Apocalypso

Monday morning and up, up, up, Ms. Moon, get up and get to town and get your prescription and go buy fish oil and a bottle of rum (yo-ho-ho!) and all of the things you need for the beach. Get up, get out, go to the library, find a nice yummy book, no, you cannot take a chicken to the beach.
Well, you can take a chicken but only cut up in a package. Where is the ice chest?
Don't forget limes and coffee. Don't forget sunscreen and lots of it. Don't forget the pizza pans and don't forget the recipe and don't forget the flour, yeast and there will be water at the beach.
Wait. Olive oil.

Get up and out, Ms. Moon. Move, move, move!

Oh god. I hate packing. I hate getting ready for traveling. I want to take a bathing suit, a dress, a pair of shorts, a pair of overalls, a dress.
Two towels. A book.
Done.

Haha!

What is it with us humans? We gotta take all our shit with us everywhere we go. Cameras and journals and pens and underwear and horseradish and umbrellas and cover-ups and flip-flops and rafts to float on if we want to float and our Own Special Brand of Coffee and our sleep-aids and all our other pills and games and is there a good knife in that kitchen? Should I bring my knife? Oh god. My pillows. Must have my pillows.

And the damn thing is, none of it is going to matter. They have all this shit down there at the beach. Okay, maybe not my prescription or pillows. Those I need to remember. But they even have things we do not have here- really fresh shrimp, for instance. Flip-flops with jewels on them. I don't know. Fuck it. It's the BEACH!

I don't need make-up or jewelry or hair products except maybe shampoo and conditioner. I don't need...

You know what I don't need?
This fucking anxiety about a simple trip to the beach.

I DO need to take the trash and recycle. I DO need to go to town. I DO need to stay with Owen for a few hours. Not because his parents need me to babysit but because I NEED my little boy time. I do need to chill out and quit checking the damn projected path of Hurricane (!) Irene.

I wonder if I'll have such crazy dreams at the beach. Last night I had one good one and one bad one. In the good one, my friend Liz had adopted a beautiful baby girl and arranged a barge trip with friends and family to celebrate and it was glorious. In the bad one, I ended up somehow the sister-wife of a crazy polygamist but not one of those that lives in squalor. No, this family was rich and there were sister-wives everywhere and the husband and his brothers were the roosters, the mean roosters, and "my" husband tried to rape me, okay? Yeah. What's up with THAT? How can the same brain come up with two such diverse story-lines in one night?

Monday morning. Get up, Ms. Moon. Get up. Shrug off the dreams, go feed the chickens, go to town. Drive tomorrow and maybe listen to Jimmy Buffett as I go over the bridge singing "Apocalypso.




Say what you will about Mr. Buffett (and I've heard it all) that man brought me out of the biggest, deepest funk of my life and delivered me unto the beach where he sang to me as the waves sang to me as the stars sang to me as I danced myself back to a place where I could breathe again.

All right. To town. To get ready. So that I can be dancing as I go.