On My Hatred of Fire Ants and Lack of Good Judgment

I spent the long weekend in my hometown. Normally, that’s a very sedate thing to do. My parents are senior citizens. It just doesn’t get too crazy around their house.

My dad and I planned a fishing trip for Saturday morning. We spent a few hours on the lake and I caught about 23 fish. The biggest fish is pictured below. That’s a Redear bream. We love catching those because they get pretty big (as far as bream go) and if you find a bed of them, you can fish in the same spot all day and have them bite as soon as the bait hits the water. The one pictured below is the second biggest one I’ve ever caught. It was a very exciting moment for me.




So we finished fishing (after my dad almost had a heat stroke) and went home to get ready for my niece’s birthday party. Her baby is SO MOBILE now. He is almost impossible to keep up with. I’m surprised his vocabulary doesn’t solely consist of “NUH UH UH UH UH!” and “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” because that’s what we were yelling after him constantly as he was trying to get into stuff he shouldn’t have. He’s so sweet though. He got into some potpourri that my mom had sitting out and it had some fake fruit looking stuff in it. He picked up a piece of it and when my niece took it away from him, he said, “BALL!” (As in, ‘Why are you taking a ball away from me? It’s ok for babies to play with balls, Mom!’) He said the same thing about a pinecone he picked up later.

For those of you who have access to my Facebook, there are a couple of new pictures of him in my family album. He’s precious.

Sunday evening, I got to hang out with Elaine which was a lot of fun. We shared a few near-death experiences. PSA: Do not wander around in downtown Texarkana at night, no matter how good you think the photo op will be. We dodged a hobo and witnessed a drug deal within the span of a few minutes and headed out.




Then we went back to her house and I occasionally kicked her butt in SoulCalibur 3. Although, I think she was being kind and letting me win since I was a guest in her home and all.

Monday, my love for fishing was put to the test. My folks and I went to Mercer Bayou to look at the baby alligators and fish a little bit. My flip flops were no match for the ridiculous quantities of fire ants. They aren’t even in mounds, they’re just all over the ground and they hated my guts. I had to choose between continuing to fish and being stung all over, or nixing the fishing and not getting stung. Needless to say, I’m covered in stings. Good thing my mom had some RX cortisone cream.

I hooked a HUGE fish when I was fishing on top of the bridge and he was so heavy that I couldn’t reel him up all of the way. While I was struggling with him, his weight straightened the hook out and he fell off. Very sad, but my dad said he was a grennel. They have big teeth anyway, so it’s probably best that I didn’t have to stick my finger in his mouth to take the hook out.