Saturday, August 9, 2008

Playing Hooky

The Hubs took a half-day off work yesterday. We left the kids with a sitter. Bye guys! Mommy and Daddy are going to the Dentist. We would NEVER go to the beach without you.

We went to the beach. It was just us, the sand, the water, the seagulls, the breeze...and about 10,000 other people. Gah! What the hell are you people doing on my beach?

In spite of that it was a lovely day. I swear I don't think we spoke to each other more than 3 times, but not in a bad way. Just in a "we are so content we don't even have to speak" kinda way. We were both relaxing and reading and people-watching. Our conversations went like this.

-check out that dude with the long hair.

-if he doesn't pull his pants up over his crack I'm going to vomit.


A few minutes later:

-If that kid runs by kicking sand on us one more time I'm going to find her mother and kick sand on HER.

-Don't. One day our kids will be annoying someone on the beach and we'll think it's funny.

After we had broiled in the sun to the point of pain, we packed up our things, the one, small bag of things required when you don't take kids to the beach and headed out to cool off with adult beverages.

There's this bar at the pier that has been there for 20 years and is my vision of the perfect beach bar. Grimy, unairconditioned, walls open to the sidewalk outside, dollar bills stapled to the walls and ceilings to provide reading material, its very own population of barflys. I haven't been there in probably 5 years and it was seriously like going home. We sat down on the cracked pleather barstools and I...forgot where I was for a moment and ordered white wine. Hubs looked at me like I was growing a second nose from my forehead. The bartender sighed and opened the cooler to see what she had.

-What? I want a glass of wine! Beer makes me feel bloated!

Hubs just shakes his head.

The bartender starts trying to peel the foil off the neck of the single-serving wine bottle. The little tab snaps and she goes off to look for scissors or something to cut the foil.

Hubs keeps shaking his head.

She returns and manages to remove the foil, then twists open the top of the wine bottle. Obviously an impressive vintage, no? She pours it in a plastic cup and hands it to me. To make up for my glaringly poor decisionmaking and to balance our bar karma, Hubs ordered a PBR.

We sat and listened to the juke box for a while and watched the people walk by on the sidewalk. And then I saw him. And he's what makes this the best bar of all time - the mascot. He sits on the counter and barks at people when they walk in. Then he tries to drink out of their beer cups.



I didn't catch his name but I like to think of him as Stanley. Slightly crochety, but deep down a friendly guy and the perfect drinking buddy.

1 comment:

Tigriswillreign said...

Ahhhh, sounds heavenly! It's nice to be reminded how easy things were before children, isn't it? (Or is it??) Guess the contrast makes us appreciate the respite even more!