My New Friend Flounder

Walking along the beach in the Outer banks, the shell pickings are pretty slim.  The surf is just too rough, and a whole clam shell can seem like a prize.  While running on the beach, a mostly intact conch shell appeared before me, but before I could grab it, a wave took it away.  The next wave set it between my feet, so I considered it a gift from the ocean.  It was the best shell I saw on the beach all week.

On another walk, I came upon this guy:

 A flounder lying in the tide line.  When I leaned over I could see his he was alive, his mouth moved and his side rose and fell.  I slipped my hand under him to pick him up but he flipped away from me.  So I slipped both hands under him to propel him to the incoming wave.  Success!

Nope.  He was back on the sand in front of me.  This time when I picked him up he didn't offer resistance. I flung him into the wave, and back he came again.  Hmmm, maybe he just wants to die.

But, I thought, wouldn't he rather die in the water instead of gasping for breath on land?   "Sorry Buddy, you are just too cute not to take your picture."  I took his photo as he stared at me with his two green eyes, moving his fish lips.  Then I lifted him, waded into the water and flung him past the surf.  He didn't return.

Success! What a good deed, I congratulated myself as I walked back down the beach.  But then, feelings of self doubt came over me. Maybe he was an enchanted human that was turned into a fish and his last wish was to die on dry land. Maybe I had just screwed everything up.  Maybe I had just lost my chance to be granted three wishes.

"Maybe you were supposed to kiss him," my friend Jon said.

Beach Vacation

Bill's first pyramid of the week

We've been vacationing on the outer banks for the past week.  We've done this for the past 20 odd years give or take a few missed summers.  Some years we have stayed in different houses but we have a few favorites.  This year we went back to an old favorite which was available again after having lost our dibs on it years ago.  We were afraid we would be disappointed, but we were pretty happy.  The one exception was that there was no internet.

Now we can remember years ago when we would say we could solve everything with a computer but that had seemed ludicrous because computers were cumbersome anchored things.   Then the first year I had a laptop I brought it along and I've always vacationed with my computer ever since, and internet access was a given.

So now a week without internet.  Some nights I could sit on different corners of the deck with the wind whipping my hair in front of my eyes and pick up some access.  My son would drive down to the wi-fi coffee shop, but I didn't care enough to do that.  It's kind of like a vacation without TV; it's really a blessing.  Really I was able to pick up a signal on my smart phone so I could read m e-mail and that's about all I needed.  I read a lot, sketched, had awesome patterned coloring sheets I got most of us hooked on, biked, swam, ran and played some bannanagrams.  It was great.