thursday - and other fishy stuff...

I wrote the post below (twinkie dink) a long time ago and saved it as a draft... yesterday I was lookin through the drafts and thought, dang why didn't I publish this -- well now I know... for crying out loud, that is one long post, it should really be three or four - I'm a crazy woman!

Okay dirty story #4 (This is one of my favorites -- and we are off to vacation at the same lodge this weekend, so didn't this timing work out nicely!

Okay so let’s skip forward a few years… well many years. Now he’s old enough to go fishing, I think he was in 4th grade. We went to the mountains, actually to the lodge of some friends of my family. What a wonderful lodge too, right on the lake. So the kids were fishing all weekend, and my mom, one of the best anglers around and damn snappy with a filet knife too, is encouraging them with lots of tips and tackle and camera action, but they aren’t having a lot of luck. Finally on the last day they caught a handful of fish, maybe 6 between the two boys and two girls (my nephew was along on this trip also). So husband and I are packing up, and washing our sheets (you wash before you leave then it’s clean for the next batch of guests), and loading the car – you know the drill. Mom has offered to filet and cook up the fish for the kids for a light lunch before we hit the road. She is in the kitchen teaching her amazing filleting skill to the boys… I think the girls were off with our hostess cleaning the boathouse or something. And they ask about eating the eyeballs, so she says sure (mom is no squeamish girly grandma), and shows them how easily they pop out. The boys eat them with much delight and then run down to tell the girls ‘hey try these’… (the girls weren’t sure they were eyeballs, and gladly tried them at the hostesses urging… they also liked them) [if you haven’t tried them, they really are pretty tasty and fun to eat]. So mom is now done filleting the fish and the boys are back to the kitchen. The trash has already been taken down so she bags up the fish skeletons and whats inside of them, along with the eyeless heads into some ziplocs and directs the boys to take them to the dumpster.

Fast forward three days. I have come home for the second day in a row to the stinkinest house ever. I cannot find it, I have run oranges down the disposal, I have taken the trash out and washed the trash can. I have looked everywhere for some dirty dish or food that we left sitting unattended before we went to the mountains. The smell is getting worse and worse. It is at the top of the stairs, but not down stairs. It is between the kitchen and the dining room, but not in either room. It is overpowering, I am starting to gag everytime I go to the stairway. Husband is dying also, he is going after me and cleaning up the sink, trash can, bread box, potatoe bin, etc. This stink is overwhelming, the dog doesn’t like it. Day four… husband is putting away a few things that didn’t quite make it to their spots when we got home. They are sitting in the dining room, near the top of the stairs. Among them are the fishing tackle and rods. He picks up the tackle box, and it feels unusually heavy... He opens it up, but there isn’t anything there but normal tackle, some power bait, hooks, weights, leaders, etc. He closes it and heads out to the camper with it, (keep camping gear in camper, one plan that was good in my organizational plan that doesn’t ever work well) and still thinks hmmmm this tackle box doesn’t feel right. He sets it right on my Duncan Phyfe cherrywood hundred year old dining room table and opens it up again… he takes the tray out this time… only to discover some strange brown-grey soup-stew in ziploc bags in the bottom of the tackle box. Oh by the way, the smell has now become so overwhelming that writing this is making my eyes water. Apparently my son, my wonderful genius brilliant son, wanted to take the fish skeletons and eyeless fish skulls to ‘show and tell’ – but then he forgot. The house smelled for weeks, my stomach still turns and my eyes still water when I think of it.