Goodbye summer

Today I washed and put away the beach towels for the final time this season. See you next year, you denizens of sunshine.

Category: things that only happen to Christine

We have an unspoken arrangement that I’m not to go to the ocean without Matthew. We go to the free beach, Vilano, which also happens to be the surf beach. I am no match for the waves. Numerous times Matthew has dragged me up by the arms as I lay fighting in six inches of water.

Today, nothing could motivate me. Not even the second cup of coffee. So many things to do, yet I couldn’t do them. I decided that the only thing that could motivate me was the ocean. But Matthew wasn’t at home.

I felt a surge of adrenaline as I pulled on my bathing costume, knowing I was doing something wicked (me, the naughty gnome, ineffectual but giddy). “This is just what I need,” I thought.

I got in the car wearing only my swimsuit—no cover-up for today’s foray—and I looked up to see a spider. It was the size of a dime, total, but its body was disproportionately large to its legs. The spider was black with yellow or green stripes—I couldn’t quite tell. I looked around for one of my half-used tissues, deciding to kill it. I jabbed, it jumped. I poked, it scurried. The spider moved much faster that the initial languorous pose I found it relaxing in.

Shocking me, the spider fell from the roof of the car and landed in my lap. I jabbed again. It dodged and landed on the floor, but I felt searing pain on my thigh. The spider bit me! Sitting in my car, a tiny black spider bit my leg. I don’t blame it. If someone were trying to jab me with a half-used tissue, I’d bite too, but it hurt quite a bit.

I drove to Vilano anyway, all of this having happened in our home parking spot, but the bite didn’t quit stinging. The ocean fixes everything, so I figured my little wade would solve the problem. It did not.

The bite now looks like a mosquito sting with a red ring about it, and it still burns. I’m trying to decide if I’m going into anaphylactic shock (something I’m fortunately familiar with the symptoms of from my allergy to chicken), and I’m trying to decide what a neurotoxin would feel like. Would I know to call 911?

I’m at home. I can’t find the spider picture on the web (har har), but Matthew read me some of the physical symptoms I should look out for. But, still, a spider bite in the car in the driveway? Come on. It sounds like some sort of put-on, but, no, this falls under the category of Things that Happen to Christine. I should be a Jeopardy column of questions. “On September 1, what poisonous encounter did Christine Wy experience?” Answer: ferocious mystery spider attack.

Turbulent on a quiet sea

Originally written last week on a date I could possibly count backward to.

Wednesday morning, I tried desperately to think of a word when writing an e-mail to a friend. The perfect word, I could describe the word to you in paragraphs and talk about feelings and emotions this one word stirred. But not the word; I couldn’t think it at all.

A Germanic root word, two words put together. Archaic grammatical structure. Uncommon in contemporary usage. Nautical. But the word. What was the word?

Tonight: “Matthew, will you bring me the new William Gibson novel?” Of course he did. I married some crazy angel who thinks I’m ginchy.

I began Pattern Recognition, knowing I’d be in for the best read I’ve had in a while, but Gibson stopped me cold by page ten. He used the word. The word. In a sentence. In a paragraph. In a book. Did this mean I couldn’t use the word now because I’d be ripping off Gibson? Did Gibson own the word by his right of having gotten to it first?

“No,” I finally persuaded myself. Gibson can write as masterfully as he chooses, but no one owns each individual word. I can use it too. So, deep breath, here it is … becalmed.

We’ve been in St. Augustine a year now. My career path didn’t exactly trip lightly through the sun-dappled forest like I had imagined it would once I arrived here, and it’s taken me that year to find a groove, and discover new areas of my life that can be stimulating outside of work. In that year was the heartache of the never-ending broken leg, but then hoola hooping through the pain, and starting make hoola hoops for others filled a niche in my heart that had been aching.

In still better news, I was offered a chance at leg redemption through surgery. I jumped on one leg at the chance to get repaired at long last. But then the leaking. All that synovial fluid that just didn’t want to stop, remember that? All hope felt lost. The synovial fluid quit leaking, and I was given the go-ahead to hoop my heart out since it was great physical therapy and would help my recovery. Excellent!

