Island Bums

We just wanted to start by apologizing for not updating in awhile. We would like you all to think we have been working really really EXTREMELY hard, but unfortunately it is the exact opposite. We have turned into COMPLETE island bums. It is hard to put island life into words and some days it is even hard to form words. We will do our best to inform you what we have been up to. Here it goes…

The weather has ranged anywhere from 85 to 95, sunshine everyday, mild humidity, light breeze, and no clouds. Now your minds should be in our paradise. Basically, everyday when we wake up we must decide which of our numerous bathing suits to wear for the day, make sure the legs are shaved, and the oil is packed and ready to go. Then we jump onto the “La Jolla”, which are our matching beach bikes, and head to our practically private beach entrance. From there on out God only knows what might happen for the day. Some days, we have been a little sleepy so a four hour nap is taken, don’t worry we try to remind the other to flip over. It is never good when you aren’t even! Then there are days when we are feeling ambitious and full of energy so we start far away and swim out to the sand bar. Here we find shells and sand dollars galore. We keep collecting sand dollars in hopes the bar will start accepting them as a form of payment…not looking good right now! Some days you find yourself in a situation with barely legal beach boys who want to teach you to skim board. Although this is fun, it can be extremely dangerous and they were sure to inform Sara she was too old for them..haha. 

There are also more organized activities on the beach like the sand castle competition, our skills were not present but if there is another event we could surely win! Finally, and possibly our favorite days on the beach are those spent with an iced margarita, ice cold beer, or a 7-Eleven slush mixture. These days you may never know what might happen, who you might meet, or how the rest of your day may look!! All in all our favorite activities usually happen on the beach, so spending 85% of our time here is not an exaggeration.

]When you live on the #1 beach in the US there is really no reason to leave, but we do try to scope out the surrounding areas.  Our first stop was St. Armands cirlcle. We attempted a little shopping but it was out of our league so instead we found some good grub and did a little people watching..these things we are good at. Then we gave another beach ( Manatee Beach)  a try, but again nothing beats Siesta and we found ourselves a little homesick. We were also missing the 99cents store in Cali and the closest thing to this is Aldi’s, which is about an hour away from where we live. Manatee beach happens to be real close to this ALdi’s so we made a quick pit stop and stockpiled for the future knowing we would not be venturing off our island again for awhile. Normal people are in and out of this store, but not us we act like we have never seen food before and acted like kids in a candy store!! Supermarket sweep style shopping is basically how we ran through this store. The cart was parked in a central location and we just ran down the isles and back to the cart until eventually our feet were blistered and our cart was full. Now as we unloaded the cart we realized how out of hand we had gotten and also remembered they only take cash…this could be a problem. We decided it was best to tell the worker up front we may not have enough money, so she told us when we were getting close and we had to prioritize our needs/wants. 

Things that didn’t make the cut were face cream (wrinkles here we come), French dressing, BBQ sauce, green peppers, and various other things that since we can’t remember are clearly not a necessity to our life at this point. The things we didn’t get have since been bought so don’t worry we are not starving and you don’t need to send us BBQ sauce in the mail. All in all the trip off the island was a success, feels good to get off every now and then. It really makes us realize how out of touch with reality we are.

With having a couple days here and there off together we decided to take full advantage and head to the village, most people in the village only see us alone, when the other is working,  but now they are in for a treat with double trouble.  Our favorite place to hang out is SKOB and we are becoming more known there (whether this is a good thing or a bad thing we will leave that up to you), but every time we say we are travel nurses we always hear about someone named Rachel, Raquel, Richelle whoever the hell she is we are not sure but apparently she too was a travel nurse. Turns out her name is Richelle and she is the original island travel nurse, who has a paved a very good name for herself. Richelle even has a shot named after her! We have a lot to live up to!! Hearing more and more about her we feel like she is someone we can look up to and we just wanted to meet her! On this particular night someone said she was at the back bar so we took off running and demanded to know which one is Richelle! After our eyes focused a little bit we saw the pink stethoscope dangling around the only girls neck at the bar. She had a scared face on but raised her hand, the rest is history. The next night out on the town turned a little ugly, imagine that. Jenn got into a staring war with an older women, who appeared to follow us to ladies night. Luckily the band picked us to be a part of the gig before any words were exchanged. We sang our hearts out to our hometown favorite “Hang on SLoopy” as we beat tambourines and bells. Put on a pretty good show for all those present if I do say so myself! The main singer even said we had pretty good rhythm for a couple white girls…how this was possible at this point in time is beyond me. We decided we needed a break from the village, or the village needed  a break from us, we headed to the south end of the island to Captain Curts, which is an Ohio owned bar. They have the best clam chowder and their signature beer: Crabby Red, very fitting and also delicious! After our food was consumed we headed out back to where they have Karaoke 3 nights a week. This is not to be taken lightly there is some serious competition and a lot of talent. 

Needless to say, we made fools of ourselves and even had the local regular cowboy dancing with us! Our neighbors met us out and they too fit the mold of really talented karaoke stars. Fun night all in all. As you can see we are not going thirsty out here either, but bottles in the mail are always welcome!

The next couple weeks were a lot of work on separate days with little fun mixed in. We realized in those weeks we hated work and have no idea how people work more than 3 days a week.  Work is starting stabilize as we get more used to the craziness. The people we work with are really cool and have taken a liking to us so we actually have friends at work…that we can understand.  Welp! That’s all there is to say about work. We go our 3 days a week and that is that.

Anyways,  Jenn had to tweak her schedule so she could go home in time for the new baby so Sara had to find other ways to amuse herself. One nurse we work with and his wife Sara have 4 kids and can’t venture out to often, so they were heading to Venice beach for  the day inviting us along. Jenn had to sleep so sara ventured down with another girl from work Shan who basically stated “why would leave your paradise to go to a craphole”. But in this beaches defense they did have shark teeth, so that was cool! I enjoyed my time here with the 4 little crumbsnatchers, not sure I will ever be  welcomed back after I accidently shot the baby in the face with a water gun, but I can only hope! Ooops!

Work again got in the way when the neighbors asked if we wanted to go boating with their friend.  Jenn had to work, but Sara went to pave the way for our future in hopes Sara could behave and we would be invited back. Boating turned out to be fun and the sunset from the boat is a completely different experience. However, when Jenn texted Sara to make sure she made it off the boat alive Sara informed her of what happened. We were heading in and the boat appeared to have run out of gas. Stranded in the middle of the ocean is a very bad, and hilarious event. Basically we had to be pulled into land and then Jerry free ride picked Sara up with a shake of a head, “what are you doing here”. Jerry always seems to catch me in a bad situation, I can’t help it! I kept the sarcastic comments to a minimum so hopefully the boat gets fixed and we  will be invited on again.

The week finally ended and it was time to take Jenn to the airport! The baby boy  was born 5/7/12 named Evan Patrick. Jenn was extremely fatigued from waaaay too much work but being tired was well worth it for a trip home to see the nugget! What a cutie pututie!! Don’t forget to read the bib..all true!

Until next time....