In Which We All Choke on Poison Ocean

Yesterday was an amazing day. I woke up at 9:30 at started getting ready for the graduation picnic. My roommates were around getting ready too – in a leisurely fashion – and although the picnic started at 10 we didn’t leave until past 11. We all dressed up a little bit for it, just because we felt like it. Marijka tried to get me to wear a skirt of hers but it was a bit short, so I just wore my nice jeans. Dani was glad because she was in jeans too and didn’t want to be the only one not wearing a skirt. Incidentally, I don’t own any dressy shirts, other than the button-up ones I bought just for this so that I would have “professional” clothing. I hadn’t realized this until we were getting ready. My version of “dressing up a little bit” is to wear a shirt I feel pretty in and take a bit of extra care with my make up. Hmm. I suppose it’s not a bad thing.
When we got there we first signed up for the paddleboat races, then wandered about a bit, and then went and got our graduation Mickey ear hats! They are like the regular black Mickey ear hats but with a graduation tassel. They came in just one size, which meant that mine was too big and PJ’s was too small, but we all put them on with great delight anyhow. We were going to get our certificates, but then decided that having to carry them around for the rest of the picnic would get old rather quickly, and we would get them just before we left.
We then saw a line for meeting Mickey in a graduation outfit, so we got in line. While were in line we took several pictures of all of us together. Then after waiting a while we realized that we had to be at the paddleboat races at 12:35, and that we still needed to eat, and it was nearly 12:15. So we ditched the line and went and got food. It was normal picnic food, hot dogs and hamburgers. Marijka’s friend Lindsey (she’s from Iowa) and I were greatly disappointed in the corn on the cob. It was dreadful. But the hotdogs were all right.
After lunch we scurried over to the paddleboat dock and got on our life jackets. The teams were PJ and Nic, me and Abby, Dani and Kara, and Marjika and Lindsey (but the last two had to go on the next race because there wasn’t space). There were eight teams per race. They lined us up on the edge of the dock – and fortunately no one was cheating-prone and we all lined up evenly. They said “Go,” and we went. I instantly realized that paddleboating was harder than I thought. My legs hurt very quickly, but we kept going. We were supposed to go around the buoy but we went different ways and had a head on collision. For several moments the four boats (there were two buoys, one on each side) were all stuck, bashed into each other. Abby and I were the second to break free, and pedaled madly away. One boat was way ahead, due to the fact that they didn’t bother going around a buoy. So they were disqualified. We were close to two other boats, but couldn’t pull ahead of them, so we got third. I thought third of eight wasn’t bad, and we won water bottles (but they were cheap boring plastic ones, so it wasn’t especially thrilling). I was exhausted after that and had to sit down for a little. Then we got our certificates, and were sitting in chairs, until I heard them doing Disney trivia over the loudspeaker and hopped up to go see if I could win a prize. Unfortunately, the prizes were more boring waterbottles. And they were doing it by choosing a random person with their hand up and not by speed. Rats. They also occasionally gave beach towels, which I would have loved to win, but since I wasn’t in the front it was no good. Ah well. The exciting thing was that while I was up there, both Kara and Marijka’s names got called for caricatures, so we got to watch them be drawn. Marjika’s was good but Kara’s wasn’t done as well – they didn’t capture her the way Marijka was captured.
After that things were starting to close down, so we walked back home and got ready to go to the beach. I couldn’t find my swimsuit so I just dressed in clothes that I didn’t mind getting wet. We all crammed in one car even though there were six of us – Kara and Marijka double buckled – because we didn’t want to spend the gas money for two cars. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was certainly fun! We didn’t know how to get there (to Cocoa beach, the closest one to us) other than what freeway to get on and which direction, but since there weren’t any have-to-have-a-plans among us, we just went for it. (I only have to have a plan if it’s something that can be missed or ruined, like going to a play. A spontaneous trip to the beach can be just as fun if it ends in being lost, if everyone just laughs at the adventure.) Fortunately, there were signs all the way there, so we made it no problem. We stopped at a gas station when we were almost there, and Dani and I were hungry so we bought egg rolls and taquitos, which were surprisingly good. As we were going down the little road to the public access beach entrance, Dani said,
“You can smell the ocean!” and then Dani and Kara and I were all coughing at once. Dani and I thought we had both just happened to choke on our food at the same time, and Kara jokingly said we were allergic to the ocean. We got out of the car and went gleefully down the wooden path to the sand. The water looked pretty but it did smell rather bad. We waded a little, but the smell made swimming uninviting. And we were all coughing more and more. At first we thought it was just the salt in the air, but when it just went on and on with all of us coughing and choking we thought there had to be something else. And the sand was an ugly dull brown gray, and Marijka and I both thought this was a travesty.
