Gone Fishin'

I have been away from the keyboard for a few days. I took a vacation from my vacation and headed up to my parents’ cabin in the White Mountains (Moose Knuckle Lodge :-) ). It turns out that my sister and her family were already there. My sister teaches third grade (off for the summer) and her husband is recovering from knee surgery so they had decided to take the kids out of the heat for a few days (116 in the valley). They didn’t mind and I got the downstairs bedroom to myself so it worked out fine.

I played with the dogs. I went for a hike in the woods. I read my book on the porch. I took the kids fishing. It was all good.

I love fishing because its solitary and serene. I love those kids. I really do. But…I hate to say it but fishing with five and seven year old children just isn’t as enjoyable. I spent the entire time baiting hooks, untangling line, removing hooks from clothing, and saying things like…

“That’s OK. You just forgot to let go of the button. You have to let go of the button so that the line can come out.”

“Hey, be careful. You almost hooked your sister.”

“I know it seems weird but we have to use our inside voices at the lake. You’re scaring away the fish.”

“I’m sorry. Your uncle forgot the fish food (Power bait). We’ll have to use corn.”

“Hey, we don’t use that to hit the dog.”

Alright, I made the last one up. When it was time to leave my nephew was complaining that we couldn’t go yet, “because we hadn’t catched any fish.” I told him that, “Fish are like Lulu (new family white lab puppy); They eat when they get up in the morning and again before they go to bed at night. We’re not going to catch any fish right now so let’s go have a sandwich.”

He bit; hook, line, and sinker.