Hello, Atlantic. September 5, 2009

Good day today. Slept in, way in (like Michael and I having a silent contest of wills to see who will get up first while the two children entertain one another unsupervised in the next room – awesome), though the latter half of that was punctuated by various kid tending it was still nice and somewhat restful. We had a birthday party to attend for one of kidlet’s classmates so we went off to do that in the early afternoon and it went pretty well. We left around 3 pm and it was so nice outside that I proposed to Michael that we go on a little adventure – just get in the car and drive for a bit while (hopefully) Margaret got an afternoon nap rather than going home and trying in vain to get her to sleep while looking out the window at the pristine weather.

She did nap, thankfully, and we drove out to Bath where I showed kidlet Bath Iron Works. You can see a good deal of what is going on there from the road, we were able to look at a couple of ships in cross-section being worked on as well as all the cranes out over the water and a giant blue barge. He was very surprised at the size of it all, I guess one doesn’t really think about just how huge your normal everyday destroyer really is until you have to quantify its height including the dangly bit that’s below the water.

We drove over the bridge toward Woolwich, then turned down 127 toward Reid State Park. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, though we were close to there recently for Keith and Misty’s wedding in Georgetown. Beautiful drive down there. We got there around 4:30 which is perfect beach time for us, being combustible and all. The only bummer were there were A LOT of mosquitoes in any shady areas, which meant the bathhouse and the restrooms. Eugh.

We let the kids run around the beach and Mim decided throwing sand in the air was the best thing ever. She only ate a small amount and I pulled the stick out of my ass a little bit so it didn’t bother the hell out of me to see her getting so wet and sandy. They are at the beach, they’re supposed to be wet and sandy, I kept telling myself. Kidlet ended up getting himself drenched from the waist down. Oh well. At least I remembered their sandals. The nice thing about going to the beach is that there’s almost always a haze in the air which gets into your airway and cleans everything out – within minutes Mim’s nose was running like crazy and all of us were sneezing and sniffling, purging all the junk. It’s a nice perk along with the sand and the seaweed and stuff.

There was a little group of sand pipers dashing from the waves and then chasing them back out, searching the surf for food. They were really adorable and we were able to get pretty close to get a good look at them. There were also lots of tide pools to splash around in and some very cool driftwood structures people had built up on the beach. They looked like an ongoing community project, one of them was particularly large. The weather was sublime. I definitely, definitely have to bring Joy here the next time she comes to Maine. Spectacular. I tried to get some pictures of the waves splashing for her but wasn’t able to get too close with a daredevil toddler trying to swim to England.

I am so thankful that we live in a coastal state and that it’s easy enough to pick a road heading generally eastward and within an hour be looking at the Atlantic. I think we take it for granted a lot, so I try to prod us in that direction whenever I can. Just visiting for an hour or two always energizes me, the ocean is such a powerful thing, awe-inspiring and vast.

Not too many nice days like this left, the trees are already starting to turn so I know those days are numbered. Before we know it we’ll be ass-deep in snow again so we need to enjoy this while we can.