Skip to main content

Paradise Found

My July 4th evening ended with a 9pm call from a girlfriend suggesting that on Wednesday, we take the kids to a beautiful county park nearby.

I readily accepted her offer and we headed there around 11am to enjoy the sandy beach and small lake (or big pond, whichever way you want to look at it). The weather was fantastically perfect, and it was a little eerie realizing that less than 10 miles away FEMA is visiting the flood zones created by the storm last week. We dragged ourselves out of the park at 4pm to make it home in time for Little Chic's soccer practice.

On a funny side note, while there, I was snapping pictures left and right, attempting to properly document our first calm summer day since school has been out. I was standing by the lifeguard chair when I heard a teenage voice asking "Excuse me, but how much did you pay for that Canon body?" My mind started whirling in confusion, thinking, "My 40-something husband thinks I look pretty good, I do work out and I've lost 6 pounds to get ready for the big wedding but I certainly wouldn't have a body that anybody considers picture perfect, especially not a teenage female lifeguard." Luckily, I just said "Excuse me?" rather than putting my foot in my mouth and she clarified her question--She apparently is a camera buff who would like a digital Canon camera to use with the lenses for her 35mm Canon and she mistook my Fuji for a Canon. Bummer that I'd had my hopes up there for a second.

I've decided that we'll be making this 20 minute trek once a week, both for the beautiful surroundings and for the hopes of scoring some actual compliments by teenagers trying to entertain themselves while they sit by the hour watching other people's kids pretend the sharks are coming in.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Now THAT looks like fun! What a cool picture. That is so hilarious about the comment - at least you asked what she said before just smiling and saying "Thank you, I work out!"
Unknown said…
What beautiful surroundings! I believe I could stay right there on that beach for a week.

That's funny but in all honesty Jennifer... You do look great!
the lizness said…
glad you had such a great day yesterday.
JenLo said…
Well, since Canon is a camera, I assumed she meant I looked good enough to photograph. Hey, I can't help that the teenagers are jealous of me ! (don't I wish)?

Popular posts from this blog

Stickin' It Out

I got married today. Well, not exactly today. It was Friday, June 2. But the year was 1989 - 17 years ago. "Amazing", people say. "Good for you", they comment. "You must have picked the right one", the add. Amazing? Yes. Good for me? I'll admit it. But it has nothing to do with picking the right one, really. It's not because I found the perfect boy, and it's certainly not because he found the perfect girl. It might sound a little unromantic, but there never really is a 'right one' floating around out there waiting in the cosmos for the other 'right one' to crash and connect. There may be 'better ones'; there may be 'more easily compatible' or something or other. But the real story is you start becoming the right one the moment you vow that "you do". When I married, I had been 20 for a whole 33 days, we had just completed a 2-year long-distance realtionship and HE was five years older tha...

Gourmet Tastebuds Looking for Chef

Brainy Boy is every good cook's dream. He will eat anything as long as it smells like food and he can't identify it. Routinely when I set dinner before him, he comments something like 'Mom, I just really prefer gourmet restaurant-type food." And he's not kidding. No PJB for him, no Chef Boyardee, no Easy Mac. He's all about shrimp scampi, homemade gnocchi (not frozen) and is dying to know what caviar tastes like. The problem is that I'm a functional meat & potatoes kind of cook. I'd love to be a throw-ingredients-together-to-make-an-awesome-dish girl, but I'm just not. I don't really know how to cook without burying my head in a cookbook, and I don't enjoy the whole process of putting it together either--kind of the same way I am with gardening. I came up with the clever idea of letting Brainy Boy choose a meal a week that I would try, his choice. I pulled out my handy Kraft magazine that comes in the mail four times a year, a...

Daddy's Girl

I witnessed an amazing thing last night. Little Chic was invited to sing at our annual church family camp which is about a 45-minute drive from our church. That's a big undertaking for an 8-1/2 year old girl, but being the aspiring American Idol that she is, it is also right down her alley. She has looked forward to it for weeks now, and she drove us all nuts rehearsing her rendition of Amazing Grace with the performance track about a gazillion times since Sunday. As yesterday approached, her nerves set in a bit, but excitement was still the dominant emotion that exuded from her. For some reason, Little Chic had her heart set on Hero Guy making the show even though we'd all seen it performed at church and a school Talent Show already. Because of logistics of getting us all to the destination on time, I took Brainy Boy and Little Chic myself and Hero Guy drove directly from work. To complicate matters, Hero Guy needed to leave directly after the 3- minute performance t...