A week at the shore..a perfect transition!

Tomorrow we head back to the city. Not NYC but Moorestown, NJ. My temporary home. Close enough to Philly to commute while I look for an apartment.

It was a great week. One thing you can say about my family is that our highs are high and, as goes with the territory, the lows can be lows. But we rebound. The weather was great, if scorching at times. But if its going to be scorching, what better place to be than at the beach.

In the never ending fight against beach erosion, we had a slight incline as you approached the beach. Once you made it to the top of the dune, now the fun would start. The dune was easily 20 ft tall and they had created a makeshift ramp that went down along side of the dune. Down was interesting. Up was downright aerobic. Now add hot sand, a beach bag and a sand chair. It was like an Olympic event! One night, after staying late at the beach to enjoy our favorite time...my sister Rachel and I found ourselves left at the beach with not two but four chairs. We had four chairs, bags and ourselves to carry up. Now that steep ramp up was hard enough, but when you are laughing so hard you can't even breathe, well, I'll just say that I appreciate the fact that there were no videos or witnesses. Thank goodness for that bench at the top.

What's a week at the beach --oops, its the "shore" in these parts -- without great seafood. We had mussels, delicious! Crabs, and my favorite, steamers. Ipswich (soft shell clams). Yum. We had great food, great company, great weather and most of all, we had almost all of us. Some of the young ones in the family are flung literally to other ends of the earth. But the four sisters were here and mom too. Those occurrences are few and far between and times that I just can't put a price on. Yes, we had a big fight. Fine, I said it. did you think I'd ignore it? but we made it through and we always will. Four sisters as different and yet alike as any you can find. Four strong women used to running the show wherever we are who have to learn to work together and get out of those old roles and into new ones. Four sisters who will be sisters forever no matter what. No matter what.

So tomorrow we leave and head home. There's the rub for me. This is when my move will really hit me. Home. Home is where your stuff is? Where the heart is? Where your friends are? For a little while my key ring was pitiful. Just my car keys and some random key that I really don't know what it belongs to. But now I have a key to the house and a key to my storage unit. To paraphrase Stevie Wonder maybe these are my keys in the songs of life.

My goal this week is to do some figuring. I need to figure out how to get to work and I need to start to figure out where I'm going to live. I have been engaging the family in some online apartment searching. Its kind of fun to toss out an address and have my mom veto it immediately. There are some interesting prospects out there. I am actually going to look at two on Monday. I think its more of a scouting mission than anything else, but you never know.

My first day at work starts on Monday, July 16th. I feel like a kid starting a new school. But first things first. Tomorrow we head home and I begin anew. Up until now it feels like a weird sort of visit. Now it begins. Now the real fun starts.