Mining for Crystals

You know when your kid gets a toy and you become kind of deranged trying to figure out how to make it work? This is what happened at Christmas when Primo opened up his super-cool Crystal Mining Excavation Science Kit. Like many children, Primo loves beauty (crystals) and he loves destruction (hunk of plaster in which crystals are embedded). So we were all pretty jazzed up to get started on the excavation immediately, using the handy little tool included. A half hour later, he hadn't made a dent. By the next morning' he'd gotten this far:


You could dig a tunnel out of Sing Sing faster than you could get one of these precious crystals out. Primo was pretty OK with the lengthy process but I, an impatient woman, was getting antsy and was dying to get a chance to shatter the plaster myself with a heavy-duty piece of equipment. I grabbed said equipment from the BBQ grill nearby and began violently hacking away. Then I trained Primo in my guerilla tactics. Success!