Vacation in the time of COVID: The Arrival

The first thing that has to be acknowledged is the sadness – this isn’t the vacation we wanted it to be, with all the kids here, eating at restaurants and hanging out playing games in the evenings. The weather is nasty, cold, windy, and rainy, and is supposed to stay that way for most of our time here.

There, now I’ve said that, and from now on I’ll be doing my best to move forward and enjoy what we do have. And we have a lot. I mean A LOT – you would think that two people going to a civilized location could do it without completely filling the back of my car and Dave’s trunk, but you’d be wrong. We spent the day packing up (with laundry, of course) and still forgot to bring an Alexa, which we might not be able to do without – how will we find out things? Who will set timers for us? The drive out was icky, very hard rain and wind and hydroplaning and not being able to see. I had prepared for it by cueing up Singin’ in the Bathtub by John Lithgow on my spotify, and singing along made the trip a little less scary.

We arrived and it was still pouring, so we did the inside/outside person unloading – Dave very generously did the outside part, which won’t come as a surprise to anyone. The very first thing is that both decks have been replaced, and they’ve put a kid-safe railing up on the back deck. I will use up my one nag here and say that this is clearly a sign that it is time for grandchildren. Also on the deck are new plastic Adirondack chairs, which are good, even if I don’t know how you can have Adirondack chairs this far from the Adirondacks. Anyway, they are good. They also replaced the siding on the part of the house that faces the ocean on the deck, which is probably a good thing, since it will not leak or fall down, but they took down the wonderful mystic symbols that were there, and that is too bad. That is also the wall that desperately wants a window, since the kitchen table is on the other side and it would be nice to look out when you were eating, but no window happened. When we got here the internet was broken and the alarm was beeping, but Dave fixed everything, because he is the fixer.

Inside the house we think there is new carpeting in the living room and big bedroom – it seems more padded and less stained than we remember. The problem is I am writing this on Hermes, my new laptop, and he doesn’t have all the old blogs so it’s hard to remember what is new – like, the kitchen faucet, which replaced the old one that sprayed everywhere all the time – is that new this year or was that last year? And did they have both of the black leather chairs? The big news, and it’s not good, is that they have finally gotten rid of the giant brown naugahide chair, site of many, many photos over the years, and an excellent place for napping. Its ottoman [note to BOS: the furniture, not the empire] has also been removed, so I’m using a sterilite box with a pillow on it for now, and we’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile Dave is making shakshuka for dinner and the house smells delicious, and a wild wind is blowing and the rain is pouring down, and there are many reasons to be thankful. The tide is high, so it’s hard to see the height of the sand – my guess is very high sands here. Stay tuned.