Tag: nature

Remember

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The sky is a beautiful blue today.  Here and there I can see a wisp of cloud stretched out like gauze.  The sun is shining, there is a bit of a breeze, and the humidity is down, keeping the 90° temperatures bearable and keeping my kids in school all day.

My kids, now there’s a thought.  Today is so much like another September Tuesday that it’s really quite eerie, only I was the kid then.  I was the one getting ready to head off to school that Tuesday morning, under skies that were just as blue, with clouds that were just as gauzy and sun that shone just as brightly.

That Tuesday was eleven years ago today.

Phlog along, folks!

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The beautiful, if shallow, Upper Iowa River
Photo by Kay Kauffman

Once again, it’s Friday.  Once again, it’s been a crazy week.  Did I say crazy?  I think maybe cray-zay might suit a little better.  It all started Sunday.  Sunday began the first-ever Kauffman Family Camping Extravaganza.  Our adventure did not exactly get off to an auspicious start. For one thing, Seymour wanted to leave our house by 10:00 a.m. as the campground we were heading to was three hours away.  His parents were going to go with us, but they live a good hour and a half south of us, so we couldn’t leave till they arrived at our house, and they were late.  Seymour’s mama wasn’t feeling well, so his papa let her sleep in a little late and it was nearly noon by the time they made it to our house.  I think we pulled out of our driveway somewhere around 12:30 p.m.

About an hour or so into the trip, possibly a little more, one of the tires on our camper blew out in spectacular fashion.  There was no fixing this tire – it was in pieces all over the road.  I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn’t think of it at the time.  And apparently campers don’t come with spares standard the way cars do, but Seymour is a smart one and bought one when he picked up the camper, so he got the tire changed and we were soon back on the road.

The excitement continues behind the cut! Will we catch any fish? Or only weeds? Hmm, seems I’ve left that part out. Oh, well – the answer was no fish, only weeds.

A short farewell, but not really

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Are you confused yet?  Worry not.  What I mean is, I’ll be gone for a few days.  After the week we’ve had, the fam and I need some time away from it all, so we’ve loaded up the trailer and we’re heading for the hills.  It’s our first-ever family camping trip, something we’ve been planning for months and looking forward to since last fall.  It will be four glorious days and three marvelous nights with no electronics, no diapers, no formula, no baby food, and somewhat less whining than normal as Cricket and Thumper will be staying with the world’s best ex-wife.  Once they’re potty-trained, they can start coming with us but until then, I’m looking forward to a few days without diaper duty.

I plan to do a little fishing, a little writing, a little marshmallow-roasting, and have an all-around awesome time with my family.  This week’s events served as a reminder of just how important family is.  I love my family so very much and I am really looking forward to this time with them.

In the meantime, I’ve scheduled a few posts to tide you all over till I get back.  Have a great week!

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Metaphor

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Apparently I made a metaphor Friday and didn’t even know it.  In case you missed it, here it is:

Every time he dropped his line in the water – and I do mean every time – he pulled it out with a fish attached to the end.  At one point, a fish jumped out of the water to get the worm hovering just above the surface.  The fish were all too small to keep, so we practiced the catch-and-release method, although I ended the excursion with a serious craving for some good ol’ fried fish like my dad used to make.  I tried to fry fish once.  It didn’t go well.  I don’t think I’ll try it again.

Anyway, he had so much fun fishing that a couple of weeks later, I bought him a life jacket and took him out to Union Grove Lake to try his luck again.  We were there for ten minutes before he proclaimed to anyone who would listen (namely, me, as I was the only person within earshot) that he was bored and he wanted to go home and fishing at Aunt Sandy’s was way more fun.  See, fishing at Aunt Sandy’s had spoiled him.  Fishing at Aunt Sandy’s showed him what it’s supposed to be like, minus the ideal of actually getting to keep them.  Fishing at Union Grove demonstrated the reality of fishing – endless hours spent staring at each other while fighting the temptation to reel your line in and cast it out again somewhere else because maybe the fish are biting “over there.”

Until the lovely Miss T. pointed it out in her comment, I didn’t even realize what I’d written.  I had to go back and reread the whole post to find out what the heck she was talking about and as I did so, a wonderful thing happened: I discovered that in writing one thing, I’d actually written another.  I thought I’d simply been recounting a fishing story, but it was much more than a simple fish tale.

Go on, read it again. I’ll wait.