Thursday morning I woke up and said fuck it, I'm taking off tomorrow, so my weekend began Thursday night with the packing of the bags and roaring off into the night down to the shore. I started Friday with a bike ride, sunrise from the jetty, and a cup of coffee from Drip N' Scoop.
Then I got down to it. Scraping and painting the concrete porch after a trip to Sherwin Williams. Why do I never have everything for painting? The old color was a weird peach topped with years of outdoor carpet. Veddy nice, veddy nice. The new color is Bungalow Beige (SW 7511). Pro tip: store your paint colors on your blog then you never have to keep the stupid little cards. I'm happy with its close match to the house. Of course I got it all over the new railings. I'll need to clean that up. Good thing I'm not getting paid or I'd be fired.
I took myself to lunch at Yianni's for a crabcake sandwich, rode my bike down to the North End and took a beach break on the jetty, then had a leisurely bike ride home where I finished a book. 2017 summer shore goal: learn how to nap.
Debbie arrived around 4, and after sitting in the driveway on the displaced porch furniture, we walked up to the boards to people watch and grab some slices at Tony P's and deliciousness from Kohr Bros. Tony P's is in my top three pizzas in Ocean City along with Angelo's and the pizza place at the promenade.
We beached ourselves on the couch and heckled a bunch of HGTV shows for the night. Saturday we crapped around in the morning and when Melissa arrived we hit the beach. It was hot as balls - bay breeze all day until like 9 pm. No relief from the heat at the shore on Saturday. I dipped my feet in but people were actually swimming. I couldn't believe it. We headed home to get out of the sun around 3 and had a late lettuce wrap taco lunch and enjoyed some porch time.
We strolled the boards again, got ice cream at Prep's, and I bought a pair of earrings from The Islander and a cheap paperback that was on my To Read list. Don't ask me the name of it, I left it at the shore for future reading and my brain is a sieve right now. I also bought a new to me brand of flip flops (Cobian). Hurrah, annual summer flip flop purchase is complete. Well let's be honest...one of my annual flip flop purchases.
We hung out in the driveway again, then ordered a pizza, and I did my weekly food prep while we were lounging and chatting. Weekly food prep: breakfast is van's whole gain waffles with almond butter and a banana; snacks are bell peppers and hard boiled eggs; lunch is chicken pesto spaghetti squash topped with roasted grape tomatoes and chicken thighs; dinners are the ol' one pan sausage and veggie meal, and we're on the run a few nights so no sense making too much.
Salt air and increased activity always have me ready for bed at like 7 at the shore, but I didn't actually go to sleep until 11. Victory? Sunday sunrise, which I enjoyed with the birds and a group of wasted kids who farted all over my serenity when the two boys approached me holding a bag of wine aloft all excuse me can I ask you a question? do you like wine? while the girls tittered in the background. My reply of no seemed to stump them for a minute but they rallied with well would you like this bag of wine? No. Then they left and I was pleased while also feeling a little holy shit I just had a You kids get off my lawn! moment. LOL
I rode my bike and got an iced coffee which put a wild hair up my ass. I changed the sheets in our apartment, cleaned it top to bottom, lined some shelves with contact paper, packed my car, did some touch up spray painting to the upstairs stools, painted all the posts on both porches, and did the initial clean out of the outdoor shower by removing most of the shit that blew in there this winter. The nitty gritty clean out is MFD's job. He's had showings both days of every weekend recently, but promised me a few hours of manual labor in two weeks. Memorial Day approacheth.
As much as I like camping out in the driveway like a squatter, I did put the furniture back on the porch. Here is its evolution from when we bought it to last summer when we basically just brought some furniture from home and some from Home Depot to this summer when we removed and replaced the railings, painted the wood up top and all the posts, removed the carpet and scraped and painted the floor, and replaced the furniture from home with chairs from Target and a table from Big Lots. None of my porch tchotchkes are out because you can't leave shit out in this wind tunnel, but you'll see that stuff in future pictures. This was one of two major spring projects. I love how it turned out but I love that it's done even more.
When the ladies were ready we ambled down to Jon & Patty's for breakfast and wandered into some thrift stores on the way back. One moved into an old bank and I loved seeing the juxtaposition of the crazy variety of stuff against the lovely bones of this building. Speaking of buildings, our awnings are back up at the house which is a sure sign summer is coming.
Debbie and Melissa are awesome people to have on your cleanup team. We had everything wiped and vacuumed and stowed in no time and I was home by 2:30. The dogs were ecstatic. MFD was working but made time for sushi so I was pleased.
I do love a three day productive yet relaxing weekend spent with two of my closest friends. It was one for the books.
How was yours?
