Couple of Crumbs

Summer Lovin’: Nights in Outer Banks

Hey y’all! I’m Jessica and you can normally find me blogging at my own little corner of cyberspace, Heart on Homestead, but when Couple of Crumbs asked me to guest post, I could hardly pass it up. My blog normally consists of all things me: life, love, cooking, and my dog, Bodie. However, when the weather gets warm, and I’m not at work, you can bet my butt is gonna be on the beach.

It’s hard to believe another Summer has almost come and gone. Before we know it, Fall will be here and there will be pumpkins on our doorstep and the Autumn leaves will be on the ground. However, the recent heatwave has really got me reminiscing about the past year and how I’ve spent my Summer vacations.
 
Every June, as soon as school lets out, the countdown begins. My nieces, 10 and 13, become restless and stir crazy sitting at home, ready to hit the road to the beach. I can’t say that I blame them because I normally start packing a good two weeks in advance myself. I’ll start my “to take to the beach” pile which includes countless bathing suits and beach towels, hats and sunglasses. And we can’t forget the sunscreen. Once my bag is packed and the day finally arrives, it’s like Christmas morning. Running on just a few hours sleep, my husband and I load up our vehicle and join the family convoy heading South. After six hours in the hammer lane, I’m finally home.
 
I say home because I truthfully feel that way about the Outer Banks. It’s where I fell in love with my husband, where he proposed and where we got married. It’s almost like I’m living a real-life Nicholas Sparks novel, which isn’t surprising because he’s my favorite author. I can’t help but connect with his words and characters and picture myself right there in the story line. I mean, how can I not picture myself alongside my favorite characters when I’m on the exact beach where they filmed Nights in Rodanthe? I may not look like Diane Lane and my husband certainly is no Richard Gere (my husband’s better looking!) but we certainly know how to bump up the romance while we’re on vacation. Call us cliche but we’ve been known to take nightly walks at sunset along the beach, have candlelit dinners on the deck by the water and enjoy the quiet evenings, just the two of us, away from the family. If that doesn’t rival Nicholas Sparks, I don’t know what does.
 
By the time our two weeks at the beach come to a close, it’s almost as if my husband and I have rekindled our relationship and we’ve become closer to our family. However, on that last night, when the entire beach house is cleaned and all our bags are packed to come home, a wave of sadness seems to overcome everyone. We all get quiet and melancholy and head to bed early, dreading the following day when we leave our paradise behind us.

Nonetheless, we get in the car and drive home, we’ll start the countdown to next year’s beach trip. Our “Nights in Rodanthe” will begin all over again next summer, we just have to be patient. 334 days to go my friends.

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Back Where I Come From is part of our Summer Series.

Summer Lovin’: White House

Pumpkin Spice is an aspiring writer trying to complete (or make any progress whatsoever) on a novel while working the nine to five.  She loves babies, being creative and/or wasting time with her twin Laura and friend Mary, working out and of course, writing.

When I think of vacation in terms of my childhood, I think first of a white house in Rhode Island where I spent snippets of every summer.  I remember my time there mostly as a scattering of pieces, tiny (meaningless) moments that stay with me as part of a much hazier whole.
 
Until the early 2000s, Rhode Island was a sure thing, a joyful constant, and it never occurred to me that it might not always be that way. It’s been over half a decade since I’ve been there, but I still feel alarmed when I realize I can’t grasp vivid, meaningful memories of those Rhode Island days.  Here, I try to piece together a few bits that I can.
 
What I do still remember are certain landmarks of the three-hour drive.  In particular, I remember the restaurant that looked like Grandma’s large, round, orange and brown earrings, where we always got chocolate chip pancakes (it closed during the last few years), as well as the little port full of little boats and ducks to feed, a clear sign we were almost there.  After the last familiar turn, the house on the corner in Westerly would appear slightly uphill.  The reason we came was inside this house.
 
Dorcas Van Horn, our great grandmother’s little sister, whom we all called Aunt Dorc, was a woman important to my childhood despite our relationship consisting of fleeting moments between beaches and restaurants. I knew her from the time she was in her late 70s until she was in her mid-90s as a fashionable, energetic and one-of-a-kind woman.
 
