One Fish, Two Fish

It has been a lovely, summery life here at Chez Loudshoes the past few days. The weather has co-operated for the first time this season, and been sunny and dry and entirely delightful. (It has been rainy and cool this summer, and no amount of optimistic cheer-leading has made it more palatable.)

We ate out for the first time this year last night. Just to put that in perspective, we usually are able to dine al fresco in late May or early June. Every time we've wanted to this year, it has just rained or threatens to do so, and nothing puts a damper on mealtime like racing through a biblical-style deluge with your burger and potato salad sloshing around on your plate.

My mom and dad had to come over for dinner last night, because we took the girls fishing yesterday afternoon and caught so many trout we had to have help to eat them. We go to a trout farm just outside of town, where they stock a 100 x 30 foot cement pool with nice, edible, catchable rainbow trout. (It's not quite like shooting fish in a barrel, but almost.)

The girls were patient, but not having much luck, for the first hour or so. This guy, around 60 years old or so, shows up on a bike and asks the Mister if he can give some advice. The Mister has no pride, so he says yes, and the guy takes apart the bobber and weights, changes the hook and the bait and plops it back in the pool. Ten minutes later, Thing 1 catches a fish. It was like magic. Five minutes after Thing 2's tackle gets the same treatment, she lands one too. You should have seen us....we were agog. And the guy just shrugs and says, "I've been fishing all my life, and I love showing other people how to fish."

The girls were so excited, I felt like I couldn't tell them that we had enough fish and had to stop. So they kept fishing for another half hour or so, and caught another couple of trout one after the other, and we finally called a halt; I was afraid we weren't going to have enough money to pay for all the fish they could now catch with that guy's fishy voodoo tricks. I called my parents from the fish farm to see if they could come over for dinner, because otherwise, we were going to have to eat a ridiculous amount of fish all by ourselves. Thankfully, they said yes.

We stopped on the road on the way home and got some corn, my mother brought some rice pilaf she had in the freezer and some fresh, local peaches for dessert, and we had an awesome dinner. And we were able to eat outside.

Sometimes, perfect just happens.