a crab yard is born
well i'm home now and back to work. but let's talk more about my vacation.
sarah had this fantastic idea that we should go to sydney spit on tuesday. so toast was eaten, maybe by me, maybe by someone else. but know there was toast and it was eaten. also sarah went to the gym and did butt curls. this also happened. also huxley came into my room in the morning and was his super cute self.
but eventually i jimmied my on my bathing suit and shoved my clothes over top, grabbed my camera and some sunscreen, my beach cover and a turkish towel--i was set. sarah and kyle did other things. i'd like to be really specific about this, that's why i said that. anyways we all climbed in to the luxory van of sarah and kyle's possession, and we drove forth to sydney.
sloan didn't come because he was still with ann in nanaimo-harbour-city. but adriel and huxley did come. you have to take a ferry to sydney spit and we were cutting it close on time and this is when kyle out of the blue decides to drive like a normal, well regulated, patient, hohum, lah-dee-daw, my life is on the speed of auto pilot, hi how are you, i'm fine, so watchoo up to these days, kind of pace instead of his usual, vroom vroom, lurch your heart into your throat and keep it there while i race this teenager and cut around this annoying slowsmobile and charge towards the finish line at full speed kind of pace. in short he was driving in van mode not sports car mode and it showed. but he no admit this. he ashamed of his van persona. in any case we arrived at the little ferry that would take us to sydney spit and sarah, adriel, the hux and i all spilled out onto the curb with all the bags, lawn chairs, coolers and board games that we could carry. kyle put putted on to park the van like a van driver would and we went to the little booth and bought the tickets.
the tickets looked like lamenated bookmarks. huxley was quite excited by the largeness of their size. "these are huuuuuuge!" he said to me quite joyfully. when kyle joined us he asked where the camel cup game was. "oh i was carrying it...and i left it by the ticket counter." i said spotting it resting there as i said it. by the time i retreived it and went back to adriel who was trying to pinch my arm and failing because i have an almost unpinchable arm. i wasn't about to tell him, oh adriel, try the inner upward flubs, was i? sarah and kyle had just wandered off to look at a little kinda place that had little kinda things in it of i don't know what because i did not follow them, and just then they opened the gate to the ramp that led to the dock that led to the tiny ferry to sydney spit. so we went down and boarded and found ourselves some seats. i was sitting with the hux and adriel and sarah and kyle sat behind. we took some selfies. sarah said that huxley said "i hope the boat doesn't go too fast." that may have been on the way there or the way back, i don't know. but she said that he said it is the point
it was a 25 minute ride. and then we were there. an island that stretched way out into a long long long sandbar. the water was still and glassy on the side we arrived on and many sailboats dotted the sea in front. soon we were tromping down the sand looking for our spot. kyle and adriel stopped too soon and we scoffed at them and kicked sand in their faces. but actually i was too far away to do that because i was keepin it real in the rear and just a dot in the distance. when i finally caught up to them at the new spot sarah and kyle were kickin it in their beach lawn chairs that had coolers built in and back pack straps on the back. i set up on a near by short log and made a place for myself. but first i took a few steps towards the other side of the spit and watched some herons who were stalking fish in the shallows there.
i am pretty sure that adriel and huxley and i did not waste much time before we took a dip. the water was silky in texture but fire in the form of ice in temperature. we yipped and squealed and dunked our bodies and gasped for breath. our senses were shocked but also so tinglingly, vibratingly alive--buzzing with life and the joy of the moment. also blood was leaving our extremities to keep our organs alive. adriel and i played a game where we saw something on the ocean floor and stood equal distances from it and then dove for it. i won every time, which i think was a total of 3 lol. we walked down the beach a ways, water chest deep, stopping when we thought we saw something to dive for. adriel was on higher ground than me and said "i'm taller than you.", as he walked with his arms chicken folded to his sides above the water level. i laughed at the sight. huxley scampered and splashed along with us at a shallower level. he pointed out huge shell in the water for me. i picked it up. it was white and beautiful with blue spots and ivory barnacles on it's back. i loved it. then on the walk back i accidentally broke a hole in it. still i could not let it go.
