Beach, swimsuits, and childhood

My roommates (who consist of one of my best friends and my sister) dragged me out of bed at 9:30 this morning. After a late night last night where the three of us stayed up till 2am. I was anticipating this, but it still pained me to abandon my pillows.

It wasn’t long before the early wakeup call felt very worth it. We got ideal parking (free on one of the residential streets as opposed to the metered parking at the beach), there was not a cloud in the sky, the weather was gorgeous, and there was hardly anyone there.

That’s the best part about Long Beach. Sunset, Seal, Redondo, and Huntington Beach are so close and cater so much more to the more touristy beach goers (snack bars, nearby establishments with food and drink) and surfers (we have a breakwater that makes the waves pretty nonexistent), that Long Beach gets completely overlooked except by the locals.

It was a wonderful day to be at the beach. My roommates swam for a bit while I remained a land-lubber this time. No offense to the ocean, I was just far too content on the sand to head to the water today.

I got a bit pink, but otherwise came out pretty unscathed. We stayed till around 2 and headed home, stopping at the nearby 7-11 for a free 7.11 ounce Slurpee (it being July 11th and all). A bit of cherry and a bit of Coca Cola flavor for me. I’m not a huge fan of the syrupy flavored ice, so the small cup was the perfect size for me. We got home, found ourselves ravenous, and one roommate offered to head to Ruby’s to pick up “dunch” or “linner” (lunch/dinner). YUM.

After eating, we found ourselves sprawled among the living room, feeling a bit drained from spending four hours at the beach.

I’ve been doing laundry since, as well as catching up on blogs and YouTube subscriptions… still in my bathing suit.

When I was a kid, we lived in an awesome townhome complex with our choice of about 5 different pools. And my grandparents had a pool. And we weren’t too far from the beach. And we had a lot of kids in our neighborhood, so water balloon fights, water gun fights, and “chase each other with buckets of water” fights were pretty common. Regardless of the water-based activity of choice, it was always exciting to have a reason to don the swimsuit.

Changing into clothes after a day of water and fun in the sun was like surrendering the freedom of summer. I remember hating taking a shower and changing into normal clothes. Of course, I was the kid who found it completely absurd that my parents wanted us to get out of the pool at 10pm after only being in there all day…

It is now 8:45pm and I am still in my swimsuit. I can’t help but feel a bit child-like. Feeling sundrenched and beachy, I’m trying not to think about the fact that I have to morph back into adulthood and leave for work at 5:30 tomorrow morning.

Edited: July 11th, 2009