Back In Heaven

We've arrived back home, which is good because we never really like leaving the dogs for very long, but bad because we're home sooner than expected.

The plan for the weekend was to scout around and relax on Saturday, enjoying the day around town with my aunt and grandmother (probably for the last time). I was looking for places to fish from shore so that my wife could stand by, watch the water, and take photos to prove that I was fishing salt water for the first time in my life. Then Sunday morning, head out just before low tide and fish in a few places trying to catch some stripers or blues that were pretty obviously in (lots of fishing activity, both boats and surf casters).

Then, while we were shopping at a large outlet mall (one of the stores, which stood by itself, was entirely an outdoor store! Clothes for the wife, fishing and hunting stuff for me... PERFECT!) my wife's cell phone rings. We find out that her grandfather - recently diagnosed with progressively worse brain cancer - was being rushed to the hospital because he was not making sense, couldn't stand up, and hadn't slept in over a week due to a severe headache. Her family said that we shouldn't come home immediately but that they'd let us know otherwise. We continued to receive phone calls throughout the day as the news seemed to keep getting worse.

We tried to enjoy the rest of our day - stopping at one more place to shop and then grabbing a bite to eat quickly before heading back to the Condo we were staying at. Around 5:30 my wife and I decided to head out on the town, grab some fudge from a famous candy shop (homemade fudge and other assorted candies), then walk around and enjoy the area. Once we bought the fudge we decided to head north (Hampton is a bit too touristy for us - as in we live in a tourist town with gaudy shirts and drunk college students and we go on vacation to get away from it). We found ourselves in Portsmith, NH, which is also touristy but in more of an eclectic enjoyable way. Lots of shops, lots of locally grown/harvested/produced products, and some great all natural or locally made food.

We stopped and grabbed a drink and some grub at Portsmith Brewery, a sister brewery to Smuttynose Brewing Company. The beer was great - I had a pint of Old Brown Dog and grabbed a beer to go (Black Cat Stout in a 22oz bottle) as a belated birthday present for my aunt.

We headed out this morning around 9:30am. My wife told me to get up early and go fishing before we left and that she'd come and hang out, but with a lot of driving and a potentially emotionally draining day ahead I didn't get up when the alarm went off and instead slept a bit later. We arrived at the hospital to find her grandfather in much better condition than expected. Though he's certainly not out of the woods, he's clearly in a better place today than yesterday. I'm not sure what will happen with him from here on out but we'll hope its a better week than we had prepared for. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go get super fresh lobster and clams at our yearly stop Browns Seafood Lobster Pound like we were going to do right before leaving on Sunday, or really get to spend what is potentially our last year doing the family pilgrimage to the shore, but at least we got a little bit of time smelling the ocean and watching the waves while sitting on our 3rd floor balcony drinking coffee.

We'll be back there, for sure, but it will be a new tradition instead of carrying on the old one.