Beach Music

Just past 5 p.m., Jude, J.P and I arrived at "Beach Music," the house in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, where we'll be staying for next week.  When she left Renewal House a few months ago, the board members were generous enough to purchase a week's stay here and give it to us.  Blessed, we are.

It's approaching midnight and I'm sitting on the porch downstairs, in the dark, listening to Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" on my iPod.  "Visions of Johanna," to be precise (just an amazing song).  I'm entering a Dylan phase, but that's another story.  Corona on the table beside me, I can smell the ocean from where I'm sitting. 

The trip down was, shall I say, difficult.  That's probably fair, given that about 10 minutes down I65 South, J.P. started whining, asking "are we there yet?"  And I'm not even joking.  For the next seven hours, that's what we heard - "are we there yet?"  The only break was when we stopped at McDonald's (or "Donald's," according to J.P.) for J.P. to play in the play area or, later, when he napped for 45 minutes or so.

The upside, though, was that for the first time in history, J.P. didn't vomit in the car.  That's something, right?  Sure it is.  Really, though, he was too busy asking "are we there yet?" to throw up. 

The real upside and what made the entire traveling ordeal worthwhile is how excited he was once we arrived.  He ran up the stairs and into the beach house, so excited he could hardly contain himself.  Better yet, we walked to beach with him after dinner, just as the sun was setting.  This time, unlike the last couple of years when we've come to Santa Rosa Beach, he couldn't wait to get to the ocean.  Jude and I laughed as he grabbed handfuls of sand and ran to the edge of the ocean, laughing and squealing with delight, as he threw the sand in the water.  It was something to see.

It's going to be a good week.