Fish out of water

You see them on our lake all summer - 4 or 5" long silver fish that fly out of the water as the boat passes through schools of them and they shoot out onto the rocks along the shore.  They flip and flap trying to get back to the water and some make it, though most don't.  That's what I felt like this weekend.

Our annual No-Boat Regatta alternates locations each year so as to accommodate folks from all the areas around St. Louis, and this year was the location for the Western realm.  As Tim described in the previous post, the lake is East.  Pretty far East.  If St. Louis was having a normal St. Louis winter, this wouldn't be an issue because we would be bundled up in down coats and buying 50# bags of rock salt to try to get the Z-car out of the garage to drive to said festivities.  Unfortunately, it was 62° and the sky was blue and daffodils are blooming in my yard.  In February.  Also,  unfortunately, the festivities are scheduled for Saturday night and Tim has to fly Monday morning so there was just no time (or money) to justify driving an hour and a half East to turn right around and drive 2-1/2  hours West to the party.  So off to the party we went, but my heart was driving East. 

Party day was followed by today that was even warmer and sunnier, so since we didn't have time to drive to the lake, we took off on our bicycles to scope out a route to the kids' new house that they hope to move into soon.  We ended up riding from there to Forest Park, did a half loop around the park and back home for a total of 8 or 9 miles.  Beautiful day.  The whole time we were riding, I was thinking about sitting on the deck doing teak work. Teak work. You know, the back-breaking, finger-grating, brow-sweating stuff we all gripe about?  Yup.  I was wishing I was there.

So we're still here, the house can't possibly sell anytime in the next 3 years with three foreclosure comps within 3 surrounding blocks, we don't have a functioning engine, and in the face of all that I still somehow seem to have managed to make the break from land to cruiser.  Kintala just doesn't know it yet.