The Daily Dose of Deana: Tales From the Beach

Sunday we spent yet another day at the "beach". We really only went again so soon because the day before that, there was a little girl from out-of-town named Ava that Lilly befriended whose grandfather promised to bring her back the next day at the same time so that she and Lilly could play together again. But they ended up being a no-show. >:/

Anyway, Lilly found another little friend there yesterday to play with that she knew from school & gymnastics class named Izzy (Isabella), and they had a great time.

While Lilly and Izzy were off playing, it gave me and Jamie the opportunity to secretly play mental Beach Blanket Bingo while we were lounging there together. Let's just say we ended up saying "check!" to almost all of the squares! ;)

As I was leisurely people-watching, I was a lucky witness to an amusing occurrence. Just several yards away from us was a lady, probably in her 50s, reclining back slightly in a beach lounge chair, reading a magazine. In the very instant that my eyes were scanning past her, she just so happened to sit up and began to re-adjust herself in her chair slightly. The moment that she sat up all the way, it caught my eye. I immediately told Jamie to "LOOK LOOK LOOK! ON THAT LADY'S BACK!" and we both quietly snickered about it together.

Remember that the lady had been reading a magazine. Well, somehow whenever she originally sat down in her beach chair, one of those pesky magazine subscription cards that invariably come snowing out happened to drop out of her magazine and land low on the back of her beach chair, close to where you would sit. And she obviously was completely unaware that it had happened. So when the lady rose up, the magazine subscription card was firmly adhered to her lower back. It looked kind of like this:

The lady had no idea that the card was stuck back there for, like, at least 20 seconds, before she finally must have felt something going awry in her backyard, checked back there with her hand, discovered the large foreign object, and discreetly peeled it off. It was hilarious! It's like something that would happen to me (and probably will eventually)!

As it was getting a little closer to time for us to leave the beach, a small basketball quickly rolled onto my beach blanket, and came to an abrupt stop. I looked behind me, expecting to see some kid briskly trotting up to retrieve it, but never saw one. We sat there for a long time, and still, no kid ever retrieved their runaway ball. So when we were packing up our stuff as we were getting ready to leave, I was like

and whisked the ball into my beach bag. HEH HEH FREE MINI BASKETBALL FOR LILLY! WHEEEEEEEEEE! :D

And along those same lines (of snagging free abandoned stuff), after me and Jamie loaded all of our stuff back into the car, and we were both standing at the water's edge telling Lilly it was time to go, I saw that we were in close proximity to a nice-looking piece of clothing laying in the sand (which was almost actually in the water), that was soaking wet, and I had noticed that it had gotten trampled on all day long. It intrigued me, so as Lilly was finally coming out of the water, I whispered to her to GET IT, and we would investigate it in the car. Lilly nonchalantly grabbed it (like the good little acceptable-5-finger-discount expert that she is), and we all hurried up to the car, so we could inspect our discovery. When we laid it on the vinyl floormat of the rear floorboard to examine it, I looked at the tag in it, and saw that it was just Lilly's size. And then I saw that it was that popular Justice brand of clothing for girls! The tag said 'Justice Swim' -- it was a really nice swim coverup! Needless to say, me and Lilly were PUMPED about our find! I washed it today, and hung it up on the clothesline to dry, and it's perfectly just as good as new! HEH HEH FREE FANCY COVERUP FOR LILLY! WHEEEEEEEEEE! :D Here's a little pic I found on the internet of what it looks like:

But prior to snagging the abandoned coverup, another hilarious thing happened. I had decided to use the bathhouse restroom one last time before hitting the road. So I walked in there, entered Stall 1, and pee'd. When I busted back out of the stall and began to step over toward the sinks, however, there was a MAN standing there! At first, in that split-second, I second-guessed myself, and even though I was 99.999999999% sure that I was in the ladies' room, it would just be my luck that the beach people would suddenly switch the genders of the restrooms for some inexplicable reason, and I would end up being the only one in the entire world that wasn't aware of it. Well, in the next split-second, I looked at the man like:

and the man looked at me like:

and then he looked left and right and said "Is this the ladies' room?!?" And I said "OH MY GOD, YES!" And the man was all like "I'M SORRY!" And as we both briskly exited the ladies' room together, he appeared to be slightly disoriented, and asked "Well, where is the men's room?!?" Laughing, I said "I don't know; I think it's down that way" and pointed him down the proper direction. It was so embarrassing and hilarious! I'm glad it was him in the wrong restroom, and not me! It was a little dopey on his part, though, because even though the ladies' room door was propped open, the front of it was still clearly labeled