Just Catching Up

Just got back from a fun weekend in Birmingham, I'm too tired to type anything.

City Slickers

"Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters. "  -A River Runs Through It, Robert Redford


We didn't catch any fish.  We tried, and we tried hard.  We camped at Shaffer Bend, an LCRA park on FM1431.  It's a point on the northern end of the Colorado River before it flows into Lake Travis and it is absolutely beautiful.  Our friend Mike came out to join us.  The plan was to paddle downstream to The Narrows, catch a mess of fish, and paddle back.  A waterfall and some low crossings prevented that.  There were not any other campers that night, though, the next morning we were awoken by a few fly fishermen in float tubes.  They looked as good as any fishermen, but I never saw them catch anything.  I think that they went out there for the companionship like we did.  My guess is that they also found it. The mighty Lower Colorado River is just too low at the point where we gave our finest effort.  At 100+ degrees, the bass are lingering at 20-30 feet depth and where we set out was MAYBE 5 feet at the deepest.  It doesn't matter, we weren't there to capture our dinner.  We were there to catch some old memories and release some new ones back into those calm waters.  


Chad and I have been pals since we were 14.  We made fast friends then, and fishing was always a big part of that.  We went fishing in some pretty interesting places with Richard Mogg back in 94, 95, and caught mostly mud cats.  Later on, we spent most of our free time at Lake McKenzie up in Briscoe County, TX.  It was us, Shaw, Austin, Tyler, Trent, Ian, sometimes Jeremy, and often a surprise visitor that made it all fun and fresh. 


I remember my first Bass.  It was a largemouth bass, and it fought like nothing I've ever encountered.  In turn, I gave it my life's effort.  After the initial struggle, I emerged with my 1.5 lb bass.  It was a proud and noble beast.  42 ounces of primordial passion.  I was finally a man, and I could tame the wild beast and provide for my basic needsd.  The folks at the bait shop, who we named Arms and Snaggletooth, took my picture(in a tank top) and put it on the wall.  We were all so proud.


When I was almost 17, my parents bought me a small fishing boat.  It was the greatest thing you have ever seen, 14 feet of aluminum, a 30 year old Mercury 25 HP outboard, a casting deck, electrical outlets for fishfinders and trolling motor.  A livewell, two padded seats, and working lights.  In all of my life, I can't think of anything I was more proud of, other than the 1996 Chariot Red Chevrolet 1/2 ton shortbed pickup I towed it with.  


We spent our entire senior year in High School fishing for whatever would take our bait, and I can't remember many times that eclipse these memories.  Whenever I speak of my memories in High School, these stories still bring a smile to my face.  These were not the best times I'll ever know, but they definitely provide a benchmark for future memories that have yet to be made.  


Fishing is a humbling activity.  You do your research, spend a lot of money on the things that will get you what you need, spend a lot of time doing it, and often you get nothing in return.  But when you do.....there is nothing like the excitement of a hit on your line.  Many times, the sensation of getting a single hit is enough.  That's probably because that is the best I often do...  We are used to it.  The fishing is always good, it is the catching that is the problem.

Fish?  What fish....

"In every species of fish I’ve angled for, it is the ones that have got away that thrill me the most, the ones that keep fresh in my memory.  So I say it is good to lose fish.  If we didn’t, much of the thrill of angling would be gone. –Ray Bergman


I can't wait until I can take my son fishing.  I'm not that good at it, but that's not even the point.  To get out there, do the best you know how, to try to connect with nature via a thin string of fishing line. I can't wait until he is scared to put the worm on the hook, or even to take the fish off of the hook.  After all of these years, it still gets me excited, and I hope it always will.

Bugs, Hugs, Lugs, Fossils, and Jugs

Bugs

Another eventful, yet non-eventful week has passed.  It never seems like many things have happened, yet I take over 100 pictures each day, I mean, week.  After the Soap Box Derby, where I did reasonably well, we did some serious swimming and hanging out on the back porch.  Soon, a VERY large katydid joined us for 2-3 hours.  He was SOOOOO cool, climbing on us and posing for pics.  I'm  getting to where I like bugs.  I believe it is a Green Leaf Katydid.

Another fun bug I found today while doing laundry was this red-headed centipede.  Luckily, the pesticide that I spray for scorpions had almost killed it, but not before I suffered a mild stroke, peed my pants, and cried a little.  We've decided to start storing the heinous insects that we capture in jars so we can freak out our guests and cringe inside our own skins on a regular basis.  This one was 8-9 inches long and ugly as sin.  I hope its soul burns in hell, if it has one, as it took one of my remaining 9 lives away today.

Lugs

Summer is here and has been here or a few months.  Though the calendar only has us 4 days into summer, Central Texas is soooo ambitious that it's been blazing hot for months.  This is one of the many blessings we have here, besides enormous bugs, a variety of venomous serpents, high property taxes, and drought.  Oh My!!!

I'm trying to plan a kayak fishing and camping trip for this weekend.  Being a stay at home dad is glorious, and I'm happy for the opportunity to not have to punch a clock, but there is something to be said for water cooler talk, guy talk, dirt, fish, a little blood, campfire, and tomfoolery.  I got the Jeep ready for what might go down next weekend and I think she's ready.  She needs a name.  

