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Look, I know it’s just a shed.

Its sole purpose is to provide a place for beach chairs and umbrellas to rest beside the garage.

And My Captain is doing one heck of a quality job on it as he builds it.  I mean, this thing will be able to withstand Category Five hurricanes…those cheap beach chairs and broken umbrellas will be SAFE, I tell you! He rocks at stability, my man.

But MY world worries less about hurricane ratings, and more about aesthetics.

Aesthetics, Man!

We’re talking something I have to look at whenever I’m out on the deck when at Pop-Pop’s cottage.

I love the deck.  I love it.

When the beach is too windy, or too buggy, or too noisy, I hang out on the deck, where I can enjoy the colors

and scents

(hello, Bee-balm!)

and gentle, more protected ocean breezes.

The birds are plentiful, the butterflies are gorgeous, and the fridge is near.  Why wouldn’t I hang out here?

But now I will have to look at this shed smack dab in the middle of Pop-pop’s garden oasis.  And even though My Captain is making it blend in with the garage as much as he can, I feel compelled to make it blend with the garden as well.

So I found these shrub roses….Mango Salsa…Get a load of that name!

How could I NOT buy those? Who could resist?  Not me, that’s who.

And with those beauties, I’m planting a lavender colored clematis, and a bright fuchsia petunias. Of course I’ll mulch the heck out of the bed I carve out around the shed, and it will take a year or two to look established, but that’s my plan, Stan.  If you can’t beat ’em, mulch ’em.

Or something like that.

Stay tuned to see my progress!

It started out like every other morning we’ve had during our summer vacation here at Pop-Pop’s beach cottage.  I got My Captain his coffee. I brought him his breakfast.  I patted him lovingly on the head, and told him I loved him, and reminded him how lucky he is to have me.

But there was something more up my sleeve today!  It was Father’s Day! Or, as we like to call it in our house, “Bonus Dad’s Day”.

We gave him his bag of presents and cards, I sat on the starfish glider across from him on the palm leaf glider.  (What?  Don’t pretend you don’t name your furniture, too!)  It started sedately enough as he reached for one of his cards, when….

Varmint had to join him….

and start messing with him.

Because nothing is easy in our house.

And if that weren’t bad enough,

Critter had to jump in to the fray.

Which, of course is predictable. “Togetherness” never took on as sinister a meaning as it does in our house.

Of course there was frolicking while My Captain tried to read his cards,

But there were also moments of sweetness…

like when he read Critter’s card.

But it was short lived, because of course the smack down had to resume and continue until the novelty of it ran out…

And My Captain could once again focus on the goodies he had tucked and hidden within his new tool box.

Happy Bonus Dad’s Day, Beloved!

I was so pleased with what I saw yesterday.

The two men in my life were being, well, manly.

And traditional.

I love it when manly and tradition crash into each other.

It’s almost as wonderful as when womanly and tradition crash into each other, only with more facial hair.

Every year since I was a little girl, DECADES ago, when we came down to Pop-pop’s cottage, someone, at some point, would be given a hammer and told to pound the nails back into the walkway up the dunes.  Pop-pop usually gave that job to one of my brothers, but occasionally he would entrust me with the sacred, rusty hammer of doom.

Because sometimes, the nails would pop up, or worse yet, the boards would rot and wittle bare tootsies do not like falling through rotten boards.  It can ruin your whole summer. I vividly recall one summer when one of my feet were punctured by a rotten nail on that boardwalk.  I spent weeks having to soak my foot in peroxide after going to the beach.  In a word, it sucked.

So when I saw My Captain working with Critter on fixing a rotten board, I was pleased, you can be sure.

It seems like every year since I married My Captain, he has replaced at least one boardwalk plank per summer.  He doesn’t ask permission.  He doesn’t try to delegate it to the people who are actually paid to do it.  He just does it. He is like this with EVERYTHING.

I sure do love that guy.

I love the fact that he is willing to take the time (and patience) to teach critter how to be a ‘get her done’ kind of guy.

I love the fact that he is willing to spend time teaching critter how to use tools.

At least I did until he went all “Calvin” of “Calvin and Hobbes.” He became The Creature, and My Captain’s drill became “The Tazer of Death.”

And that would have been cool,

except that my prized double peach lilies became his nemesis.

He’s healing just fine, thanks.

Oh, and My Captain, if you are reading this:

“HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!”

Love,

your Beloved.

It was a dark and stormy day.  The whipping wind tore at our clothing.  The ocean was violently, angrily, relentlessly turbulent.  The air held a sinister sense of foreboding.

So we decided to go swimming.

But that didn’t seem challenging enough.  So we decided to take some surfing lessons.   I mean, hell, the waves were only at 5 feet or so…..ahem.

The kids saddled up to the young men who claimed they were surf instructors.  We had to take their word for it, we didn’t know them from Adam.  What could possibly go wrong?

It’s not like we could refute anything they were saying.

The moment came.  The kids were in the violent waves with 6′ long hard, composite and foam objects bobbing precariously by their sides.

Or, more often than not, shooting into the air.

In the age-old term “Crash And Burn.”

It wasn’t pretty.  In fact, it was pretty ding-dang hard to watch.

But then….

Things started to get more stable.

And there were less full on Maytag-ing wipe-outs.

And kids started getting on their knees and crouches on the surfboards,

like they were finding their grooves.

And then, to our utter amazement, they got on their feet!

Despite the 5 foot waves, which, the instructors told us later, were NOT optimal to learn to surf in.  Thanks guys.   Way to make a mother even more uptight than she usually is.

But the long and the short of it is that now I have children who can surf in 5′ waves.   That’s pretty dang pride-inducing.

And, er, anxiety producing……

Here’s the thing, I can’t pick on him too much because he’s doing this out of love for ME.   Still, in the interest of keeping it real, I can’t let it pass.  I’ve got to call him on it.

My Captain and his best friend, Ty, are working on building a beach chair shed that My Captain designed for renters of Pop-Pop’s beach cottage to use.  So he’s spending a good portion of his vacation, well, working on it.  But that is the way My Captain rolls.  He’s got to be busy.  He’s got to be doing.  Making a difference. Sweating.  That’s just who I married.

Oh, sure, he says he’d like to just sit down with a beer and be a vegetable, but he never does it for more than a couple of hours before he finds stuff that ‘needs doing.’   And if he doesn’t find it, you can bet I will.

So here is the spot next to the garage the shed will eventually go.

And here are the guys at work building it.

But none of this is the point of this post.

The point of this post is that it is literally impossible for anyone to look cool wearing safety glasses.

Impossible.

Utterly impossible.

As in, NOT possible.

Despite sweaty muscles.

Despite the love-colored glasses through which I see him always.

Despite his cute butt, as reflected so beautifully in the old pink mirror.

There is just no way to turn safety glasses into something NOT dorky.

But My Captain doesn’t mind for several reasons. 1) He knows safety never takes a holiday, and a few hours of dorkiness easily off-sets wood chips through an eye.  2) He’s on a mission, and can’t be bothered with how he looks while carrying it out.  and 3) He knows and trusts his dearest friends and family to love him anyways.

And he is right, as always.

But he’s still a dork.