good sand

Yesterday, the sand was really good.  We ran past the 90's neon pink house and I was surprised to find out how large it really is, and that it doesn't sit further out on the sand than the other houses.   3.5 miles away, it looks like it's the same size, and half a house length or so in front of the surrounding houses.  Marveling at the visual distortion caused by wide and relatively featureless expanses has become a hobby of mine.

It was sunny too, which is also visual appealing because it reminds me of these post-apocalyptic dreams (not quite nightmares) that I used to have regularly when I was younger, before I knew the meaning of post-apocalyptic.  I knew only that most of the people on Earth were dead for some reason, and I was stuck alone with miles of sand and sun and sky (strangely, I don't remember any water).   I'd been to very few beaches as a child, and all of them had been river or lake beaches, and I didn't particularly like going to the beach anyway; my beach dreams were a mix of initial horror and growing contentment and all kinds of awe.   Usually when I run on a wide empty beach on a sunny day, I remember falling in love with void.

Total run: 7ish miles.

Today, the sand was still good and the run started off sunny but with a huge dark front looming.  It looked like a wall, as if there was a limit to the ocean, a backdrop or something like that and something else, goodness knows what, maybe a bunch of ropes and black paint, behind it.  The radiance of the sun was squeezed and condensed, the light sharpened.   I had a minute or so to remember the scene before the cloud banks covered the sun and turned everything into just another overcast day.  And of course this distraction obscured the lack of poop bags, and the dog had to go five or so minutes later, so we ran back, and back out.....so, 1.5 miles.  Later on, when the sky was still merely overcast and not portentous at all, I jogged with my husband and the dog for about 3 miles, and there were dolphins again, but further away and less flashy than they or their relatives had been two days ago.

We also got some bad news regarding the place we were supposed to move into on the 4th, then on the 6th, then on the 11th, now the 15th or so?  Originally we were supposed to be moving into another place (2 or 3 places ago) on the 18th of December; fortunately, this has extended our beach vacation enough that I can't be entirely fed up with North Carolina so far.  I'm beginning to learn that the only way to get into a house or place by the agreed upon date is to rent from a housing manager somewhere off-post.  The two times we had no issues moving in, that was the situation.  All the other times, there have been delays upon delays.  Not so bad now because we're at the beach--another time, we were living on a boat in Baltimore's inner harbour, which ROCKED--but we will have to move from here into a motel for some indeterminate while, instead of straight into a house.  I'd better watch dolphins some more but, meanwhile, I will view a threatening sky as a warning in the future.