fishing, surf, and surf fishing

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Keely

As promised, Sean took me out to the beach yesterday morning to try surf fishing.

He tried getting a cast beyond the breaking waves and couldn’t quite do it: The waves were monumental and those rods are heavy. We opted to give up on the fishing and just enjoy the surf. He and I each grabbed a boogie board and kicked out into the froth, grinning at each other and waiting out the subpar waves. That perfect one galloped in, glittering in the morning light and humming, ready to roll at just the right moment. I started kicking, and the wave made me weightless.

In the fraction of a second after that, I did something clumsy and the wave cackled and gripped me tight and I was perpendicular to the sand, my feet straight up, still a part of the wave, tumbling with all that water. I felt my face scrape the bottom, my nose taking most of the impact, I thought “this might hurt. I hope my nose isn’t broken” and suddenly I found myself on my feet. My face felt numb and runny, and when I put my hand to it the first time, it came away clean, then the second time there was blood. Sean was smiling at the edge of the water: the same wave had carried him to shore. As I walked up to him, the smile dropped away and he came rushing to get a closer look, make sure I was okay.

I’m fine, but I look about like C did when he and his brother crashed their four-0wheeler into a tree last year. Skin is missing in a stripe from my chin to my forehead, right along the length of my nose. Nothing is broken, I still have all of my teeth, and the worst of it was the sting of being stuck ashore all day yesterday. I had to wait for the sticky phase to pass so that I could play again, and I didn’t want get sun on the antibacterial gel that’s been basting my face like a roast turkey: The last thing I need is a burn.

The good news is that Sean’s cousin J caught a shark last night surf fishing! It can be done!

Nobody else caught anything, though we stuck it out until well after dark, enjoying the bioluminescent critters in the sand and a special delivery peach cobbler.

Sean’s cousin R took us out in the whaler this morning, seeking flounder in the intracoastal. That dude is a daredevil! I grew up on boats and I’ve seen scary, and this ride made the hair on my neck stand up. We tried several different spots, zipping across the chop to a new location after fifteen or twenty minutes with little or no luck. In our last few minutes, fishing off a sandbar between grass flats, I hooked a flounder! His face is almost as flattened as mine! Flounder need to be fifteen inches, so we couldn’t keep him, but I was proud of myself. J caught another shark today and a little stripey guy, and she and I each caught a sea trout. Sean caught one little striped critter, and R didn’t snag any fish. Conclusion: fishergirls > fisherguys. J is, of course, queen of the fishergirls.

We’re hoping all this talk of a hurricane (named Arthur, of all things) is trumped up. I’m not ready to leave yet: my face has just set its scabs well enough that I can swim again, and I haven’t won a single game of bocce. I’m not ready to go back to the garden and the humidity and summer school and solitude. Everybody get together, take a deep breath, and blow hard at that storm. Maybe, if enough folks try it, we can knock that storm off course and buy me just a few more days.

salt and sunblock

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Keely

I’m writing from the upstairs balcony of the beach house that Sean’s family has rented for the week. Sean’s Granny turned 90 years old today, and her seven children and their children are here to celebrate. There is a warm breeze blowing across my bare toes and I can hear waves crashing on the beach and younger cousins giggling down below. If it were daytime, I’d be on the lookout for pelicans and sailors on the horizon, but for now I’m just enjoying the dark and letting the salt in the air and the starched ruffle sound of the surf heal my long homesickness for the Atlantic.

There are thirty of us here, all of them Sean’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and inlaws, with a few outlaws like me for flavor. I’m still working on getting the names and relationships straight, though I’ve met most of them before. The aunts have done a tremendous job at the helm of this operation: with thirty in one house, organization is key. There is a schedule for cooking duty and cleanup crew, and everyone was assigned a sleeping-spot before we arrived. A pullout couch in the basement was designated for Sean and me, but last night we dragged our mattress off of the uncomfortable frame and laid it out on the pool deck. We crashed quickly, exhausted from a long sunburnt day of swimming and reading and bocce on the beach. Our eyelids fell closed on stars that glittered like mica in the sky, while to our drifting-off ears the hush and whisper of waves on the beach fell silent.

The sunrise woke us – I love sleeping out! – and we dozed and woke and watched the sky brighten and dozed off again. Some of the uncles and cousins went surf fishing this morning, and rumor has it that someone caught a small shark. Sean has promised to take me tomorrow. I can’t wait to leap out of bed and get salty first thing

Because today was the big birthday and Sean was on dinner-duty, we spent much of the day in the kitchen making cupcakes. There was a respite in the afternoon, so we played in the water for a while and then constructed what became easily the best sandcastle I’ve had a part in for ten years. Sean built a bridge over a river and made sure to have farms for food security and huts for the peasants, while his cousin Matt built gorgeous crenellations along the exterior wall and I erected a tower for the inner keep.

Sean’s Granny is an astonishing lady, and it is a pleasure to know her. She’s more alive at 90 than many elders are at 70, and, although I have met her only once or twice before, she has taught me essential lessons about pinochle, which is a foundational life skill. More importantly, I have her to thank for the man who has become my partner.

She and Sean have been talking for nearly an hour now. The birthday feast was laid out on the deck, and I can look down to where they’re still sitting side by side. The dishes, and now the tables and chairs, have been cleared away around them, but they still have their heads bent in, their shoulders a hair’s breadth apart, for all the world as if they haven’t yet realized that the party has burned down to the ember of their conversation. I can’t hear their voices over the waves, but their hands are talking, each gesturing in turn. It’s lovely to see, so I think I’m going to perch up here for a while longer, drinking in this sweet, warm, North Carolina night.

