Frageelay!

In case you didn't notice, there was a new moon last night.  You probably didn't, I didn't until I went for my walk on the beach this morning and there was a lot more beach.  I don't keep track of tides anymore since I moved off the boat, I think I have a block or something about those years on the boat, the ones I remember anyway.  Those years on that boat accelerated and cemented my alcoholism, and the fact that the cap'n and I received an estimate yesterday that it was going to cost us another $25,000 dollars to get it marketable, again, is not making me any fonder of it.

But that is neither here nor there.

Back to the beach.

In addition to having a new moon low tide which gave me more beach to traverse, a norte' blew in last night which usually means great shells.  Now I swear I'm not a shell seeker, like the boat, it is another thing I'm done with.  I mean you can only do so much with seashells and when we bought this house it came with its own collection of bottles, and jars and bowls, and buckets full of shells because the previous owner couldn't think of anything else to do with them either. Plus I have a few Jack Daniels 1.75  bottles full of tiny shells that I rescued off the boat that are now residing in a storage shed in Colorado.

Convinced yet?  

Ok, one more.

Enough shells already, agreed? 

 Except... I'm still on a quest for one of those big honking shells about a meter long that my friends have and swear they've found on the same beach or that some fisherman has gifted them with one after he's become enamored with their stooped early morning  figures and ample derriers as they poke among the rocks.

So I set off in search of my own today.

I didn't find one.

But I did find something that I've found a few times on the various beaches I've combed and it never ceases to amaze me.

An unbroken light bulb.

Laying on the beach where a wave has tossed it, past the reefs and the ankle snapping rocky shore, as if a careful, steady hand has placed it there.

Safe at last.

My friends, that light bulb is you and me.  We've ridden the tumultuous wave and balanced precariously on its crest only to be pulled under and deluged time and again.  Rising and falling. Rising and falling.  Finally we've been cast onto the beach, crashing against the razor sharp reefs and jagged rocks, tumbling to rest on the soft sand.

Unbroken.

But we can never forget how fragile we are.  Please stay safe, don't get too close, don't let the tides suck you back out into the maelstrom.

The next wave might shatter you.