My Van Life: Day 53
Monday, October 11, 2021
Port Lavaca, TX
While I may have assumed I could just dive back in to Van Life after a month’s hiatus, my body felt quite differently. Unfortunately I did not sleep well at all last night and while usually that’s due to the uncomfortable heat and humidity, last night it was merely due to the struggle to find a comfortable position back in this small bed. Well, to be fair, it’s not terribly small but smaller than what I’ve been sleeping on for the last month so...It’s an adjustment. I traditionally toss and turn quite a bit while I’m sleeping but last night seemed to be nothing but tossing and turning and thus I rolled out of bed quite groggily around 8am this morning. After going to bed around 11:30pm I wasn’t terribly disappointed with the hours of sleep I managed to get just the quality.
After completing my morning routine – that on the other hand came back to me just like clockwork – I set up my folding chair outside to work on my blog and read a little bit with my morning coffee. I recently started a new book, Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell, and it has me anticipating each minute I get to spend reading, getting lost in the pages of this edge of your seat thriller. I love when books can captivate their audience like that. It was cloudy and beautiful when I woke up. The sky had that hazy purplish hue that seems to match the tones of the water first thing in the morning. It’s hard for your eyes to differentiate between the two. Where does the sky end and the water start. It remained that way, cloudy, moody, for the majority of the day. Personally, I didn’t mind. Not one bit. In fact I never found myself getting hot at all today, just moderately blinded when the sun decided to make its big, bold debut later in the afternoon but never once was I hot. Or sweating. Or uncomfortable really.
Ironically I ended up getting sunburned after hours perched up in my chair outside even though it was completely overcast. Did I not learn anything growing up?! The overcast days can bring the harshest sun rays and therefore sunburns. Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it until I came inside and looked at myself in the mirror.
The work day commenced shortly thereafter and proceeded as they always do – minute by minute, hour by hour – until finally it was time to close up shop and enjoy a walk along the beach with Coco. I continue scavenging for shells, each one added to my collection more beautiful than the last. Shells are amazing things really. I find myself starting at them, sometimes so symmetrical, so perfect in every way and just wonder how they even came to be? How did this earth form you to be so perfectly shaped, smooth, so captivating? Even the ones that aren’t perfectly symmetrical or shaped, they are still beautiful despite their broken nature. I find myself aimlessly picking up these smooth white ones, almost like slivers from a broken piece of pottery, rubbing them in between my fore finger and thumb as if subconsciously using them as some natural stress ball plucked from the earth beneath my feet. Stress Shells if you will.
Anyway, the walk commenced. There’s a decent stretch of sand out here that we can pace back and forth in order to get some kind of movement in during the day. Unfortunately we’re quite far from a Planet Fitness (approximately 45 mins) so I’m not sure that will happen this week so we’ve committed to daily walks – at the very least! We even happened to meet a friend on our walk this evening, a black pug named Winston! He was about half Coco’s age and almost double her size – not in a fat way at all but more so in a long legged and stout kind of way. They sniffed each other curiously for a while before retreating back to their owners, each of whom decided to continue on their venture. Winston’s parents back home and Coco’s parents back to their home on wheels to prepare dinner. There’s a decent chance we made a rookie mistake tonight in eating dinner outside, right in front of the van as we’ve had to worry with a few bugs this evening, bugs we haven’t had to deal with since being here. I’m really hoping it’s a fluke thing because this place is much too perfect to start dealing with these outside forces we simply cannot control.