Top Ten

I'm home!

I guess I am hypnotized and soothed by anything rhythmic and repetitive: crashing waves, tranquil seahorses, pulsing jellyfish. On the flight home, I thought, "OK. I will find my new center. Within myself, I will find...the waves! The jellyfish! The seahorse." Oh, yeah, and from now on, I'm going to get to bed before midnight every night.

I was back in Utah for about half an hour when I realized that I was right back to my usual bad habits. Lost my goddamn inner seahorse. Whatever.

My Oregon Coast Vacation Top Ten

1. Having Nathan call Sara an ignoramus, but pronounce it, "in your anus". I had been blocking them out, as moms do when kids squabble, but that got my attention. "What! What! OK, who put what in whose anus!? What have I told you guys about putting stuff in body cavities, huh? Huh?"

2. Seeing the ocean for the first time, after a long day of travel. We like to be dorks, so we (the kids and I, while Simon lags behind and pretends not to know us) run to the water as fast as we can, yelling, "Ocean in view, oh joy!" (That's what Meriweather Lewis wrote in his journal when the Lewis and Clark expedition made it to the Pacific.) Lewis had problems with is inner seahorse, too.

3. The look on Nathan's face when he heard that the scene at the end of "Return of the Jedi", with the high speed chase on the forest moon of Endor, was filmed in the very same grove of California Redwoods where we were hiking. ohmygawd! There was a little confusion, though, over why the Ewoks were no longer there.

4. I slept until I woke up every morning. No alarm. The customary dark circles under my eyes are temporarily gone.

5. Arriving at a view point to find that the rocks below were crowded with California Sea Lions, Harbor Seals and Elephant Seals. And there was a volunteer there to show me the Elephant Seals. They are so enormous that I thought they were boulders.

6. Watching the Olympics on TV. It's cute, the way NBC thinks Micheal Phelps poops lemon drops.

7. Finding a beach with incredible seashells. And a dead starfish. Which I brought home in my suitcase. Which stinks.

8. Sitting as far out on Cape Perpetua as we could go without actually being killed by the crashing waves.

9. The pirate gift shop in Depoe Bay had a pair of boxers that read, "Prepare to be Boarded!" Aye aye, matey.

10. Reading Oprah's magazine, which I found in one of the houses where we stayed. I am WAY out of the girl-loop, I see. She reviews products I didn't know existed. For example, "Brown Betty". That's pubic hair dye. I asked Si what he thought of that. He wanted to know what colors were available. Uhh...well...brown....? He said he would be more interested if they offered shocking pink or something. I could just hear my mother, asking what if I got in a car accident and had to go to the hospital?