so on saturday, she and i and sarah also and bixberoni piled into sarah's car rose and headed east.
we pit stopped at an arby's-cum-dunkin donuts for all the necessities and hit the road round two and then BEACH BEACH BEACH.
we found a spot away from all the fish hooks and jumped around in the water and plopped down on the sand and maybe did a little dozey stuff. bixby did like the the seagulls, did not like the waves, did like barking at everything and pulling on his leash a lot, did sit on my head with his sandy butt when i was trying to nap. and then it started sprinkling but fortunately this beach included a covered gazebo so we moved our party there and i made some progress on a storm of swords (yes, i jumped on the GoT bandwagon, sorry not sorry) and we ate gummy bears and generally had a really splendid beachy time.
side note: the dog friendly part of the beach was also a historic site but my suggestion to hit up the museum was entirely shut down. plus they probably don't take kindly to dogs. buuut we got to hear their cannon go off every so often, which was exciting! and startling!
so then it was 4:30ish and we wanted to Do Something but it was too early for dinner so we drove downtown and found the best parking spot and used the smelliest bathroom (even bix was like "what the hell guys," and he didn't even go in) and marched ourselves up to a place with outdoor seating and they said they didn't allow dogs on the patio and the only place they knew of that did was in carolina beach and was called the lazy pirate. so we decided that was probably not true and walked across the street to jack mackerel's and actually it was true but we could tie bixby up to the railing as long as he was on the other side of the patio as the restaurant. so he chilled in the parking lot while we were there and alternated between dejectedly laying on the stones and whining at me. the rest of us, however, ordered margs and had a lovely time (is there any other time to be had when you're drinking margs?).
we sat on the pier and watched a kid flirt with the ocean and talked about what we wanted our actual careers to be (i'm like 75% joking when i say i want to be a stay-at-home mommy blogger but the 25% that isn't joking is very much real). i've said it before and i'll say it again, but mid-twenties is a very unsure limbo-y time. no, i don't want to be the front desk girl forever, but also no, i don't know what i want to do instead. and then we snuggled a little bit and bixby said "HEY" and we said "you can snuggle too."
by then it was coming up on dinner time so we decided to venture over to the lazy pirate. we got there and it was quite a thing - volleyball, live music, cornhole, picnic tables, fake grass, the works. i heard someone complaining about "a DOG in a RESTAURANT" which seemed unfair since we weren't even inside the restaurant, we were just walking on the fake grass. we asked if dogs were allowed and they said yeah but we had to go to the back porch area and we wouldn't have a server, we'd have to just order from the bar which also seemed unfair but we went back there and the menus were disappointing and overpriced so we decided eff this and i found a couple locals who recommended michael's seafood, which was just three blocks away, but turns out we don't actually know what a block is and we're not even certain they're applicable outside gridded cities. so we walked FO-EVAH and got to this place and they did allow dogs and even though they didn't serve anything fried (where are my damn hushpuppies, this is a seafood restaurant, you are letting the south down) our opinion was that it was delish (pasta alfredo ftw! creamsicle drinks ftw! martinis ftw!).
and then we walked all the way baaaack to the car and sarah drove us safely home and we all agreed it had been a Great Beach Day, even/especially bixby.
the end.