back at our spot i piled my collected shells near my shorty log and sat dripping a while with my turkish towel. adriel plonked down on their family beach blanket and we joined sarah and kyle who were kickin it in style, munching on chips, veggies and dips. adriel passed me some chip handfuls but not without doing 'dropsies' which is the name i gave a chip dropped in the sand, and a word which everyone adopted. and verily a grieved pile of sandy dropsies developed, rued by all. i donned my beach cover up and lay my towel in front of sarah and kyle and demanded a game of camel cup. and so we played. as kyle was setting up the game i showed him a flattish grey rock. "hey, don't put that--" , plunk! it landed inside the pyramid with the coloured dice. smug smile on my face transmitted to exasperated eye roll of kyle. our ancient chocolate almond/camel cup war continued. however as we played the flattishness of the rock blocked the hole for all the dice and it was sarah who fished it out and chucked it. never mind. when one has no chocolate almond one does what one can and it is the principle of the thing that matters.
it was while laying there on my towel that we began to discover tiny little bleached crab bodies and began to collect them. it was then that the crab yard was born. we would rake the sand and find tiny bodies or tiny claws and offerings were made to the crab yard, and offerings were accepted. there was a tiny crisis when the hux kicked sand all over my towel. how was i to shake the sand off without loosing the tiny crabs and crab parts?? sarah offered the solution in the form of a pinky shell to hold the crab yard in and crisis was averted.
adriel dug a hole in the sand and buried himself. sarah and i helped finish him off by doing his arms. yeah, i got sand on his face, specifically, eyelids.. and then while trying to get it off got more on his face, which caused him to break his hands free and rub his eyes with his sandy hands, which just did not go well. but some how that was all taken care of and sarah got some boomerangs of him escaping his sand cave. huxley meanwhile dug himself a hole which he rested in like a lazy boy chair, feet up. sarah got a super cute boomerang of him wiggling his toes in delight and later i got a little clip of him piling sand on his tummy. how can he be so so so cute. and why do we want to bite cute things?
we all chose which boat would be ours. sarah chose a yacht as is her right. i chose a sail boat with a black bottom and kyle chose one beside it. we couldn't read their names so adriel and i decided to swim out to them and find the names. adriel it appears, does not get tired when swimming and the cold water doesn't bother him that much. he seems to have a whiff of laura in him. "adriel is the laura of my family and i'm glad you have each other", said sarah to me some days later on this very subject....wait. i don't remember if it was our first dip or our second dip but i think it might have been our first dip, sarah and kyle decided to sprint out to me and around me and back as a quick exhilarating heart thumping crashing dip of their own, so that happened and don't forget that it happened. back to adriel and i, we swam out to my sail boat but adriel requested we swim around back because he gets freaky deaky about the chains in water, such as the one attached to an anchor or buoy...so i was like shrug, ok. on the back side we found my boat's name, "princess tian". legit name. then we swam toward's kyle's boat and found it was named "assafrass" back on shore we laughed a lot about kyle's boat's name. suddenly he was all "oh i meant that other boat." no. the time fer pickin is OVER, kyle. assifrass is yers. don't make ruth meyers steal yer upper lip.
we made a sandwiches without sand which is quite a feat. after eating said sangies.... "geeze kyle a sangie is a sandwich!" errupted sarah jokingly when he did not get my sangie terminology, we decided to walk down to the end of the spit. to the lighthouse. as we walked we found the spit was literally thick with crab bodies, large and small. a veritable life size crab yard. i found a huge claw that seemed like it was turning to stone. everyone kept bringing me crab yard offerings that it became too much to carry and after a while i had to sacrifice most of it. we made it almost to the end and that was enough. so we turned back, huxley spent the walk back running along the shore, diving in the water on his stomach or on his hux-buns and yelling for us to look. we made it back just in time to pack up and make our way back to the dock and catch the last ferry back.
but we were not done having fun. we picked up korean chicken on the way home. the very chicken i've been waiting since christmas to try. we ate it while watching the rest of race, the movie about jesse owens, the famous olympic athlete in track and field who won 4 golds at the berlin olympics in the 1936. i womansplained the title to kyle, "you see it's called race because, he's a runner, and ALSO because it's all about race, being a black athlete going to the nazi run olympics etc" he 'preshiated my explanations. sarah was cuddling with the hux while they watched. she said he pointed to jesse's dad in the film and said "he's tan like me."
