Hey! Remember you were warned that my new blog would probably be about many crazy things unrelated to my Katrina blog. Every now and then I will have pics of new construction as promised. The above music video that I put up has inspired me to write about the summer place that we had for 26 years. Before marriage I had loved to fish and after marriage I was still fishing anywhere I found water. Having children didn't curtail my fishing, I took them with me and over the years they all loved to fish ... like me. Their ages soon changed that and they decided they liked boys much better, besides who wanted to be seen with their parent. My youngest was only 6 yrs. old and we were soon inseparable fishing buddies. It was inevitable that my husband would eventually buy a cabin on a manmade lake for me. The young daughter and I fished each day and evening on the weekends. Within five years, we made a permanent home there.

I loved to catch large mouth bass because they really gave me a fight.. a sport fish. George, my husband, would only fish "when they were biting". He bragged often at the office about all the BIG bass he caught but I would remind him that technically I caught those fish. He would call to me, "Get the scoop net, I gotta big one." I would say, "Bring him in closer he's too far out". He would always say, "I can't he's very big and the line will break." So like a crazy fisherman (or someone who will put themself out there for people), I would wade out waist deep to get his fish and carry them back to shore. praying the moccasins were frightened by all the commotion and wouldn't bite me. Whenever I called for him to bring the scoop net, I had the fish at the dock and all he had to do was scoop it but he seemed to always knock the hook out of its mouth and my bass would be lost. I rather quickly decided that we had become competitors and I wouldn't let him anywhere near my fish.

So one very hot day while fishing he said, "I am going inside, you have to be crazy to be fishing in this heat." I replied, "The hotter it is brings the "lunkers" out. He went inside and almost immediately an 11lb. bass was on my line. I thought I gotta get him as it would make me the "champ". Since there wasn't anyone to help me, I would have to do it myself. For 15 minutes I let the line out so the bass could run and tire himself.... reeling him in an inch at a time. I got him about 3 ft. from the shore than I jumped down into a "snaky" area with rod in right hand and a gaff in my left hand and pulled him to shore. I got him! The look on my husband's face was priceless.

If you have gotten this far reading this you may be asking, "Is there a moral to this story?" No!! But there is a reason for it. I spent 20 months writing about the storm and for those months I became the voices of people whose lives were devastated. I shared the emotions I felt from all I was witnessing but I began to lose myself. So this blog is about me.