Rain, Snow and the Beach

Baltimore is expecting two feet of snow this weekend. Now, we've had an unusually wet, cold winter here in North Carolina but usually we're blessed with sunny, mild winter days. So even though we had our own little snow event last weekend and today is raw and rainy, I am damn glad I'm here and not there!

On the other hand, where I'd really like to be is two states farther south - Georgia or Florida would be just fine thanks. At the coast, of course. Because when we move from here, (and it will be soon), the only place we'll be going is to the beach.

It's becoming harder and harder to wait. It used to be that I could count on my monthly dose of Coastal Living to help keep the dream alive. Pages of sea green and blue and tan photographs, images of beachside bonfires, cedar shake shingled houses softened by tan and green seagrass around the perimeter left me longing but inspired.

But then they went and changed the entire format of the magazine into some cheesy retro attempt to be cool that speaks nothing of the beach, so that now it totally sucks, and I am spinning into an abyss of despair.

I had hoped that painting our landlocked Wake Forest house in white and tan and infusing it with navy blue and ochre decor and a smattering of seashells would help me weather the time. But it just looks like some crazy person in denial lives here.

I just want to pack up the entire family and drive to Sanibel, on the gulf coast of Florida. But we don't have any money at the moment, which puts a certain kink in the plan.

We have to leave. We don't belong here. We don't care about what cars we drive, or how our house compares to everyone else's, or the school system, or climbing a corporate ladder. Our hearts are buried somewhere in the middle of a sand dune. Our windows belong open, with salt-infused breezes whipping through the house. Our girls should be perennially barefoot and tanned, surfboards under their arms as they run to the waves. Time to go, time to go, it is more than past time to go.