Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did not wait until Last minute Friday night to Finish buying and Wrapping presents for our Christmas Dinner Saturday.  And I most certainly did not sleep in Saturday and enjoy every second of it instead of leaving early for the Christmas Party.

I did not let Sean talk me into going duck hunting and I did not whine the entire time because of how miserable it was!  I still cannot feel my feet.  I did not take a four hour nap yesterday and sleep late this morning and go into work late because of how much I hurt from duck hunting....

You can read all about my hunt and how miserable it was and see some fun pictures on the post below!

Happy Monday!  Four days until Christmas!!

I Promise never to Go Again!

So if you read my last post you know that I went duck hunting with Sean Yesterday.  Kelsey commented on how hard core I was because of how cold it was yesterday morning but after she reads this post she might just want to retract that statement.

Get ready...this is a long one..

Sean and I traveled three hours north to my Mother's Family's Christmas dinner on Saturday night and we had a wonderful time!  I finally finished the WWII scrapbook for my Grandfather and he was just in awe of it and it made me so happy that he loved it!!  I guess I was in such a good mood on the drive home that I agreed to go Hunting with Sean so I could take some photos of them hunting.  Now last time I went Duck Hunting I was horribly cold the entire time and swore I'd never go again.  Sean assured me it wouldn't be so cold this time and that they would actually see some ducks as opposed to last time when we saw like two.

Sean was very wrong my friends.  Very wrong.

See we left North Arkansas at 8 pm and got back home at 11pm.  We gathered our clothes and drove another hour and a half to duck camp.. making our arrival time around 1:30 am.  The alarm jerked me awake at 4:30 am and I wanted to shoot it, except that no shot gun was in reaching distance.  So going on three restless hours of sleep...oh and I had to crawl in bed with Sean's brother because all the other beds were taken...at least I didn't have to sleep on the floor like Sean did.  So anyway going on three restless hours of sleep and zero food and drink, we loaded up and got on all the many layers of clothes and waders and drove out to a duck hole on the Bayou Meto in Stuttgart, Duck capitol of the US.

Let me just insert here that I'm a little bit moody when I only get three hours of sleep and have no food or drink...and there's a good reason for the no food or drink rule.  Last time I went I had to pee so bad that I almost fainted and Had to hold it for FOUR hours.  It's not possible to pee when you're in the woods in waist deep water in waders...not possible.  But even though I was moody, hungry, and thirsty, I was optimistic about this hunt!  I just knew I would fall in love with hunting as Sean has and we could go hunting as a couple next duck season and hold hands as we shoot ducks out of the sky.... I was very very wrong.

Within 20 minutes My toes went numb and I couldn't feel my face.  Sean told me to move around a bit so I walked in circles which wasn't easy in waste deep water and heavy waders on.  Finally the sun rose and we could hear other hunters shooting away, it sounded like bombs exploding all around us.  But um...why were we not seeing any ducks to shoot?

After the sun rose high enough for me to get good pictures I started taking photos which ended my boredom and got my mind off my cold feet until I took so many pictures it got boring again and we still weren't seeing any ducks.  I was so cold by this point that I thought my feet were going to fall off and I started praying that this miserable cold would disappear.

Sleepiness started to creep in at this point also, so I walked a good 200 yards to the boat, flung myself over the side and layed down for a good hour nap.  When I awoke, I could no longer feel my legs, my hands, or my face.  That's when the whining set in.  I wanted to cry.  I was hungry, sleepy, bored, and the coldest I'd ever been in my life.  My feet were burning they were so cold and I'm pretty sure that there was zero blood flow to them at this point.  I told Sean that if he took me back to the truck now I promise that I will never come again, that I had hypothermia and I am about to cry.  I'm sure his Dad and brother were annoyed but honestly I was so miserable I didn't care at this point.

Thankfully the hunt was dying down and an Hour later I was in the warmth of a heater and I still today cannot feel my toes.  I think I might have frost bite, which I delirously called freezer burn as we were leaving the bayou.  I also feel as if I'd been hit by a truck because in an effort to stay warm I did lunges, squats, ran in circles, toe rises, leg lifts, and any other excersize I could think of to stay warm.  It did not help me stay warm but it did help tone my muscles, which will be the only exercise I will do for the rest of this month because of how sore I am today.

After leaving the Mouse House we went to Mack's Prarie Wings, which is much like a bass pro shop except geared more towards water fowl hunting.  It was fun and we stayed there and looked around for awhile and spent too much money.

