Note to self: DO NOT WAIT UNTIL GETTING TO THE BEACH TO PUT TANNING OIL OR SUNSCREEN ON. The design of your shirt will be seared onto your body if you are fair-skinned.
Joshua and I loaded our bags with towels, drinks, 4 different "in case of low" snacks, suntan oil, and changes of clothes. The drive to Tybee took about 40 minutes and was pretty stop-and-go. There was a lot of traffic, but I had to admit it was pretty picturesque to see the marshes and the gorgeous blue sky - especially after days of rain back in Macon.
When we got to Tybee we were greeted, as my grandma stated quite literally, by "the land of the endless parking meters". We drove for at least an hour trying to find parking, failed, and had to drive about 1-2 miles out to the post office just to find an empty space. On the bright side, we were treated to the tour of local houses and hangouts... on the bad side, gas was $3.30. And we didn't escape the lengthy sojourn to the beach once we parked either... then, the hike began. Part of me thinks the 12 miles hike up the mountain that year at Summer camp was easier. We could only carry the necessities in my purse, and we kept walking, and walking, and walking, trying to tell ourselves that lunch and the beach was "right around the next corner", or the next, the next, the next.... there were no shady trees, no soothing bird tweets, no trickling creeks. Oh no. Pavement, searing sunlight, traffic, and don't forget those parking meters.
Suddenly all of me shook, and I tested, blearily seeing the 36 mg/dL on the screen, peeling away the granola bar wrapper, eating it in about 1.5 bites and stumbling on, leaning on Josh for support. The cognitive thought in my head faded, replaced by zombie-mode. My "beach, beach, beach" chant echoing in my head soon turned into "lunch, lunch, lunch", and it must have been thirty minutes later - but really felt like two hours in "Tybee time" and a miniature downpour - that we finally made it to a restaurant. I told Josh, out of desperation, that I would literally eat at the first restaurant I saw that was at least semi-reputable looking. So we ate there. I don't remember the name, I remember it being overpriced and tiled like my old house back in Sanford, but the food was pretty OK and it did the trick. I didn't feel shaky anymore, probably because I ordered a salad and ended up eating half of Josh's steak fries when I tested and saw that I was still at 50, and we proceeded on towards the beach from there. As soon as we reached the sand we shed our shoes and set out under the pier and to our left in order to find a less overcrowded plot of sand on which to lay our bag.
So far our trip seems like it might have been miserable, but don't get me wrong. The moment my feet touched the sand, it was all totally worth it.
We found a place, which was amazing considering Tybee was the most crowded beach I'd ever seen (I guess in FL we have a lot larger of a choice), and we wasted no time in shedding our shirts and pants and running to the water. The water was incredible! It was warm, and salty, and pure perfection. Back at home it always seemed like the water was too cold (I'm a wimp when it comes to cold water, yeah), but here it was just right. Like, wow. Josh and I laughed and ran and tripped and dove into the waves, swimming out and making a game of leaping over the waves as they charged toward us, threatening to drag us back towards shore and sometimes sending us tumbling underwater and scrambling to hold onto our bottoms. The day passed away while we screamed and paddled and vigilantly watched our bag from the water, and I felt like a little kid again.
When we had swallowed enough salt water to pickle us, we breaked for a good half hour in the sand, digging sandcastles with our bare hands and haphazardly remembering to apply some bit of tanning oil (mistake, mistake, mistake). Halfway before building the pyramid of giza-great moat of China hybrid, we decided to run back into the water and played in the waves more before packing up our things once again and starting the hike back to the car. And an uncomfortable hike it was! I had been spoiled from years of seeing showers to bathe in on the beach docks, and there was not a shower to be found anywhere on Tybee. No lie, Josh and I both would have probably paid for a shower and we were seriously considering foregoing the consequences of using someone's hose in order to avoid the sandy, salt-sticky walk back.When we were almost there, we stopped in a beach store to enjoy the AC and grab some fresh T-Shirts, and Josh went ahead of me to get the car. I caught glimpse of myself in a mirror and to my not-so-surprised horror saw that I was unevenly sunburned. By that I mean, the mother of all sunburns. As in, I was wearing a crochet top and the design of the crochet was burned into my skin. In short, my skin somewhat resembled a doily. Le sigh. I can't get a pretty tan for the life of me.
We began the long sojourn back, stopping at Sonic for some mega-huge drinks before going back to the hotel, where we freshened up, complained about our sunburns, applied aloe, repeated the word "ouch" a lot, and finally crawled painfully back into the truck, with our tender red skin, to go back into the city and get some dinner. It took forever... we drove around again for an hour looking for parking, as apparently Savannah on a Saturday night was THE place to be. But we got some great views of the city that we had missed Friday. We saw more churches, town squares, Paula Dean's restaurant, theatres...it was stunning to see the eclectic mix of old and new, and the ever-constant thrum of pure life that pulsed like a heartbeat throughout the city. People were everywhere, tourists, locals, dressed-to-the-tee's, photographers, hipsters, rednecks. I loved it all and took in every moment of it.
When we finally did hunt down a spot next to a cozy looking cafe by the intersection of Hull and Bull Street (easy to remember), we walked around for a good while, and couldn't seem to decide where to eat. We actually just ended up eating at the same place we had for lunch the first day because we thought it was so good! I was ravenous - we ate nachos and queso, Josh had another parmesan chimichanga (we aren't creatures of habit at all...), and I had a huge serving of chicken, my fries replaced with veggies. BG had held pretty steady since the beach and I was cruising at around 150, but was careful to give myself plenty of insulin to cover the chips so as to try and not get off track. After dinner, we walked down River Street again, spent some time listening to another one of the 4th of July bands until the bugs ate at us too much, and then journeyed back across Bay Street and onwards to check out the squares we had missed earlier.
It was fantastic --- we looked at booths full of beautiful things for sale, witnessed a proposal in the middle of a streetside concert, and I happily dragged Joshua back into a Candy Shop (conveniently enough they were all over Savannah!) to indulge in a treat of my choosing. I was literally as happy as a kid in a... well, candy store! (What is it about candy that makes people so... happy?) I had such a hard time choosing what I wanted! This was such a treat for me --- I told myself that, for tonight, I could pick anything I wanted, no blood sugar-strings attached. Tonight, I was just Lacy. Not Diabetic Lacy. Just me.It took me away from life and from the everyday, from the ins and outs, the drags of Diabetes, everything -
Nevermind the insulin pen in my stomach as I dutifully bolused. In that moment, it was Joshua and I, and we weren't sad with troubles, or weighed down from the world, I wasn't Diabetic -
No. We were simply, truly, oh so very, very happy, and it is a memory I will treasure always.
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