// emerald isle travel diary | pt. two //

hello, my friends!

it is hot as heck today. i spent the morning with my friend izzy, and we decided to use the sun to our advantage. so we went outside and burned stuff with a magnifying glass: ants, flowers, leaves, cat hair, our legs. (friCK, it hurt).

anyway! here’s the second — and final — part of my emerald isle travel diary. :) (read the first part here.)

☼

« day four »

another night without much sleep! how fun. it’s turning into a habit.

we went to the pine knolls aquarium this morning. there were some normal stuff, like frogs and otters and freshwater fish. but there were also a few sharks, as well as lion fish, jellyfish, pipefish, and sea horses. the whole thing took us about two hours.

once we had been at the beach house for awhile, my parents went to check out a fishing shop. c and i sat on the porch and he insulted my friends again while i played ukulele. (believe // yellowcard and adam’s song // blink-182 are easy songs.)

i convinced c to go on a walk with me. we went in the opposite direction that i explored last night. it was really humid and hot and kind of gross and the wind kept blowing my hair into my face. but we saw a dog and some pretty beach houses and i picked flowers, so it was alright.

for dinner, we went to a restaurant named port of calls, which was right up against the water of the inland side of emerald isle. it was raining the whole time we ate, but it was rather nice anyway, because i got to watch the waves and the storm clouds and the rain drumming against the windows. the restaurant served seafood, which i’m not too fond of. so i got something called “buried treasure,” which turned out to be an enormous plate of potatoes, covered in cheese and bacon and tomatoes and sour cream. it was pretty good, but there was so much of it.

oh, and while we were eating, i figured out the names of my future pets: the dog will be named turtle, and i’ll have two turtles, who will be called dribble and billie joe armstrong.

my dad went fishing down at the beach after dark. c and i went to watch after our mom told us he had caught sharks. while we were waiting for him to catch something, we got in the water, even though the sea feels like a creature waiting to pounce when it’s nighttime. the water was creamy and warm and i wanted nothing more than to slip under the gentle waves and swim and swim and not come back.

 my dad did catch another shark while we were down there. it was slightly shorter than my forearm and it wriggled a lot and it felt like cold sandpaper.

« day five »

i didn’t sleep much again. what a surprise.

i woke up at eleven because there were noises in the house. the bathroom sink is leaking, so i guess there’s a plumber here to fix it. but he’s being extremely loud and he’s right outside my door.

i’m ready to go home. i feel like i can’t hear my own thoughts out here. i need to hide in my loft bed at home with the soft blankets and the fairy lights and not come out until the summer is over. we’ll leave on sunday morning, so i have to get through three days before i’m home again. that sounds really hard and i want to cry and sleep the rest of this trip away.

a few good songs:

long lost feeling // blink-182

if it means a lot to you // a day to remember

miserable at best // mayday parade

jamie all over // mayday parade

we walked along the pier and watched the fishermen lined up against the railing. people had carved hearts and their names and phone numbers into the wood. you’d think that couples would be able to come up with something more romantic than their initials inside a crudely drawn heart. if i were going to scratch something into a railing, i think it would just be the word lovely. 

we checked out one of the touristy shops by the beach. i don’t remember what it was called. there were tons of t-shirts and swimsuits and beach towels. the only thing i actually liked were the lifeguard tees. but i think it would be weird to wear something like that if you had never been a lifeguard. it sounds like a fun job to have, though. to me, one of the coolest things you can do is save someone, or at least be willing to. i’d like to be a lifeguard someday.

we went to watch spider-man: homecoming at a tiny movie theater called cinema 4. i have always adored spider-man, and the new actor made me like him even more. my mom and brother kept telling me how similar i am to one of the characters, michelle. i’ll take that as a compliment.

