me & my boat

I most definitely do NOT have a picture to accompany this blog post! Last Sunday afternoon, I had several hours of completely FREE time. All the kids were occupied, and I only had one necessary errand to run. Actually that one errand turned into two, though. I was in Fred Meyer and saw a lady that I know having trouble in the checkout line. She missed the bus that goes by her house, so I took her home. It's always a good feeling to be in the right place at the right time to help someone out. I even made her smile even though she'd been very angry at the store. :-) After my errand, I wanted to do SOMETHING. I had a book I wanted to read, but I didn't want to just sit at home reading. So I changed into "i-don't-care" clothes, aired up the boat, and went to the lake to read. All of that sounds all nice and easy, but there were a few little incidents that livened things up a bit. First of all, we've had a very cool, rainy summer, so the lake water never had a chance to warm up. My boat is very small, barely big enough for a slightly overweight mother of four. As I was squeezing myself into it, I leaned too heavily on the back end and let quite a bit of water into the boat. Cold water. Which I had to sit in the whole time I was out on the lake. :-( The second incident could have been a little more serious (to me -- not to the people watching, I'm sure). My boat is a Walmart cheapy, so it's not exactly top quality. My oars are plastic and they screw together -- AND APART. One of my oars came unscrewed out in the middle of the lake. I'm a good swimmer, so I wasn't AFRAID to have to swim back to land. But that water is GROSS and really cold. I did NOT want to have to swim in it!!!! I tried to reach the oar, but couldn't maneuver myself around to get it. Then I thought it had sunk because I lost sight of it. I didn't panic or even say any bad words :-) So maybe that's why when I turned my head, I saw my oar floating just a few feet away. God gave a little blessing for my self-control :-) I grabbed it and screwed it back together. I enjoyed my book for about an hour, then started to row back to land. I'm a terrible oarsman, so I'm pretty sure people were watching and laughing from their front-row seats on the bank. One girl in particular sat on her slightly larger-than-mine rear end chuckling at me trying to get myself out of the boat without getting completely soaked. She even commented: "It's kinda like getting out of a really comfy couch, isn't it?" yeah -- thanks for the HELP!

Even with the little problems, I enjoyed being on the lake and will probably do it again sometime :-)