Feb 2009, weather forecast: snow. snow. snow.
It was about 4 days before my departure back to Vienna. The weather situation has been bad the entire month of Febuary. We even were snowed in for a few days. Let me tell you, that’s no fun if you have no food at the house and the pizza guy downstairs couldn’t make it to work because the roads were so bad…
However A and I were planning a trip to Atlantic City to spend the last weekend doing something fun. Something we wouldn’t normally do to keep ourselves occupied, so we wouldn’t think about having to say goodbye – yet again. Having to say goodbye is always painful, it doesn’t matter if you’re the one leaving or the one staying. One way or another it hurts bad.
Unfortunately the weather fairy didn’t want us to go to AC. We checked the weather periodically and it was calling for snow, snow and more snow and for bad traffic on the roads and flight delays too.
So a couple days before our AC-weekend we had to call it off and somehow had to deal with the pain without a huge distraction. A was trying to cheer me up, he made tons of suggestions on things we could do instead but somehow the only things we could come up with were renting some movies, going to the movies, going to the mall… These are all nice things but not big enough to distract you from a heartbreak.
I told A that I would have loved to stroll around at the beach and that I would have loved the boardwalk and the different scenery… Back then I thought AC was nice… fun… good stuff, I later had to learn that it was just not.
I jokingly said to A, “what about a beach in the living room?”
All he said was, “done and done”
He made a quick shopping list of things to get: Beach chairs, beach food (hamburgers, french fries, pasta salad…), beach drinks, candles that smelled like cotton, bright lights for the lamps, so it’d feel like the sun shining upon us and of course… sand.
I thought he was kidding when he picked me up that night to go shopping with him, but he clearly wasn’t.
About 2 hours later when we got back home we exactly had that:
Sand.
Pilled up in the living room (of course we used a plastic thing underneath it, so it wouldn’t stay on the carpet…). Just fyi finding sand at the end of Feb in PA wasn’t all that easy… Walmart and Lowe didn’t have any but Home depot saved us.
And of course the set up: a dvd with beach sounds and a video of the beach, beach chairs, towels, cups with lids, so the sand wouldn’t get in it, candels for the scent, burgers to eat and A as the world’s awesomest boyfriend ever.
The next evening we did end up going to the movies though since we both couldn’t stand being at home and being miserable. But at least we got our little beach in the living room for our last few days together and let me tell you, waking up in the morning, drinking your cup of coffee with your feet stuck in the sand and listening to the beach sounds while it’s snowing terribly outside is the best way to start your morning.
A bird loves a fish 
o.O