Doing battle against the waves

I watched a tiny green crab digging a hole in the sand today. Just on the edge of the surf, he would pull clawfuls of sand out and toss them onto the beach, always keeping an eye on the waves. Every so often, the water would creep higher - the little crab would dart back into the hole, and the wave would push the sand over him. But as soon as the ocean receded, out came the little crab again, pushing sand back out of the hole. He would even run at the waves, as if to say, "See, you can't keep me down, I will always get back up again."

Today, I felt just like that little crab. Life threw a few curveballs at me, and I had to keep digging myself out that little hole in the sand. Let me explain:

We discovered a bakery on the end of our street, and found out they had pain au chocolat in the morning. So this morning, bright and early, Mario slid quietly out of bed and made his way to buy us breakfast. Some time later, he came back and returned to bed, dejected. The pains au chocolat were all sold out, and he had returned empty-handed. We instead woke a little later, and made a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs on baguette toast, even using up the leftover ham and cheese sandwich from yesterdays lunch in the dish. And it was delicious.

Afterwards, we headed out on a little hike we had planned. Nothing hard, just a walk along the littoral, from the Plage des Amandiers where we had ended our walk yesterday, around the coast to the Pointe Allègre, about 5 km away. Everything went fine - the hike was flat and dipped in and out of the forest, offering beautiful views of the coastline and beaches that we were walking along. We passed creole homes, tall palm trees, cows lounging in long grasses, protected by their "garde-boeuf" white egrets. But the wide vistas also offered another view, that of the sky, and clouds, and incoming storms that we watched along the horizon. They got closer as we headed further along the trail, and when we emerged on the plateau of the Pointe Allègre, the skies were grey, and the air filled with a mist that hinted at the imminent storm that was upon us. 

We decided to press on, hoping to find refuge in the trees that lined the Pointe. As the sky opened up, Mario fashioned a shelter for us from a piece of tin he found on the beach, and we sat there, watching the rain fall. During a break in the clouds, we scurried out and continued again along the trail, looking this time for shelter at the Plage de Clugny, hoping this time for real shelter, maybe a restaurant, maybe something else. We instead found heavier rain, and a hole in a tree where we hid camera, mobile, basically anything of value that we did not want to get wet. And that's where we stayed, for a little while, eating wet ham sandwiches and wiping the rain from our faces. It was...fun...no, it wasn't, but when thinking about how silly we must've looked, hanging around that tree, having our lunch, I can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it. 

We eventually got a long enough break in the storm to walk back to the Plage des Amandiers and hide all our gear in the car. Then we stripped off all our muddy wet clothes and jumped in the water. Boy, did it ever feel good! It was like all the stress of the situation washed off me with the mud. And then I just sat on the beach, and watched a little green crab trying to dig out his hole in the sand, all while doing battle with the ocean.