If Nautical Nonsense be something you wish...2014

It feels like a century since I last blogged in July 2013, and frankly I have had so much going on since the summer that I haven't even realized I missed blogging. Being a full time student, a part time cat blogger (see Sandpiper Cat) keeps me busy. SC is my full time blog, that gets the most attention and most updates. I even registered my own domain name www.sandpipercat.com this year, which is an amazing moment for me.

I started Capemaychick in 2009 and it is hard to believe I have been keeping this blog for 5 years. But when I think about it, I've been coming to Cape May for my whole life, 20 years, so 5 years isn't really that much. Oh man, I'm rambling.

I've been to Cape May 2 times since last updating the blog (November/December). Now (March) I am here for my only spring visit before my big summer vacation.

We left today after my class and I *gasp* drove us part way! From our house, through the beltway and Route 50 and even over the Bay Bridge (plus the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, Severn (Severen?) River Bridge, Kent Narrows Bridge, but these are minor). I had never driven over the Bay Bridge before, and frankly I wasn't nervous. It went well and we all survived.

The hardest part was driving on the beltway. Keeping up with the flow of traffic which is around 65 miles an hour (despite 55 mile speed limit) is something I can do, but prefer to do in my Subaru Outback. My dad's Subaru Forester handles very differently and is very sensitive. Someone merged while I was in their blind spot...mind you they merged over a solid white line (BIG NO NO!!) and almost hit me, causing me to serve and jerk the car a little tightly, which my car could have handled better than the Forester. Basically, I am vigilant about checking my mirrors and knew there was no one in the left lane so I guess it was subconscious that I swerved to miss them hitting me, because they definitely would have. We're all really sensitive about swerving because a pick up towing a trailer tractor hit our family jeep in 1995 and flipped our jeep. We could have died, and probably should have, but we had guardian angels watching over us and we were fine. But needless to say, it is really hard for my parents to let me drive after a terrifying experience like that.

Before we got to our restaurant for dinner, we saw a new antique store called The Cool Cat Antiques, Consignments & Gifts. It was exciting to see a new antique store with a great name. Since our beach house is called The Cool Cat Cottage, we felt at home there. Check out the cute little cat dish we bought.

We ate at our favorite fried chicken joint Holly's Restaurant in Grasonville, Maryland. It is supposed to close in June this year which is sad. It's been a tradition to stop there for so many years. I will miss it when it closes.

Dad drove the rest of the way. We made good time until we stopped at the Vineland Target which probably added on 40 minutes to our trip. You know, it's impossible to go to Target and not shop for everything but the thing you stopped for! Buzzfeed's 53 Thoughts Every Girl Has While Shopping At Target was exactly a summary of our trip.

We stopped at Wawa for milk and got to the house by 10 pm. We left at 3 pm and did hit some traffic and with stopping for antiquing, dinner, gas and Target made the trip longer. We unpacked, saw our next door neighbors and got settled in to the house.

Tomorrow we have quite a bit on our plate!

xo,
capemaychick

All by myself? // the time I almost went to college

*Side note before you read my long post - we started a Facebook page for our house so visit it here: Cool Cat Cottage.

It's been a whirlwind of a day, with lots of emotions. I got up, dressed and had cereal. We worked on putting things away in the house and clarifying some of the things I will need to do before I leave for our renters the second week of June. Dad showed me things in the owner's closet in the basement, and how to use a skeleton key (difficult!!) to look our upstairs owner's closet. Our do-it-all-NJ house-guy, Bill, came by today. He has a lot of projects to do. Including coming early tomorrow morning to work on my windows. So since I don't want to scare him and he doesn't want to scare me, we agreed it would be best if I sleep in one of the other rooms while he is working in mine. It will be nice to have screens back in the windows and be able to open them.

We went to Bella Vida for lunch. Surprisingly it wasn't too busy. I tried something different, since I don't have to worry that we won't get back to try something different! A good thing about owning the beach house, more opportunity to branch out (and hopefully not just food related, though I know a great deal of my blogs are oriented around food!). So I had a waffle with banana, chocolate chips, walnuts and powdered sugar. And a side of the New Jersey delicacy - scrapple - and if you don't know what that is, don't ask. And definitely don't search it up.

