Forget Lemonade, Go Make Sand Castles!

Life hasn't exacrtly been giving me lemons, but I've definatley been needing to decompress the chaos of the brain. So, two weeks ago, after turning in our Biblical exegesis papers at 4:30 (48 hours after turning in 15 pages of Philosophy papers) Cabe and I (who are always ready to do something other than work that needs to be done) headed out to Golden Gardens beach for a couple hours of sand castle building. Some of you know about me and sand castles (i heart them) but I hadn't really said much to Cabe. Just a casual, "Wanna make sand castles when we're done on Friday?" and next thing I knew, we had about four hours' worth of serious Tolkeinesque citadel sandworks that prompted every passerby to feel obligated to comment. Autumn, a friend from school also happened to be at the beach and said she had been watching the two of us playing with piles and buckets from a distance before she knew who were, and was wondering "where's their kid?". Duh-
Needless to say, I was impressed and pleased by the fortitude, foreplanning and vision shown by Cabe- sometimes you think you're the only one who cares about sand castles, and then you find there are other people willing to be mistaken for eight year olds.

Speaking of that, this first sand castle venture was even equipt with the obligatory visit and inquiry from random 6-9 year-old-lonely-precocious -child-who's-there-with-a-parent-and-not-a-playmate who always appears at my attempts at serious sand castle building, so we of course had some psuedo-helpful help and high vocabularied conversation with young lad of 8. It didn't take me long to recognize that the narrative he was forming around his pyramid-in-progress was closely based on an episode of "the Backyardigans" (I'm a faithful viewer).

Well, one Friday later, with the final Hebrew assignment (and final summer term work) emailed off, we headed back to Golden Gardens, but this time with more buckets, shovels, and helpers. Chase, an incoming counselling student form Mars Hill, and Carrie, my roomate and Mars Hill counselling graduate. Serious work was done, and we were all pleased with the trajectory of our work, though sunset made us stop. We started making plans on how to approach our next castle endeavor: graph paper may be needed.

But then today, our hypothetical 9am-6pm week-long class got out quite early, so Cabe and I grabbed Chase again and tried to get some serious building done before nightfall, but this time we chose a tide-sensitive location, and got completely run over within about an hour. The much-discussed ziggurat was almost ready for embellishment. But it's okay, because today was just a research/rehearsal phase for some serious day-long building plans for Sunday. Let's hope the tides and the weather and slightly autistic children don't keep us from building our dream to completion this time! After all, we're having to fit a month of summer vacation into six evenings. Get it while you can, people.