Housecleaning and Hushpuppies

It is easy to fall into a routine out here.  It has only been a week since we arrived, but we feel as if we have been here much longer!  We don't set any alarms but we both wake up early; sunrise is just a little after 7:00 and the sky grows lighter much earlier than that.  I make some coffee right away and then go out the walkway to the dune-top deck and do a little yoga and practice my Tai Chi, while Martha does her DVD-based exercise program.  Then I return and do some more stretching exercises on my yoga mat, have breakfast, and return to the deck with a cup of coffee, absorbing the sights and sounds of an oceanfront morning:  the surf breaking, little birds chirping around me on the deck, gulls laughing overhead, perhaps a shrimper passing by or a freighter parked on the horizon.

We have designated Thursday as cleaning day, so we get out the vacuum cleaner and the windex and the bathroom cleaner and go to work.  But somehow housecleaning doesn't seem to be a drudgery out here.  Those sliding-glass doors don't stay clean long, though!

We usually eat lunch and dinner here, and that's what we did yesterday.  We had planned to have fresh scallops from Blue Ocean seafood market for dinner, but just as we walked in they brought out a big tray of freshly-made crab cakes and we could not resist them.  Martha sauteed them and we accompanied them with leftover yellow rice, and a new casserole we discovered from Friendly Market, corn and tomato gratin.  We are well-known faces at both Blue Ocean and Friendly Market.

Before heading home yesterday, we thought it might be nice to have a side to accompany the shrimp burgers Martha was going to make for lunch today (Carolina shrimp and chow-chow slaw), and hushpuppies from El's Drive-in came to mind.  El's is an institution and has been written up in Our State magazine.  To dine at El's, one simply drives in the unstriped parking lot, parks randomly more or less facing the diminutive building, and immediately a cheerful young lady comes out the front door with pad of paper in hand to take your order.  There are no prices shown on the sign, but hushpuppies are $2.00 plus tax, as they probably have been for decades.

We have had such unusually warm weather that the heat in the condo has not come on at all since our arrival.  The bright sunshine coming in the master bedroom and living room windows helps, too.  This morning the temperature was 62 degrees when we started out on our long run of the week, down to Fort Macon and back with a couple of extra loops around the parking lot - six miles for Martha, seven for me - and we both realized we were dressed too warmly in shorts and T-shirts.

Today, we headed out for more seafood - those Blue Ocean scallops deferred from yesterday - and stopped when Martha spotted this ibis, standing on the shore of a small pond right next to the parking lot of a shopping center, and I took these shots as it took off in alarm and winged its way to the opposite shore.  These ibises are everywhere, and a lovely sight to behold with their snow-white wings - beauty discovered almost incidentally along the way, hiding in plain sight.