Back to the land of clothes and calories

I’m back to the reality of having to wear clothes and eat right.

Last week’s fill-in column was about the beach because I was … at the beach.

So, forgive me, but that’s my topic this week, too. We hadn’t been there in three years, thanks to my husband’s journey to get more education and earn a doctorate — even though he was the one who had fun in college, and I was the one with the good grade-point average.

He took academic books to read on the beach; I took magazines telling me how to get better abs and what colors will be in this fall.

We drove through blinding rain when we hit Florida, but it stopped by the time we got to our condo. Before we even stepped on the beach, we went to one of my favorite restaurants. If you don’t want a long wait to eat in Florida, you go at 5 o’clock, if not earlier. That’s not a problem for me because I’ve been on senior-citizen time for years.

I’ve also advanced in my beach behavior from trying to get a tan to making sure I have sunscreen on every inch of my body and staying under the shade of the umbrella.

Speaking of bodies, you see a lot of them on the beach — all shapes and sizes. For some reason the song with the line “Everybody’s beautiful in their own way” popped into my head just now. It’s not really true. Personalitywise, maybe. Not every body. One woman who strolled by with her husband — I’d guess her age at 60-plus and her favorite pastimes as tanning and smoking — was wearing a thong. She stopped directly in front of us to bend over and pick up a shell. “Did you see that?” I asked my husband. “I’m afraid so,” he said.

My husband and I always nickname regulars on our section of the beach. This time, one of the more interesting people was dubbed Hulk Hogan. The man was probably in his late 60s, with white hair and a horseshoe mustache like the famous former WWE star. We first saw this guy swimming laps way out in the ocean. When we realized how old he was, we were impressed. Seeing him at the local coffee shop with his cap on backward, wraparound reflective sunglasses and bicycle gloves, he looked a little ridiculous, yet his impressive physical prowess earned our respect.

You couldn’t pay me to go out in public in Arkansas the way I do at the beach. One day I threw a tank top and short wrap skirt over my bathing suit and went to eat lunch and go shopping. For a couple of breakfasts at the coffee shop we would walk to, I didn’t even bother with the tank top.

One of my favorite things about going to the beach is going out to eat. I’ve come a long way from the days I would order only fried shrimp at every restaurant. I tried snapper this time — loved it. I also ate grouper and shrimp. I overheard a woman say she lived there part of the year, and I asked her recommendation for a restaurant we hadn’t tried. She suggested a place just down the road at an inn. It was our most expensive meal, and worth it. It was the kind where the waitress scrapes the crumbs off the table with a knife, because heaven forbid that we have crumbs. My husband’s meal came with an edible flower on top. He said it tasted like … a flower. But the fish was amazing, and dessert more so. We were so full we couldn’t breathe, but we shared each other’s desserts — his chocolate brownie with ice cream and my chocolate-raspberry cheesecake. I read somewhere that calories don’t count when you’re in a different ZIP code.

Now that we’re home, I’m back to covering my body and eating salads. I hope the woman in the thong is doing the same.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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