Something's Fishy...

Sometimes you don't even know when the call comes that you are about to do something so fun! We had talked about it once before. In passing. It was one of those thing we thought would be fun to try--sometime. At least that's how the conversation played out in my head. I guess the guys took it a little more seriously when they said, "We should go catch crawdads and have a boil". And apparently, they discussed it. In detail. On more than one occasion. Sure, when they mentioned it to me, it sounded like fun. I said I was game to tag along when they went. If I'm being honest, I'm not sure I really thought we would go. But go we did. And it was SO MUCH FUN! You seriously have to try it.

Eric called yesterday afternoon and said he and John were on their way to pick me up. I had about ten minutes. I mentioned to my mom that we were going and she told me about how she and her brothers used to catch crawdads when she was a kid, then she set me up with the ideal crawdad catching kit from her childhood. A piece of string, a safety pin and a few slices of bacon. John already had fancy traps he had bought for us to use, but I took my mom's kit anyway, just to see how it worked. It was magic!  I pulled one crawdad after another out of the creek. It was great. My mom really is a genius!

When we caught our fill of crawdads, we headed for home. The hard part of the night was ahead of me. We were now going to boil and eat our crawdads. I know what you're thinking. Eating dinner is not the hard part of the night, but for a girl who doesn't like fish (at all!), this was a terrifying prospect. But I helped catch them, so I was determined to at least try them. We headed back to Eric's house and fired up the propane cooker. Next we loaded the pot with Zatarains crab boil seasoning, some onions, red potatoes and corn. Then we tossed our catch into the pot and let them cook.

The moment of truth had arrived. It was time to crack those puppies open and give them a try. You know what?? They were surprisingly good (of course this could have had something to do with the copious amout of garlic butter I dipped that little tail in, but who's counting??) I probably don't need to eat them on a regular basis and I certainly wont be looking to order them off a menu any time in the future, but at least I was able to eat them without gagging. I view this as a small victory for me!

So, next time you are needing some entertainment, grab a string, a saftey pin and some bacon. Drive to a local creek and toss it in. It's hours of entertainment. Even if you don't want to eat them, you can let them go when you are done. It's definitely worth trying...

Go To The Payphone, and Wait For The Call

You know how there are things that happen in your life that just kind of stick with you? I'm not talking about major life events here. Clearly, things like weddings, the birth of a child, or an amazing vacation to some tropical paradise are going to stick. The things I'm talking about are much smaller. Even seemingly insignificant at the time they happen. Ususally it is something that someone says that somehow makes an impact and it just sticks. Such is the case with the phrase "Go to the payphone and wait for the call". It happend when I was a probably thirteen-ish years old.

My family had spent the weekend working on building a cabin on humble piece of property in the middle of nowhere. The weekend was coming to a close and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. I'm not talking about tornados and driving rain, but the temperature had dropped significantly and a stiff wind had begun to blow. I was cold and ready to go home, but there were a few loose ends to tie up before we could leave. In an attempt to protect myself from the unbearable elements I was forced to endure, I put the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and cinched the strings as tightly as I possibly could so that I basically sealed the hood of the sweatshirt around my head- leaving me with a hole about the size of a quarter through which I could see. I'm certain that I looked ridiculous. In that moment, I had a phrase flash in my mind. I walked up to my sister, leaned my face close to hers and, in my most secrative tone, uttered the phrase "Go to the payphone, and wait for the call". Then I spun on my heels and walked away. It was inexplicably funny.  And we laughed. A lot.  Then, to compund the hilarity, my nephew, who would've been about 6 kept asking us what was so funny. We couldn't explain it. We didn't know why it was funny, just that it was. The more he insisted that we explain, the funnier it got.

Eventually, we finished up and headed home. But the phrase had left it's mark. Go to the payphone, and wait for the call. We still say it to one another from time to time. And it's still funny when we do. Especially now that the prospect of finding a payphone to wait at, is borderline impossible. (I think they may still have some in airports- but I may just be imagining that.) You know how there are things that happen in your life that just kind of stick with you? Those are probably the important things.