2013 Sunday Night at the Beach Part 8: Mama Enters the Water

It’s been hot.  Miserably hot, for almost two weeks now.  It normally doesn’t get hot here, and rarely for so long.  While we’ve had plenty of precipitation all summer long, the intense heat and lack of rain the past two weeks is causing everything to shrivel up.  Unfortunately, even though it’s hot, we haven’t had a dry heat.  It’s been crazy humid.  I hate being hot.  I really do.  And I hate it when the grass starts to shrivel.  It all puts me in a very grouchy mood.

On Sunday afternoon the temperature was in the upper nineties, and the heat index was 107 or something horrendous like that.  It literally felt like a sauna.  We headed to the sandy beach dressed in swimsuits, even me.  I did not hesitate to jump right in that big Lake with my kidlets.  The water at the sandy beach was actually almost warmish since the wind had been calm all day and the water had been baking in the sun all afternoon.  When I say warmish, I mean that it was still cold, but not so cold that your feet were pink and numb after 10 seconds.  In fact, after standing in the water I was actually able to acclimate enough to feel cold, but comfortable.  Since the air was so hot, I didn’t mind the cold water.

I brought my very old camera and it’s cheap underwater housing into the water with me.  By the time we arrived at the beach, though, the sun was setting, and my old camera doesn’t work well in low light.  This, enhanced by the fact that I was taking the pictures through a wad of thick waterproof plastic meant that a lot of the pictures were not remarkable.  The big kidlets were excited that I was in the water with them, and even though the lake is huge, they had to be RIGHT NEXT TO ME ALL THE TIME.  Ugg.  Just standing up was exhausting.  Usually they were thinking of ways to sneakily splash me, too.  Mr. Sneaky Pants even found a floating log and used it as a battering ram, calling me public enemy number one.  Luckily my defenses were mostly able to deflect the large log constantly aimed at me.  At the end I did do a little bit of back floating.

Even the cautious Mr. TOF, who never enters the water was in up to his chest, splashing around and having a wonderful time.  By the time we left our body temperatures had lowered and we were so much more comfortable, even though it wasn’t much cooler.  A thunderstorm was building out over the lake, so we were treated to wonderful lightening when we got home.  In fact, there was so much lightening that after the kidlets were sleeping I drove down to the rocky beach all by myself just to watch the storm out over the water.  It was mesmerizing.  I’ve always loved watching a thunderstorm over the prairie, seeing the lightening dancing from miles and miles away.  Usually the trees are blocking my view here, and I never get to watch a thunderstorm approach.  Even though this one was moving away from us, it was such a treat to watch the whole horizon flashing.