I'm filing this one away in the event I need to quickly cure myself of any future cases of wanderlust. Consider that your warning. Still reading? Fine. Eye rolls sold separately. Knock yourself out.
Julia and I had grand plans of seizing our summer Christmas and hitting up the beach, since it would be our first spent without our respective families. We had been talking it up for months, plotting the best patch of sand-in-front-of-water on which to plop ourselves, which culinary delights we would be treating ourselves to, and were overly pleased with our "the only white this Christmas will be sand!" proclamations. Then we were invited over to a friend's for Christmas Day, so we decided it was no big deal--we would carry through with our beach plans on Christmas Eve. Well, a couple bumps in the road (stomach flu and unexpectedly being called into work last minute, aren't you glad you asked?) later and it was decided that we would go sometime later in the week.
It turned out that Christmas Day itself was the one uneventful (and lovely!) day this week. Several days, dreary weather, and another round of stomach flu later and things were looking grim (on all fronts beach-related and otherwise).
I was enjoying a nice slumber this morning when I was awoken by the ever-lovely fire alarm at dark o'clock and it went off a liiiitle too long to ignore. Julia and I schlepped ourselves down too many flights of stairs and loitered an appropriate amount of time before making our way down the street in hopes of finding an open cafe in which to plop ourselves. This proved (expectedly) fruitless. We lamented 24-hour American diners.
At some point in the forty minute period between meandering our way out of the building and finding out (hooray!) it was a false alarm, I became aware that I was wearing the same pair of clothes I had worn the previous day for my singular jaunt out of the apartment in search of bland crackers (futile) before passing out at the latelate hour of quarter to notevendarkyet. I also remembered that I had discovered that my only pair of work pants had earned itself a hole (and I was only donning the aforementioned pair because my only other pair of pants currently smells of mildew after its last four-five day stint on the drying rack).
Things were looking especially rosy this morning. I also became acutely aware of the fact that I could not remember the date of my last shower when we were crammed like pickles into an elevator full of neighbor-strangers.
Sweet relief was mine, though, upon spotting my pillow. Ahhhhhh, siiigh, eyelids drifting until WHAM. Off goes the fire alarm, again. Please note that "alarm" does not accurately convey this experience. This thing is capable of waking the dead. {zombie apocalypse preppers of the world (?), I would step things up a notch if I were you.} And it decided to go off roughly every ninety-one twenty seconds until there was eye twitching and I'm fairly certain I uttered multiple times just how much I hated everything. I'll be accepting my award-crown for drama q. any day now. (parents of the world, I'll throw in a few extra free eye rolls. just for you). There was much yoga breathing and mantra muttering re: I am thankful for modern technology. I am thankful for modern technology. I am thankful for modern technology that keeps me from dying in a fiery blaze, etc. from between the pillows smashed over my ears (futilest) before the God of modern technology smiled upon us and finally shut that thing off. And no, sleep was not happening after that point. I did indulge in staring off into space for an inappropriate length of time, though (no questions about how that is different from my normal state, Mom. Or Dad. Or Brian. Shoot).
Well. After a while, Julia and I both decided that we were taking back this day/week and we WERE going to the beach. It was sunny! We were past the plague! We didn't have anything else to do! To the beach we went! And it.was.glorious.
Twenty minutes into soaking in the sunshine on the beach before we started to feel raindrops and see some dark clouds moving in. No worries! We'll go get those legendary pancakes that Julia has been raving about for four months while we wait for this to pass!
Oh, I could tell those pancakes were good! Unfortunately, rational Cheryl evacuated the building this morning and never returned because I did not take the hint from my previous day's diet of water and a handful of crackers, or the more--way more--than a slight sheen of sweat that the morning's meander down the street left me sporting, that my mind was bigger than my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I'm certain I did not finish even one of those pancakes.
But it was allll okay. Because the sun was out! We will get our beach day after all! (This was def. not a ploy on my part to hope that plonking myself on the beach would get rid of that sensation that the room was spinning everrr so slightly--take it easy on those pancakes next time you're recovering from the palgue-iest of plagues, oh chipper one--before we hopped on the bus home). We headed back to the beach and set up camp with our towels and books. This time we got in a good half an hour before the rain started up. We gave it a couple minutes before deciding this probably wasn't going to let up anytime in the nearish future and making our way to the bus stop. And thus concluded Christmas adventures 2k13.
Now get back to your life, future no-longer-wanderlusty Cheryl.
**I will admit that this day was not a total bust. I got my notsayinghowlong space out session! And it is a nice beach that I fully plan to revisit when I'm feeling a little better and also when I've checked the weather report. Plus, it was a nice change of pace to get out of our apartment and immediate neighborhood for a while to see someplace new. And I want to try those pancakes when I actually have an appetite because they seemed amazing. Sunshine on a beach! In December! Day off from work! Your problems are small! Things are mostly good! Fist-bump.
