A Florida Saga

I'm writing this from Captiva Island, Florida—not my usual stomping grounds. Thanks to some nice friends, we are staying at a lovely beach cottage right by the ocean. With our usual traveling expertise and direct route (yes, that is meant to be sarcastic) it only took us three days to get here. It didn't take even that long for the misadventures to start.
My dad drove almost the entire way, but I did spell him for 20 minutes just outside of Orlando. Of course, within that short time, more crazy stuff happened on the road, including a truck blowing out a tire right in front of me, than the rest of the trip combined (almost).
When we arrived late Saturday evening (after over 26 hours in the car), we walked into the TV blaring. There were crayons and groceries on the counter, and the beds had the sheets on but used. "Hello?" we called out, to no answer. Freaky. It felt a little like a twilight-zone setup, except that humid Florida evenings do not good atmosphere make. A couple of phone calls later, we found out that the people staying before us had left last Wednesday, but that the cleaning people thought they weren't leaving until this coming Wednesday. Within an hour or two it was all worked out, and we had a fun dinner on the back porch in the dark of frozen pizza and root beer while they cleaned up the place.

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Right now I'm sitting with my leg propped up on pillows, with ice and a towel wrapped around a large lump. It all started with Delusions of Grandeur (what a great phrase).
My mom, being the cool mom she usually is, found a nifty book on sandcastle building. We've always made, in our opinion, very nice (aka totally cool) sandcastles with those little plastic molds and our hands. But this made our old sandcastles look like a kindergartener's finger painting compared to a Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece—nice, but oh wow is there a bigger world out there! The sandcastles in this book were amazing, and it started by teaching you different techniques for building up with the sand. So we read the book, oohed over the pictures, and congratulated my mom on her foresight in bringing all the necessary supplies, from putty knives to a huge shovel. Then yesterday afternoon we went out onto the beach to start practicing.
As so often happens, our efforts were anything but successful. Lukas and Julia made some cool stuff, but we could not get the hand-packing technique to work (we decided the sand was too shelly). I was still dedicatedly struggling along, though harboring the gravest doubts as to my chance of success, when I went down to fill up the bucket with water again. We had already dug several different holes, trying to find the right sort of sand, but attempted to fill them back up afterwards like the considerate people we are. I should mention that the beach is not a flat stretch but rather hilly, with several fairly sizable mounds and dips between the dunes and the ocean. I was walking with my usual non-existent grace when I reached the top of one such hill, put my food down in one of our small left-over holes, and in one not-so-fluid motion twisted my ankle and went sprawling across the sand.
I just sort of sat there is shock, then started moaning (I think) and clutching the sand with my fists. Okay, so my tolerance for pain is like zero, but that was not a fun experience. Julia and my dad were out in the water, and they saw me and hurried back to help. I'm sure I looked like a very pale and sick beached whale, and Julia told me afterward that everything I said was in a "little girl voice" and sounded really stupid. I thought I was doing rather well. Everything started going blurry, and I could feel the sand I was still digging my hands into and bright light and then dark, and that was about it. My dad kept trying to get me to sit or sand up, and I kept trying to tell him that I couldn't see and was going to pass out. There was that weird muffled feeling, when you hear and yet don't hear, and you know that you are and aren't there—I can't describe it very well. I don't like that lost feeling, and I just wanted to black out or come back. I've only passed out once before, and that was when I was getting blood drawn (it didn't help that I was just reading a book about a girl who had just passed out from bubonic plague right before I got called back). Anyhow, I felt dizzy and disoriented, but I didn't actually pas out for more than a few seconds, and eventually the world cam back into focus.
Getting back to the house was Not fun; I was begging my dad to just let me crawl back, but eventually with Lukas' help too we made it back. So, like 24 hours later I'm sitting inside with a sprained/twisted ankle and writing this blog. I can get around the house, and made it out to lunch with everyone, but it's still a bit unhappy and I decided going out on the beach today was a bad idea. Thankfully I'm more of an indoor person, so the forced inactivity isn't so bad.