There are few things I look forward to more than my annual vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I spend seven perfect days in a beautiful home with my closest friends while we share delicious food, sunscreen and chick-lit. The most strenuous decisions of the week include, "Should I lay on my back or my stomach?," "Do I want to read People or US magazine?," "What should we have for dessert, crepes or caramel popcorn?" It's my favorite seven days of the entire year and I crave it like I crave Rio chips & salsa and queso.In all the years I've gone to Corolla, there have only been one or two days that the weather has not cooperated. And by "not cooperate" I mean there were a few clouds in the sky. The Outer Banks is all about blue skies, coastal breezes and a shining sun, and every year OBX has delivered.
Until this year.
This year brought five days of gray skies and rain. Five days! It's during times like this, when severe cabin fever sets in, that you learn if you really do love your friends and family as much as you think you do. It's also an opportunity to learn how to curb your extreme frustration that five days of vacation time is being used to sit in a house and watch videos.
Fortunately, despite our hostage situation, the twelve of us found the silver lining, enjoyed two sunny days at the pool / beach, and created a host of new, albeit rainy, memories to add to our OBX collection.1. Weight Gain - This is not a funny or happy result of five days of house arrest. In the absence of pool time, we ate. And ate. And ate. We blew through peach pancakes, blueberry muffins, blueberry blintzes, maple creams and caramel pull-aparts. And that was just breakfast. Add in BBQ chicken, rice krispie treats, cookies, muffins, candy bars, crepes, caramel corn and you have a serious situation. We all joked that we'd gained seven pounds during beach week. The joke was on us when we all arrived home and discovered a few days later that many of us had, in fact, gained exactly seven pounds. Now, if only my weight problem could be condensed to just seven pounds!
2. No tan - In the absence of good beach days, we all soaked in the 12 hours total of sun we received and nearly everyone chose to forego the sunscreen. Post-beach week, Caroline Marriott sent a sad email in which she lamented her lame vacation and summed it up by complaining that "my skin is itchy and peeling...and WHITE!!!" Nothing is worse for Beach Girls than white skin. I exclude myself from this camp as I'm fanatic about not getting any sun anywhere, but everyone else lives for the second-degree sunburn that stings like a snapped rubber band. That's why the liberal application of Maui Babe, with a thin layer of SPF 8 "for protection", is so integral to Beach Week and why so many were so disappointed.
3. Diet Coke Withdrawal Headache - This goes along with the weight gain. In addition to eating nonstop, we drank nonstop and never was it water. We went through 3 36-can flats of Diet Dr. Pepper and 4 24-can flats of Diet Coke. That's more than 200 cans of soda for 12 people for seven days! We were on such a caffeine high that the withdrawal shakes didn't stop for days!
4. Chick Lit - Beach Week is for beach reading. This means that preferred reading material is to have a maximum of 350 pages and include the words "heaving" or "throbbing", as in "her heaving breasts were pressed against his throbbing heart." Beach Week is really not a time to dive into War & Peace or Anna Karenina, as Susan chose to do this year. Instead, it's for books that prompt comments like this jem from Caroline as she floated on her pool raft, "Don't judge me if I start rocking back and forth on my raft." Nice! Now there's a book for next summer!
5. "Jesus, Take the Wheel" - Like many beach week memories, this one will likely be filed in the "you had to be there" category, but it sure was funny in the moment. On our way down to OBX. Lindsay watched as another driver on 395 cut off Carolyn. Lindsay automatically threw down the Lord's name, only to realize her faux pas, prompting Amber to chime in with Carrie Underwood's "Jesus, Take the Wheel." It was a line that got a lot of use during Beach Week!
6. Working Girl Blues - On our first day back to work, Amber and I left her apartment and were walking to the car for her to take me to National Airport. On our way to the car, I noticed her shoe attire and asked, “Do you have your work shoes at your desk?” Amber looked down and realized she was wearing flip flops to my career! Oops! Some habits are hard to break!
7. Recipe-palooza - As noted in #1 and #3 above, Beach Week is all about fun, sun and food. This year, we decided to make a Beach Girls cookbook, initially titled, "Beach Babes and Bitches: How to Gain Seven Pounds in Seven Days." (Who knew the weight gain joke would be on us when we all got on our home scales!) We all contributed our recipes that had been shared and enjoyed at the beach, except Caroline. As a proud non-cook, Caroline didn't have any recipes to contribute to the book. So we made one up! Now, our cook book features an original Caroline Marriott recipe, "How to Prepare Diet Coke." Bring on the ice and limes!
Despite the rainy weather, Beach Week 2009 still brought lots of funny moments, great memories and a dream for a sunny, warm weather next year!