I got a few good photos, I'll be showing throughout the week. Here are my favorites of me, sean, and Banjo.

I don't know why but I really like this picture of Sean,  he looks so cute!!  I like Men in Camo!

Notice Sean's face paint, that is so when you look up at the ducks they won't see your shining white face.  He put some on me too but because I was so cold and had a face warmer over my entire face all day, it rubbed off a little.  This photo below is probably my favorite of me.  Sean took it on the boat ride out of there.  I was delirious, miserable, cold, half covered in face paint, and happy to know that a heater was just minutes away.

I love this photo of Banjo looking to the sky for ducks.  He looks so innocent and sweet, which he is!

So Totally needless to say the duck hunt was horrible.  We left the hole with two ducks and a promise that I would NEVER go hunting again, NEVER...unless it was hot outside, which is like saying when Hell freezes over. 

Hope you enjoyed my extra long post about me being a whiny baby.  And for the record my toes are still tingling and very much in pain from freezer burn.


Never Duck Hunting Again,

Geese

I went Duck Hunting this morning with Sean,  more on how miserable that was tomorrow.  I just wanted to show you what we saw on the way home.  A flooded field covered in Snow & Canadian Geese.  I've never seen anything like it before, there were tens of thousands.  I just had to get out and take photos.  These pictures don't even capture how many there were!!!  Enjoy!

Letters

I sent out my Christmas Cards today!  Finally that is done.  One of the cards went to my Great Grandmother who is 94 I believe.  She mentioned to my aunt that she just loves to get mail.  Usually my aunt sends her e-mails but she just so happened to send her a hand written letter and my Grandma told her how much she enjoyed reading her hand written letters and how she has almost worn out the letter because she has read it so many times.

I decided to put a hand written letter in my card to my Grandma so she'd have something else to read!  On a legal pad, hand written, it came to two pages.  I was quite proud of my handwriting skills, I had forgotten how pretty my handwriting was when I really tried.  Oh and let me tell you, I did NOT realize how wonderful typing was!  I had forgotten how much it hurts your hand to write that much, because I haven't written anything like that since Junior High!!  By the time I was finished my hand was cramped into a position that looked like some type of weird sign language.

Writing that letter got me thinking about all the letters my girlfriends and I used to write back and forth to each other in Junior High.  It was so much fun to write and receive letters from your girlfriends about who was "going out" with who and what boy liked what girl and what outfit we were wearing the next day.  I got tickled when I remembered all the jargon/lingo we used.  It's almost like Text messaging is now days except letter style..

For Instance...  "What's Up? NMH" was a favorite of mine. 
Though I never used this method, My BFF always did:
"Just thought I'd
D
   R
     O
       P
You a line"    It made the letter look much longer when you used four whole lines for that clever little pun. 
Of course if you were Going out with someone you always put "your initials + their initials" in a heart in the margin, that was always cool. 
And you always signed TTYL  BF4Ever and then of course we added a ps pps and ppps, whether that was correct APA format, we never knew.
It was also cool to fold your letter a really weird way and then write To: and From: on it and have someone else pass it to them in the halls!

I'm no sure if the letter writing days are over yet but one day they will be replaced with IM's and Text messaging completely because Kids are getting cell phones younger and younger now days.  I'm sure when I have children they will cringe every time they hear me talk about writing letters to friends, kind of like I cringe when I hear the "I had to Walk to School when I was your age" speech I got from my Dad. 

It's almost sad to think that letters are a thing of the past.   I would love getting hand written messages,  I love getting e-mails but a letter would be awesome because after writing that letter the my Grandmother I realize how much pain a friend would have to go through to make my day!  With the internet the world is getting smaller and smaller my friends!  I love staying in touch with old friends and meeting new ones, but I'm sad that my great grand children won't be able to look back at letters I wrote to home like I have been able to do with my Grandparents.  It's so neat to look at the letters they wrote and feel like they are somehow captured, their life happenings writing on that paper with their handwriting; knowing that they touched that page it gives me happiness! It preserves a little memory of them.  You can't just attach emotion and memories onto an e-mail like you can into a hand written letter.  (Which is ironic because you CAN attach things to e-mails but not letters in real life.) 

Maybe we should all write down a few stories on paper and save them for future generations to stumble across and remember us by!  Has anyone else thought about stuff like this or am I the only weirdo ??   Also, did any of you guys write letters to your friends in Grade School??  Have any more fun lingo to add?!  I wanna hear it!

Have a great weekend!