Crocodile DG: Entry 526: Post-Vacation Wrap-Up

Back from our trip to OBX. It was a nice vacation -- a day too long, but still nice. (One of my life axiom: Everything is too long.) I was burnt out and literal burnt by Wednesday morning, but we had the cottage until Thursday. (I wasn't that burnt, by the way -- I go heavy on the sunscreen -- but sometimes you miss a few spots.) The thing is, I would have been fine staying at the beach one more day without kids, I would have preferred it, actually. With kids though... It's fun, but exhausting. I have to be on high alert anytime one of my boys steps foot near the water, and then they always want me to take them in and play in the waves with them. And the waves where we were can get brutal. There were a few times they literally flipped me head-over-heels. Imagine what they would do to two kids under 60 pounds. We put Lil' S2 in a life vest, but not Lil' S1. He can swim, but he's only 8 (and as I've mentioned before, he's the least confidence-inspiring swimmer I've ever seen; he's actually pretty good at staying afloat, but you'd be forgiven for thinking like he's struggling to reach the side). I made him hold my hand or stay very close to me anytime we got further than ankle deep waters.

Thankfully, they will also get distracted for long stretches and play in the sand, and then I can just zone out and bask in the sun. It felt good. We were right on the beach, so you didn't need to bring anything other than the essentials. I wore nothing other than trunks, shades, and a hat. Then we set up a canopy and some chairs and that was it. No phone, no headphones, nothing to read. Just sitting on the beach watching the waves. It was as relaxing as anything could be in 2020. The bad stuff was still there in my brain -- Covid, police brutality, our idiot president -- but I could at least compartmentalize it and enjoy the moment.

Speaking of Covid, I think we did a good job being safe. We only went inside a public place two or three times and literally everybody was wearing masks. (A quick aside: Mask mandates work. The "there's no real way to enforce them" argument might be technically true, but it's a total cop out. If you put things into law and get businesses and most people onboard, then the vast majority of other people follow suit, if begrudgingly, because they don't want to get hassled.) Then outside, on the beach or about town, it's extremely easy to stay distanced. I don't think anybody came within ten feet of us the entire time we were there.

Unfortunately, the disease is going to persist, however, because of people like the ones who rented the house down the street from our cottage. They were having a family reunion (as evidenced by a giant sign that read "Family Reunion 2020"), and they had at least fifty people all packed together, with cars in the drive way from all over the East Coast. And they certainly did not strike me as the type to test and quarantine before they came. They had a massive "Don't Tread On Me" flag hanging behind their bar. (They had a bar and a pool in their backyard, which was right on the beach below this little bridge across the dunes, so you could see everything they had going on.) They sounded like Long Islanders -- like, if you hear interviews with New Yorkers who love Trump, that's how they came off to me. They were so obnoxious -- ridiculously loud and inconsiderate. They has massive, wedding-DJ-size speakers that they bumped them so loudly you could hear them from our cottage which was at least 100 yards away and in the opposite direction they were facing. They were playing such trite, repetitive music too. I think they had "In Da Club" on repeat at one point, and then they would all sing along to "Bohemian Rhapsody," like, five times a day. I was so annoyed one night, I went for a walk down the beach by myself, just to get away from the noise. It turned out to be a good walk, though, because I got to see hundreds of these cool crabs scurry away as I got close to them (we took Lil' S1 to see them the next night), and even better, when I was walking back across the bridge, I heard one of my "friends" in that house announce that they just got shut down by the police and everybody there was all pissed. ("I guess nobawdy is allowed to have fun in dis place.") It was a magnificent moment of schadenfreude, and then they kept it down the rest of the trip.

Here are some other highlights.

We celebrated Lil' S1's eighth birthday, by taking him kite flying, and then having pizza and sundaes at the cottage.
We visited Kitty Hawk, which is pretty cool, even though the indoor portion of the museum is closed due to coronavirus.
S locked herself and the kids out of the cottage, and her phone in the cottage, within our first hour of being there, while I was at the grocery store. It was 9:30 at night, so she had to ask the bros across the way to borrow a phone to check her email to get the code again. (Said bros were extremely friendly and obliging.)
She tried to blame the above incident on me, because she said I'm so anal about keeping the doors closed to keep bugs out that I got in her head about it. It's true that I am anal about this -- for good reason, I say, what's more annoying than flies and mosquitoes in your house? -- but I accept no responsibility. You cannot blame locking yourself out on somebody who was not there. You just can't, sorry.
We drank nearly two cases of Lacroix water in the six days we were there, and I was the only one really drinking it. I would say I averaged six a day. By contrast, I had two beers, total. This pretty much sums up my drinking habits these days.
S's sister Sw joined us the last few days at the cottage and now she's staying with us here in DC for a bit. I think she was going a bit stir crazy by herself in her condo in Atlanta. It should be fun to have her here.

Okay, a few pics, and then that's a wrap.