish that Lola picked up with sticks and flung back out into the sea, discovering enormous clam shells full of barnacles and throwing sticks for the dog to fetch in the surf. When we finally settled down on some driftwood and Lola started creating art out of sticks and stones and sand, she looked up,

“Mom? When do we have to leave the beach?”

“Whenever we want. We have no agenda, love. Eat when we’re hungry. Drive when we want to find a new place to hang out, sleep when we’re tired. That’s all. Just us and whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it.”

Oh, the look on her face.
Simply glorious.

We stayed for three hours, soaking up the sunshine, playing with the dog and only leaving when our stomachs started to rumble.  About ten miles down the road we found a hotel with a pool that accepted dogs, checked in and had a lovely dinner looking out at a marina full of great blue herons and beautiful sailboats.  Lola swam to her heart’s content at 9:30 that night and we woke up the next morning happy and rested.  We rented a kayak, paddled through glass-smooth waters with seals poking their heads up to greet us every few feet, spied bright orange and purple sea stars just beneath us and watched herons dive for their breakfast.  When we got hot and tired, we headed back to hang out with the dog some more.

I could bore you with the rest of the details, but let’s just say that even though we’re home now, we are still taking advantage of our ‘us’ time by doing whatever we want whenever we want to.

It rocks.

8 replies
  1. Dee
    Dee says:

    Dear Kari, what a lovely time the two of you had together and I'm so glad that's continuing now that you're home again.

    Recently I took a two-week vacation and drove to Minnesota where I used to live–for 38 years. The days were packed with visiting friends at lunches and suppers and get-togethers and with driving on the freeways to get to all these gatherings.

    When I got back home I realized that I'd never really stopped and sat by the St. Croix river in Stillwater and soaked up the beauty of the day. So I'm so glad that you and Lola did that. Peace.

    Reply

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