Was my uneasy/dis-easy self yesterday, late morning. Usually wake up nice, and even nicer since the realization last week, in the middle of the night, to a kid claiming he needed a band-aid on his ear, that I can be angry without being mean.

I am angry because I'm accustomed to resorting to it. I can change that by accepting it'll take time and much rose smelling along the way.

But, became lost late morning. Had that not-a-mom-from-a-Swiffer-commercial feeling. What to do with myself? With the kids? The naive words that run through my mind are, "What am I supposed to be doing?" I ask this with no compassion, unfortunately. I'm supposed to be dying, is the stupid answer.

I opted to spend some time dying at the playground/beach. The highlights at the playground were swinging, seeing Lloyd growl a foreign little boy to tears, watching the kids play with other kids, Dallas laughing at a baby coming down a slide, and a vision of an enormous pine cone collection to glitter and don this year's holiday tree with. I may entertain the pine cone idea.

We shifted to the beach after the growling incident--I'm not sure if the kid was afraid of the growling or Lloyd's desperate need for a Kleenex. A walk to the car for a nose-cleaning was on the way down the shore, so the kids obliged.

There was no one on the beach. A couple benches were filled atop the hill, but the beach was ours, the seagulls' and the Canadian Geese's. At the bottom of the steps sat a plastic horse on wheels that interested the boys for a couple minutes. Not sure what the circumstances of it ending up there were but, being me, I cared to wonder and still do.

The water was wavy. :)
It's just that the water is different every time I see it, which affects the beach layout. This time the waves rolled off onto a smooth, wet couple yards of sand, the larger waves making it to the rock/pebble layer I like so much.

I filled my pockets with the eye-catchers, as usual (Lloyd copies now, but is indiscriminate), but I did something I had never done before. Something therapeutic. Something I'm feeling in my arms and back today. I threw rocks. Lots of rocks. I threw them as far as I could. I skipped the flat ones and chucked the good, massive handful ones back out into the turning water. "Go back home, you lucky ones," my frustrations turned to dreams.

Meanwhile, flocks of birds rode both air and sea; the wind blew the water and crashed it into the break-wall, consuming ears; Lloyd pulled his pants down to whizz free; and Dallas sprawled across the rocks while sucking on his fingers and curling his curly hair.

I threw rocks I had considered souvenirs. I returned them instead, because I liked them so much. The launched rocks became symbols of my head crap. Depression can't swim, nor can it fly. I cried amazing, beautiful rocks back into the sea's rock-bed.

Lloyd's tummy reminded us of the time, so we headed home. The boys and I said goodbye to it all, including the toy horse that didn't get a second thought. Lloyd caught and freed one of the grasshoppers on the way up. Two elderly gentlemen met us at the top of the steps to say we'd forgotten our toy down on the beach. Waves crashed between our interchange.

"Nope. Not ours."

"Oh."