Picturing her, I see her in large pearl earrings and large rimmed glasses with bits of red left in her hair.  I remember her as tall and willowy, and in her movements and her style, I feel she combined the grace of a star from Hollywood’s Golden Age with brassy, at times more masculine manners and sense of humor.
 
An essential part of these trips to Aunt Dorc’s was Misquamicut Beach, where she would be sure to be the driver so we’d get a senior discount. When there were too many of us for one car, I remember following Aunt Dorc as she drove fast and furious ahead of us, leading a friend we’d brought along to sing, “Little old lady from Pasadena, go, Granny, go! Go, Granny, go!”  Ah, the sense of pride I felt over that one.
 
Once at the beach, Aunt Dorc never came onto the sand (my grandmother says she never went in the water), but would sit on a bench near the showers, watching from the shade of her hat.  We would play in the waves until our skin stung with salt, with what seemed like hundreds or seagulls looping in the air.
 
Back at Aunt Dorc’s house, we spent the most of our time on the second floor, made up of four bedrooms: the master, the yellow room, the green room and the blue and red room.  I’m not sure if anyone else called them that but me.  I remember the master, where Aunt Dorc slept, as seeming pink to me, but I’m not sure if it actually was.  My sister and I would spy on the neighbors across the street (they rarely did anything interesting) or marvel in the cable TV, watching “Pop Up Video” and “Clarissa Explains It All.”  Despite the yellow room’s old toys, the red and blue room was a favorite, and our choice of location for the toilet paper time capsule we hid under the rug.
 
I have a few more memories — a shoebox of tiny wooden cars and buildings, chicken nuggets shaped like fish, the child-size pathway leading through the bushes wrapped around the garage. The spottiness of my memories worry me, because I still feel such a strong attachment to them.
 
It was in the mid-2000s that Aunt Dorc began developing dementia.  I don’t remember our last trip to Rhode Island — the real  Rhode Island, not the trip after Aunt Dorc’s son sold her house, and when Aunt Dorc didn’t remember me. Since Aunt Dorc died in 2007, I’m not sure we’ll ever go back again, at least not as a family.  My mother has said it would be too painful to go knowing Aunt Dorc wouldn’t be there.  I agree it wouldn’t be the same.

Still, I do long to go back, to mourn the additions the new owners have made on the house, to return to the beach, to think of Aunt Dorc and miss her despite my childhood shyness, and to bring part of her and Rhode Island into my present.

Aunt Dorc and her second husband, Mike, who she married in her late eighties or early nineties!

My twin and I — not completely sure which is which — at Misquamicut Beach.

More of my twin and I at Misquamicut! Not sure who’s sitting on the rock.

My twin posing on a rock — I was hoping this was a picture of me, but upon closer inspection, I think it’s her!

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White House is part of our Summer Series.

Bridesmaid at the Beach

By: Red Velvet

Three things that can make a wedding enjoyable (for a bridesmaid): beautiful weather, being in a bridal party where you actually like all the other girls and a (really!) awesome pair of heels.    

Luckily for me, I got all three this past weekend.  

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An Ordinary Summer Day.

By: Funfetti

Working through the summer is a hard thing to get used to. Three years after college, it still makes me sad. Without the luxury of three months vacation, I tend to jampack our weekends. Probably a bit too much, but I don’t want to feel like I’m missing out on anything despite the responsibilities of work (boo).

This past weekend we had a friend visiting on Saturday. I hadn’t seen her in a few months, and I was really excited. Mr. FF and I had been working on the house obsessively since May and we finally feel like it’s ready to host people without feeling self-conscious (we have curtains, people!)

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Summer To-Dos

By: Red Velvet

Lately I’ve been sitting at my desk at work (internally raging) and wishing I was anywhere else but here. To help pass the time (and ease my irritation), I try to think about what I’d much rather be doing on all these beautiful summer days.

I want to go to the city and actually enjoy it. Like this past Saturday, one of my best friends and I ventured out to Brooklyn for the first time. It was fun to not have any specific plans and just explore.  Try a new restaurant (TUE Thai Food), see new sights.  I’m constantly adding places to my list of things to see and do in the city - but I’m rarely crossing them off (Shakespeare in the Park, The Cloisters and The Guggenheim, to name a few).  This has got to change.  

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