News improved even more. My hoops caught the college intramural director’s eye, and he saw possibility. He wanted me to do a hoop dance demo to raise interest and for me to teach students hoop dance basics. Not only would I get paid to do something I’ve been giving out for free at the farmer’s market, but I’d be given the chance to offer hoops for sale to students. My heart’s hobby looked like it might be sprouting golden fleece to reward my days of tedium.

Now, I am a sailor, becalmed.

“Becalm.” Almost seems like such a lovely, fetching word. “Calm.” Sounds like “palm.” Which makes me think of “palm trees.” “Calm palm trees” sounds like a meditative place of perfection formed in one’s mind in utter peace. “Becalm” nautically means the palm trees are a little too calm. It means one’s boat is trapped—hopefully temporarily—by some uncontrollable sea force that has stopped one’s progress.

I am becalmed. The intramural director brought so much more hope into my creeping little life, and I could just see the good work I’d be doing and the happy place from within myself where it would grow. I made detailed lesson plans. I put together hoop dance workout music sets for different phases in the workout and for different sessions. I made fifteen hoola hoops from scratch with only a scant prayer that they return on their investment—all for this beacon. I was willing to give it my all, and I have been doing so.

I mentioned the hoop dance demonstration. I haven’t really hooped in a year, not since breaking my leg. Getting back up with the hoop and expecting my body to remember how to move was apparently more than I should have asked for. I’ve had to gradually rekindle the body memory of each new old move, syncopated, and coax them into transitions enough to consider dance. So I took my bag of the few moves I had time to pick back up, mixed them up, added some good music, and I’ve been rehearsing for my big hoop demo ever since learning about it a month ago.

“Go ahead,” more than one doctor said, “there’s nothing you can do to hurt your leg at this point.”

They were wrong. Tonight I started leaking synovial fluid again. Six days from my big campus debut, and I’m leaking. Again. I am, truly, becalmed.

I feel like a twitchy sailor trapped in an unreal bubble of inaction. What is the ocean but action? Yet, when becalmed, the sea becomes a glassine place where no one can act because of nature’s lethargy, all while you know that just outside that entrapped dome life zooms on. I feel angry, resentful, restless—anything that makes you want to lean overboard and just scream at the top of your lungs at the sea. No words, just primeval screaming at the height of human frustration.

Finding my sea voyage at last, I am becalmed. “Becalm” itself may be the perfect word. “Be calm.” Isn’t that what you say when the theatre catches fire?

You didn't even know I was away

My dad instilled in me a deep paranoia about ever letting anyone know when I was going out of town. Surely, he was convinced, some miscreant would take advantage of the knowledge and rob my home of my crockpot and espresso machine.

I was away, and I didn't tell you, internets, because some cyber criminal looking for blog posts on vacations might have taken my stash of yarn and collection of dollar vases from Ikea. Or my favorite couch pillow. God bless me if they took my favorite couch pillow.

Lovely husband and I were in North Carolina for his cousin's wedding. We were south of the Outer Banks and north of Cape Fear, somewhere called Top Sail. Which is funny because there was visibly a huge sandbar that makes sailing in the area pretty much impossible.

I'm glad I survived the vacation. Matthew's parents rented a huge condo and the ENTIRE Wy family of in-laws and babies and sisters and sister's friend stayed together in one house. Everyone was on their best behavior (except when inebriated), and the whole trip went much more smoothly than I would have imagined. It's a compliment to my mother-in-law that she pulled everything together and it went so well.

The wedding was odd in that the etiquette of the bride and her family didn't jibe with the way I was raised. I was constantly surprised by her sudden departures from parties thrown in her honor. Really, she's a lovely girl, and I like her a lot for someone I barely know, but I couldn't wrap my Southern Trained Brain around some of her behavior. I told myself, "Everyone's different. She can do it her way," but that only helped a little.

I took more than 200 pictures, and the ones shot on film I can't wait to develop. Once I weed out the loser photos, gobs will be going up on my Flickr account. As you know, internets, I am incredibly lazy, so don't expect the photos quickly. Maybe a few of me hula hooping in the ocean will go up soon, but some of the wedding photos need to be Photoshopped to correct for bad exposure (It was my fault for not getting the aperture right on the first few photos).

