The granite came today.  I am having my last nervous breakdown.  All that worry over nothing:  Will I like it?  Will it be too dark?  Did I choose the right pattern?  It is absolutely gorgeous.  Everything I hoped for. "Get a grip."  I kept telling myself that.  And reminding myself of the real problems in our world.  Our men at war.  Crime in the streets.  Hungry children.  I must have said to myself, "Quit Obsessing, you are being an idiot," a hundred times.

It's almost over.  I can go back to being normal.  The only thing left is the movers.  Then I can spend all winter unpacking and such stuff as that--taking as long as I want to.

Sally called me.  She is going to the beach this week with her grandchildren.  They only live two hours away.  I told her to squish sand between her toes for me.

I love the beach "abstractly."  It's the "actuality" that stops me from going.  I've lived on the Pacific--four different times.  The Atlantic--twice.  And the gulf at Pensacola once.  The white sand in Florida is the best.  But to tell you the truth, I hated brushing kids off--and trying to get keep sand out of the car when we left the beach.  I have pictures of Pat when she was a toddler playing in the tide pools at Laguna Beach after the tide went out.  That was 1957; it isn't the same any more.  The beaches are dirty.  And crowded.  We are destroying our natural wonders.

In Beaufort S. Carolina, we lived two blocks from the Atlantic backwash and the kids would go catch crabs and come home full of sand.  So I have mixed feelings about beaches.  You need to live on a beach after your kids are grown and gone.  Then you can enjoy sun-up or sun-down views without dreading the aftermath of clean up.   You can walk up and down the beach and only have to rinse your feet with a garden hose after you get back home.  And find some little hole in the wall restaurant on the water, where the boats come in and unload their catch and you get to watch them do it.  And eat the kind of food you couldn't afford when you had children and were feeding six.

I love those little cafes on the beaches where everything they serve is fresh.  Why, then, am I living in Oklahoma.  I ask myself that every now and then.  And of course, the answer: it's the people.  Oklahoma people are the best in the land.