Our fishing adventure

As a child I remember fishing. We would spend summers with church folks at the cabins and fish. I remember watching my dad and the other leaders from our church clean fish and I remember even eating fish. As a teenager I even tried my hand at ice fishing. For you southerners who have no idea what I'm talking about, that is when you walk out onto a frozen lake, drill a hole in the ice, set up your tent and light a fire (all on top of the ice) and plop your line through the ice to catch fish. It's really a great time even though it sounds insane. Somewhere between then and now all of that changed. I have no problem with casting. In fact, I have a pretty good cast even though I rarely fish. I am great at the reeling in. What I'm not so good at is baiting the hook (if live bait is involved) and I'm not so good at the removing hooks and touching the fish. Let's not even talk about the cleaning and filleting.

Today's adventure in fishing was at a local pond. They stock these ponds with catfish. Anything you catch you buy. It's perfect for our kids who lack patience to throw in a line and watch and watch and watch.......and watch some more. Catch #1 came about 2 minutes after throwing out the line. This was his only catch of the day. He's a bit like his momma in that he was d-o-n-e, DONE! No more fishing for the little guy. The big catch of the day went to his older brother (on my cast). *patting myself on the back* No idea how much this whopper weighed but he was big.

We ended up with a cooler full of fish. Honestly, I can't remember how many we had. It took about an hour from naked hookless poles to a cooler like this. Yes, that's my good cooler. All I can say is "thank you, Lord, for Clorox".

I guess it doesn't matter how many fish we had. That scale says 13 lbs. 6 oz.

This next part has no photos. When the cleaning started, the little dude and I bailed. I did walk back to the room and asked him if he wanted to see. We looked in just in time to see him whack the fish over the head. That was too much for us. Back in the truck to wait. My oldest son and his dad watched the entire filleting process. They were intrigued with the entire thing. On the way home my oldest was kind enough to give me a play-by-play on what happened during my absence. I told him to stop or he might get to see what I had for lunch. He ignored me. We hit a pothole and I felt that familiar sensation. That bile-ish feeling in the back of my throat burning, the dizzy, warm headachey feeling, and uncontrollable salivating. We pulled over to the side of the road. I never did see that lunch again. Whew! I did make some catfish nuggets for supper tonight and the boys did enjoy them. I passed. I still didn't have an appetite. Somehow hamburger is not cow to me, nor is chicken, chicken. Pork is not a pig. I can keep the two separate. I'm sure if I saw the slaughtering process I would become a vegetarian. At dinner tonight my oldest had a brilliant idea. He said, "how about next time we go fishing you can just stay home and take a nap!" Sounds like a fabulous idea.

Ummm....awkward moment?

Yesterday I was coming through the gates here at Fort Polk. The gate guard was a very young female soldier. Prior to her army service she decided to go tribal and get one of those earlobe stretching piercings. Did you know those things don't close up? Upon driving up to the gate all I see is a hole. A large hole. In. Her. Ear. I know this could very well be a very awkward conversation as all I picture is the Austin Power's "mole" scene and the National Lampoon's shopping scene. I strike up a conversation with my preschooler hoping and praying he won't see her and say, "What's wrong with your ear?" I couldn't say a word but couldn't look away either. Ugh! Awkward moment. Ever have one of those and have no idea how you are going to get out of it? There is no way I can look cool in this situation. So I just skip the cool bit altogether and be an old lady. That seems to work best for me these days.

Would I be able to do this?

I won't even begin to write on the crisis in Haiti because I just don't know what to say. I will say that I've read articles on why God hates Haiti and it left me furious. It's like a bad car wreck. You don't want to watch but you can't help it. I really don't like watching the news but these days I can't seem to shut it off. Today I saw this on the news channel and it was so beautiful it made me cry. I'm not sure I would be able to do this.

Why my son says I totally rock

My son calls himself the Jr. Shrimpmaster. The Master Shrimpmaster would be his Papa who once had 44 shrimp at one sitting. I'm not talking about the kind of shrimp you find in middle America either. I'm talking about the huge monstrous kind found by the coast. My son loves all things shrimp. He loves peel and eat shrimp at the Chinese buffet, he orders popcorn shrimp whenever it's offered on the kids' menu, and he's even been known to bust open a bag of the frozen mini shrimp and chow down. I wasn't kidding when I said the kid loves shrimp. Today at the grocery store I saw this bag of shrimp flavored chips in the asian food section. At 89 cents I could not pass it up. They look like pork rinds but taste like shrimp. The jury's still out as to whether he really likes them or not but he said I totally rocked for thinking of him and buying him a bag of chips. I guess you could say I'm all that and a bag of chips. (I couldn't resist.)

Good morning to me!

This is what I saw when I walked out my front door this morning. This is EXACTLY how I saw it so I had nothing to do with the slaughter of this monster. Instead of screaming and cursing that I live in a land that would even support life such as this I said, "OH! Thank you LORD!" This is an odd thing to say since I am terrified of spiders and even more scared of poisonous spiders. I thanked the Lord that this spider was already dead and I would not have to hunt for a large flat-soled shoe and then dig up enough courage to destroy the beast before it attacked me first. It's all in perspective, folks. Do you have any ugly dead poisonous spiders in your life that need some fresh perspective?

Guess who's been painting again

It's amazing what a new coat of paint can do for a girl. That is purple nail polish with a glitter and star topcoat. I know I'm not 13 anymore but it sure is fun!

Born loser

I don't like games. I don't like strategy and I really don't like to lose. I figure a game like Candyland is about my speed. The only skill required to play is color recognition and it's a game of complete chance. I can't even win this stinkin game! Tonight my Q brought me this game and asked if I would play with him and his brother. Sure, I think. Surely I must do better than the last time I played. Now, the last time I played was a couple years ago. I didn't want to play my husband because I never. beat. him. ever. At anything. He begged and since I can't tell him no I played. And I lost, of course and he laughed hysterically which I thought was very insensitive of him. When I found out why he was laughing I was even more miffed. Dude had stacked the deck so I would win and I STILL managed to lose. Like I said, I don't like games. So tonight I decide to give it a shot. Q pulls his first card and gets Lolly. This is one of the character cards about 2/3 of the way up the board. Then L pulls his card and gets Jolly. This character is about halfway up the board. I pull my card and no characters for me. I get purple which is the second space on the board. My next turn brings me an orange card. I get to move one whole space. Like I said, I hate games. I hate board games. Don't ask me to play poker or spades or pinochle or whatever other game you've got a hankerin' for. This momma won't play. Now ask me to play some Rock Band and I can rock your socks off!