Afterwards we went to Swain's Ace Hardware to pick up some cleaning products. I'll have to go back there next Saturday or whenever they get in our toilet bowl cleaners. Apparently CM was having a shortage on them?? We came home afterwards and did more packing and cleaning/organizing. I finished my book. We popped over to our friends Ron and Shelia's house, to say hi.They were getting their house ready for renters. They might be up when we're all here.

We came home and mom, dad and Michael finished packing. We had a very short and calm goodbye - probably sort of what my college goodbye should have been, except that there was no goodbye because I came home. I know that will impact me the rest of my life - despite already being at the college I wanted to go to (GMU). It still had that college abandonment feeling - but not until later.

I left shortly after them, to go to the Acme to get some food. I got lost going there, but was able to figure it out. I felt stupid getting lost because it's a place I've gone to a million times - though I have never driven there which is probably a big reason why. But I was in and out in 45 minutes, which was pretty fast considering the deli was so busy and probably took at least 10 minutes! I even got some healthy food :) but seriously I'm trying to be good since I'm at the beach and want to walk everywhere (well not really but I don't have a lot of choices) and want to lose some weight this summer. I came home, unpacked and ate some sushi I picked up at the Acme. I also marinated the chicken breasts I bought in Italian dressing, for dinner.

Clockwise starting upper left: Me marinating chicken, air plant & buttons, dinner while watching My Cat From Hell, Clara Beau Necklace.

I put on my sneakers and headed over to the mall. It was a really nice temperature out today, it if stayed around 70 degrees all summer I would be so happy! One of my favorite jewelry stores, Splash, was closed, so I went into my other fave jewelry store Henry's. I had been in March and they didn't really have many more different things. I really like their Alex and Ani bracelets, but think I will hold off until I go to Stone Harbor to shop. You never know what I will find and I don't want to blow my budget too fast. I did that two years ago and didn't have any money for a big portion of the trip. Live and learn. I save so much of my pet sitting money to buy things in Cape May, I have to be careful how I spend it as well as making sure I do save some for the rest of the summer in Virginia.

I went into Whale's Tale and found a new jewelry designer they just started carrying, called Clara Beau. I got a cute little anchor necklace. I also went over to Across the Way and picked up an air plant and a little bird glass to keep it in (I've wanted one of these plants forever) and a few buttons (my fave!).

I came home and put the chicken in the oven, since mom said it could take up to an hour to make. It only took a half an hour. I guess you never know with the oven here. The chicken came out great. I put it on top of the salad I made, with croutons and Parmesan cheese and dressing. I also had corn on the cob. It was really good, but I definitely got a wave of "I want mom" while I was eating. I don't really cook for myself since I live at home. I occasionally make the pot of mac and cheese but nothing like chicken. My mom showed me how to make the chicken last week at home so I would have easy meals for the beach. I also had lots of leftovers that will be good. Trying to eat healthy. I had bought a lemon meringue pie to have a slice of for dessert, but I didn't feel up to it. Whenever I'm stressed beyond normal standards I have trouble eating. And you know if it involves not eating dessert, it's serious. I think that living here by myself will just take some adjustment.I really, really haven't lived away from my parents for more than 4-5 days at a time - when they are in Cape May and I'm at home taking care of the cats and Michael. So it's obviously a culture shock to me.

I messaged with my friend Lindsay and she reminded me that it's a process and I have to get used to it. It was kind of funny to me that just eating a home cooked meal would trigger those anxiety feelings. I haven't felt like that really since I was trying to move into my dorm last August. It's like, after all that work moving in and getting all settled in, shouldn't I just put my best foot forward and stay? I knew staying at Longwood was not going to happen - I knew it all along. I think my parents knew too but they couldn't not make me try. And trust me, they did everything in their right minds to make me stay. I'm still grateful for that and all my friends and family who messaged me and stood behind me. It helped a lot, but I knew I wasn't going to stay.

So will it be the same with Cape May? It's funny sort of. To think that I don't want to be in my favorite place in the whole world. No, that's not really it. I just don't want to be alone here. And I'm not really alone because when I'm not doing something, I have a neighbor calling and checking in on me and my family texting me. It's not really as big of a deal as I'm making it. I mean my goodness it's only the first night! I do think that by not staying at Longwood, I lost some of my ability to deal with being totally on my own issues.  I know I'm not always going to live at home - and I'm definitely feeling ready to move out, but there are a lot of factors why I'm not ready yet.