« day six »

would you believe me if i told you that i actually got enough sleep last night? yeah, i didn’t think so. nights are hard, my friends.

old microwaved pancakes are good for breakfast. i bet that when i move out, i could make one batch of pancakes and live off of it for a week.

my mom took my brother and me back to the aquarium. there were two trails there that led to the sound, and we hiked one of them. it wasn’t very long, only 1.2 miles. but there were so many awful mosquitoes. don’t even think about hiking here without lots of bug spray. it would have been a disappointing outing if it weren’t for the crabs. they were all along the marshy parts, with their holes beside the trail and claws littering the ground. and there were huge clusters of them on the sandy area of the sound.

we stopped by a little shop called homer’s point on the way home to pick up seafood for dinner. we still have some frozen food at the beach house, and i can have that instead of scallops.

my dad and i both really want to go home. we managed to convince my mom to let us leave a day early. :D so we’ll be going home sometime tomorrow (saturday) instead of sunday.

pro tip: don’t listen to three green day albums right before going to bed. you will be too hyped to sleep and you’ll want to run through the streets at night and kiss pretty people and overthrow the government and rule the world.

there was an insane storm tonight, and i was awake until four, drawing and watching the lightning. it lit up the sky more than the fireworks i’d seen a few nights ago a in the beach. and it wasn’t like there was one strike every few minutes. this was a constant light show. some of the lightning was red and it slithered from cloud to cloud. the strange part was that it wasn’t raining here at all.

« day seven »

i got up before noon today (i deserve an award, honestly) and packed all my stuff up. we left at 10:30. i’m in the car now and i have a feeling that this will be a very boring six hours. it’s rather hard to draw or write in a car, so that leaves me with reading to pass the time. this would be more bearable if i had music.

i had a dream that i kissed your lips, and it felt so true. then i woke up as a nervous wreck and i fell for you. (fell for you // green day)

apparently we’ve already been driving for an hour? it doesn’t feel like it. maybe this won’t be as awful as i anticipated. (i’ll probably look back at this in five hours and start laughing, and then i’ll cry.)

i thought we were getting close, but we actually have about three and a half hours to go. sigh. i would write down some of my thoughts, but the only thing in my head right now is basket case // green day on repeat.

x

SOMETIMES MY MIND PLAYS TRICKS ON ME. IT ALL KEEPS ADDING UP. I THINK I’M CRACKING UP. AM I PARANOID? OR AM I JUST STONED?

we stopped for lunch, and lo and behold, there was a chick-fil-a. sadly, we didn’t get a free milkshake like last time, but it was still pretty good.

make sure you stay hydrated, kids. if you want some water, but you think it’s too much work to get up and find a drink, DO IT ANYWAY. if not, i will come to your house and lick you all over, and believe me, no one wants that. just looking out for your health, my loves. :)

the last time i remember driving through the mountains for a long time was in february, when i went away for the weekend with n. there was a girl in the van who got really sick after just a couple of minutes. i’m glad that no one in my family gets very carsick. i never know what to do when someone is feeling ill. reason #74925390 why i would be a bad parent.

 

my brother is snoring next to me. it sounds like when you have a cold and your nose is all clogged up. you guys can laugh at this picture of him, since you seem to enjoy dumb things.

we should be getting close to home, but i don’t think i recognize anything. maybe that’s because pockets of trees and golden fields crisscrossed with fences are everywhere here.

wait. apparently we’re on the road that goes right by the high school. i’m so confused. how can i not remember any of this? not being able to trust your own memory is a scary feeling, because what if the best ones, the ones you fall back on to escape when things are too hard — what if the version you’re clinging to isn’t how it really happened?

i don’t know where i am and i’m wondering if my most important memories are lies, but there are flowers along the road, so everything will be ok.

scratchy rock music playing on the radio is kind of comforting.

COWS.

my favorite things about my hometown are the wildflowers that grow in the median, and the christian music stations that remind me of my brother’s old friend, and the rundown stores along the highway that are owned by the locals, where time stops moving and all you can think about is the too-cold air conditioning and the smell of cigarettes and the moisture on the cooler doors and the colored specks in the tiles and the taste of freezer burn on the ice cream.

i know where we are now. we just got out of the state park that’s filled with waterfalls and trees with faerie houses in them. i’m still confused as to why i saw the road sign that’s supposed to be next to the high school. maybe there are two roads named that in this state (unlikely)? maybe i can’t trust my memory. i don’t know.

my mom said we would home at 5:17, but it’s 5:19 and we’re not there. lying to your family. what a monstrous thing to do. (also, i’m about to run out of battery, help.)

I NEED TO GO TO THE BAAATHROOOOM, BUT IT’S A MUUUSICAAAAL.

hello, post office! hello, town hall! hello, housing development! hello, bumblebee car! hello, my hill! hello, my house! hello, my kitten!

☼

xo

loren