Monster on the Beach! (Well, not really...)

Jody is so far away. I wonder where she is right now? What is she doing? Let me paint a picture...

(Originally written in my notebook.) Its my beloved day off. I am reclining in a beach chair, on the beach, under an umbrella. The sun is setting behind me. My bikini is still dripping from my recent dip in the ocean. I was playing in the waves, doing handstands in the water. Two local Thai girls floated over to me on their inner tubes. We communicated via smiles and body language and they let me come aboard. Moments later we were all pummeled by a wave which dumped us over board and sent us spinning into the rumbling white water. We all burst out laughing and we did it again and again.

I'm sitting here in this beach chair, the local kids are still playing in the waves and my good friend Will (another colleague from home who has been hired!! Now there are 4 of us from med school here all together!...very cool to have familiar faces from home around!) Anyway, as I was saying, Will is about 10 yards ahead of me sculpting a beached dinosaur out of sand. Will and I have been at the beach for I'd guess, about 5 hours. (...who knows really though. When its my day off and I'm at the beach, time doesn't really matter!) We both have the day off together today, a rarity that wont happen again since his training ends tomorrow and his official day off from now on will be Thursdays. ;-(

So I've been sitting in this beach chair for hours watching the waves crashing, all the while reminiscing back to the days when I was a little tot running around on the beach in Maui every spring break with my sister and my grandparents. They would slap on the sunscreen and my white t-shirt, and I'd be off to build sand castles and play in the waves for hours. So as I have been sitting here, the 35 year young woman that I am, in my elegant bikini (as much as a bikini can be elegant, that is. My point is just that its not one of my sporty ones) all I've been thinking about wanting to do is, well, let go of any notion of how a 35 yr old in a bikini is 'supposed' to act, and build a sand castle and play in the waves...and finally, I just had to go do it!

Will traced out the blueprint of a beached dinosaur and I just sat myself down in the sand and started digging. I actually stopped for a moment, wondering how much my nails were getting scratched by the coarse sand, but then realized how '35' that was, and how un-little-tot-ish it was, and quickly let it go and went back to digging. Will's artistic passion came out as he started redirecting the angles of the legs and perfecting the shape of the dinosaur's back and sculpting a spine. I just kept digging and dumping sand for him to sculpt, digging and dumping, digging and dumping... leaving the fine details up to Master Will. In classic Jody form, after about 15 minutes, I was ready for something new, so that's when I jumped into the water and started doing hand stands and then playing in the waves with the local kids.

So back to this moment right now. I'm lounging back in my beach chair. Will is still 10 yards ahead of me, now perfecting the details of the dinosaur's face. There is a small crowd around him: 2 kids whom I'm guessing are Swedish, (lots of Sweds spend the winter here; there is even a small Swedish elementary school in town) plus 4 tourists from who knows where (probably Sweden), and a couple of local kids....all admiring this mass of sand that Will continues to bring to life moment by moment with every improvement in detail. Will is now looking for shells.... Now Will is using the shells to make 2 eyes, a pair of ears, a nose and teeth. (I'm truly giving you the play by play of what is going in my life at this very moment. ;-) Now he is walking up to me with a huge grin, thoroughly satisfied, as are all the other admirers on the beach, with his artistic accomplishment of transforming a flat beach into the home of a beautifully sculpted, very life-like beached dinosaur.

!!!!!!At this very moment, a group of dogs have noticed Will's life-like creature and are madly barking at it!!!! I kid you not! They are about 30 yards from it, all reluctant to come any closer. Now they have stopped for a moment and are all looking around at each other, and I'm quite sure that they're saying in doggy language, "What the ^%$#^! is that?!" Barking again. Staring. Barking. Looking around at each other. Stepping closer. Moving back. Barking. Barking. Barking!!! I've never seen anything so hilarious. Will is next to me about to fall over laughing, and I hope full of pride for the confirmation he has just received for how life-like his creation truly is!!! This is hillarious! I've got to put my pen down and watch all this play out....! ;-) Bye for now!