Sandbox Zen

One of our projects this week was rehabbing the sandbox. We have a cute little table that looks like a picnic table, but opens up to be a sand and water table. I think combining sand and water on purpose is a terrible idea, so we just put sand in ours. Over the course of the summer, the sand table has turned into more of a swamp table. Fairly disgusting. Now, Lyla has loved playing in the swamp, but I figured it might be time to clean out the cess pool lest someone get a fatal disease on my deck.

Drew and I headed to Home Depot to get a 50 lb. bag of play sand and one other item. I purposely went to the check-out line near the sand and asked specifically if someone could load it into my car. The lady took one look at me and said, "Oh honey, of course." Apparently Home Depot employees have been trained to avoid women going into labor in their store at all costs. It took us a while to get to the car since Drew insisted on carrying the bag. And then, some builders who were CLEARLY in no hurry to get to the job site sat in the lane where you have things loaded in your car for an additional 10-15 minutes. Guh. I tell you all of this to point out just how much time Home Depot had to find someone to load my sand. When I finally pulled my car next to the sand, I hopped out, optimistic that someone would be right out to help. After 10 more minutes of waiting (we are now up to nearly half an hour of waiting for a $3.99 bag of sand) I started muttering, grabbed a cart, loaded the sand in and loaded it in my car. I'm sure it was a sight. About that time, a guy came sauntering over-LAUGHING- with a snack in his hand, and said, "Huh, guess I'm 5 minutes too late." Har-dee-har. He was young. Clearly he had never experienced the wrath of a sweaty pregnant lady. I just rolled my eyes right in his face. And thought long and hard about writing a letter to headquarters, but I was too tired from all the manual labor.

We got home and I loaded the sand in the wheelbarrow and filled up the sand table. Yeah, I could've waited for Dan to do it, but I'm not so hot at waiting to check something off the list. It's been great having clean sand. Drew kept saying, "Mommy, it's so soft!" I think he meant, "Mommy, my hands are in no danger of rotting off when I play with this!"

Yesterday we spent a lot of time playing in the sand box. I found myself using the little rake and just raking lines over and over, in sort of a trance. I could feel myself relaxing more by the minute. It made me think of one of these:



I know nothing about a Zen Garden, other that what I've seen on t.v. dramadies, but I'm pretty sure you don't really need one. Seems like a plastic sand table and some clean sand will lead you to that place of zen just fine.