back from staycation

It's been a while since I've written here. As I've explained, I've been on a staycation. Staycation officially ended Monday evening. Yesterday daughters and I took a ride to Cape May. We took younger daughter's car...a Honda Fit...because it gets fabulous mileage. Lots of young guys checking out the vehicle as we zoomed past them on the Garden State Parkway. The weather was terrific. The beach was only slightly populated, mostly with high school kids and toddlers with young parents. The water was COLD! I did put my toes in but they fell off! (not really...but pretty close!) Not many people were in the water.

Now that we are all older, we travel very light to the beach. We each have those folding chairs with hoods on them. We have a small cooler for snacks and a small jug for iced tea. One tote bag that you carry yourself. Mine had some magazines, a book, my camera, my wallet, my cell, my keys. I was a gorgeous day. We got there around eleven, grabbed our stuff, bought our tag ($4 a day now!) and walked to the waters edge where we plopped ourselves down for some serious down time.

I did walk down the beach once to use the restroom. That was my exercise for the day. And then I sat and alternately watched the little ones, read a magazine, or stared at the water. Dolphins swam by every now and then. Just a lovely day.

On the way home, instead of buying fudge (like we always used to), we stopped and bought blueberries and strawberries (and a cantaloupe...but not local). Came home and made a charcoal fire to cook up some delicious steaks for dinner. God bless my daughters for setting the table before we left for the day. Added some butter braised asparagus and some sauteed summer squash and a nice salad of sliced tomato and slice fresh mozzarella cheese (with some of my fresh basil snipped on top.


I took a picture of my feet and my view. Sit back. Relax. (By the way....how did we ever live without sun block? I can remember my high school girlfriends slatherting themselves with baby oil and frying themselves. I mean I'm all for taking care...youngest daughter and husband do not tan...they burn ...so as soon as sunblock was invented I bought it and used it on the kids. Yesterday we used SPF50...I just saw a commercial for SPF70...have to get some). Because of the use of sunblock...no one got a sunburn. There were some on the beach who were going to be miserable when the sun went down. I don't like the feel of sunblock. And it does give me little red spots just when I have it on. Today...I have a nice healthy glow to my face. I guess all this new stuff is great...sunblock...thawing meat in the refrigerator...fruit and vegetable wash...germ killers...but I'd like to know how so many of use managed to survive our dangerous childhoods. It's a mystery.

Today I'm home alone. It's very quiet in the house. I had my salad for lunch. Dinner is salmon filet. And I don't know what else. Working on it.

I spent much of the staycation working on my novel. It's almost done. I'm going to it now. Here I go..........