Drizzle

I went to the beach house this week and played with my Hipstamatic app a lot. It was so gray and rainy all weekend that the manipulations the app makes aren't that exaggerated.

Crossing the Astoria Bridge

Beard's Hollow

View from friend's deck

Amurrica

Friends, I spent this weekend taking advantage of all the freedoms granted to us Amurricans.

I went to the beach house with my whole extended family and spent most of the time tanning on the lawn/beach, walking various dogs, reading old copies of Vogue (articles about Sandra Bullock's perfect marriage are tearjerkers), painting my nails, watching really awesomely bad tv (You're Cut Off, Say Yes to the Dress), discussing our absent cousin's upcoming wedding, and eating. And eating. And eating. Pulled pork, bbq chicken, about 100 bowls of ice cream (I gave up giving up dairy for the weekend), lasagna, about 10 hot dogs...I won't embarrass myself by going into more detail. The only thing to rival my food consumption is my alcohol consumption, which began around 11 am on the 4th and ended around 8pm on the 6th. It's really quite wonderful to have a cousin who is a bartender.

My family is really, really, really into the 4th of July. It's hard to explain. We're not especially patriotic; it's more that we're really big fans of bar-be-ques and huge pyromaniacs. All of us are taught from an early age to love the scent of singed cardboard and the aroma of the Ground Blooming Flower. And, yes, we know all the names of the best fireworks. This year, our favorites included: Release the Beast, Peppermint Patty, Stegosaurus (green flames and dino noises), and Girl Power (2nd photo).

girl power: a zig a zag ahhhh

We went and watched the town firework show on the dunes and named each one as they went off. Some of the better name ideas went from the adorable: Cinderella's Castle, Lily of the Valley, Unicorn horn; to the obscene: Fire Crotch, Sex on the Beach, Taco Bell Food Poisoning. Then everybody came home and set off the aforementioned fireworks in the street for an hour. After that, all of us who are of age and/or morally pliable partook in a little booze-filled family bonding dance party in the backyard. The Olds just loved us the next morning. I haven't been yelled at like that by so many adult relatives since the 4th of July I was 11 and my cousins and I, without telling our parents, walked down to the apocalyptic scene that is the beach post-fireworks show. Oops. Anyway, after smoothing out some family rifts, we spent the day tanning at the beach because it was 73 and not windy, which is like, some kind of miracle. I even got a little tan!

Yesterday my cousin C and I stayed late to enjoy the sunshine and then road tripped back to 90 degree Portland blasting Patsy Cline and other classic Americana music, such as N*SYNC. The drive on Hwy 26 from the Peninsula to Portland is my favorite drive in the world; the sun filters through these huge trees and everything glows. And then, on a slightly deeper level than my love for hot dogs and Popsicles, I was thankful for Amurrica and all its wonders, from sea to shining sea. The end.

Happy as a Clam

I was at the fam's beach house all last week. All of my mom's extended family lives down there, and has for generations, so when we're there, we get lots of visitors and lots of weird offers, such as you can only get on the coast. "Do you want some of our left-over Salmon?" (obvi) or "Have you ever wanted to tour the canning factory?" (no) or "Would you like some of our live bait?" (ew). However, from time to time, in months not containing an "R", I am asked if I want to go butter clamming. My great-uncle is one of the only non-commercial owners of Willapa Bay property, meaning that we get to harvest all types of world-famous, top-price clams for free. Now who says "no" to that?!

How does one hunt the wily clam?

You put on rubber boots and a rain slicker, trudge out 1000 feet into the bay at low tide, brave the muck of the bay floor, and bend down for 15 minutes. You dig into the muck with a trowel, hit something hard, dig it out with your fingers and wash off the dirt in the water, and see if it's a clam or a piece of gravel. Usually it's a clam. Then you toss it into a bucket. Repeat 75 times. And that's how you clam hunt. They are the Deadliest Catch, for certain. Then you get to double-boil them and eat them with lemon-butter. NOM NOM NOM.