Hugs, Fossils, Etc

My kid is cute.  There's just not much getting around it, nor is there anything else to say.  He just is.  He got my extra charming personality and Cristina's calm demeanor.  And he got a whole lotta cute.  And sweet.  And soft.  And sweet.  And a little bit of pink.  He needs to stay this sweet and predictable forever.  Though, he needs to walk and learn the business end of a shovel and a rake to lessen my burden.  Until then, all he has to do is be as sweet as he is and we won't sell him to the Chinese.

Friday, we headed to town for a big day at the Memorial Museum on UT's campus.  We looked at some dinosaur fossils with his big pal Fritz and his parents, Freddy and Kerston.

Afterward, we strolled down to La Condesa and ate with Jerry, Susan, and Kevin(and their friends who shall go name-forgotten).  Susan doesn't like Christopher, or babies in general, but I think that she will catch on.  :)   

 

Saturday, I went to San Antonio with the Boober(official nickname) to see my longtime friend, Shawn, and his family.  He has a beautiful daughter that turned 7 recently and we got to visit with his wife and younger daughter.  Here's the Boober with Shawn's sister, Erin.  Since Daddy got some new Wayfarers this week, the Boob got some new shades to match.  He seems to like wearing them, and he looks amazingly cool.

Jugs

Those who know me well know that I have a contempt for pools.  Particularly, pools that I have to own and maintain.  There is no such thing as a pool that is low maintenance or no maintenance, and like all else, planned obsolescence is a big part of pool ownership.  Things break, and when the do, they break in threes.  Or fours.  Or alls.  

However, the beautiful thing about a pool(besides skinny dipping after mowing and having another 3rd world problem to complain about) is seeing your beautiful family enjoy your hard work.  We had some friends come over today and enjoy my hard work and when they left, Cristina and Boober enjoyed my hard work.  I did, also.  Three or four times.    Hard work.  It was 106 today and it felt like approximately "bowels of hell and blowdryers."  Another shout out for Central Texas.  We thought about living in a blazing inferno on the bottom of a volcano, but thought it might be hotter here.  We were right(as always).  

When we moved to Louisiana about 1,000 years ago, people would say, among other things, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."  I hated them for that.  This is why:  It is the heat.  It's just plain hot.  You are wrong.  It's so hot here that it makes me want to move to a cold place where I can complain about the cold winters.  Humidity is awful and it is your penance for sinning and having good football teams, but the heat is what it is.  It's hot. Dang hot.  99 is hot.  92 is hot.  106 is hot.  Humidity is just adding insult to injury.  And when people from TX complain about the humidity, I quickly refer them to the humidity in Louisiana, where they quickly quip about the heat/humidity conundrum, and subsequently, my head explodes into a flame of crawfish and chiptotle pepper confetti and I just want to shoot stuff like Yosemite Sam.  

But I digress.

Look how cute my kid and wife are!

 Yes.  This makes my sun rise and set each day!

 Boober is 150 shades lighter than I am, and as such, is much softer.

Stuff

It finally struck me today that I am a 32 year old man who is the father to a person.  A cute, pink-like person who needs me to tell him the stuff that he needs to know.  An impressionable person who needs me to let him know how things work.  That bugs are there and they are big.  Real big.  That the world is fairly nasty and how to navigate it with grace and style.  That you really need to wear black belts with black shoes, as well as brown, and so on.  That one nice suit is better than not.  That he'll regret the things that he never did far more than the things that he actually did.  To not tell him about politics, but rather ideas.  To tell him not how to do things, but, rather, how things ought to be.  To teach him that Philips heads are vastly superior to flats and that a owning a good set of sockets and ratchets are as important as the teachings of Plato and Shakespeare.  That knowing about the Allman Brothers will likely impact his life more than Mozart.  And how to do basic maintenance of a car.  By the time he can drive, under current law, it will be 2028.  By then cars will likely be run off of unicorn farts and tears of a lost generation, but hopefully, his old, tan, wrinkly dad will still have this old Jeep to teach him the ways of the old generation.  And maybe he can help me change out spark plug 4, which requires the removal of the AC compressor on that old Jeep.

Anyway, today I learned how to tie two new knots between my kayak and Jeep.  I also committed to learning to play banjo, but this soon shall pass, for I am busy with life and its responsibilities.  Maybe he will learn, as well as learning a second language, and I will languish and envy in my ineptitude and ignorance.  Even then, a parent can wallow in the pride that they, as their elders did, created something better and greater than themselves.  Until then, I will continue to change diapers, wipe puddles of drool, and dress him in overalls and Star Wars shirts that remind me of a simpler time when all I needed was someone to do these things for me!

