Beach House on the Moon

Returning from Florida would've been downright depressing if all I had to look forward to was work. Fortunately, my gaggle of girls knows the only cure for the post-vacation blues is another vacation, so we jumped right into the next one.

Our destination, Crystal Cove, was only 40 minutes from home, but it felt like we were far, far away, both in time and physical location. We stayed in the cove's little cottages, built right on the beach. (Our cottage was actually 30 steps away from stairs to sand, but really, who's counting?? OK, yes, I counted.)

We stayed in the Painter's Cottage, named, apparently, for this one random accessory nailed to the wall:

The ugly palette provided us with many giggles and a few snickers throughout the weekend.

The cottage was big enough to house the whole lot of us--me, Edra, Kathleen, Monica, Vic and our lone boy, Mark. Mark stayed with us Friday night, but then went off to diabetes camp. I knew he was looking forward to the beach, so I felt bad for him at first, until I remembered he was also going off somewhere fun, and I now had a whole child-free weekend with the girls. That, my friends, is what we call a win-win situation. :-)

I wasn't surprised that we brought enough food to feed the whole village, but I was surprised at how much of that food was chocolate. Vic brought the biggest candy bar I've even seen. It was so thick we couldn't even break it apart, and the only kitchen utensils we had were plastic cutlery. But my ever-resourceful son grabbed up a corkscrew and went to work chopping up that chocolate.

Saturday morning broke bright and sunny and we could hear the beach calling out to us. We packed our chairs, wine and gossip magazines, and heeded that call. But as soon as I hit the sand, I saw a familiar-looking building. My eyes immediately welled up, and I screamed, "It's the 'Beaches' house!" (Can't help it, and won't apologize--"Beaches" is one of my, and every other girl's, all-time favorite movies. Don't try to understand it, men, just chalk it up to one of the things you will never ever understand about us.)

It was, in fact, the very house where the pivotal last scenes were filmed in. I realized my very own idol, the Divine Miss M, and I stood in this very same spot. I didn't think the weekend could get any better, but it just had.

Of course, this called for a couple of Kodak moments. Here's the first, with me in front of the house, and the wind beneath my wings.

And here's the second, when I screamed at Vicki to look pale and sickly, so she could re-create a dying Barbara Hershey spending her last few precious moments on the beach. (Yes, my friends are very good to me, and they humor me quite a bit.)

We spent much of the day on the beach, with wine and girl talk. We hadn't seen each other since the holidays, so it was great fun to be all together and laughing again. We spent most of the day like this:

I felt so lucky to be in such a beautiful place with my very favorite people. If there really is a heaven, I imagine it will look like this.

Edra, Kathleen and I walked down to the tide pools to look for sea creatures. The only thing better would be if our resident marine biologist went with us, but apparently, she chose wine and the beach over educating her friends. No matter, we met a super nice man who not only pointed out the sea stars, but also gripped our hands and kept us from falling as we shimmied across the slippery rocks. It was nice to see chivalry is not dead.

After an impromptu supermodel photo shoot on the rocks, we headed back to the cottage. The sun was setting soon, and we didn't want to miss it, especially since we had prime seats.

The sunset was even more amazing than we could have hoped for. The visibility was great all day, and we could see Catalina silhouetted in the water. We also saw some harbor seals and a couple dolphins, but none of that compared with the show Mother Nature gave us.

The sunset was so gorgeous, we all cheered.

I was glad we'd had the sun and Catalina, because they both disappeared on Sunday. It rained a little bit, but not enough to dampen our spirits. We still staked out a place on the beach to read, and then eventually retreated to the cottage for lunch and a rousing game of Yahtzee, in which Monica scored an unbelievable FOUR Yahtzees. I jokingly ripped up my scorecard in protest, and was thankful Mark wasn't around to see my bad sportsmanship.

The rain cleared up, so we decided to walk. We started on the hiking trail, and ended up a couple miles later on the beach, where we discovered a little cave, and crawled into it. Our marine biologist was more helpful this time around, pointing out all the different sea birds, and the little things they ate in a beached bed of kelp.

As we walked along the beach, we spotted a pod of dolphins frolicking nearby, super close to the shore. There must've been five or six of them, and they were just awesome to see.

There was another tide pool along the way, but it didn't have nearly as much cool stuff as the one by our cottage. A huge flock of birds on the beach eyed us nervously, so we chased them, setting off an explosion of wings over the sea. We marveled at all the dilapidated cottages set precariously on the cliffs, slated for refurbishment, and wondered how they were still standing.

By the time we returned a couple hours later, it was time for a quick dinner, then it was off to the one bar/restaurant in town. We planned to drink and hang out with the other guests, but apparently, nobody got the message. Everyone else had checked out, or didn't feel like braving the bar in the rain. It seemed silly to keep buying $10 drinks in the cold when we had our own stash back home, so we settled our bill and returned to our warm, dry cottage, ending the weekend on a high note.

The whole weekend was perfect, especially after all the holiday craziness. It was so awesome to hang out with the girls, to just laugh and be silly. It was fun to sit around playing games, and gossip, to fall asleep listening to the crashing waves, and to sleep in late. I certainly love my big, long, exotic vacations, but truth be told, it's weekends like this that really keep me going. I can't think of a better way to spend them, or a better group of people to spend them with. And if the rest of my year is even partially this good, then 2012 is gonna be AMAZING!