The perfect kind of Monday in Vacations 2015

A Monday when you’re on vacation, that is. I’m trying to avoid the “real world” as much as possible on this vacation. No TV. No newspapers. Although I can’t resist at least checking the headlines on line just to make sure there isn’t some disaster that I should know about. The way the world is lately, you just never know. I’ve been reading a few diaries here and there but I’m trying not to get too absorbed in that, either. It’s mostly just walking on the beach, sitting back in a lawn chair on the deck – reading, talking, watching the ocean; listening to music; going out to eat or making meals together here at “home”. We took the first couple of days to decompress and make the transition into vacation mode, so it’s been low key. Today we’ll actually venture out and do some tourist-type things, which I’ll write about in a day or two after they’ve actually happened.

But to go back to the beginning, we managed to have the car loaded and leave home by 7:00 a.m. The drive was fun and uneventful – we are good travel companions with lots of singing along to music, talking, and laughter. But. Why does there always have to be a “but”?? We still aren’t sure how it happened but at some point we realized we had gone much further south down I-5 than we should have. We are still baffled by how that happened. This is a trip we’ve taken countless times before. We suspect that somehow the GPS on my iPad messed us up because suddenly I realized that it showed that the car was moving even after we’d pulled off the interstate and into a gas station to figure out where we were and where we went wrong, and it showed we were going 95 MPH when we were going 71. We lost over an hour and had to back track. This soured both of us considerably and we got really quiet for awhile. I made comments like “Well there’s nothing we can do about it now, it’s done. It’s just an hour and in the big picture of things it could be worse” but Michael wasn’t ready to be chatty about it. Then I snapped at him when he did a little bit of back seat driving (it was my turn to drive) and that really sent him into a sulky quiet pout for awhile. Eventually I told him that it really pissed me off when he shuts down on me like that. We had a few (and I do mean a few) words and then gradually worked our way back into our cheery vacation mode. Because of the delay (it turned a 5 hour and 45 minute drive into a 7 hour drive) it felt like we’d never get here to the beach house we rented But of course, we did get here (“here” is Yachats, Oregon, a funky, small little town on Highway 101, 30 minutes south of Newport, OR). And it didn’t take long at all to shrug off the route debacle and shift into happy moods.

We unloaded the car, then went out for a quick lunch at a pub Michael wanted to try. The food was only “so so” which was disappointing to me because we’ve had some excellent food at some of the other little restaurants here in this little coastal town. But oh well. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about crab cakes.

We picked up a few things at the little local (expensive) grocery store and made pork chops here at the house for dinner on Saturday night. Sunday we went out to lunch at a favorite seafood restaurant we’ve been going to for 12 years whenever we are here on the Oregon coast. But it’s the first time we went for lunch rather than dinner, and their lunch menu was smaller than the dinner menu and didn’t have what we really wanted on it. So two meals out so far, and two disappointments. We’re going to improve on that, I’m sure!

Spent most of yesterday afternoon walking on the beach, reading, listening to music, letting the stress of the last few months slip off my shoulders. Michael made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for us for dinner. So far our meals have been nothing to write home about but this will change. We went into Newport – the next biggest town, where there are big grocery stores that are a lot more reasonably priced than the little local market. We bought the ingredients (except for the seafood) that we’ll need to make Cioppino tomorrow night – we’ll pick up the seafood at one of the local seafood shops on Tuesday. That’s going to be a cooking adventure for us.

Some of the things on our somewhat tentative, relaxed agenda for the week include shopping in the little tourist shops by the water in Newport that we like, including a delightful little doggie shop where I might pick up something for Josie; there is a lighthouse we want to go visit; we’ll celebrate Michael’s birthday at one of our favorite really nice restaurants; we’ll go to my favorite glass blowing shop and see what I can spend money on; and I’m going to schedule a massage or a facial at a nearby spa – I haven’t quite decided which it will be but I’m leaning towards a facial and I had better decide because I need to call and make an appointment.

I’m trying not to think about things at home but I can’t stop trying to imagine what my new flooring and kitchen counters are going to look like. I don’t remember what I wrote on Friday about the kitchen, but Doug, my project manager, said he was going to try to get the floors demo’d while I’m gone, and the drywall done. The carpenters were booked for this week but if that changes he was going to get them in there to repair the kitchen cabinet and start pulling off the existing tile countertop. The hardwood flooring is scheduled to arrive at the store today or thereabouts; the new counter top tile should be here in the next couple of days; the hold up is the faucet and sink I ordered, which are due to arrive between next Monday and Wednesday. But I’m beginning to actually have hope that this work, or the majority of it, will actually be done before I go to Iceland.

Of course we’ve already taken a bunch of pictures. I think I’m going to do some separate entries just for pictures, so if you’re interested in seeing them, keep an eye out for those entries.

For now I’m enjoying the fact that I’m sitting here in my pajamas and fuzzy socks, watching the low tide waves rolling in, wondering if the sun is going to break through the clouds, drinking coffee (I rarely drink coffee at home but I have a cup or two every morning when I’m at the beach) and listening to Boz Skaggs – at a time of the morning when I am usually just pulling into the parking garage at work. That’s sweet.

Ok let me go put up some photo entries. Have a great week, everyone! Ciao.