Resort Life

My blog needs a change. The layout is totally boring. I don't even want to read the thing and I re-read everything I write about a million times (mostly marveling at how badly I create sentences and kicking my computerself in the face for the fact that I continue to write insufferable drivel). Regardless of the drivel, I wish the thing looked better. Alas, I have no idea how to do much of anything except make hummus and live in any tense other than the present one, which is not conducive to being able to find or create some kind of stellar blog layout. If anyone has a suggestion, out with it. Help. Me.
Life is exhausting right now. It's hard to explain what seasonal life really feels like to someone who has no hope of an idea. One morning, you drink your coffee and eat breakfast and go to work. This is normal. The next morning, you have to wait in line behind twenty other people for coffee. Those twenty people know that you work there, so before you have even had that essential taste of caffeine, you're answering questions about the weather and which beach is best and where can they get snorkel gear? It's entirely unfair. Once season starts, your customer service face becomes a permanent fixture. You always have to be smiling because anywhere from 100-300 people are always watching. You start to feel like a zoo creature, somehow totally fascinating to vacationers who chose the curtain with the cubicle behind it. Examined and discussed. It's really weird.
Our restaurant serves dinner at 5:30. The staff generally comes down around that time, sits at the same group of tables we have sat at for years now, and eats together. We talk about the day. We tell stories about crazy guests, of which there is never a shortage. We talk about which beach we might head to on our weekends and giggle at inside jokes and try each other's dinners. It's a family thing, really. We get there at 5:30 not because we are hungry then, or even because that's a logical time to eat. We get there at 5:30 because that is when everyone else will be there. We love dinner. We love dinner, that is, until the time of year rolls around. You know in prison movies when they show eating scenes and the guy carrying the tray is always shielding it from the other guys? That's what dinner feels like right now. I have literally had someone breathe over my plate and ask me which entree I got. Touch the arm that is blocking my plate as if to say, "Excuse me, arm. You are in the way of my viewing the food that this young lady whom I do not know has chosen for her dinner." I'm not kidding. This happens.
The beach does not belong to us anymore, either. We are afraid to go to our favorite little sunny corners because we might be followed and then those corners will be covered in beach towels (which don't even make sense here. The sand is calcite. It's little jagged grains that cling to a beach towel like we cling to summer) and we would hang our heads down and walk on, submitting ourselves to something ridiculous like porch-tanning because we can't stand the lack of personal space anywhere else.
Not that it's all bad. There is so much energy this time of year. You can't help but to feel the buzz of the whole thing, even if you don't want it. It gets all over you. Of course, we miss the slow days when no one else is on the beach and we can have Woody's happy hour all to ourselves. But you can't possibly spend a day around people who have worked 51 weeks of the year looking forward to this ONE week and not catch some of their excitement. I find that listening to their conversations makes me think, "Oh my goodness, they're right. This place IS amazing. It IS beautiful. Why do I forget that part sometimes?" Because eventually, wherever you live will just become home. No matter how exotic it may have seemed at the beginning. It becomes the place you do your laundry. Where you fumble through making coffee in the morning. Where you complain about the drivers/grocery prices/post office/bank line. So, it does us a bit of good to be tsunami-ed by the giddiness of hundreds of people who pay exorbitant airline prices and struggle through trying to find a swimsuit to buy in February just to spend a single week here. They've been dreaming of it all year long and by the time they arrive, their skin is the only thing holding them together. They're about to explode into rainbow confetti bits, so tired and so happy to finally have gotten here. How awesome.
Perspective changed. This is why I write a ridiculous, insufferable blog. You can start out a post as grumpy as anything and end feeling a little more sparkly. I'm gonna end this one here, I think, and dream of a place to go on vacation where I'll explode into rainbow confetti bits.