Keep Moving

There has been a simple message that keeps popping up in my day-to-day routine, "Keep Moving".  Traffic signs, polite customer service messages at retailers, etc, and one day it recently hit home for me.  Kids constantly keep moving and learning.  Almost every day.  They do it, and that is their nature.  The human nature.  We adults tend to stop and dig a deep rut and blame time.  But it seems that you don't find time to do the things you really need to do, you make the time.  You have to make the time to keep moving, like the crazy critter currently in my gutter as I type who is striving to reach it to my roof to make me keep moving.  To kill more scary stuff.

It's true, you have to keep moving.  To keep moving in life, love, work, etc, etc, etc, and to keep growing.  I don't sit down, ever, unless I'm typing, and even then, I'm often standing.  But it's true.  Move.  Do stuff.  Cancel your cable, make time to do the stuff that makes life worth living.  This saying taunts me, and I've been thinking about tattooing this on my forearm so that every time I waste the time it took to do something worthwhile, I am visually reminded to keep moving.  Keep Moving.  I was hoping to find a correlation to this with my favorite movie, A River Runs Through it, but alas, there may be none.  

Off to the races!

Back to the Suture won last night! I was nervous because last year I wrecked my first race. We smoked the Marble Falls Police Department.

Today, the team I was up against had mechanical issues with their car so I won by default! Woot woot! That advanced me to the quarterfinals, where I lost. We were eating sushi when Penny called me and told me
I was up next! After a brisk sprint, I got defeated by the Ace Hardware team. They have fast cars!!!

Christopher is being a good sport considering the heat. He's learning how to fit in with us and our go go go lifestyle. Good for him, good for us!

Here's the video from the race.

More races tonight, maybe I can win the loser bracket!

Another Fun Weekend Ahead!!!!

Are you telling me that you built a time machine?  Out of a Delorean?  Out of a rusty go cart you bought cheap from a really drunk old Mexican man in Hutto?

Fact.  All of that is true.  This weekend is the 3rd Annual Marble Falls Soapbox Derby.  My car is ready to go.  Big thanks to my dad for helping me work on it and to my mom for watching The Boy while we were working on it.  And as always, thanks to my lovely wife for bankrolling all of the miscellaneous parts and paints and pieces that it takes to build something of this magnitude.  And for letting me waste a lot of time on this.  And for painting my license plate.

Video walkaround of the car

All the way, From Bourbon Street to Esplanade, they sashay by, they sashay by...

Tara and Nick Rodrigue, the newest newlyweds we know are coming to meet The Boy and support my amateur racing career.  We generally have a pretty good time when we all get together.  They are from Chalmette, LA,  which is a census-designated place in the parish seat of St Bernard Parish, which is affectionately and simply known as...."Tha Parish, brah".  It's next to New Orleans, to da east.

Oh Yeah, the Boy!!!!

This kid is great.  Not only is he made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails, but he's made of sugar and spice and everything nice.  And lots and lots of farts, I mean, like a champ.  You can hear it from behind closed doors.  It's likely something that he inherited from his mom, while his mild-mannered demeanor and general laid-backtitude came from me.  

After a milk, we've been trying to get him to teetee on his little potty seat.  Some people can train their kids from day 1 to pee on command like a seeing eye dog.  While we aren't doing this full time, it's good practice to get him used to peeing and pooing in something other than a diaper.  I don't see how people have time to constantly try to get their baby to do this, especially considering he can't walk or do anything very cool yet.  Maybe they just don't do much else.  Cristina and I, on the other hand, are busier than a couple of one-legged men in a butt-kicking contest.  Writing this blog was the first time I've sat down today since I got up at 4:30AM.  

We joke that Ginger tries to offer him advice, but since she is fairly ignorant, her advice is usually off.  She whispers things such as "Don't eat the cold snow."  "Look one way before darting across the road with reckless disregard."  "Always jump into the lake without testing depth."  "Two birds in the bush are better than one in the mouth."  "What goes up doesn't always come down....for instance frisbees that got lost in trees 2 years ago.  Always go look for them."  Stuff like that.

"This knuckle sandwich comes with an extra serving of 'get away from my milk', Dad ".

Mom and Christopher like to play, rest, and relax on her days off and watch me run around in circles cleaning, maintaining, fixing, painting, scraping paint off , building, etc, etc, etc.  I think I already posted this pic, but it's so cute.  Cristina has him dressed up like an elderly Canadian tourist at any beach in Central America.  

They help each other nap.

Staying home with him is great and all, but you can't get much done when you have one of these people strapped to your front.  I feel the same way.

But, it's worth it to look down and see this.

For you parents out there, you know what it's like to get excited about every little thing that these kids do.  He's making lots of noises now(besides belches and farts) and is blowing raspberries.  I call it motorboating.  It's crazy(and cliche) how fast they grow up.  Just three months ago, he was a lump of cells that didn't do anything.  Now, he doesn't do much, but he likes to stand and will lift himself up if you pull his hands up slightly.  He also will follow you around(tracking?) the room as you move.  He also smiles quite a bit, and is enjoying a great deal of tomfoolery.  A dab of peekaboo, some Superman flying, walking(with my help) like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, a fair amount of motorboating on the belly, riding Ginger, etc.

Gotta go get mentally prepared for the race.  That, and pack my first aid kit.