My husband’s a beach person, and I’m a mountain girl, so tomorrow we’re going to the beach. When he announced his intention, I thought wistfully of woodland trails and sparkling waterfalls, then said, “OK”, because I’m a wuss.

This means I have to shave my legs and “bikini zone”, which is a total misnomer since I’ll be squeezing my fat ass into an exact replica of the one-piece bathing suit my grandma used to wear. I had to get one with a steel reinforced bra section to lock my tray tables in an upright position.

I can look forward to:

• Parking myself under a hole in the ozone layer
• Counting the grains of sand stuck to my sweaty thighs
• Fighting off the black flies prevalent on the Outer Banks
• Watching the age spots appear on my arms

The latter is similar to watching paint dry, except that a good high quality paint doesn’t last as long as an age spot.

I’ll be swimming in a body of water rife with icky stuff, like horseshoe crabs, jelly fish, skates, and unidentified things that bump into my legs, which by the way, are easily mistaken as slim jims to passing sharks. Reading a good book is problematic, as it keeps slipping out of my slimy sunscreened hands.

My husband spent the last few days getting our vintage motorhome roadworthy. Much of his time was spent gluing the roof back together and cleaning out nests built by small rodents. The refrigerator’s broken, but I’m assured that all we have to do is pull it out and shake it vigorously to get the ammonia and water mixed back together. How do they know this stuff, and who came up with the idea? Did someone actually decide one day to shake a refrigerator to see if they could make it work?

In spite of my griping, I’m looking forward to spending some quality time alone with my honey, and approximately 3,000,000,000 sand fleas. For those of you who love the beach, you’ll be stuck at your thankless jobs while I’m under-appreciating your dream vacation. I’ll bring you back some sand fleas.