Team Wy is back. Some of us slightly sunburned, both of us very tired, and the dog thrilled to be reunited with the loves of her life.

Now we just need groceries.

A few notes

More Southern clichés that ensure Northerners think everyone’s bonkers down here… I am reading a history of St. Augustine. On page two of the preface, the author referred to “The War Between the States.” Now please, this book was written in 1987, not 1887. I’m hoping it was the author’s concession to the private archival collection he pulled his material from, but I am wary that he might really think that the Civil War was “The War Between the States.” He’s considered THE historian of this part of Florida, which means he holds great influence, which means other people think it’s OK to say “The War Between the States.” I guess really it might be OK to say that about the Civil War, but it makes the South seem so much more backward than it really is.

I have a new Florida friend. She’s Cuban, which is kind of ironic, I think, because we’re nowhere near Miami, and she came here legitimately for marriage, not political asylum. But she’s a real doll, and I’m glad she’s in my life. She’s a crafty lady too, like I used to be, and she may be inspiring me to get back into my hobbies instead of ignoring them. I finally found a hula hoop design that I like to make, that has the right weight and the right size and the right texture. I think I want to make her one as a gift. I only have a couple of colors that I really like though, so that makes it harder to show her some mad skills. We’ll see though. It’s OK if we’re hoop twinkies I guess.

I have also conceded to the dog/catnip debacle. I can’t control the dog’s access to common areas, therefore the cat should only have catnip in his bedroom. It makes me kind of sad because I can’t get to watch the cat get all bonkers on ecstasy, but at least he has the fun without being chased off by the dog.

I think that’s all the new news. Nothing out of this world to report from St. Augustine, just the regular new rhythms of life in Florida. No beach time this week, no time, but next week the in-laws come to visit, so I foresee a beach trip or two.

Love you, reader(s).

I heart you ocean, rogue waves and all

I have fresh ink, you know, new tattoos, which means I’m not supposed to get them wet to prevent infection. But it had been so long since a Team Wy trip to the Atlantic, I just demanded. “I want to go to the ocean,” I told Matthew.

“But you can’t get your tattoos wet.”

“Just a little ocean, please?”

And he knew what I meant, that I just wanted to wade a bit and kick around in the surf, so he agreed. With one codicil: he had work to do, and wasn’t free to go until three pm. Boo. I like to go earlier in the day so that we risk less sunburn. But, three or nothing, and I accepted three.

We arrived to discover that three pm is high tide. Who knew? I’m used to Lake Michigan where the water is psycho cold but the little wave-lets and nonexistent tides are predictable. High tide meant that instead of the gentle, sloping, sandy beach we were used to in St. Augustine, we were confined to a small strip of broken shell detritus for a shore. The shell grit hurt to walk on, but we got used to it pretty quickly.

We’ve also had four days of non-stop rain that dumped nine inches of water on St. Augustine. Let’s do ocean math: high tide plus four storm days equals rough surf. So much for the easy-breezy ocean romp! We waded up to our feet and got splashed up to our thighs with huge choppy waves. Even at so shallow a wading distance, I actually got knocked down by powerful blasts twice, dragged across the gritty shell-covered shore. Both times, I made Matthew reach down to grip my arm and drag me up to standing before I was swept out to sea. Matthew said, “We won’t go any deeper; this is the kind of surf that people go into and get lost.”

As we stood in the surf, a middle-aged woman wearing a religious t-shirt and carrying a Miller High Life tall boy stumbled our way. I don’t know why she was following her particular trajectory, except that she was drunk and seemed to be following the edge of the wave line, but she made her bumbling way straight toward us. Without my glasses, I didn’t realize how ominous she really looked until she was about five feet from us, and still she kept weaving directly our way, not veering off to give us space. Just as she reached a two foot distance, a large wave blasted in and knocked her unsteady feet. As she fell, she nearly reached out to grab us to stop her stumble. Not wanting to be pulled down by drunk, rambling strangers, we were pretty freaked out by the incident, and gladly watched her regain her balance and stumble along further down the beach. We wondered mostly where she got that t-shirt and if god protected drunk women on the beach.

