Pineapple Express

Hey! So apparently I can upload those photos directly from my new smart phone. Wow, this phone really is smart!

First the pics I couldn't post the other day. Here are the two hill pics. The first pic with the big hill = Palos Verdes as seen from Seal Beach Pier on Feb 3rd, 2014. That's downtown Long Beach to the right.



In the second pic, the little hill = Signal Hill, also taken from Seal Beach Pier on Feb 3rd, 2014. Our house is just a smidge to the right & nearer to the pier from Signal Hill. Downtown Long Beach is to the left.



Lastly, these are the wonderful shells I found on Wednesday, Feb 19th, 2014. I know all these dates because my smart new phone tells me so.



I've had wonderful, fantastic walking conditions all week: very low tide, fine weather, and tons of shells. Yesterday I crammed my left pocket so full of shells I was afraid some would fall out, but my other pocket had my keys in it and I didn't want the still damp (rinsed in the ocean, of course) and salty shells to mingle with the electronic key fob for the car. Also, at the same time, the fingers of my left hand did a great job of holding on to a second huge wad of shells. I purposefully don't bring anything with to help carry them because that would only make my over-collecting worse, and I admit that sometimes I go just a teeny tiny little bit overboard on shell collecting. Which brings me to today.

Today I was determined to only keep perfectly shaped, scalloped shells. I mostly stuck to that, except for two or three abandoned hermit crab shell remnants which I simply can't resist (because they are completely delightful) and I still had a full pocket, though not overflowing. I happily looked for shells, did some jazz walking (more on that later) but I don't think I did the ScarJo (that's more of a non-water thing). I had a wonderful time! I even noticed something new. As I've mentioned before, I have my rock friends at each end of the beach: Pookie and Fonzie. I think I posted a pic of Pookie on here back before my phone got so smart. He's on the cement retaining wall next to the pier.

Here's a pic of Fonzie to jog your memory. He's the pointy "A" (like Fonzie says) rock.



And today, I noticed that there's a baby Fonzie!



See him up there on the tippy top? Isn't he cute?!

Also, I want to give a shout out to my other rock friend, Flat Stanley. I don't think I've mentioned him before.



I appreciate Flat Stanley very much. We became friends because sometimes the tide is too high for me to reach Fonzie for a high five and Stanley is almost always there ready to welcome my feet to step on him.

Then there's this today. A guy pointed out to me that "some" pineapples had washed up on the beach, though I only saw this one.



He was very excited about it and said that they had come from Hawaii. I thought this was unlikely and that it was more likely that they had come down from somewhere up the San Gabriel river, a.k.a. the wash, the water channel that carries all the trash down from the mountains to the sea and empties out just north of Seal Beach. A lot of strange things wash up on the beach. Also, I've read that most of the pineapples you buy in Hawaii weren't even grown in Hawaii, but what do I know? Anyway, I didn't want to be a buzzkill, and maybe they did come all the way from Hawaii, so I just asked, "do you really think they could have come that far?" and he said yes, it just depends on the currents. I have no way to verify where the pineapple(s) came from, so let's just go with Hawaii because it made that guy really happy.

Finally, about the jazz walk. I do it to pump up my walking a little bit, but because jogging poops me out too fast, I like to do what I call my jazz walk. It's more of a bouncy fast walk than a jog but my arms kind of do what they would do if I was jogging, and also I throw in a little bit of jazz hands on purpose. The ScarJo thing is that I sometimes like to imagine that I'm Scarlett Johansson with her rockin' body and I walk how I imagine she would walk and hold my body how I imagine she would hold her body as she walked. Maybe that sounds weird but it's kind of fun. I spend a lot of time alone in my own head. Don't judge.

I realized earlier this week that I'm kind of an optimist. I have a generally positive outlook on life. In fact, lately even the word "generally" makes me feel cheerful so I say it as much as possible. I have worries and problems and negative thoughts just like everyone, but I make a point to set them aside as much as possible. As I walked along the beach, enjoying the feel of the ocean washing across my feet, it occurred to me that even if I lived in a cave where the only light that ever reached me was a shaft of sunlight that came in for only an hour a day, I would praise that light and look gleefully forward to it each day. I think this ability to look on the sunny side of things is pretty useful.

My sincerest best wishes to those who remain buried in snow far away from our beautiful, dry and warm, west coast. May the warm sun soon shine upon your faces!