Last & This Weekend

With all the Jaeger Pooting going on last week, I didn't get a chance to blog about what happened last weekend! It was...well...exciting and terrifying all at the same time.

On Saturday, we went to a local flea market type place. I've had my eye on a china cabinet there for a long time now. Every time I go, they tell me they'll negotiate with me on the price and they do come down quite a bit ($425 down to $350) but it was still out of my range. My mom had said that if they ever come down to $300, she'd buy it for me and would consider it my Christmas and birthday presents (X-mas this year and b-day next year). I quickly agreed.

They would never come down lower than $350. For the whole month of July, they are having an inventory reduction sale (they got new items and need to clean house of the old). I found a bakers rack I needed for my front porch. While there, mom decided to ask if they'd come down any more on the china cabinet. They still only came down to $350. Mom then asked them to call her if they decide to move the piece to make room for other stuff. She'd like first refusal.

Well, the lady finally said, "Would you take it for $300?". Mom calmly accepted and now I have a BEAUTIFUL china cabinet in my dining room.

Don't worry, I'm gonna move James Dean over. Now that I have the cabinet, he's not centered on the wall.

I haven't filled it yet, but I'm working on it! It looks a lot like my mom's which is part of the appeal.



On Sunday, light of my life and I decided to go fishing. We took our little cane poles and walked down to the creek. The creek was real low (due to lack of rain) so I didn't have any hope of catching anything.

Well, I was wrong! Light of my life caught 9 fish and 2 crawfish.



Here she is with just 1 of 9 that she caught!



Here's one of her crawfish (or as I called them growing up...crawdaddies)



Here's one of the fish!


And, the pic below, it's what I caught (besides 2 tiny fish)!



Yes, Internets, that's a water moccasin! Needless to say, I cut the line on that one and we ran like hell!

This past weekend, we went to my grandmother's for the 4th and had hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, apple pie, blackberry pie, etc....It was yummy. Light of my life and I went fishing again. Not as much luck this time but we did end up having the "dropsies". I dubbed us the Dropsie Twins because we managed to drop part of a pole, a bobber, a thing of tape and light of my life's hook got caught on a log underwater. This meant that I had to crawl down the STEEP bank to the creek (thank goodness the creek was still low) to get it unhooked. While I was down there, I got the bobber and the pole but the tape was long gone.

Saturday and Sunday we really didn't do much. Just relaxed (well, I cleaned).

This week is gonna be rough. Light of my life is going to overnight camp...for the first time EVER! She's a little nervous but excited. We got her all packed and ready to go. They'll sleep in cabins and she has to take her own sheets and towels and blanket and pillow, etc....

I've never been to sleep away camp all by myself before. My mom always made sure she was one of the chaperons (well, not really, she always got roped into it) so I didn't really have any advice for light of my life except to have fun! I sent her with a disposable camera, so she'll be able to document the experience.

The camp is only 10 miles from our house so she's still kinda close. We drove up to it on Saturday so she could get a look at it. It looks like a nice place. Hopefully she'll have fun.

But, I'm without her for the week. This is gonna be a LONG week. Sigh....

How was your weekend?

Later,

Mama Dawg

P.S. We lost Johnny (named after Johnny from Grease 2...you know, Andrian Zmed's character) the beta fish, last night. Another one bites the dust!

P.S.S. Oh, yeah, my turtle saving count is now up to 4! For anyone who cares!

ABBA Should Change the Lyrics to...

...Dancing Queen to state:

"You can fish, you can cast,
drop your line in the creek fast.
See that girl, watch her fish,
seeing her makes you wish....You were the Fishing Queen. "


The reason I say this is I've created a monster with light of my life. When I got home Friday from the local flea market (where I bought light of my life a new, well technically old, desk and chair and a few other things), I asked if she wanted to go fishing for about an hour. The look on her face answered that question so I went inside and got changed. We ran over to B & L's to grab the nightcrawlers and headed out.

I swear, it was like the gods were against us.

When we got to my grandmothers house and parked the car, I noticed that our lines were tangled. I knew that that would take a bit to undo, so we started off towards the creek. Now, keep in mind, the creek is like a 15 minute walk away.

We get halfway there when light of my life asked me if I have the worms. Um....no....I have everything else. You know, the poles, mosquito spray, beer, etc.....

Shoot a monkey....we started walking back. When we got to the fork, I sat down and told her to go the rest of the way back to the car. I did this for two reasons. 1. It gave me a few minutes to start working on untangling the line and 2. It forced light of my life to walk in the woods by herself for a bit. When she got around the curve, she would be able to recognize where she was and the car was only like 2 minutes away at that point. I want her to get comfortable with the woods as we plan on living here for quite a while yet. She went back gladly and got the worms.

As we were walking to the creek, I had to explain to her that you don't always catch something every time we fish and that today, it might be even harder since the creek was down due to lack of rain recently. She sort of understood but wanted to continue on anyway.

