Four Feet More

This is my BFF, Mel. Mel and I met about 15 years ago when we were both working at The Pet Hospital (a highly dysfunctional place where I met my 3 best friends). Our first impressions of each other were not complimentary. She was hired to cover my position while I was doing summer school in London. Naturally, she assumed that I was a rich, spoiled, brat. After all, who else gets to study abroad? (BTW, I used school loans to pay for the trip, and am neither rich nor spoiled. The brat part is open to debate). When I returned to work and met Mel, she had this long, curly rocker-girl hair, and was wearing stretch acid-wash jeans. “Oh my, she’s one of those”, I thought (I was also a bit of a “rocker-girl,” but would NEVER wear stretch acid jeans. *shudder*).

Anyway, despite our first impressions and many differences, we soon became fast friends, and have been so ever since. We’ve been through so much together that Mel is more of like family to me now, rather than just a friend. My kids call her “Auntie Mel,” and her children are “cousins” to mine.

Yesterday, we packed the kids into the car and headed to the beach to meet Mel’s family. Mad and Chadly (Mel’s kids) are 1.5 and 3 years old – much younger than my kids. However, they still enjoy playing with each other, and Vika is a bit of a mother hen to them all. In fact, Eamon plans to marry Mad when he grows up, and Vika wants to marry Chadly (even though he's 4 years younger).

It was a typical gray, slightly windy, Northern California day. The kids ran around on the beach, ate sandwiches laced with sand, and rode a makeshift driftwood teeter-totter. Mel's husband, Chad, got some much needed rest (he's a stay-at-home dad), and Jeff got a nice break from the office. Of course, no beach trip is complete without Eamon falling into the water. We pack extra clothes every time we go for this very reason. The boy has not learned that when he looks down into the waves, he gets dizzy, loses his balance, and falls. At least this time he continued to have fun – in the past such falls would traumatize him. He was sure there was a shark in the surf, just waiting to gobble him up.

Even though the weather was less-than-summery, our trip to the beach was a great little get-away with good friends.

Here are some more pictures from our day: