JustMattHenry.com: gossip, life and humor

let’s get started, shall we?

i left immediately after work at 4 am on saturday morning.  nope.  scratch that.  i went home, picked up the dog and my weekend bag, then hit the road.  the entire 4 hours trip the pooch alternated among three disturbing/annoying/weird behaviors:  she either sat behind me with her head just over my left shoulder breathing her dog breath right in my face, or she sat right in the middle of the back seat staring at me in the rear view mirror–at least, she was staring at me every time i glanced in the mirror–or she sat with her nose pressed firmly up against the ac vent on the back of the console between the two front seats making this sound every few seconds:  pffffffft.  pfffffft.  then, heh-heh-heh down my neck.  then stare.  pfffffft.  heh-heh-heh. stare.  while i sang loudly at the top of my lungs so i didn’t doze off…not that i was really tired.

i arrive at the beach house and immediately go in, claim my room and take a nap and it takes me forever to fall asleep.  must be those three coffees on the way down.  i wake up, have lunch with my dad, and head out to the beach.  the water was surprisingly clear and calm and there were tons of people on the beach and i’m happy to say that i think i ranked at least in the top five percent of best beach bodies….although, this is the outer banks, that’s not hard to achieve.  OBX ain’t miami, i’ll tell you that.  i walk a mile or so down to the pier then retrace my steps and these are the dead things i saw on the way there and back:  2 dead puffer fish, about six gigantic jellyfish (one may have been an octopus or a sea serpent), two dead birds, one horseshoe crab (which may have also been just a brown bucket half buried in the sand, but i didn’t zero in to confirm in case it sprang to life and scuttled after me.  i don’t like things that scuttle which is why i don’t like ghost crabs and refuse to sit, stand, exist near one of their little crab holes…they’re always scuttling about and i don’t like things that scuttle along here and there), zero dead fish (other than the Mr. and Mrs. Puffer) and one dead cat.   except actually i saw that on the street on my walk over to the beach from the house.

after the beach, i lounged by the pool for a bit and read my book and then went for a dip in the pool while the pooch played life guard.  when the sun became just too unbearable and the rumble in my stomach told me it was dinner time, i wandered inside to find my father asleep on the couch with an open beer next to him.  so i headed down to the rec room to watch some tv when my aunt anne (my dad’s sister who lives in OBX) came over with one of my favorite things!  corona!  we caught up and drank and tried to figure out what sarah jessica parker/phillip seymour hoffman movie we were only kinda sorta watching (it ended up being State and Main and not very good).

i don’t remember where we went to dinner but i know it sounded like something out a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  shipwreck cove, or the salty pelican or pirate pete’s.  applebees.  something.  all i know is i had the best cheese fries ever at that place.   hm.  maybe it was applebees.

then we headed home and the three of us drank beer out on the upper deck and watched the ocean.

the next morning, at 7, i got up and took the pooch for a walk on the beach where she didn’t go in the water like last year.  well, she went up to her ankles.  so…like an inch.  then i thought i might go for a jog since i’ve been running at the gym, but running on pavement is a completely different thing than running on a treadmill and after my shins exploded, i opted to sort of walk/run the mile or so back to the house…where i came upon my aunt sitting by the pool reading the paper.  so i go get my book and sun block and head on down to sit by the pool.

so…

old people.  my dad and his sister are old.  not like dead old.  but like old, like, old people say the darndest things kind of old.  so i’m sitting there reading.  aunt anne is reading the paper…when out of nowhere, as if we’d been conversing all along, my aunt says: “and so i went to see the chair that connie and norm bought and i told them they should really just get rid of it.”

i thought maybe she had slipped in a secret phone call while i’d been reading and kept her voice down until she was just so excited about the chair that connie and norm bought that she just couldn’t contain it anymore.  but no.  not on the phone.  and i’m like, “who-tha-whatzit?”

and then later, when i went up to the kitchen to get some lunch, my dad, in that way he does, has to offer me literally every item we have even though i tell him i was thinking about running up the street to this cool deli to get some sandwichs.

“i have chips, do you want chips?”

no

“i have cashews.  or beer.  do you want some grapes?  there’s gingerale.  you want some clam dip?”

i’m okay, i think i may just run up to that deli place.

“there’s cookies, have whatever you want!  you want a beer?  did you finish that ice cream?  did you see the chips?”

seriously.  cool it.  it reminds me of our trips to soccer tournaments when i told him i wasn’t hungry, but he would still try to get me to eat something by pointing out every fast food/chain restaurant on the strip.

“you hungry?”

no.

“there’s a mcdonalds.  you want mcdonalds?”

no.  i’m not hungry.  hissss.

“what about fridays?  burger king?  roy rogers?  hardees?  wendys?”

i said i’m not hungry.

“long john silvers?  ruby tuesday?  there’s a dairy queen?  you want dairy queen?”

i’m sure all this is just his way of showing he loves us.  but he was doing it again now at the beach house and i was…just…sort of smiling on the inside and laughing at how our parents never change however old we get.  and again, i repeat my plan to go to the deli and ask if he would like something to which he says:  “and they just give you a bag, did i show you the bag?”

who?  what?  how we got from talking about random items in the ‘fridge to a bag he received at the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg Va, i’ll never know.  i think he was actually continuing a conversation we had upon my arrival twenty four hours earlier.  i think.

which now gets us to our dinner conversation that evening.  oh, but first, after lunch i decide to head back to the beach where i’m literally the only person on the beach attacked by swarms of black flys.  i don’t know why they weren’t bothering anyone else, but it was like a horror movie for me.  i probably looked like a crazy person to all those kids and grandmas and grandpas because i could not sit still.  i was swatting left and right, smacking the backs of my legs, waving my hands around my head, getting up and moving my towel every two minutes thinking surely those flies wont follow me–but, oh, they did.  right on down to the waters edge where i think i’m safe because i know that flies do not enjoy water because there are about a hundred dead ones in the pool that i had to clean out this morning, so i’m assuming that flies try to stay away from water if they can help it.  but oh no, those little fuckers followed me right on into the water, buzzing up and away when a wave would crash up on my legs, then as the water recedes, they land right back where they were…so i couldn’t take it and after throwing everyone else on the beach a what’s wrong with you, why aren’t they bothering you!? glare…i huffed and puffed my way back over the dunes and back to the comfort of the fly free pool.

okay, so dinner.  my aunt again came with us to dinner which is nice since i don’t get to see her often and i’m only casually listening to the conversation when the subject turns to my aunt’s buying and selling and trading of hand guns and how she has two (i think) but she wants another and she knows this dealer and my dad’s heard of the place, but she doesn’t want a .22, she should get a revolver, and she said, but they’re so hard to clean and i’m like what the hell is going on?  i mean, they’re old.   and now i think they are involved in some sort of illegal arms trading underworld on the outer banks.  or maybe she’s like a gun runner, you know, like a drug mule or something and the outer banks is like, so inconspicuous that there’s a steady stream of hand gun hiding grannies transporting them from the docks to the mainland and on up and down the east coast.

ugh.  man, this is long.  i’m home now and tired and i think i’m going to bed early.