Salad and Sunset

     The fact that I’d made chicken salad (portable!) from the leftover grocery store rotisserie chicken was all that it took.
We made a couple of G & T’s (pour out one jigger’s worth from an eight ounce bottle of tonic, replace with gin, and recap), picked up a loaf of sourdough bread on the way, and headed to the beach for our first sunset of the year.

          We set up the folding chairs, poured our drinks, and sat back. The sun still had another twenty minutes to go. Perfection.

          Except in back of us a photo shoot of a couple of long-suffering two-year-olds was in process. Dressed in their Sunday finest, they showed the patience of Buddha as they were moved from one spot to another, jollied up with manic efforts by the photographer, and discouraged from actually enjoying the beach. We decided it must have been a shoot-for-hire since Mom stayed on the sidelines while two slim long-haired young women scurried around with props and fake smiles.

          Finally this ended and we broke out our bread and salad. Out in the sea before us fish jumped into the air and pelicans, looking for all the world like pterodactyls, dove headfirst into the water, followed by smaller birds who must have realized this was the gravy train.

          Before long, our progress into our dinner was echoed by the

pelicans, who kept moving a bit closer to shore with each bite.

      I wondered if at some point one of them would swoop in on the slice of bread in my hand and carry it off in its shovel of a bill.

          The sun set, we finished our dinner, the wind picked up, and we headed for the car.

          In the parking lot we passed a small car emitting a definite herbal odor. The harried photographers coming down (or up) from their late afternoon’s work?