Sonya's Blog - Day 171 - Tasha will have a Blue Christmas

Sonya’s Blog - Day 171 - December 10th - Tasha will have a Blue Christmas

We decided to go into the city of Myrtle Beach today to check out the Boardwalk. Natasha wanted her hair cut, so she made an appointment for 1 PM. She informs me that she may get it dyed as well, probably blue. We had a little discussion about this, but in the end it is her hair and it grows, so she can make her own choices. If she wanted us to pay for it, however, it would be part of her Christmas present. This sounded great to her, so the deal was made.

We messed around for most of the morning. The kids were doing school work and Blake and I were helping them and doing chore type work. The excitement was overwhelming. Who doesn’t love a chore list, I ask you?

I wanted to go for a walk on the beach around and give Kizmet a good run. She had already had a couple of walks and would be going to the Boardwalk with us, but it is nice to walk on the beach and I had had enough of my chores. It was another beautiful day and there was no wind today, which makes it that much nicer. It was probably about 18 already and expecting to go up to 21. I wore my shorts today, which was a huge shocker to everyone in my family. It has to be pretty warm before I break out the shorts.

Off we went to the beach, which wasn’t too busy. We took the frisbee and were able to let Kizmet off leash. We walked quite awhile, until I looked at my phone and decided we should head back if Natasha was going to make her 1 PM appointment. On the way back we ran into a lovely couple and started chatting with them about dogs and traveling. They just retired and they are testing out the RVing full time thing. They are on a 6 month trip right now and figuring out if they like it or not and if this is something they want to do full time. We were chatting about RVing full time and I was wondering about mail service and permanent residence if you no longer have a house and are traveling all the time. I guess the Good Sam website has a mail forwarding option. They give you a mailbox somewhere and then it allows you to go online and see the mail that has been delivered. You can decide at that point to have it scanned to you, forwarded to where you are staying or trashed. Pretty cool. We talked with the couple for way too long and by the time we got back we had to rush out so that Tash could make her appointment. Luckily Natasha had taken matters into her own hands and had made a smoothie while we were gone so we all had a little something to eat (or drink as the case may be).

We hopped into the truck with our smoothies and were off. We got Natasha to the appointment a few minutes before 1, so it was perfect timing in the end. I took her in and got her checked in and then went back to the truck and told Blake to head on down to the boardwalk. He was surprised I wasn’t staying, so he must not have been listening to our conversation earlier in the day. I informed him she was going to be at least 2 hours and he was shocked, but not as shocked as when I told him she was getting her hair dyed blue. You would have thought she was getting a full body tattoo from his reaction. I calmed him down and we went off to find the boardwalk, which was only a few minutes away.

As we were driving into Myrtle Beach and now that we were driving around, wow is there a lot of tourist stuff. Lots of mini-golf and beachwear shops and then as we got close to the boardwalk, lots of tacky museums (like Ripley’s), haunted houses and arcade areas. A little crazy. The boardwalk is relatively new, built in 2009 or something like that. There is only a small section that has restaurants and businesses that back right onto it. It is not as large and as grand as the Atlantic City Boardwalk. It still had some sketchy characters on it though, so it had that in common with Atlantic City. The rest of the boardwalk is just a wooden walkway along the beach towards one of the piers. We walked along the boardwalk to the end and then Isaac informed us he was quite hungry so we headed back to find a restaurant to eat at. We found one that was on the boardwalk with an outside patio. The were not busy so they had no problem with Kizmet being on the patio with us. She scared away the pigeons, so the manager was happy about that. She laid down and had a nap and we ordered some lunch. The boys had tacos and I had a taco salad, so it was a taco lunch day. It was all good and we had a nice time on the patio. Natasha texted me and said she would be done in about 40 minutes or so, so we finished up and paid and headed back to the hair salon to get her.

When we got to the hair salon we found out she had miscalculated. We decided to wait because she had already been there for over 2 hours. Blake put his seat back and was asleep within 3 minutes, snoring and everything. How do guys do that? It’s amazing and it pisses me off at the same time. I cannot fall asleep that quickly, ever. I read the news, never a good thing for me. Reading all about the drama in Alberta with our new NDP government and the new carbon taxes and all that. Couple that with new business taxes and the oil price falling daily and things are not looking so rosy in the oil patch. Makes me worried about Blake’s job prospects when we return home. With our new “sunny ways” Liberal government and their tax hikes, we can look forward to tax hikes federally and provincially. Of course, if there is no work then we won’t have any tax hikes. So much to look forward to!

After we had been there about 45 minutes or so and Natasha was nowhere near to being finished, we headed back out to explore some more. We went to Broadway on the Beach, which is right near a theatre. The area is mostly shops and restaurants. We explored around, it was not very busy. When we first got there a group of kids were feeding the fish and when you looked in the water there were hundreds of catfish at the service trying to grab the food. They make a big O with their mouths when the break the service of the water. We went to the Starbucks first because Blake was feeling groggy after his cat nap. Isaac was super excited when we went inside because they had one advent calendar left and it was half price. Now he has been bugging me for this calendar since he first saw them in October or something. They are quite pricey and large, so I said no. Half price was okay, so I let him get it. Wow, was he hyped up about this. Blake and I got our drinks and we started to walk around. We found a store that had jeans for 40 to 50 % off and went inside. Blake needs a new pair of good jeans as his are getting pretty worn and are going to start falling apart soon. He found a couple of decent pairs, so we bought those. Merry Christmas Blake! Natasha texted us that she was almost done, so we hopped back in the truck to go and get her.

It was 5 PM when we got back, so she had been there for 4 hours. She still wasn’t done though. The hairdresser was still finishing up the cut and then had to style her hair. Dying your hair blue, or any “fashion” colour is a highly involved process. Her hair looked pretty cool though and she was some proudy pants of herself. Here is a picture:

She was done about 5:30 and I paid her bill and we were on the way. I must say they had the friendliest staff in that hair salon. They all loved Natasha’s hair and were wonderful.

A close up of Natasha's Hair in the RV:

We got back to the RV and had supper and hung out for the evening. Blake and I took Kizmet on a late night stroll and it was still beautiful out and the stars were very bright on the beach. It was a good end to the day.

Sonya