Salty Mommy

today i saw a huge motorhome pulling into a parallel parking spot....actually it was 3 spots. whoever was driving was so lucky to find 3 open spots on the main street...i was pretty impressed with their parallel parking ability. i wonder if they paid all 3 meters??

so today was nice after 3 days of rain...so i looked out at the beach and counted umbrella's in a block wind stretch of very narrow beach i counted 48 umbrella's...lots and lots of people are at the beach getting burned by the glorious sun. good for them.

So today has been one of those days where you cant tell if the sun is gonna come out or its going to pour rain. so people have been carrying umbrella's while they walk around in their bikini's. this is very odd to me. but more then that today i have been watching the horse and buggies and they are so cool and so much a part of cape may. they have 2 shifts...a morning and an evening...they change the horses in the afternoon so they are closed from 3-5pm which is great because i couldnt imagine if they worked the horses all day and all night...they must have horse labor laws...atleast i hope they do.

Pizza eating is a big part of Cape May..actually i think it is big all over the east coast...it is a big competition type feeling when you say that some place has THE BEST pizza and someone else thinks thier place has THE BEST... anyway. Louie's Pizza is right next door to Art & Soul so i see alot of pizza being consumed. Today was the best...I was busy all day and around 7:30pm there was a break for me to get dinner...so i headed next door to Louie's and they had just taken a pepperoni pie out of the oven it was hot and delicious looking...(i usually get cheese-white pizza-it has ricotta and a garlic sauce instead of traditional red sauce) but not tonight...i got the biggest slice of pepperoni and it was soooooooo good. i picked the one with the biggest crust because i love crust. YUMMMMY!! I love pizza. (most people eat pizza either before or after painting which is cool)

So yesterday and today have been rainy..which means lots and lots of painters...which is good. So i didnt really have time to leave the counter or notice anything beyond the door or window of Art & Soul. So a neat little thing happened inside Art & Soul... a return painter brought the hotel she works at news letter and she had put in a piece about Art & Soul...just a little blurb but it goes to everyone who stays in the hotel...so a piece of free advertising. Thanks to cool customers...love, melissa

so it was extremely humid today...so far the summer has been mild in the humidity department but today was bad. so i made an executive decision to close the doors and let the central air cool just my store instead of the enitre city...(normally i leave the doors open so people know we are open) Needless to say having a nice cool place to work and have fun (for customers) was a great bonus today...so my executive decision was a good one. on to today in cape may...whale watcher...silver bullett and other boats charge people a fee to go out into the atlantic and find Whales ... but usually they just find dolphins. Since the water is warmer here then in the pacific there are tons of dolphins (of course i know there are dolphins in the pacific also) so these boats were out today and i kept seeing them very close to the shore...which is great for the people who paid to go on the boat but even better for those who are sitting on the beach and have a great view of the dolphins for free...so is...

so being from california and a beach community it is normal for me to see sea shells for sale in stores at the sea shore. and today two cute little girls come into art and soul with big purple bags (plastic kind like what you get when you make a purchase at a gift shop) and i could see little lumps in the bottoms of the bags and both girls had HUGE smiles. ofcourse being a friendly store owner i asked ooohhh what do you girls have in your bags??? and both of their eyes lit up and they walked toward me and opened up the bags to reveal the newly purchased bright pink and purple seashells...unlike in california there are still shells on the beaches here...ofcourse not pink and purple ones...so the girls were so glad to share their new treasures with me....after they were all done painting the first thing on thier minds was those shells...the both asked their moms...where is my bag of shells.

This is something i think is odd...but it happens everyday. Girls walk all around town in their bikini's. Now this being a beach town it shouldn't be that odd, but where I come from in Sunny Ca the girls atleast grab a pair of shorts or a wrap before leaving the beach. Maybe the humidity makes the rich people think of some islands they vacation at or something. This is even very common for people with out "the perfect body" and it isnt pretty. so that is another wierd but true fact about Cape May.

so any place you are there are cute kids...or babies. in cape may there are lots of babies from all over the world...being a tourist destination. so tonight a cute little baby is brought in by his mom and we become friends...he is 8 months old and must think i am very funny looking because  he laughs and laughs at me while he is in the store. then the family is enjoying pizza out front from Louie's and he begins to cry so his dad brings him in. come to find out he is japanese and polish...very interesting. the family is on vacation from north jersey but the parents met in Japan while the husband was on vaca there...crazy story. here's to another cute kid.

yesterday the sight from the window of art & soul ~~~~picture this~~~~ deeedooo deedooo (that's a siren) and whizz goes 5 cop cars (this is not a normal sight for cape may) then running down beach dr. are 15-20 men in speedos. (ewwwww) this is all for a lifeguard competition it was a sight to behold..or not behold...there were lots of people cheering them on. i have no idea who won but it was wierd.

so a little birdie must have been really hungry...because he was sitting on the front window ledge outside pecking at the glass. you see there was a fly in the display box and he really wanted to catch if for dinner...lucky for the fly he was inside. (not so lucky for the hungry bird)

me and david 

Have you ever watched as someone put up an umbrella in the sand? Well in Cape May there is a BEACH SERVICE that you can rent beach chairs, umbrella's and surfboards from called Steger's. Today I looked out and noticed the Steger's guy putting up an umbrella in a very odd fashion. Instead of digging a hole and then filling in the sand around the umbrella, he took the pole and plunged it into the sand and waved the umbrella back and forth in the sand vigourously until it was deep enough to stand on its own. Seemed very odd to me to look up and see a blue umbrella waving to me. But it worked...the umbrella was up all day. Now it is down and as I see the beach clearing out I can only hope for more customers. Melissa

So i don't even know if anyone looks at this blog...but i have made a decision from looking at some web sites today that i am going to write one thing per day about what i see from my store window. if i happen to not be at the store for one day then it will get missed. otherwise check out my blog to see what interesting thing i choose to write on from safe inside the walls of Art & Soul. Cape May is a crazy place and i am excited to share this with the world. Melissa