Mother Nature continues to be kind. Right now it is 81° with a forecast of partly sunny and partly cloudy. I always wonder why the weatherman needs to say both. I figure if it is partly cloudy then it must also be partly sunny. What else could it be? The breeze is strong and cooling.

Today is a lazy day. I could do some chores, but I won’t. The dogs have set the tone, both are sleeping.

When I was a kid, we often went to the beach on Sundays. My mother packed the picnic basket, gathered the towels, pails and shovels and a blanket for sitting on the sand. My father made the bug juice. My favorite picnic dish was my mother’s peppers and eggs. It was a recipe from my aunt. She cooked them just before we left. She had a secret ingredient, a bit of tomato sauce. We ate the peppers and eggs in rolls. It was always the first thing I grabbed to eat. My mother also made sandwiches, packed potato chips and cookies for dessert, usually Oreos. My mother never swam. She only walked along the shore line or sat on the blanket keeping an eye on my sisters. She never learned how to swim. My dad, though, was a great swimmer. He taught us to swim.

In the late afternoon, we’d pack up to go home and trudge to the car over the hot sand and the hot parking lot. We helped carry stuff. At the car, we had to sit on the seat with our feet dangling outside so my father could wash off the sand. He had this thing about sand in the car.

Sunday night we were all tired from a day in the sun and swimming in the ocean. We usually fell asleep early. I have this weird memory of falling asleep with one side of my head on the pillow and feeling warm water drain from my ear. I figured I brought some of the ocean home with me.

This entry was posted on July 6, 2025 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.