of all my children, edith has been the most mixed of bags!
my arms and shoulders got a tiny bit burned. just a teensy weensy. a little rose if you will. my hair? my hair, thanks for asking, was a light and fine fluffy cloud of frizz that could sway with any breeze or puff of exhaled air across the room.
that night sarah and kyle attempted making malted milkshakes. they were quite critical. i thought it was good. it tasted like malteasers almost.
sarah had this fantastic idea that we should go to sydney spit on tuesday. so toast was eaten, maybe by me, maybe by someone else. but know there was toast and it was eaten. also sarah went to the gym and did butt curls. this also happened. also huxley came into my room in the morning and was his super cute self.
but eventually i jimmied my on my bathing suit and shoved my clothes over top, grabbed my camera and some sunscreen, my beach cover and a turkish towel--i was set. sarah and kyle did other things. i'd like to be really specific about this, that's why i said that. anyways we all climbed in to the luxory van of sarah and kyle's possession, and we drove forth to sydney.
sloan didn't come because he was still with ann in nanaimo-harbour-city. but adriel and huxley did come. you have to take a ferry to sydney spit and we were cutting it close on time and this is when kyle out of the blue decides to drive like a normal, well regulated, patient, hohum, lah-dee-daw, my life is on the speed of auto pilot, hi how are you, i'm fine, so watchoo up to these days, kind of pace instead of his usual, vroom vroom, lurch your heart into your throat and keep it there while i race this teenager and cut around this annoying slowsmobile and charge towards the finish line at full speed kind of pace. in short he was driving in van mode not sports car mode and it showed. but he no admit this. he ashamed of his van persona. in any case we arrived at the little ferry that would take us to sydney spit and sarah, adriel, the hux and i all spilled out onto the curb with all the bags, lawn chairs, coolers and board games that we could carry. kyle put putted on to park the van like a van driver would and we went to the little booth and bought the tickets.
the tickets looked like lamenated bookmarks. huxley was quite excited by the largeness of their size. "these are huuuuuuge!" he said to me quite joyfully. when kyle joined us he asked where the camel cup game was. "oh i was carrying it...and i left it by the ticket counter." i said spotting it resting there as i said it. by the time i retreived it and went back to adriel who was trying to pinch my arm and failing because i have an almost unpinchable arm. i wasn't about to tell him, oh adriel, try the inner upward flubs, was i? sarah and kyle had just wandered off to look at a little kinda place that had little kinda things in it of i don't know what because i did not follow them, and just then they opened the gate to the ramp that led to the dock that led to the tiny ferry to sydney spit. so we went down and boarded and found ourselves some seats. i was sitting with the hux and adriel and sarah and kyle sat behind. we took some selfies. sarah said that huxley said "i hope the boat doesn't go too fast." that may have been on the way there or the way back, i don't know. but she said that he said it is the point
it was a 25 minute ride. and then we were there. an island that stretched way out into a long long long sandbar. the water was still and glassy on the side we arrived on and many sailboats dotted the sea in front. soon we were tromping down the sand looking for our spot. kyle and adriel stopped too soon and we scoffed at them and kicked sand in their faces. but actually i was too far away to do that because i was keepin it real in the rear and just a dot in the distance. when i finally caught up to them at the new spot sarah and kyle were kickin it in their beach lawn chairs that had coolers built in and back pack straps on the back. i set up on a near by short log and made a place for myself. but first i took a few steps towards the other side of the spit and watched some herons who were stalking fish in the shallows there.
 |
| pascale saw this and said "kids today, always on their shell phones!" har har. he was listening for the ocean. |
back at our spot i piled my collected shells near my shorty log and sat dripping a while with my turkish towel. adriel plonked down on their family beach blanket and we joined sarah and kyle who were kickin it in style, munching on chips, veggies and dips. adriel passed me some chip handfuls but not without doing 'dropsies' which is the name i gave a chip dropped in the sand, and a word which everyone adopted. and verily a grieved pile of sandy dropsies developed, rued by all. i donned my beach cover up and lay my towel in front of sarah and kyle and demanded a game of camel cup. and so we played. as kyle was setting up the game i showed him a flattish grey rock. "hey, don't put that--" , plunk! it landed inside the pyramid with the coloured dice. smug smile on my face transmitted to exasperated eye roll of kyle. our ancient chocolate almond/camel cup war continued. however as we played the flattishness of the rock blocked the hole for all the dice and it was sarah who fished it out and chucked it. never mind. when one has no chocolate almond one does what one can and it is the principle of the thing that matters.
