Alrighty, then! That was alot of cleaning! Whew! I thought I'd never be done, and you probably did, too! When did I start this spring cleaning thing? Was it two weeks ago? Really? Actually, it feels like I've done nothing else for two weeks. Now, before you go off thinking that we must have been living in a pig-sty, (boy room excluded), let me just say that it wasn't just the dust-the-ceilings, clean above, inside, and outside the cabinets, behind the frig, under the couches, shampoo the carpets, kinda thing, but it was also a purge the closets, cabinets, and boys' toys while they aren't looking, kinda thing, along with a little (or alot) of the touch-up-all-the-wall-and-trim-paint, kinda thing. Whew! Oh, I think I already said that. Well, I mean it! Every muscle in my body means it.
Okay, and another reason that it took me two weeks, is that I had to take the guys to the beach every once-in-a-while. Just one of those things a mama's gotta do. I really had no choice. There are three of them, and only one of me.
So, there we were, walking along the beach, and we came upon a strange-looking thing lying there on the sand. (I don't have a picture of it, but imagine with me...) It was what appeared to be an overgrown nut having a bad hairday. Now, we've seen these at the beach before, the only thing about this one was, it wasn't a person.
About the size of a football, it was light-weight and covered in a course, brown, fiberous mass. The first boy to spy it immediately claimed it as his find of the day. He played with it, sat on it, tossed it around in the water and watched it float. He retrieved it when somehow it would end up too far from our jumble of beachtowels, and he declared that he wanted to take it home. Because this was a treasure, if there ever was one.
His mama's encouraging reply was, "Sure, you can take it home, if you carry it!"
To which he surprisingly answered, "I can carry it, Mama, no problem!"
Wasn't this the same boy who, just hours before, had found carrying the water jug, his buggie board, and the popcorn bag to be extremely taxing on his six-year-old body? Now he wanted--no--he needed to add a big, hairy nut to his load? Yup. He packed it all the way back to the car with narry a complaint.
All because he had a sneaking suspicion that it was a coconut.
I wasn't so sure. I mean, could you really just be walking along a beach, reach down, pick up a coconut, carry it home, crack it open, and eat it? Okay, I know it's been over three years, but I'm still getting used to this whole Florida thing. I suppose it might be like someone saying during our Alaska years, "You can really just be walking through the woods, and come upon a blueberry bush, and just pick the blueberries and eat them?"
Come to find out, yes, you can.
When we got home, all three of the boys took to that nut with hammers of all shapes and sizes, and beat the thing silly. But, it took big daddy and his nut buster (a.k.a. crowbar), to crack through the fiber and the shell and reveal that indeed, it really was a coconut.
And that six-year-old boy? He ate the lion's share with a big grin on his face. Said it was the best he'd ever had.
Sure was.