A young woman watching two small children—we assumed her to be a nanny—played high up from the water, the older child dashing into the bubbly reach of the waves, and putting sand in buckets to dump it out back on the shore. Another large wave crashed in, and I saw the older child’s orange bucket get swept away as the nanny ran to grab him. I said to Matthew, “Oh, that poor kid just lost his bucket.” We both strained to see if we could find it in the waves. I kept telling Matthew, “It’s gone, the waves took it,” and he replied, “The sea giveth, and the sea taketh away.” So biblically appropriate.

Amazingly, after giving up, we saw the orange bucket bob up to the surface and get stuck in a trough where the incoming and outgoing waves met. Matthew declared, “I’m going to get that bucket.” I asked him not to, told him it only cost 99 cents, but he insisted on saving the child’s day. I watched in horror as he waded out into the strong waves, making little forward progress toward the floating bucket. I knew this was the chance for the ocean to knock him down and sweep him away. As he ducked under for each wave, I waited desperately for him to pop back up. Somehow he managed to defeat the Atlantic each time, but he struggled to get to the bucket, merely a few feet away from it, but impossible to reach it in the wave convergence. I kept thinking of what he said: “This is the kind of surf that people go into and get lost.”

Finally he caught the orange pail, and then he began the epic struggle back to shore. I watched, again my stomach in knots, as he fought the waves to make it back to the beach. I thought both concerned and selfish things. “What if he goes down. There’s no lifeguard, no one to save him?” And: “What if I get knocked over by a wave again? Who will pull me back up?” But he magically made it back to the nanny and the two children. I was so worried when he finally got back to me, that I forgot to ask if they thanked him. They didn’t look very thankful, but I was too far away to know for sure.

And thus our strangest ocean adventure yet. When we came out to dry off, we were both covered in tiny fragments of shell. I showered at home, and had to use a loofah to scrub all the little sharp pieces out of my skin they were embedded so stubbornly. Clean and tired, I collapsed on the couch, grateful to have my little ocean, though it turned out to be so big.

Ocean 6, Christine 1

Friday has become our de facto ocean day in St. Augustine. That is, up until we start our full-timeschedules. I’ll probably still have Fridays off, but I’m not ready to go by myself. I want someone to notice if I go missing, you know?

Our first trip to Vilano Beach was perfect. The waves were calm and we were able to wade out to our shoulders and only get splashed by waves occasionally. The water was bath water warm, there was a gentle cooling breeze, and everything just fit together snuggly. We were in love.

Our second trip to Vilano was not smooth. It turned out to be a big wave day, and all the surfers were out en masse. A guy with a surf board walked by me, and I asked, “How did you know it would be a big wave day?” His answer: “I’ve been doing this forty years.” Hmm, good answer, but not very useful to me.

On the second trip, we (I) only waded up to my knees, technically, but the waves were so huge that even at that depth I got covered up to my shoulders. Usually. Sometimes the waves came in so huge that I really got dunked, even so close to the shore like that. I kept score of the waves, hence this post’s title. Six times the ocean knocked me down, and once I withstood the ocean’s wave attack.

Each time I got knocked down, I’d get pushed to a sitting position and pushed toward the shore. This meant my bottom was being dragged across the sandy bottom, and my swim trunks would fill with sand. The trick here is that since I was wading so shallow, I’d have to go in deeper to try and get the sand out of my trunks. Going deeper exposed me to more waves. Exposure to more waves tended to knock me over, thus the dilemma of the cycle.

We managed to have fun anyway, and Matthew seems to really enjoy body surfing in the big swells, so it was far from a bust. What ended up happening to me, though, was that my knees got really sore from constantly being pushed by the strong water. I had to give up on the ocean dip once I realized I was hurting myself—no, wait, once I realized the ocean was hurting me.

We went to the shore to lay out and dry off. We forgot sunblock. And, so, Team Wy earned their first St. Augustine sunburns. Aww. Matthew’s hurts worse than mine, so I guess I’m lucky that way.