The Great Outdoors

People don't always think I'm super outdoorsy. But I am. I'm all about Mother Nature. In theory.

I took a little mini-vacation this last weekend to scenic Coeur d'Alene. As a late birthday celebration (in my mind, if no one else's), I wanted to go fishing on the lake. Fishing for me means a boat and alcohol. Fishing to others, though, apparently means worms, fishing poles, and mean jokes about my lack of fishing abilities.

But I know that you're all wondering if this little Girl Scout caught anything. I bet you're all thinking that I don't even know how to fish. I scoff at your scepticism. Scoff, scoff, scoff. I'm from Idaho, people. As you all know, you can take the girl out of Idaho, but you can never take the mad Idaho skills out of the girl.

But in answer to your (unspoken) question, uh, I actually don't know how to fish. I tried to cast this weekend, but that required way too much hand-eye coordination for me. And apparently, you have to continue casting if you are using a flashy lure to trick the fish into thinking that the lure is really some delicious bug-type-thing. Non-stop. You don't stop. All that casting was distracting me from my margaritas.* So I decided that the lure wasn't the way to go. I would just kill an innocent worm. Fishing with a worm means dropping the line into the water and sitting there while waiting for the pole to move.**

And move it did.

I squealed with delight, basking in the glory of being the first to catch something. My gloating was quickly quelled when I couldn't reel the fucker in and my fellow fisher-person had to take care of business for me. But then I just thought that I must have caught the granddaddy of all the fish in the lake, since it was too big for me to reel in by myself.***

So the other person kept reeling in and reeling in, with me nearly prancing with happiness. Who's the best fisher-person ever? Me! As the line got closer, my fish looked less fishy then skinny and long and brown.

I caught a mother-fucking snake.

Ok, so it was actually a stick, but it looked very snake-y. So I responded like any sane person would. I screamed like a little girl and ran as far away from the thing as I could. Which wasn't too far. Because I was on a boat.

I did this twice. I caught two sticks and thought they were snakes twice. And screamed. Twice.

Because that's the way I roll.

No actual fish were caught on our fishing adventure and since we couldn't eat my stick-snakes, the whole adventure resulted in no down-home good cooking. But it was still fun, because tequila makes everything more fun. Yes? Yes.

My vacation is over now and I'm in Missoula. Of course, I'm sitting in a hotel room watching cable (no adult channels, though) on my big-ass California King bed. That's kind of vacation-y. I have an interview tomorrow and then I take off for another fun time in the South. Mississippi.

And then I have to go back to Pullman to move out of the ghetto. I only have to sleep one more time in the ghetto. How awesome is that? If you haven't seen my ghetto duplex with the carpet coming up and with dark wood paneling and with my classy neighbors, you cannot judge. We should all help me celebrate that that phase of my life is over in just a few days. Celebration, just FYI, means either presents for me or lots of drinking. Either way, you should be done reading so you can go purchase either a present or my booze.****

*Said margarita was made on the boat in a portable blender. Outside of the Brady Bunch variety hour, I have never seen anything that rocked so hard.

**Waiting for the pole to move? Fishing is fun and dirty all at once.

***Of which there are five. No one told me that Lake Coeur d'Alene is fish-less.

****I was serious. Presents, please.