“The sand in the Philippines is white!” Marijka complained.
“The sand in Michigan is golden!” I bemoaned.
“This is the color of the sand at Rocky Point,” Dani declared cheerfully. She was really the only one of us who liked that place, and her only because it reminded her of where she used to vacation with her family.
Then Dani picked up a jelly fish.
“Dani, drop it!” I cried.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s a Portuguese man o’ war!” The beach was full of them, of all different sizes. We had to watch our step. (This also confirmed our decision to not swim.) And dead fish too. And we all kept coughing the whole time, and the sand was dull and ugly – it reminded me of one of those apocalyptic scenes in a movie where everything has gone wrong and turned desolate and poisoned.
So we walked down the beach to the pier and went up it to look at the shops. We went in two of them, and tried on hats. And then we went to a little ice cream store and bought two cups of ice cream and shared them between us all – cotton candy and “garbage can,” an ice cream with 7 kinds of candy bar pieces in it. We thought that that was a frightful name for such a nice ice cream. Dani bought it because she was the only one with cash and they only took cash. We asked the lady about how the air was making us choke – PJ’s allergies were kicking in and his eyes were watering like crazy – and she explained that it was the red tide. It’s an algae bloom and it releases a neurotoxin that kills the fish and things. Great.
We went back to the car after that. On the way we saw an old lady out walking her dog – wearing a surgical mask. That was encouraging. We were pretty glad to get back in the car and leave.
The way home was interesting – it was a toll road and we were scrambling for cash because we had almost none. We just barely came up with enough change to pay the last toll.
When we got back it was about seven o’clock. We changed clothes and then went to the Magic Kingdom to get our hats embroidered with our names. We were going to take the bus, and left just in time to catch it. And then when I was getting on I realized I had left my housing ID. And the driver wouldn’t let me on the bus even though I had my Disney ID and my driver’s license and all my roommates there. It made me so mad – more because of the blank, completely indifferent way he just shook his head to tell me no than anything else. No “I’m sorry, we just can’t make exceptions,” no nothing except a blank face and a head shake. I hate it when people don’t care. I hate it. I would have liked to just walk past him onto the bus, just to make him react. But anyway, Dani was very sweet and walked back with me so I could get my ID and we could drive to Magic Kingdom while the others took the bus, and talked to me to help me stay calm. I’ve been fighting panic attacks for the past few days and this wasn’t helping. But I grabbed my ID and car keys, and we called the others to have them meet us at the TTC so we could take the monorail together.
The monorail was mostly empty, of course, since the park was closing in just over an hour. PJ was enjoying saying “Por favor, manténganse alejado de las puertas!” along with the monorail announcer, and he was very excited when I told him that they have shirts that say that. So when we got there, as soon as we had gotten our hats embroidered – mine says “Jonesy” because that’s what all my roommates call me, I love having a nickname – we went to the Emporium so that he could buy it. Then it was time for the fireworks so we went out into the street to watch them. Kara had never seen them before. Then we were hungry, especially Kara, so we all piled in my car and went to Denny’s. Abby joined up with us there – I forgot to say she didn’t come to beach because she had to take an exam – and we all had a nice meal. Then we went home, not quite so squishedly because we had Abby’s car as well as mine. We all went to bed pretty fast because we were so tired. And that is the tale of yesterday.
Today I baked cookies, and that’s all. And I need to go to sleep.