Peace, love and aloe

My face hurts. My shoulders hurt. And the tops of my knees.

My back is none too happy either.

But my soul is pretty darned happy because it -- I -- we -- got to spend one whole glorious day at the beach. Pensacola Beach, our favorite.

It was a quick little trip. Just two days. We left Friday evening in the middle of a monsoon that threatened to overflow my swimming pool and returned today.

In between we got our tweenage daughter out of her room, drank some beers, ate a good and greasy burger with fries, listened to a live band in the sand, slept on the world's most uncomfortable mattress in the world's tiniest hotel room with the tiniest bathroom, spent five glorious hours on the beach, reconnected with an old high school friend and her ornery parrot Peety, 

surfed the waves, increased our chances of skin cancer, transformed ourselves from regular people to boiled crawfish, checked out the island view from an eighth floor condo,
cooled off in a pool, took a nap, drank the world's best Pina Colada, ate the best spinach and artichoke dip ever, then ribs and steak, shopped in the tacky touristy shops, spent another miserable night on the world's most uncomfortable mattress, packed up the wet bathing suits and towels, shopped and ate at Cracker Barrel and headed home.

Call it a quicky.

A weekend away from not knowing what's going on at my own place of employment, from having to read about it in the pages of our rival, from reading the employment ads, from perfecting my resume and writing cover letters, from competing with my own office mates for the too-few jobs out there, from worrying about my future.

A whole day.

One perfect, glorious day of salt and sea and seaweed and sand and not enough sunscreen.

And love and togetherness and peace and quiet and calm.

And aloe vera.