I take them so rarely, I forget how good vacations are. This last weekend, I had the opportunity to go out to a cabin on Whidbey Island with a friend I don’t see nearly as much as I should. Glen goes to school on the east coast, and he’s just about the only person I know who does. I’m personally much too fond of the west coast to even consider packing up and heading three-thousand miles across the country for any reason whatsoever, and my weekend on Whidbey just reaffirmed my love for the Pacific Northwest.

Admittedly, it was windy, wet, and winter, but I don’t see how a little non-stop driving rain or evening power outages could stop me from enjoying a rocky beach and beautiful grey day. Seattle is known for wet, terrible winters, but this really was a storm to write home about. It came and went though, and in the few clear moment, I thoroughly enjoyed hunting for rocks on the beach. I’ve got a pocketful of sea-smoothed rocks that I can’t wait to put in the polisher and turn into something really fantastic. We saw the view from Ebbey Landing and went into Coupeville to walk around downtown, stop by the bakery, and go out on the dock. On Sunday, we just drove around the island listening Simon and Garfunkle and Jim Croce.

I fell in love with “Time in a Bottle” almost immediately. When I got home and looked it up again, I couldn’t believe what a sad story was behind it. Jim Croce wrote it, and then released it in 1972 as a single…only to pass away in an accident the following year.

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with…

It’s one of those songs that reminds you to live in the moment, and it made me think about all the silly stress in my life, and how little time I actually spend doing the things that I want to do. Life can be short. Do I really want to spend it fretting about all the little things when there isn’t even enough time to spend all the moments I would like to spend on Whidbey Island skipping smoothed over stones into the choppy waters of Puget Sound, laughing with friends and crawling through driftwood forts?