By the Beautiful Sea

 Avast, mateys! This cheerful pirate lass is back on her laptop, which smells very faintly of cigarettes. My dear Computer Whisperer has resurrected my old machine and breathed new life into it as if it were the risen Osiris! Praise be to all the bored deities of all the pantheons both known and lost to history!

You know what's funny? I was galvanized to get my dinosaur of a laptop fixed because my spouse gave me an IPad for my birthday. I didn't ask for an IPad, he just got it for me so I could read the New York Times. (We switched to digital.) When it took me about 45 seconds just to type in my email address on what goes for a keyboard on the IPad, I knew it was time to rekindle my relationship with the ancient and venerable laptop.

In the last installment of "The Gods Are Bored" I wrote about how rooting for the Baltimore Orioles helps me to deal with the catastrophe unfolding on our national stage. That was before the Orioles nose-dived onto the bottom of the sea floor. Mr. J and I drove all the way to Baltimore to see the team lose 24-2. We stayed until the bitter end. Last night the O's had a better showing, losing 15-3. This is a team that made the playoffs last year! Now they're buried in the basement, alongside my hopes and dreams.

Luckily, I have other forms of anesthesia to help distract me from the Trump Disaster.

Aww, look at this decade-old photo of Chicken Bone Beach! The sun's just rising, and it's low tide. And the beach is really called Chicken Bone Beach. I'm not making that up.

I never thought, as an Appalachian born and bred, that I would bond in any way with the beach. But it's only an hour's drive from my doorstep, and we have lots of hot days around here. So I found this beautiful beach through a sea glass collector friend, and since then I have been visiting in every season.

When I started collecting sea glass, the hobby hadn't been discovered widely. Now it's hella popular, especially among white ladies of a certain age. I used to have this beach all to myself, but now when I go, there's almost always someone else hunting there, usually white ladies of a certain age.

I'm very particular about the sea glass I bring home. In order to qualify to even be called sea glass, the product has to show some signs of having been in the drink.

These are pieces I have picked up over the years. They are round and "frosted" and rough to the touch. That's what sea glass should be. But don't tell that to these eager white ladies of a certain age. They are pleasing themselves pink just picking up broken glass no matter how shiny and sharp it is, just because it's on a beach. Oh, they do get lucky sometimes, but in general I don't feel like it's a competition.

On one occasion last summer, I watched two WL of a CA labor for an hour with custom made sieves, trying to find sea glass on Chicken Bone Beach. Finally I sauntered over and watched the pebbles sloshing to and fro, and within a half minute I reached down and picked up a little shard of orange, which is a rare color. I keep my methods to myself. Then again, it's been awhile since I offered free advice, so here you go:

When hunting sea glass, train your eye to look for colors that don't appear in nature and shapes that also don't appear in nature. Once your eye can skim a pebble bed and see those oddball shades, you won't need a sieve.

It's late April, and I went to the beach last weekend and waded in up to my shins. That's the other trick to successful sea glassing. No wind or water too cold, you've got to wade. And let me tell you, nothing will rid your mind of the Trump Menace quicker than slogging through sea water in April in New Jersey.

Friends, it has been a pure pleasure typing out this blog post. I have one last type of anesthesia to describe, and then by golly I am going to put on my tried-and-true big girl panties and take on these contemptible "prayer warriors" who need a good butt kicking from some bored God.

I broke in a new pair of flip flops on Sunday, during a red flag warning for high winds. There is still a lot of butt kicking left in me, even though I am indeed a WL of a CA.