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A week of reminders and revelations

It was a week of reminders and revelations, including that fishing can bring out the best and worst in us.

It can be a workout for our patience muscles; an ewww-yuck experience baiting a hook, feeling pity for the unsuspecting worm suddenly on a bluegill’s dinner menu; an ongoing series of “reel” repairs with bobbers not bobbing, hooks hijacked and lines tangled; or a glorious validation of not having lost your touch, that you can still “lip-lock” a fish on a hook and reel that baby on in to shore.

Better Half and I and son Adam decided we needed to revisit such an experience, be the outcome good or bad, because it had been such a long time since we’d gone fishing and enjoyed something we did with frequency and pretty decent results.

But not so much so this first time out in a spell.

Calculating the cost of fishing licenses, worms and personal energy expended in more regret than rejoicing, it was not one of our better outdoorsmen experiences.

I think the main thing we “caught” was each other off guard with our bad attitudes brought on by poor performance, fly interference and well, smart fish, definitely of the “schooled” variety.

I was game for the outing, though, especially since I had been feeling extra outdoorsy and wanted to put to good use an extended weekend padded with a day off and a Fourth of July holiday thrown in for good measure.

I had been wanting to try out a new tent I’d won at a Chinese auction.

It sleeps three, so I figured great — me, Better Half and “Herald” the cat, so named because she is black and white like a newspaper.

Purrr-fect.

“We’re going to sleep out tonight,” I kept threatening Better Half as I glanced around the back yard for an ideal spot to set up the tent. “It’ll be fun,” I assured him even as I realized the accommodations would lack cable.

Then it rained, and Better Half smiled in one instance more than what I’d seen him do in days.

Rain may have stopped me from pitching a tent but not from other pursuits, including grilling, holding an umbrella in one hand, a burger flipper and corn on the cob tongs in the other.

I feel like a meal warrior at the grill, the complete opposite of the kitchen-side experience.

There’s a confidence that everything tastes better cooked there, and it usually does.

The really neat thing about grilling in the rain was that the sun came out, prompting a rainbow that arched its way to a newly created flower bed in the yard, one that Better Half lamented would mean more weed-whacking maintenance.

He wasn’t convinced the new flower bed was so beautiful with all the added solar lights that now make our back yard the Kiaski Festival of Lights.

But we were impressed by the rainbow, thinking that if it didn’t mean a pot of gold was there for us, maybe it was a sign for good things to come.

Maybe that means some dumb fish.

(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and community editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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