We get to the creek and I sit down to finish de-tangling the line. I got one of the lines untangled from the other and I got ready to re-tie the line on light of my life's pole when it FELL through the cracks of the bridge down into the creek.

Are you f**king kidding me?!?!?!? I had to literally crawl down the bridge wall on down to the creek to retrieve the damn thing.

After all that, we only got to fish like 20 minutes. Light of my life caught NOTHING and I only caught one itty bitty tiny fish.

It was still worth it.

You know how I can tell though, that I have a fishin' demon on my hands? Light of my life woke up during a thunderstorm Saturday night and drowsily said, "Well, I guess the creek won't be low now, huh?".

I rest my case.

Later,

Mama Dawg

One Fish, Two Fish

Here's the first fish light of my life caught. She was so proud. We had to throw this one back because we didn't have any water in our cooler when she caught it.

Later,

Mama Dawg

...And They All Had a Good Time Part 2

On Sunday, we got up and went to church. Came home, ate lunch and went to visit my grandmother.

Mom had gotten some good news about building her house. The survey had been done and the land marked off. She got to walk the land last week and wanted to show it to me. The next step in the process is to start clearing the land, go to an architect to have the plans drawn up, get the culvert done, grading, driveway started, etc....She's so excited. So am I. It's gonna be a cool place to build her house.

Anyway, while we were at my grandmother's house, mom and I went out and walked her land. After seeing the spot where she's gonna build, we decided to walk down to the creek to see if we could find the spot we went fishing last year. I had invited M and C to go fishing with us after they got back from their piano lesson. They were all for it. They go fishing with their dad a lot. So much so, that they have their own rods and reels.

Light of my life and I have those dinky cane poles from Wal-Mart that cost about $4. Light of my life had only been fishing once before and liked it well enough. I love to fish, but having lived in cities all my life, it was such a hassle to go fishing that it really wasn't worth it. But I love to do it.

After the girls got back from their piano lessons, we grabbed our gear and hopped in the car. It was about a 15 minute walk to the new bridge where we were gonna fish off of. The girls didn't voice one complaint the whole way there. I was so proud of them.

We got to the bridge and I had to bait their poles. We had night crawlers as bait. I prefer crickets, but we were using L's bait since I didn't have time to go to town to get some crickets. Light of my life's and my poles were brand new and the line hadn't been tied to it yet, so I had to get that done first. I got hers taken care of and baited her hook. She promptly put the line in the water and loudly commented on how cool it was. I got M and C's hooks baited and then went to work on trying to get my line loose so I could get my pole set up. Before I could get that done, light of my life was hollerin' that she had one! Sho nuff, she had a little brim. I took a pic and because we didn't have our little Styrofoam cooler set up with water in it, we had to let it go. C and I decided to try to find a place along the creek that we could make our way down to the bank to get the Styrofoam cooler filled with some water in case we caught something big. We went up the creek a bit and had to fight our way through some thorny things, but finally found a sandy spot where we could gain access to the water. We filled up the cooler and made our way back to the bridge. Light of my life ended up catching the second fish, C caught the third, light of my life caught the fourth and M caught the fifth one of the day. I caught nada. Zip, zilch, zero, big fat goose egg nothing. Sucks, but I had so much fun, I didn't care. C's fish (the biggest one we caught) was so pissed that it decided to JUMP out of the cooler and back into the creek. It didn't even touch the bridge. It just JUMPED out of the cooler and right between the slats of the bridge right the creek beneath it. So cool! Out of the five we caught, we ended up only having three in the cooler. Stupid me, I said it was OK for us to take them back with us....forgetting I had a 15 minute hike through the woods and fields while carrying a bag full of stuff and a cooler of fish. I'll never do that again! Actually, next time, we'll just take the golf cart.

We decided to move off of the bridge and go to the spot where we had gone down to get some water in the cooler. It was kinda steep but had a couple of flat places that the girls stood on. I was trying to work my way around a downed tree when I slipped on the wet sandy bank and fell flat on my ass. The girls got a good laugh out of it. Especially since my butt was covered in mud! When it started to get dark, the girls pulled in their lines and light of my life's hook got stuck on a log on the water. Instead of breaking the line, I decided to do the smart (read..stupid) thing and walk out on the rotted, wet, slimy downed tree to get to the stuck hook. I managed to get there and back in one piece, but at one point, I almost fell in.

On the way back to the car, we spotted a rabbit in a field and M tried to sneak up on it. She actually got about 10 feet from it before it hopped away. They all thought that was cool.

We made it back to the house and showed off the three tiny fish to my grandmother and aunt. They were suitable impressed and oohed and ahhed over the fish. The girls were so proud of themselves.

We made it home and showed off the fish to my mom, B and L. Everyone was impressed (read....impressed that we caught anything at all!). The girls had so much fun. It was just a perfect day. I can't wait to go again!

Later,

Mama Dawg