Yo Mama’s a Beach

The past few days have been interesting. Melissa has been interviewing and talking to headhunters like a fiend and I’ve been on a mission to spend zero dollars per day, so I bet you can imagine the super fun party at our place this week. 

So. Much. Stress. 

Today we had a blank schedule with no interviews or doctor visits, so it was decided that we all needed a day of relaxation. We live 90 minutes from the Pacific Ocean, so the coast was selected for the day. Because what could possibly be more relaxing than hauling five kids plus food plus gear up and down a two mile stretch of sand? Clearly, this is the stuff parental dreams are made of. 

Spending zero dollars a day is a lot of work. And I’m not whining, but damn if these kids don’t want to eat with a frequency that I find downright irritating. (Three times a day just feels a bit excessive, you know?) So I made two coolers worth of food – sandwiches and pasta salad and fruit and chips and two stuffed turkeys and four prime ribs and a partridge in a freaking pear tree – so that we could make it to the beach and back within my targeted budget. Plus towels and sand toys and blankets and a change of clothes for everyone post-beach. Of course we left the house over an hour later than planned. Of course we hit traffic. Of course parking was ridiculous. It’s ok, we’re powering through this. Chin up, y’all. We all load up – everyone’s got a bag or a blanket to carry and Pook and Boogie are riding tandem in the jogging stroller. We all manage to make it to the promenade – I can actually see the ocean now. I’m feeling so proud of us. 

Then I broke the freaking stroller. In my attempt to handle it solo because everyone else’s hands were full, I bent the bar that holds on the front wheel. The tire fell off the stroller, and the wheels fell off the morning. Melissa and I are literally yelling at each other in public and I’m crying and the kids are DYING to get to the waterline and trying to run ahead while we attempt to drag the stroller with 50 pounds of babies down the ever-lengthening stretch of sand. It’s like one of those funhouse mirrors where you look super tall except it’s actually real. 

Somewhere in the middle of all that amazingly fun relaxation time, I realize that the reason I’m not having any fun is because I’m not letting myself. My response to the stress in our lives has been to try and control every fractional moment of the day. I’m not only making myself miserable, I’m making everyone around me miserable, too. Ugh. Why is it so hard to just CHILL? I’m forty years old. You’d think I’d have figured this out by now, wouldn’t you?

So we got our crap together, figuratively speaking. Melissa and I apologize. We take deep breaths and try to start over. And we sit and watch the big kids play and scream and splash. And we watch Pook and Boogie toddle through the sand. I’m fairly sure Pook ate a bite of washed-up crab claw and I know Boogie’s gonna have some seriously sand-laden poop, but they had so much fun. I took a jillion pictures and our miracle baby ran on sand (take that, physical therapy) and hey, we still have food leftover to take home. 

I broke my zero dollars goal and bought a coffee for the ride home. I think we’ve bringing at least half the beach back in the van with us and everyone desperately needs a shower. BUT. We spent the day at the ocean and we were all together. And I was a big beach (haha, see what I did there?) but I’m trying. And, for today, that is enough.