it was while laying there on my towel that we began to discover tiny little bleached crab bodies and began to collect them. it was then that the crab yard was born. we would rake the sand and find tiny bodies or tiny claws and offerings were made to the crab yard, and offerings were accepted. there was a tiny crisis when the hux kicked sand all over my towel. how was i to shake the sand off without loosing the tiny crabs and crab parts?? sarah offered the solution in the form of a pinky shell to hold the crab yard in and crisis was averted.
adriel dug a hole in the sand and buried himself. sarah and i helped finish him off by doing his arms. yeah, i got sand on his face, specifically, eyelids.. and then while trying to get it off got more on his face, which caused him to break his hands free and rub his eyes with his sandy hands, which just did not go well. but some how that was all taken care of and sarah got some boomerangs of him escaping his sand cave. huxley meanwhile dug himself a hole which he rested in like a lazy boy chair, feet up. sarah got a super cute boomerang of him wiggling his toes in delight and later i got a little clip of him piling sand on his tummy. how can he be so so so cute. and why do we want to bite cute things?
we all chose which boat would be ours. sarah chose a yacht as is her right. i chose a sail boat with a black bottom and kyle chose one beside it. we couldn't read their names so adriel and i decided to swim out to them and find the names. adriel it appears, does not get tired when swimming and the cold water doesn't bother him that much. he seems to have a whiff of laura in him. "adriel is the laura of my family and i'm glad you have each other", said sarah to me some days later on this very subject....wait. i don't remember if it was our first dip or our second dip but i think it might have been our first dip, sarah and kyle decided to sprint out to me and around me and back as a quick exhilarating heart thumping crashing dip of their own, so that happened and don't forget that it happened. back to adriel and i, we swam out to my sail boat but adriel requested we swim around back because he gets freaky deaky about the chains in water, such as the one attached to an anchor or buoy...so i was like shrug, ok. on the back side we found my boat's name, "princess tian". legit name. then we swam toward's kyle's boat and found it was named "assafrass" back on shore we laughed a lot about kyle's boat's name. suddenly he was all "oh i meant that other boat." no. the time fer pickin is OVER, kyle. assifrass is yers. don't make ruth meyers steal yer upper lip.
we made a sandwiches without sand which is quite a feat. after eating said sangies.... "geeze kyle a sangie is a sandwich!" errupted sarah jokingly when he did not get my sangie terminology, we decided to walk down to the end of the spit. to the lighthouse. as we walked we found the spit was literally thick with crab bodies, large and small. a veritable life size crab yard. i found a huge claw that seemed like it was turning to stone. everyone kept bringing me crab yard offerings that it became too much to carry and after a while i had to sacrifice most of it. we made it almost to the end and that was enough. so we turned back, huxley spent the walk back running along the shore, diving in the water on his stomach or on his hux-buns and yelling for us to look. we made it back just in time to pack up and make our way back to the dock and catch the last ferry back.
but we were not done having fun. we picked up korean chicken on the way home. the very chicken i've been waiting since christmas to try. we ate it while watching the rest of race, the movie about jesse owens, the famous olympic athlete in track and field who won 4 golds at the berlin olympics in the 1936. i womansplained the title to kyle, "you see it's called race because, he's a runner, and ALSO because it's all about race, being a black athlete going to the nazi run olympics etc" he 'preshiated my explanations. sarah was cuddling with the hux while they watched. she said he pointed to jesse's dad in the film and said "he's tan like me."
of all my children, edith has been the most mixed of bags!
my arms and shoulders got a tiny bit burned. just a teensy weensy. a little rose if you will. my hair? my hair, thanks for asking, was a light and fine fluffy cloud of frizz that could sway with any breeze or puff of exhaled air across the room.
that night sarah and kyle attempted making malted milkshakes. they were quite critical. i thought it was good. it tasted like malteasers almost.
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