Last chance at the beach?

September 30, 2008 by Barbara.

Reid and I had a picnic supper on the beach at Petrie Island Thursday night, maybe our last beach visit for the season. I’ll take her again next week if it’s warm enough. I’m left wondering again why we don’t go for supper in the spring (before the evenings are ridiculously hot) or earlier in September before we’re living on borrowed time. We had a lovely time though, to be perfectly honest, Reid had eaten her hamburger by the time we got to the beach and I picnicked alone on my lentil couscous while Reid played.

There was an immense flock of sea gulls on the beach for chasing and they’d left many, many footprints for studying. There were also a couple of fast boats on the river that caused a few waves worthy of note. This is where I confess that I let wade in water that hadn’t been tested by the city as all city beaches were officially “closed” before Labour Day. Reid made me a wonderful mud pie and even served it with a sand hoe as a fork. She isn’t nearly as enthused with sand castle building as I am and had lost interest in the shovels and molds before I had even finished eating.

We walked around a bit - the beach is really big - and investigated the breakwall, some trees and a little hill. Okay, the hill is more of a rise but it was big enough for Reid to lay the sticks that she’d been dragging through the sand crosswise and declare, “X marks the spot.” When I asked what she was referring to, Reid told me that it was the spot where the cherry was to go on top of the cupcake. I’m not sure who bakes such cupcakes, even Melissa hasn’t served us such a confection. (She specializes in cookies.) I think I’ll add cupcakes with cherries to my “to do” list. We were walking down the beach together, to the scene of last year’s family water fight, when my big toe collided with Reid’s little toe. All of a sudden Reid was spurting blood from her aforementioned toe. Her impulse was to rinse it in the water since we’re more of a rinse-with-water than Band Aid family. I was somewhat responsible at this point and prevented her from taking her open cut into the untested water. We had a bottle of water at the car but no Band Aid (unlike that mom at Reid’s birthday party) and so we had to cut short our time at the beach. We’d have been able to stay only a few minutes more, though, and it was good not to have to end the fun because the clock said so.

The light at sunset on the beach is so lovely. Thanks to it being fall, we didn’t have to stay out late to see it. I took some good pictures, even a good one of Reid and me together, thanks to the “self-portrait” setting on my Olympus 850 SW camera. It has about 36 pre-sets and I rarely use more than a few of them but I’m going to try to more of them out when I can remember.

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