Where I've Been (Thank God for Girlfriends)

I went away last friday, and just got back today. All year long, I'd been looking forward to this past weekend. Some of my bestest, oldest girlfriends and I planned to meet up in Ocean Shores for a long girl's weekend. The list of invitees was fluid, and changed a bit over time, but in the end five of us went, old friends from high school and before.

We grew up together in western Washington, but as always happens, time scattered us around the country. For this weekend, some of us came from far away - central Oregon, east Texas. Some of us hadn't seen each other for as long as three years, and not all of us had been together in one room for many years, if ever! We rented a lovely vacation house nearly on the beach for three nights. All of us brought something to share - mostly booze, of course, but also plenty of food and music. I brought goat cheese and eggs and a big package of grass-fed rib-eye steaks from the freezer.

Ocean Shores is a wonderfully kitschy little town on a long, long spit of land on the south-central coast of Washington. It's a vacation/retirement community of a certain kind. You probably know the kind - the attractions include go-cart tracks and video arcades; all-you-can-eat seafood buffets; T-shirt emporiums and shell-shops; kite flying on the beach, or, equally popular, reckless driving on the beach and getting stuck in the sand so the town tow-truck has to come pull you out. Much of the town has a slightly run-down feel to it, but it's not out-and-out tacky.

I hadn't been to Ocean Shores in about eleven years. Homero and I went with Rowan the first year we were together, and had a wonderful time. And I went as a child, I think with both parents, which would have meant I was younger than eight. It is substantially as I remember it, which is nice. That's not a very common experience.

The weather was crappy most of the time, but the last day was gorgeous. Of course, the Ocean is always freezing in this part of the world, but I didn't care. I swam anyway.

Chainsaw art in some tiny town along the route.

The beach as it usually looks....

Aimee with a mojito... thoroughly enjoying myself.