Dewey Eyed

Iris (left) and CBW (not at all right right)

This weekend I drove to Canada, lawd it was a long drive to Dewey Beach, Delaware, to visit my college roommate Iris and her family at their vacation home.  Here we are on her rooftop deck enjoying wine the view and fresh air.

Chesapeake Bay Daughter and son, shown here playing paddle ball on the beach, went too.

Iris and I have known each other since 1492 1982.  She and I have so many stories, we could start our own blog.  Click here for one guest post she wrote about a time we drove from Charlottesville to Key West.

Oh, the stories we can't could tell...

This is Delaware but it reminds me of the drive to Key West. Water on both sides of the road.
Plus driving. Lots and lots of driving. 

For the Chesapeake Bay Family, who never only rarely eats out, the trip was full of culinary delights, including some delectable Thai food in Rehoboth. At the opposite end of the culinary scale, Dairy Queen, which was within walking distance of Iris's house, saw sometimes twice daily visits from CB Son and Daughter, who are ice cream fanatics.

(There is no Dairy Queen or Ice Cream King or anything close to dessert royalty in Mathews. On the one hand, that is good. On the other hand, it creates kids who are so sheltered they think they've died and gone to Ice Cream Heaven when they see anything that isn't scooped from a Breyer's carton that was two for one at Food Lion. The same holds true for their mother, who actually let out a very audible scream when she found the Thai restaurant on the way to the boardwalk in Rehoboth. It's abundantly clear we all need to get away from Mathews a little more often.)

Reluctantly, we loaded the car up and headed back yesterday morning.  The drive took us down the Eastern Shore of Virginia, which looks a lot like Mathews except there's fast-moving cars and Don Valerio's restaurants four lane highways. From where the photo above was taken, which is north of Cape Charles, Mathews is only about, what, 15 miles across the bay?  I can't remember, but it isn't far by water.

By car, however, it's four hundred a two hour drive. Without traffic.

Except there was all manner of beach traffic converging on I-64. Virginia Beach traffic.  Outer Banks traffic.  All trying to squeeze through one tiny little foot feat of engineering known as the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel.

(Between this and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, I must've crossed and re-crossed and circumnavigated the bay at least eighteen four times this weekend, at least it felt like it. Oh, and to make matters worse, I only had one contact lens in and was squinting the whole drive home.  Don't ask, it's a typical CBW story of being careless and forgetful. Or just typical CBW.)

Speaking of being forgetful typical CBW, when we finally arrived home I was greeted by a harsh reality reminder of an unfinished project.

Before we left,  I had trimmed the front shrubs but neglected the top parts which required a ladder. At the time,  I was too worn out to drag the ladder from the garage. So I just left things as they were.

"I'll finish it later," I said.

Right.

For now, let's not focus on the botched trim job which causes the bush to appear slanted.
We're talking about the top part.

Between my mohawk shrubs which draw just enough attention to the window that's been missing a shutter for a year now, and the fact that this week will be brutal at work, and the fact that there is still unfinished business with the book, I was ready to turn back around and head back to the beach.

Traffic and all.

The End.