So this post totally strayed from Cape May in a sort of non related venting session. But I think it's good for my friends and family to understand what I'm going through. Anxiety is a really hard thing to control, and as much as I have it together - I don't always have it together. But being able to write about it keeps me in check. I'm not perfect, my anxiety isn't perfect, but day by day I'm able to get through. Some days it's a struggle and other days it's a trip to the beach.

I actually have some plans for tomorrow, so make sure you check back!

Miss you mom, dad and Michael. Thank you for a beautiful beach house and the opportunity to stay here. I miss you lots. Give the kitties a pat for me. :)

xo,
capemaychick/Rachel

Mocca Chocolata

The title of this post is one of my favorite lines from the song Lady Marmalade, which I've heard in a few movies and happened to hear this morning on 98.7 The Coast - which is my favorite radio station in Cape May.

Since last night was a late night, it was a late morning. I fell asleep and woke up listening to 98.7 The
 
Coast, which was nice. I got up at noon and had a bagel for lunch. We worked on putting stuff away in the house.

Cheetah print (what else would it be for the Cool Cat Cottage) coffee planter!

Later on in the afternoon, we walked over to the mall to Bliss. We had a really good turkey and avocado sandwhich and I had a chocolate covered strawberry smoothie. Mom and dad had affigatos - which is espresso and ice cream. That was delicious! We spent time talking to our friend Nicole (who owns Bliss).

I went to Making Waves and bought cute Anchor/whale earrings that I had seen on their Facebook page, and a little sign that says "Mermaids Welcome." I also popped into Across the Way, but it was too busy to browse. I really had to go to the bathroom and between the two bathrooms at the mall, one was overflowing and the other was closed, so I ran home. I ran in flip flops so my feet are killing me tonight.

I showered and got dressed before dad and I went out to Walmart. It was a very poorly laid out store, so finding ANYTHING took forever. They didn't even have everything we needed. Like 3 ply toilet paper! My favorite things that we got were a coffee cup planter with flowers, a hello kitty pin wheel and a leopard fly swatter. Oh, and Cover Girl flamed out mascara! We got a grill too, which is what we primarily came for.

On the way home, we picked up really yummy Chinese food from The Cape Orient. Yum! Afterwards we lounged around, cleaned up and got ready for bed.

I can't believe everyone is leaving tomorrow and I will be all alone!

xo,
capemaychick

♫ On the Way to Cape May ♪

I had every intention of getting up at 9:30 am to get ready for the beach. But of course, I couldn't wake up. I fell asleep around 2-2:30 am, with sweet dreams of Cape May floating around my head. I woke up at 11 am, but not frazzled because I knew we hadn't planned on leaving until around 2-3 pm so we would beat traffic.

In all reality, I should have assumed that we weren't "together enough" to get out of the house before 5 pm. And though we got out at 4:48 pm, it was clear we were in for a long trip. We had an early lunch so we could have an early dinner.

I packed up my car, completely by myself! I regret that I over packed, but now that I'm here I know I can send some stuff home with my parents on Monday.

Yes, I blurred out my license plate :) and YES that is dad in the background! Oopsies.

We were on the road (with dad driving my car and mom driving her car). Michael went with mom and I went with dad. We stopped in Bowie, MD for a bathroom break at Barnes and Noble. Michael picked up the next book in his series.

Dad I fidgeted with the GPS navigation voice. We tested American Jack and American Jill, British Emily & Daniel and Australian Lady (I forget her name) and Australian Lee - who we settled on. Not before I tried putting the GPS in Romanian and then French-Canadien Julie!

We got to Holly's about 6:30 pm. Our regular server wasn't there!! We all had the fried chicken special and it was extra delicious. We were out about 7:30 pm. It was a long drive from there; we stopped a few times in Delaware to pee and rest. Dad and I stopped at the Wawa before going home to get ice, milk and half-and-half. We got to the house at 11:10 pm. It was hard to see the painting and new awnings, but we know it's there! We also bumped into our next door neighbors and chatted with them. A bug promptly flew down my shirt while we were talking. Why does that happen to me! Shudder.

We unpacked, checked out things around the house. It's definitely a mess. Lots of cleaning is in my future! We also might need a new table, but we have to figure that out tomorrow.

Once I got everything unpacked, showered and ready for bed, I realized how incredibly exhausted I was. But despite that, I still wanted to get a blog post out! Tomorrow dad and I will run over to Walmart and pick up some important things. Lots of house errands to do, but hopefully we can fit in a quick walk to the beach and the mall!

xo, capemaychick