Summer Recap. Part One: The First Few Days in Cape Cod.

(Posted on Wordpress on September 23rd, 2014)

All of the days in July that lead up to its final days, when I dashed about, prepping for our ad campaign shoot, feel like the One Long Day of July 2014, when I think about them: Get up. Quickly shower. Put on summer attire that I all but loathe. Moisturize but pass on make-up, to avoid looking like I came out of the loins of a raccoon that mated with Alice Cooper before I even reach the office. Board the crowded bus and stand next to the woman I know will soon get off. Take her warm spot and proceed to mouth-breath all the way to work because people already stink. Get off the bus, walk passed the same everything I've been walking by for almost two years, looking up at and inside of buildings, hoping to glimpse something, anything, new. Enter the frigid glass tower. Shiver. Go up to the ninth floor. Look at walls or my computer screen because there are no windows where my desk is. Get up to deliver things, put groceries away, collect paper at the printer or put something in the storage room. Eat lunch at my desk because getting an hour off for lunch is not worth losing that hour in sleep. More of the same. Down nine floors, outside and walking through the warm soup that is Montreal's July air. Back on the bus but people smell evenmore and now they're pissed off. Home. Dinner with the kids. Sew, sew, sew. Maybe some TV with the kids. Everyone goes to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. A snowless fucking Groundhog Day with only a slight variation in outfits.

Then we shot the ad campaign. Then I realized I was about to burn out. Luckily for me, we left for Cape Cod two days after the shoot and, for the first time since I went to Jamaica, in 2012, I got to spend an entire nine days not thinking about my day job or about the apartment I had been neglecting to thoroughly clean, let alone decorate.

In my life, I am blessed to have someone who is part mentor, part parent, part friend, part supporter and sometimes I feel like I have a fairy godmother. She's been there for me more than my own parents have and I love her dearly. She is my daughter's grandmother and she, along with her best friend, who has also been in my corner and a great source of wisdom, is the one who invited me to stay at her friend's house in East Sandwich, Massachusetts.

On the way down:

Near the border.

Pit stop.

Driving through Boston.

One rainy day, in East Sandwich:

 

Sandy Neck Beach:

Provincetown, August 5th:

Race Point Beach, August 5th:

It was around this time that I finally began to relax. I took cat naps, ate whatever I wanted to, read more than a few pages ata time, partook in excellent conversations, played Scrabble and swam. Luckily, I still had half the trip to go.

Posted in: atlantic ocean,beach,boston,east coast,east sandwich,hiking,Massachusetts,provincetown,sandy neck beach,summer vacation,usa,vacation,woods