Allergies to bees, lead and sweat

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Keely

Sean has been in a creative mood all week. He’s done some drawing and painting, but, most wonderfully, he leaped up last night and declared “I’m feeling inspired!”
“Inspired how?” I inquired of the grinning fellow, posing like a superhero before me.
“Inspired to cook!” He proclaimed, and sprang to work in the kitchen. These are the best days.

Practical projects make my heart flutter. Anything that simplifies or brightens daily tasks is worthwhile to me. My superhero name is The Obviator. Though it doesn’t really improve the functionality, refurbishing this coffee table was my great accomplishment of the week:

Materials:

Crappy old coffee table
Unwanted maps
Paint
Paint brush
Elmer’s Glue
Polyurethane to seal the top

Paint the coffee table, water down the glue a tiny bit, affix the maps making sure to minimize air bubbles, add a few coats of watered down glue to the top, allow to dry, seal with polyurethane. Don’t let your cats jump up there during any of the drying phases.

On Wednesday, we totally pigged out on nori rolls and watched Frozen with Ian. We talked big talk that day about key lime pie and key lime pie ice cream. Since Freckles is our only layer right now, we’ve had to wait a while to accumulate the necessary eggs for these projects. I made the pie a few days ago, and we’ve had to employ great self-control to keep from finishing it off before it can be added to the ice cream (which takes four eggs). Thank goodness we picked up some pullets this week. We are not getting enough eggs.

We were chasing the pullets out of their sequestration in the henhouse one evening (Cappy and Freckles wouldn’t let them out) when a wasp stung Sean right in the nose. His cheeks and top lip swelled up so much that he looked like Hermione’d jinxed him to hide his identity from Snatchers. We drove down to the neighbors’ and Nancy took one look at Sean and sent us on to the doctor. The folks at the doctor’s office giggled over the comparison between his swollen visage and the photo on his license, gave him a steroid shot in the butt and a prescription for an epi-pen and sent us on our way. Sean wore sunglasses in public for a day and a half like a starlet trying to fool the paparazzi.

Yesterday, our neighbors took us for a ride in their party barge on Moon Lake. While we were floating on foam noodles in the muddy oxbow lake, succumbing to our first sunburns of the year and talking about allergies (Sean was still looking vaguely rodentine), Nancy told us the story of her grandfather’s death.

The year was 1921 and my grandfather had just acquired a divorce, a rare thing in those days. He was a bit of a lady’s man, and he’d been fooling around with the secretary in his office at the county courthouse. She was under the impression that he planned to marry her, though he had no such intentions. When she realized that he wasn’t serious, she came to work with a gun to shoot him right there in the courthouse. He didn’t want to get shot, so he tried to take the gun away from her. While they were struggling, her daddy came in, and, remembering that my grandfather kept a gun in the desk drawer, reached in, took out that gun and shot him in the gut. Shot her, too, on accident, but didn’t hurt her. My grandfather, it turns out, was allergic to lead. He died a week later.

In other news, we’re getting ready to teach summer school at Lee. I’ll be teaching Algebra 1 to two groups of kids each day in 90 minute blocks. I’m so excited! I’ve always wanted to teach 90 minute blocks, and I love teaching Algebra. Bonus points: the money is really good and we’re working only until about 12:30, so we still get to work in the garden and get outside in the afternoons. I’m going to try something new where I don’t have rules exactly, but instead I have a poster that reads something like this (shoulda taken a picture: whoops)

In this classroom you will…

Challenge Yourself

Respect, Honor and Support Everyone

Follow Directions

Ask Why

Learn from your mistakes

Act like and be treated like a young adult

I like it because it sets positive expectations for the kids and for me. These are better than rules: These are facts. You will do these things. I can give both positive and negative consequences based on these statements. I’m really super-stoked.

Canoeing Montage!

As for me, I’m not really allergic to anything, but working out(side) in Arkansas in the summer makes me sweat, and sweat makes me itch and go all bumpy from eczema and before you know it I’m a mess. It’s a great excuse to come in and take frequent, cool showers.

a long post about a short weekend

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Keely

Friday Evening:

Sean bravely accepted the cold water challenge and took a sunset dip at the confluence. Kathy and I didn’t join him, to the disappointment of the guys camping out to spend the weekend fishing.

Saturday:

At pro-sat, they started calling my cohort “TFA alums.” It was really weird. Aside from the crappy veggie wraps and the long haul to Jacksonville, the day was a solid. I got a great vocabulary tool from another CM and had some thought-provoking conversation during a session on identity. During that same session, Sean let fly with some feminist discourse that had me swooning.

At pro-sat, you are required to make this face.

Art teachers lookin’ cool on a hot day.

Post-pro-sat dinner with friends in Little Rock.

9:00 a.m. Sunday

Sunday Strawberries: almost there!

I think this guy likes pigs: note the belt buckle, t-shirt, and hat.

Sunday Afternoon:
We planted sweet potatoes, ate our first broccoli, moved the piggies to greener pastures, and went to a birthday party. While moving the pigs, we discovered that pigs can indeed scale walls and leap high buildings. Pigs are not supposed to be able to jump at all, but Levi somehow scrambled over a waist high wall to freedom when we thought we had her cornered. They are truly astonishing creatures.

homegrown broccoli!

Daisy’s getting bigger!

They like to take baths in their water trough. We should start charging for refills.

4-square at Mel’s birthday party!

10:30 p.m. Sunday
We just about hit these little critters on the way home. There was no house nearby, and when we stopped, they marched right up to us. They’re part Siamese, so they have a very elegant bearing and slinky gait. I’ve named the mama Audrey after the Hepburn human she resembles. If you’re in Arkansas and looking for a cat or kitten, let me know. Sabine and Rucifee aren’t interested in new roommates.