My Aching Feet

...and no, I wasn't barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

Before I can tell you my aching feet story, I have to tell you my catfishing story.

On Easter Sunday, being the pagan I am, I did not have any plans to do much of anything. Although I did have a very nice offer from my boss to have dinner with him and his family. Not being much for hanging out with other people's family, I decided against that. But I overheard my co-worker/friend Pete was looking for a fishing buddy. Being that few of his friends are heathens, he was going to go alone. Instead, I invited myself.

I want to say I knew what I was in for. Pete and Brian had made it pretty clear that catfishing mostly was about sitting around drinking beer and watching the river go by. And occassionally checking your fishing line. I figured I could handle that.

After sitting around for about an hour and a half and having some very delightful conversation on how much someone would have to pay us to never again play our favorite albums, Pete had a snag. It was the kind of snag that led him to believe he had caught on to something, whether it was floating debris or a tiny fish or the big one, we didn't know. Anyway, not yet having a fishing license, all I could do was use the net to gather our catch. We had actually gotten a pretty big one, and being journalists our first instinct was to hope for a scale to determine exactly how big and thus report it back. Instead, all we can say is it's a pretty good size. Anyway, Pete can verify that I was pretty pale and horrified by capturing the slimy little guy. Still, as I am a meat eater, I figured I should know what goes into eating living things.

Then, we sat around for another hour and a half and ate sandwiches and discussed the early Christian Church (can you guess which one of us picked that topic?). And, once it started to get overcast and late in the day, we gave up with one fish in the bucket.

We smartly decided to walk back to Pete's car in our bare feet. Through a forest of thorns, and cockleburs. It was hell. If there was ever a good hazing task, it should be walking through that sort of debris. Oh god. (I was too tired to try to remove any splinters last night, which means I could barely walk this morning when I got out of bed. I then spent 20 minutes digging out at least five thorns. I know for sure that there is one I didn't get. I am thinking there could be more considering how much my feet still hurt. Wah.)

On the way back, Pete sort of confessed that he'd never actually scaled his own fish, so we did what every over-educated intellectual does, we googled it. Heaven help us, we learned how to get the meat off the fish from a Web site. I could not be there as Pete made sure the bugger was dead (and I won't get into what he had to do), and I don't think Pete liked it very much either. We didn't exactly have the right utencils so the scaling took longer than it should have. And we did this all over my kitchen floor. In the end, though, we did get two decent pieces of meat. Thankfully, we didn't eat it yesterday. I don't think either of us would have been hungry for fish after that debacle. (Thankfully, I was too grimy to take pictures of this part.)

I'm sure, except for the squeamish part, I would have made my grandad proud. He'd have been even prouder to know that I'm going to do it again. (But mostly for the beer and nice weather.)