May 31st, 2019

 I had the tremendous good fortune this week to spend some time with my best friend, Marsha.  Tim was travelling and I assumed I would be doing what I always do when he is away which is mostly miss him and rattle around the house by myself like a marble in a cigar box.  

This time however I had company instead.  Woohoo!  We talked, we ate, we talked, we shopped, we talked, we shopped more, we talked, we walked around town, we talked and we walked on the beach a  LOT.  Oh and we talked.  It was awesome :)

Two absolutely astonishing things happened while she was here that I wanted to share with you though.  Truly amazing moments.  Not earth shattering or life altering but still holy cats moments!

The first has to do with Shark Teeth, obviously. Apparent from the photos at the top of the page. As you may or may not know, Venice is the Shark Tooth Capital of the World.  Why?  I have no idea.  Maybe eons ago this area was like the Shark Graveyard or something.  Perhaps old and ill sharks swam for hundreds of miles just to die here.  Honestly I do not know why. I just know that it's true.

And the southest beach access point on the island, Casperson Beach, is like the MotherLode of Sharks Teeth.

I have walked it many many MANY times since I've lived here.  And yet...... I have never EVER found a single sharks tooth. Not One!  There I will be, walking the beach searching, looking mile after sandy mile and all around me people are plucking them out of the water, off the sand, out of the air I suspect and I have bupkus.  Zero.  Zilch. Zippitydodah.  Nada.  What the heck?

But anyway, I will set the scene,  Marsha and I walking South down Casperson beach.  Her first time there by the way.  And as we are walking, I am telling her about how divers find giant sharks teeth there and people seem to just pick smaller sharks teeth up off the beach with great frequency.  She asks me what they look like and I tried to describe it.  Then a few small steps later, she bends down and picks something up and show it to me.  "Like this?"  she asks!  I got all excited for her.  'Yes!  That is a sharks tooth!"  Woohoo!  So we kept walking for quite a distance.  Walking and talking walking and talking. 

It's like talking a walk instead of taking a walk :)

Anyway, finally, we turned around and began the walk back.  I swear to you, not half way back, she did the exact same thing and found another tooth.  Not searching hard. Just leaning over and picking it up off the beach.  Now she has two.  What the actual heck?  I've lived here for three years and not one single sharks tooth.  She visits Casperson Beach once and finds two of them?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  That's awesome!

It reminds me a little bit of my mom. My mother was the four leaf clover queen!  We would be walking along and every now and again, while still chatting away, she would barely even break stride, bend down and pluck a 4-leaf clover and keep going. By the end of the walk she might have a half dozen or more.  I could sit in the middle of a clover field and search for hours and NEVER find one!   Too funny.

Okay so that was amazing incident number one.  

The second one was probably not such a big deal to anyone else but it surely was to me.  I was wearing yet another pair of earrings that are big favourites of mine. I wear them often.  They are twisted silver hoops, about half dollar sized.  As it so happens, Marsha gave them to me. But that is not  why was wearing them, that was just a happy accident.  I was sporting that particular pair because I wear them quite often.  It's kind of a  go-to earring.  They just sort of look good with everything and I especially  like that it's a closed loop.  Not just that little plastic piece on the back of a post earring.  Hoops, just by virtue of their design,  are much  harder to accidentally lose, right?  Well sort of right.  Up until that day, I had never had one come off by accident.

But there we were walking and talking, right there at the waters edge, water never deeper than our knees.  It was slightly breezy and of course the waves tickle their way in and out over and over.  I tucked an errant strand of my hair behind my right ear and somehow jostled one earrings loose and it fell out.  I felt it happen.  And in fact, I actually saw it land on the sand, but before I could grab it, another wave came and it was gone.  I mean it vanished like a magicians trick.

"Oh no!" I said immediately, "My earring fell out!"  Now both of us are feeling through the water, starring down through the waves, combing through the sand and...nothin'.  Dang!  We spent more than a few minutes searching and Marsha was saying the sorts of supportive things that a good friends says when witnessing something stupid having been done.  And then I turned around to face the shore instead of the water.  No idea why I turned honestly.  Just instinct I suppose.   I squatted down and scooped a bit of sand away as another wave washed up and there it was.  Half buried in the sand.  Holy Cats!  Lost Earring Found !  (That's two different sets of earrings lost and then found in one week!)

Colour me Happy!  

So it seems that my mother's secret power was finding 4-leaf clovers.  Marsha's is finding Sharks Teeth.  And, as it turns out, mine is finding earrings that I have lost.  Very Cool.

So there you have it.  Two moments of amazement in the midst of a whole lot of yakyakyak and a few unusually successful shopping trips!

Today is the last day of May and tomorrow is the weekend.  Enjoy Both ;)