laaa dee dah!

summer time is here! spent last week at the beach among a couple friends for a couple days and then just with william for the rest of the week. there was plenty of doing nothing, though we did manage to make ourselves run a few times to work off the ridiculous amounts of food we ate. i also had plenty of time sitting on the beach, staring and staring at the ocean and reading dumb magazines and great books. you know how being from SC we all know that pat conroy is a great writer. most of us know this even if we haven't actually read any of his stuff. until this past week, i was one of those people. i've heard the guy speak a handful of times and i have read his cookbook, but i was a loser about reading his stuff. i don't know that i would have appreciated it before now anyway. so i read beach music and am quickly now about to devour everything else he has written. i love stuff that's set in the south and especially when someone can actually capture the part of the south that is beautiful and not dwell on the part that isn't so beautiful. he definitely can do this.

in other news there was major drama on the beach this year. in the past there has been the occassional situation of the beached jellies, the cannonball ones or something, the kind that won't hurt you. anybody else remember that a few years ago? you'd go to the beach and have to dodge the little guys because they were everywhere you tried to throw out your towel. well this year was the year of the ray. at first we thought sting ray, which meant that i wasn't getting anywhere near the rocky sea. but then after a little research discovered these were cow-nosed rays, not to be confused with caboose rays, which is something that is totally fabricated and made up by rob. so for days i watched little kids run around on the beach being completely misinformed, which often becomes little kids, yelling, "I saw 37 sting rays just now!" or "I just touched one of the sting rays." now obvoiously these aren't sting rays or one of those kids would have been regretting the whole touching of the sting ray. let us remember steve irwin. perhaps his daugter could enlighten us on the nature of the cow-nosed ray, who knows. even though these rays were as harmless as a caboose, i still was a bit wary. i know the sea is for the sea life, but i just don't like seeing the creatureyness of it all i guess. there was one little girl who captured my feelings. she was coming in from serious boogie boarding, stopped dead in her splashy tracks and let out a shriek like any 8 year old girl can do. a few dads, none of which were hers, went running for her thinking, "drowing child" or "shark attack" even though she was just standing in the ocean. this kid had just seen the rays go swimming by her little legs, so she stopped dead in her tracks and did what any fine girl would do, be completely still and scream at the top of her lungs, the high pitched scream i might add. even though she was a mess, i thought it was super cute. that'd of been me at age 8 too.