62. August 8th, 2010 Picture.

The morning after Rachel's party, everyone packed up and headed home early to beat the traffic.  Ratty and I had thought otherwise, and decided to spend the day on the Cape, hey we were down there, might as well enjoy it, right?  We woke up, packed up the car, and headed down the road to a cute little place to get some breakfast.  Once I was sufficiently caffeinated, we headed out to find a beach.

Being on the cape and all I thought it would be pretty easy to find a beach, you know, somewhere.  We drove up and down Main Street it Cotuit for what seemed like forever, knowing that at some point the road would end and we would HAVE to hit water.  We had to, it was just the simple physics of the situation.  After getting stuck behind slow car, after pedestrian, after families on bikes, we hit the end of the road, which also happened to be a nice, lovely, beautiful PRIVATE beach.  Ugh.  People with money have all the luck.  We turned around and decided to ask for directions to the nearest beach at the Cotuit Market.  At this point in time, we had passed every person in town at least twice.  Turns out, there was a beach right down the street on Oceanview Road.  Here is the funny thing about Cotuit, apparently each street intersects with Main Street at least two times.  We'd pass Oceanview Lane, commenting that we MUST be near the ocean because of said street name, and then 2 seconds later, we'd pass Oceanview Lane AGAIN.  How is that possible, you ask?  Well, thankfully the lovely people in the Cotuit Market solved this mystery for us, and Oceanview Lane is actually a loop, and at the bottom of that loop is...drumroll please...LOOP BEACH!

Since the parking lot at Loop Beach was for residents of the town, we parked on Main Street and walked the 2 minutes down the road.  It was a pretty small beach, and apparently everyone on the cape was there, but we managed to find a nice little spot near the water.  We stayed for about 2 hours, reading, swimming and relaxing.  I did panic at one point in the water because I was concerned about sharks.  One had just been sighted at another beach down cape, and I was afraid it might have migrated towards us.  Sharks swim you know.  The water was so full of seaweed you couldn't even see the bottom, so I was sure that any second I was going to be attacked by a great white.  Seriously, I can't even SWIM without thinking of worst case senarios.  I am also afraid of pools because of an episode of 'Are You Afraid of the Dark' where a high school pool was built on an ancient Indian burial ground and a spirit was haunting the pool and drowning people.  Seriously.  And yes, I am afraid of the dark, kinda.

After leaving beach we stopped back in at the Cotuit Market to grab some lunch and coffee.  I don't know what was wrong with me, maybe too much sun, too much relaxing or too much internal panic over sharks, but I could not order a sandwich for my life.  The woman asked what kind of bread I wanted and I blanked.  I just stood there looking helplessly at the menu, going 'umm, well...'.  At one point Ratty actually started laughing and had to walk away because I sounded so completely ridiculous.  It was embarrassing.  I finally picked a bulkie roll for my sandwich, what an enlightened pick, and went to grab some waters.  Turns out, they were out of bulkie rolls, shoot!  I had to pick another type of bread.  Um, wheat roll.  Nope, out of those too.  My god, how about you tell me what kinds you DO have and I'll pick from that.  At this point, the poor girl behind the counter probably wanted to quit, or laugh, or cry, or do a little of all three.  I settled on a wheat wrap, which they had, and called it a day.  Gah, I shouldn't be allowed in public sometimes.

We drove down the street, when BAM!  I saw the most perfectest house on the planet.  I need it.  I love it.  It is amazing, and sweet, and adorable and everything I've ever dreamed of.  I made Ratty take a picture out of his window, even though the owner was standing right there.

{I know the quality isn't that great, it was because we were taking it while pretty much moving.  If I had my way, we would have gone and sat in the chairs on the porch and posed for the picture, but sometimes we can't always get what we want.  But honestly, I'd really like this house, like yesterday.}

We drove down the street a little further, to a park we'd see on the way down the day before, and decided to eat lunch at one of the picnic tables.  It was a pretty cool park, complete with a frisbee golf course, which made Ratty so incredible excited.  Me?  I was excited for swings.

After swinging our little hearts out, we headed even FURTHER down cape to make a very special trip.  Unbeknownst to my mom, I had made arrangements to buy her a new computer.  A Mac.  She had an evil Dell, mostly my fault since when I moved home from college no Macs had Microsoft Word yet and I really needed Word so I could apply for jobs.  We bought one, and it turned out to be horrible.  My poor mom could barely check her email without the whole thing crashing or 200 pop ups blocking her window.  At least weekly I'd get get a call from her saying that the computer was doing something weird, and I had no idea how to fix it.  

I had found an EMac on Craigslist for $100 and was in contact with the seller throughout the day on Sunday to try and set up a time to meet up.  Ratty and I had to drive about 30 minutes or so further down cape, so we made plans to meet at 5pm.  I am in no way creeped out by Craigslist, I have had nothing but amazing experiences on it.  I've bought Red Sox tickets, found roommates and apartments on it, gotten jobs through it, and even found my book club on Craigslist.  I've also sold concert tickets and furniture on it without any issue whatsoever.  I know that there are a lot of sketchy people out there, like Craigslist Killers, RIP, but a lot of times there are really good people in the world too.  I think you definitely have to be careful, but can't be afraid of doing something just because there is a chance something could go wrong.  Hi, crossing the street every day is probably more dangerous!

The computer was just as advertised and the guy selling it was as nice as could be.  His girlfriend had been using the computer for her business up until she got a laptop and they decided to sell it to someone who could use it.  Here is where I came in, I could use it!

After grabbing the computer, Ratty and I made a quick exit off the cape, and drove up to my mom's house to show off the surprise.  Traffic wasn't that bad, so we made good time.  My mom was SHOCKED to find out that I bought her a new computer, but was absolutely thrilled to get rid of her horrible Dell.  I set up the Mac so that all her favorite sites were bookmarked, when she hit home she'd be taken to AOL (yes, up until August 8th my mom actually logged on to AOL every day), and when she clicked GMail she'd already be logged in.  Here's a shot of the new EMac.  Oh look!  She's got it open to my blog, that wasn't staged at all!

YAYYYY SURPRISES!