The "Bored" Alien

    Recently, it seems that there has been a renewed interest in extraterrestrials, spaceships and other worlds.  I am beginning to think this is a grasp at relief from the troubles of our world.   When times get hard, people reach for anything they can as a diversion and, well, things are in a troubling state right now.  I would even venture to say that our country is in the biggest mess it has seen in many decades and this trend does not appear to have an end coming anytime soon.  That said, aliens and their spaceships have taken hold of people's brains...or at least, their imaginations.  THEY are coming!  And that is said with a giggle.  Matter of fact, an alien did visit the Bayou recently.  More precisely, it visited the Little Bayou House.  At least, Son identified it as an alien.  I had other thoughts. 

 

  Son and I have been doing some major renovations on the Little Bayou House.  The place has been in a dire need of improvements for some time now so I figured it was best to get started before the house fell down around us.  I get these harebrained ideas and he brings them to fruition.  Before he left for work, Mark bought a bunch of lumber which was just begging to be used.  So...I used it...or Son and I used it.  At one point, he handed me a board that he had just cut and said there was a "bored alien".  That is what I heard...he actually said there was a "board alien".  Sure enough, there was a pair of eyes staring at me from the plank.  Hmmm...while he insisted it looked like an extraterrestrial, I begged to differ.  It looked to me like a heron giving me the "evil eye" because I did not catch its supper of little mullet.  Either way, there was something looking at us from that board!  Alien...heron...who knows.  Ahh, imaginations are grand things!

He's Thinking....

   Since Hurricane Zeta literally took out the entire pier...planks, stringers, runners, a lot of the posts...Son is having to start from the ground..errr..mud...up.  After putting in several posts and adding the stringers, it comes time to add the long joists between the posts.  These are huge boards that are about 14ft in length and some are 3 inches by twelve inches.  That is a lot of board.  It is too much board for one man to handle by himself but Son does.  He has to move the planks from the top of the hill all the way down through the marsh to the section he is rebuilding.  It is not easy work.  I offer to help but, since the body refuses to work correctly at times, he flat out refuses.  So, he works alone.

  Son has figured a system that seems to work for him.  Since we have no "cart" that will suffice moving the long planks, he has devised one.  He uses a dolly...backwards.  Yep, backwards than what is intended.  The dolly is laid flat on the ground, the plank is placed on top running "up" the handle and secured with a tie-cable.  Once the board is tightly bound, Son merely picks up the loose end and wheels his prize to the pier.  There, however, things get difficult.  The dolly cannot be used since the ramp is missing.  Son has to carry the board all the way to the far end of the pier.  Then, he has to slosh around in the mud while attempting to hoist the heavy thing into place.  I watch and feel helpless.  He claims it is better to think before trying to do things and I do believe he has it down to a science.  I stand amazed.

  

Now That Is Some Fishing!

  Fishing has been relatively good as of late which makes me happy.  If we catch fish, we eat fish and my grocery bill is cut exponentially!  Seafood is one of those things that I can eat just about every day of the week and still not grow tired of it.  I guess that is a good thing since I live on a bayou!  It would be terrible if it was the other way around.  But...fishing and eating is good!

  Still, not everything we pull from the water is edible or, more to the point, tasty.  Son tells me that most everything is technically edible but some things are just not tasty.  Alrighty, then....I guess he makes a valid point.  This week already, Mark and I caught several things that I deemed inedible. One large eel, dozens of gafftopsails, about half of the hard-head catfish ever in existence, a soccer ball and a board.  Yep...to all of the above.  None are edible in my view.

  The fish, however, can be explained as something that one might readily find in the Bayou but the soccer ball and board are different stories.  The board is a huge thing that floated up during Hurricane Nate and became lodged in the marsh near the pier.  Always on the lookout for a good piece of lumber, we decided to "catch" the plank and bring it ashore.  If no one claimed it, we could surely use it in some project on the pier.  After a dozen or more casts, he finally snagged the board and eased it out of the marsh.  It did not take long before the huge plank was sitting on the pier.  This will make a fine replacement board for one of the pier "stringers" that are damaged due to the storm surge. If bought, the plank would probably cost nigh on $70.   I would say that his catch was a success!

  My catch was not so worthy of note.  The soccer ball was something else that Hurricane Nate deposited at the pier.  Obviously, by the number of barnacles encrusting the ball, it has been in the water for some time.  Perhaps this has been sitting in the marsh since Hurricane Katrina and washed out by the flooding of the more recent storm.  The ball IS NOT usable by any means but still is a rather unusual catch.  Since the ball was half filled with water and mud, when I pulled it out of the Bay, I thought I may have snared a turtle!  There is nothing like the dead weight of a mud filled soccer ball to give you a nice pull!  This catch was not a success unless you consider that I am "cleaning" the Bayou!

  Neither of our catches will put supper on the table but the redfish and trout we caught will be mighty edible AND tasty!  Its all good, though, as it does shake things up a bit for us!  Plus, just between you, me and the pier post, any day spent fishing is a good day.

I drew a blank....

  Mom used to recite a little verse whenever she made some silly mistake.  "Can't think; Brain's numb; Inspiration won't come."  I think she remembered this from an autograph book back when she was in high school.  (Autograph books were all the rage back in the day.  These were tiny books with blank pages (pages usually in a variety of colors).  At the end of a school year, the book was passed around among friends to get their "autograph".  This autograph was a small rhyme or such.  This later was adapted to signing the yearbook.  In this case, Mom must have liked the little rhyme since she said it often.  I imagine there was more to it than the first three lines but this was all I ever remember her saying.

  Today, the little rhyme went through my head.  I was trying to work on some of the props for the upcoming Annual Clue Hunt on the Bayou when I drew a blank.  The brain stopped working.  That inspiration just would not come no matter how hard I tried.  Twice, I started sketching my picture and twice, it turned into a flop!  The brain, indeed, was numb....or dumb.

  By the end of the day, I still had no prop.  The board that was to be the background stood empty other than a few ill-fated attempts.  This would never do!  A quick slosh of a paint brush and I literally "drew a blank"! Everything that I had done before was now awash in a coat of white paint.  Well, at least I now have a blank slate for tomorrow.  Hopefully, the brain will be in working order!