On Sunday, Marcia took me to the Artisan Cheese Festival, which she had free tickets to. It is one of many festivals we have here focusing on a particular kind of food. Throughout the year, there are festivals about oranges, apples, berries, olive oil, mustard, and seafood, etc. I don’t know who goes to these festivals because they are usually expensive. In this case, it would have cost $60 to go. However, since it was free, it was well worth checking out.

The part of the festival we went to was in the Hotel Sheraton, where a conference room was full of tables of cheese and wine samples. We circled the room toting our complimentary bags and sampling cheese, mostly goat cheese and white cheddar. It was very good but unfortunately, within 15 minutes we were starting to get full and a little sick of cheese. Plus, it was gorgeous outside, so we decided to have an adventure. We got in my car and drove to the coast.

Eventually, we decided I should take Marcia to the secret beach to look at tide pools. Kyle and I discovered the secret beach six years ago. It’s hard to find and you have to climb down a steep cliff to get to it. Because of this, there are usually interesting things on the beach. I have seen a naked man, a seal, gorgeous abalone shells, three dead crabs propped up on a log, and other interesting things.

Anyway, I have lived by Northern California beaches all my life, and I can tell you: It is very rare to have a day that is not too hot, not too cold, not foggy, not windy. That’s how Sunday was. The sea was glittering and the hills were green with purple bushes. No one was on the secret beach and the tide was out. We walked around on rocks covered with black wooly seaweed, sidestepping sea anemones with slick pink centers like tiny vaginas (gross!) and crouching over pools of water to look at the sea life.

We saw:

• Tiny purple shore crabs ranging from one-inch to four-inches long
• Purple and orange starfish
• Pale green sea anemones that didn’t look like vaginas
• A bottom-feeder fish with whiskers
• Lots of hermit crabs, including one with tiny tiny blue pinchers
• Snails
• A red crab with yellow hairs that hung off its body like moss
• Buoys that washed off of boats
• A large piece of driftwood that looked like the torso of a man
• The biggest abalone shell I have ever seen
• A starfish that a bird had torn in half
• A purple crab with iridescent green streaks on its back

I enjoy nature situations where you are pulled out of yourself and become unaware of how much you are exercising or whether or not you are bored. The tide pools made me feel like I used my pretty day to the fullest. That, in turn, made this whole stupid early daylight savings thing more bearable. And so I say: Hooray for nature!