When I Grow Up...

I know who I want to be.

I want to be the lady who lives at the beach year round. She gets up super-early every morning because she has that Old-people-can't-sleep-in-but-falls-asleep-at-eight-pm-in-her-chair Syndrome. She goes and walks on the beach at sunrise and gets all the good shells that have washed up during the night. Later, she will sit on her balcony and giggle craftily at the young tourists searching hopefully for seashells around 8am. Her vast collection of whole sanddollars and conch shells will inevitably end up in a jar gracing the back of a toilet.

She has copious amounts of snow white hair that is without specific style, but manages to look wind-blown and natural most days. She is deeply tanned with warm crinkly eyes and a leathery chest. (Not old lady in There's Something About Mary leathery, just a nice soft brown series of wrinkles.) There may be a few stray chin hairs, but she is not worried about them, they add character.

She spends her days reading on the beach or the balcony. She definitely has a bathing suit which involoves a skirt, and she has skinny brown legs. She does not wear shoes, ever. She comes in at one for lunch (a tomato sandwich with Duke's mayonnaise and sweet tea) and some mindless, trashy television, possibly Days of Our Lives. In the afternoon, she naps in a hammock, then freshens up to meet her friends for happy hour at the local beachfront dive, where the ladies have a regular table waiting for them. They might play cards. Some days she plays seniors doubles tennis at the club.

That's who I want to be when I grow up.