Castle, Castle, Made of Sand...

Wow - what a Fourth of July - I spent all of about 12 hours on the beach, feel like I have been boiled, not just a little boiled, but alot boiled, look about the color of a hot lobster coming out of the steamer, and feel like the corn on the cob that has ice cold butter melting all over it - any minute now the skin on my body is going to slough off like a lizard skin, and I imagine as I walk through the dark, all you will be able to see me by is eyeballs and teeth - and the sound of me crying loudly from the distinct pain of second degree sun poisoining as I make my way to cold sheets and more glasses of ice water...It is also compounded by the fact that at the break of dawn I stumbled out on the patio in my boxer shorts, and well, the mosquitos seem to be attracted to the more tender parts of my body, so two bites later, and well, one is somewhere painful, the other is somewhere less painful - hell, that's what Bud Light is for I guess...

The fireworks, well they were fireworks - but the best part of the day is explained above in pictures - I have never - and I mean never, in my entire thirty-six years of existence, built a monstrosity of a sand castle, and then, with a cold cooler full of beer sit and watch as the tide took it away - the whole time listening to Feist "I feel it all" - crying. It was an amazing sort of feeling -my son asked me what was wrong - and the thing was, that nothing, I mean nothing was wrong, short of missing company...

So much of what we do in our day to day lives is just another scoop full of sand - we all get compliments, and feel good when folks say that's nice - but what happens when we leave - does a wave of anything come and make it clean, smooth sand again as if nothing was ever there - as if we just built a castle knowing that is was not permanent and would be carried away to some other tidal pool, or to be included in someone else's castle -

I am building a life out of bricks, and right now, I am scared to death that it is going to be much harder to tear down - that's why the sandcastle touched me the way it did - it is hard work to build and watch it go away -

Happy Fourth - I can't wait until July 7th so I can celebrate my Independence Day....