It’s true.

Every year we go to the Cape–pack up the cars, bring the kids and sometimes their friends, and stay in the same house we’ve stayed in for years, a 3-bedroom house that comes equipped with lobster pots and playing cards, good paperback books, electric fans, feather pillows–and beds that sag in the middle. (We joke that it’s those beds that finally make us glad to go back home–we practically need a team of chiropractors to get us up in the morning by Day 7.)

Over the years, as you can imagine, the vacations have varied in their quality. There was the year Hurricane Bob struck on day two of the vacation, catching us completely unaware. Apparently everyone else got the memo and knew to bring batteries and lanterns, filled-up ice chests, and buckets to fill with pond water so they could flush the toilets…but  not us. We had a policy then of not watching TV on vacation.

Instead, we stood there dumbly while 70 mph winds blew down trees all around us, and by the time, three days later, when we managed to work our way out of the woods of Wellfleet and into civilization, all the batteries, ice and candles were long since sold out. Because this was Our Vacation, our one time of the year to be away, we stayed there for another five days which I will not describe to you because you would know then how utterly insane we are.

In the vacation journal we keep, there is one line, written by me, which sums everything up: “Tonight for dinner we had crackers and potato chips. Warm beer for us and warm water for the kiddos.”

But why am I talking about that? This year was perhaps the culmination of everything that is GOOD about the Cape.

For one thing, there was day after day of sunshine, beach days with actual warm water (up to 66 degrees, in the OCEAN). There were stars and evening beach walks. There were steamers and mussels to eat. There were early morning runs on the bike trail. There were babies to play with in sand that was as soft as flour. There was a campfire one night, with a million stars sparkling in the Milky Way above us. And there was a lot of drawn butter.

And there was no internet.

I LOVE the internet, of course, but I have to say it was kind of nice to be back to the elements of sand and water and sun and fire and drawn butter. I didn’t even work on my novel, although I meant to. Instead I played in the water with babies.

My characters would speak to me every now and then whenever I wasn’t talking to anyone else (which was rare), but they seemed busy, too. The main character, Annabelle, pointed out that she really does love her husband a lot, even though she complains about him. She thought maybe I should emphasize that a little bit more in the opening chapters. “I’m not REALLY wanting to be done with him,” she said. Then she wafted away and wasn’t heard from for the rest of the vacation. I figured she was on vacation, too.

One evening, walking on the beach, though, looking at the nearly full moon on the water and catching the white tips of the foam, I suddenly knew the title of this novel. (Here I’ve been writing this book for six months and am over halfway through and haven’t had even one inkling what its name might be.)

It’s going to be called The Year You Think of Nothing Else.

There. That was enough work for a vacation, don’t you think?

And now that I’m back, the characters came back, too, with lots more to say. I’m back on the internet and vow to be a better blogger than I was in August.

And I gave Annabelle some nice things to say about her husband.

I’m still tanned and spoiled and fat from all that drawn butter, but it’s fall. Time to get shaking. Tomorrow I might even go to the gym.