It was a lovely time, really.

We all went to the Cape, rented the same little house we always rent, went to the beach nearly every day where we plopped down in the sand with our sand chairs and our new cooler (the kind that has wheels) and our umbrellas. We ate steamers and drank beer with limes in it, slept late, read books, played killer double solitaire, had long talks and walks, went to a county fair with Charlie, who is 3 and who loves the rides so much that he is in a constant state of grinning the whole time he’s there. Some people in my family ate FRIED TWINKIES. (I did not, not from any moral superiority but simply because I think that Twinkies are already an abomination…and frying them could only make them worse. However, I was hooted at when I mentioned this. So I had to console myself with eating a strawberry sundae that claimed to be the best strawberry sundae in the known world, according to an international panel of experts. This is true.)

It was lovely for the whole week, which alternately seemed short and then longer than forever. The children came and went. There were babies to cuddle and smile at. We ate more steamers, went to Moby Dick’s twice, took a long hike while flies pursued us and we had to run from them, flapping our arms around our heads, laughing and looking ridiculous, which only encouraged the flies to bite us more. There was sunburn. There was the required day of rain, requiring a movie. There was the night we cooked lobsters, and one lobster got out of the bag and terrorized us, a la “Annie Hall.”  

I thought about my novel and made tons of notes on it, and came home and spent today writing it with renewed passion.  New ideas have kept piling in. The main male character pointed out that he had said he was going to California three separate times, and that I really should have allowed him to go, since now he looked foolish for not going. Unmanly. The other boys in the novel were laughing at him and calling him a wimp, I suppose.  So now I am sending him to California–at least temporarily. He has to come back when he realizes he’s in love. He has promised to do that. The female main character, who is mad at him, thinks it would be fine if he stayed there, although she would like to sleep with him. These two are a mess, but now at least I know who I’m dealing with!

I may have gained 250 pounds on this trip, mostly from the butter from the lobsters and the steamers. They don’t call that restaurant Moby Dick’s for nothing. I have become the whale.