faux summer

Late April in Philadelphia. Typically on a nice day it's mid-70s or so. Cool, but warm. Rains some, sunshine some. Well, the past four or five days it's been basically summer, the last few days hitting highs in the 90s. Really hot. It's totally thrown me for a loop, because it's so out of context. It's felt like normal late April in Louisiana. So I've been hot and crabby. Yesterday C and I were driving around in the car, and I was muttering, "it's so hot. I wish I could go to the beach."

I'm always wishing to go to the beach when it's hot, yet in the almost four years of living here, I had actually yet to go to the beach (that's not Maine or vacation-related). The thought of going to New Jersey usually terrifies me, because I will get lost. And the thought of going to the shore in the summer is overwhelming, because that's where EVERYbody goes. Bumper to bumper across the state of NJ? No, thank you. There is also Delaware, Virginia, even Maryland. But they are further away, so introduce problems such as spending the night somewhere. But in late April? I thought I might just be able to handle the Jersey shore. So I called a new friend from church, whose little girl is just a few months younger than Marlowe. We squeezed the three carseats in the backseat (yes, Ellis played hookie, but I suppose you can if you're three years old), and off we went. In just under two hours we arrived in Ocean City, NJ. Yes, we did have to stop to ask for directions at one point. What is it with that state!?

The sun was warm, but the water is, of course, very cold. It is in June, why not in April? The breeze coming off the water was cool, but we were comfortable. I expected Ellis to have a lot of fun digging in the sand and driving his dump truck all over, carting sand. I didn't know how Marlowe would do, though, I thought sand ingestion would be involved. M totally surprised me by only trying to eat sand a few times. He LOVED the beach. He had to have a shovel in each hand, and kept trying to dig (more patting the sand). And they he decided to go swimming and toddled off to the waves crashing into the land. He got his toes wet and plopped down in the water a couple of times. But it was very cold. He loved the sand and the water and basically stormed the beach with his mad toddling skillz.

When the babies started getting tired, we took a little walk on the boardwalk, grabbed some ice cream, and headed home. Marlowe had zonked out before we got to other end of the causeway. And home again. I totally did it! I drove to the end of the continent and back. Hmm, maybe the middle of the week in the summer won't be too bad. Maybe we could do this...

anyway, the cool breeze come in through the window is promising that Faux Summer is going to be over soon. I'm relieved. I wasn't ready for it yet. I want my cozy days still. But come back in a month or so, and we'll be ready.