WRITTEN SATURDAY, POSTED SUNDAY
Okay. No blog on Friday – busy day: work, pack, mow lawn, drive to cabin, argue with family in the car, eat three stale junior cheeseburgers from Wendy's. Still feeling those.
So it's Saturday night and I sit on a spacious cedar deck looking out across Lake Mille Lacs. It's interesting sitting in front of a laptop computer with those picturesque nature screensavers, only to look up and see a calm night on the lake, waves cackling against the shore, the sun setting in the water and all around the hums the drone of fishing boats motoring out to their honey holes.
So, you may be asking, why am I not out with the others, fishing, hauling in Big Luke the Lunker? The answer simple – commercialism.
See, very unlike me, I did not purchase my fishing license prior to the season for a variety of reasons – I don't know if you are aware, but I am unemployed, looking for FT work and juggling job searches, interviews and contract jobs all at once. But I have the time to write a blog, though, right? Touche. Nice countermove.
Anyway, I went in to a local establishment up at the lake here to buy my fishing license, handed the gal my driver's license and my debit card and was greeted with: “We can't sell licenses on cards, ONLY cash.”
Really?! Can't purchase a fishing license with a debit card? I've done it for the last seven years and it wasn't a problem.
“Oh, but we have an ATM in the back that you can withdraw cash from. There's a $4 surcharge.”
Ah. That's the game.
So instead of using my card to buy a fishing license, like every other place does, I have to pay $4 for the right to withdraw my own money and buy the license. And this is a standard rule right? So standard it requires a B&W, dot-matrix paper printout scotch-taped to the front door to advertise for it? Yeah. It doesn't look like a temporary “We can stick it to the fishermen on opening weekend when they come up here to buy their licenses” scam. It doesn't feel like that at all. I mean you went to all that trouble to print out that B&W, dot-matrix paper printout. So you were pretty damn serious about it.
While you're at it, here's a red-hot fire poker. Why don't you stick that in my ass too while you're at it.
I can wait and buy my license this week, where I know I won't have to pay a surcharge to get access to my own money.
Okay. What did I do to feel like a kid again?
Last night, driving up to Mille Lacs, we went a completely different route we had ever gone before and I didn't care if we got lost or took twice as long to get there. And you know what? It was the best commute to the lake ever. There was no traffic. And it was fishing opener weekend. There's ALWAYS traffic on that weekend. Hell my cul-de-sac in Chaska is full of cars that weekend. But last night it was a breeze. We drove through four new towns we had never seen before – Dalbo, St. Francis, Ogilive, Nowthen and town called Day 2, which made us wonder where Day 1 went.
On Saturday, I had to find time to actually be an adult after I spent all day running with the dog, climbing on rocks on the shore, playing kickball with the girls using a stability ball (It's a lot harder than it sounds!) and playing board games. Well, I did two adult things – I replaced the license plates on my car (Kind of on a license bender here and guess how many times I misspelled it when writing this? At least a dozen times and I only used the word eight times) and did the dishes. But I'll make up for that tonight – campfire cherry pies. YUM!
I woke up at 5am this morning because my dog was whining. It's 7pm as I write this and my eyelids feel like caked-on mudflaps, heavy and thick. Earlier, I was shooting a slingshot at some birds. The slingshots up here get used quite a bit, so we've replaced the rubber hoses that have broke over the years. So I was lining up a good shot and stretched that hose as far as she could go and SNAP. My hand and pocketed rock flung back and hit me in the nose. I was caught unaware and it stung, but I had to laugh about it.
Lately I've learned to laugh at a lot of things, especially the unexpected bad things. You may wonder why? I'm thinking that I must still have it pretty damn good to have the powers that be worried enough to try and tear it down all the time.
How's that for positive thinking?
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