Beach Living

I was at the beach on Sunday and it reminded me of one particular item on my bucket list, live on the beach in Hawaii for one year. I have told my husband this will happen and at times he is excited, then just a few months later he says something awkward like "Well, I'm going to miss you."

My plan was to wait until my kids have moved out and are capable of buying their own milk. I'm hoping by that point they are also driving places without my assistance and scrubbing the toilet they shit in without me paying them to do so. It's a dream, you see. At that point we would sell our house, purge all the shit we don't need and move to Hawaii. I want to rent a bungalow on the beach and write. That's it. That's the dream. Will my husband work? Don't know, don't care. That's the joy of bucket list items, they don't have to make sense in their infancy. Will we be able to afford it? Don't know, don't care. Does my husband want to go? While I do care about this part, I honestly don't know. He is a Utah boy through and through. He loves winter, skiing, our crazy liquor laws and he has a successful business, that I doubt he would want to relocate for the purpose of validating his neurotic wife's crazy whim. I think my crazy whims are the reason for his high blood pressure, so I completely understand. He has put up with me calling from Hawaii and telling him I found a house to buy, planning a four day Florida vacation one week in advance, and showing up at home with gallons of paint and a really great plan for one room or the other. He's a saint, is what I am getting at.

As I have stated, the details aren't all planned out. My hope is that I will be a paid writer at that point and that I will have throngs of human beings clamoring to read my next novel. The reality may be completely different. I may end up scrubbing toilets at Starbucks again and wishing I would have pursued a degree in veterinary science so I could retire without wondering how to pay for my Depends. My kids may never leave my house and I could end up as a recluse with a 42 year old gamer who smokes weed in my basement and yells at me every day at 5 pm regarding his meal options. I could end up getting stung by a jelly fish during our next beach adventure and swear off bodies of water in any form. In that case, we would be living in exactly the right spot for us. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

My dream to live on a beach has been raging inside me since I attended massage school 17 years ago. My plan was to graduate, be hired by the most prestigious hotel/spa in Maui and live the dream of rubbing tourists' zit ridden backs while learning how to surf. Instead, I was recruited by a spa in Vegas that was a cement slab in the middle of the desert, where the only thing I learned was how to avoid dating guys in bands. It was a great lesson, but I feel I could have picked it up on an island just as easily. I then met my husband, moved back to a land locked state and smothered my beach dream. Problem is, it just won't shut up.

Every time we vacation on the sand, my heart aches to stay and I visualize myself sitting on a deck overlooking the ocean. I want to go barefoot all day long and call my flip flops slippers. I want to grow fruit in my backyard with little to no effort and have the salty breeze ruin every bit of metal on my bungalow. I want to be writing in the morning while my husband has a golf game, after which we we would barbecue fish on our patio and talk about the days when we had kids to keep us entertained. In my mind, it looks like a movie, but in my heart it feels like my future.