What Does Catholic Mass Have to do With Fishing?

Nothing, but that is what I am writing about…

So I went to catholic Mass last year.  There was no lightening in the immediate area and I did NOT, I repeat did NOT burst into flames.

I grew up Baptist.  I converted to Catholicism several years ago. Not sure how many now.  I won’t go into the how or why of it.

The last 2 times I went to Mass were not in the states:

Dome of Koln

Once in 2002, at some point after my Daddy passed away.  It was conducted in what I call a "side chappel" in the Hohe Domkirche St. Peter and Maria (English: High Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Mary) in Koln Germany.  It is also known as Kolner Dom or the Cologne Cathedral.  Anyhow, I was amazed at how much I understood even though the whole thing was in the Latin and German languages.  That is a good day.  I needed that dayin order to help cope with the recent loss of my father. It is amazing how that whole trip helped.

I still miss him so much however.

 

Michelangelo’s Pietà

  The second time was in 2004 when my daughter and I traveled to Italy on "Roman Holiday".  We attended the Sunday Mass in Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano (Latin: Basilica Sancti Petri), officially known as Saint Peter's Basilica.  

All I can say is, while that mass was in Latin and Italian, it was the most moving Mass I have ever attended.  The chapel was packed.  We had to arrive a few hours early to make sure we could get in and be seated.  One day I will find the words to describe that experience.

 

Yes, except for the 2 above visits, I have not been to any other Masses since my Dad passed. I basically stopped when I lost him.  I went from going nearly every Sunday, even when traveling, to not attending. 

Period.

I made a last minute decision to attend Mass at a local catholic Church some months ago because I had been struggling with many things of late and I needed the continuity and tradition that the catholic Church Mass provides.  We will revisit the concept of "Continuity and Tradition" in a moment. I used to find that attending Mass would set and then re-set my emotional and mental clock for the week.  I decided I needed some group therapy with God.  I typically believe that you do not have to attend a church to commune with God, but I do feel that attending an organized event such as Mass helps keep my mind in the moment.

Enter "Continuity and Tradition"

I never liked anything but a good OLD fashion traditional Mass.  No new age, hippy, drum banging, guitar playing Masses for me.  I want some Latin in there (the more the better), choir when possible and the traditional words…

So, when I found a card in the pew outlining new words and songs integrated into the Mass, I was taken aback.  Confused.  Befuzzled.  It seems there is a new catholic Mass Missal as of November 26, 2011.  The explanation that I found when looking online?  Forty some-odd years ago, when the Latin Mass was translated into English, they apparently did a rush job and everyone knew it would be revised. 

Huh?  OK, news to me.

Apparently this new translation is closer to the Latin in both meaning and sentence structure.

They also say that Mass celebrates the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and that is not everyday stuff.  It is a profound mystery that is beyond our comprehension and that mystery is deserving of a more significant language than what we use in our everyday lives.  A deeper meaning.

I am not going to go into all the details of the changes, but instead will give you the “Click Here” link to read the changes for yourself if you are so inclined.

OK, why am I whining?  I needed the continuity and tradition and knew I would find it in the Church. 

Instead? 

More change. 

Really? 

Seriously?

  

That will teach me to take a break from organized religion…

Lost and Found

I have an announcement to make!  I am back!!!

I LOST my "blogging-way".  

Fell off the "blog-wagon".

Have been a "blogger-slacker".

I FOUND myself again.  Not just my "blogging-self", but a large chunk of "myself" that I was separated from for awhile.  A long while.

Finally....

So I am back and blogging.  Ok, I am trying actually.  I went and read some of my "Cookie Cooks" food blogs recently - and was amazed.  Amazed by the writing itself?  Hardly....  I was amazed at how I did not recognize the writing as anything I had done.  It was like I was reading someone else's work all together.  I don't know.  All I can figure is I lost a portion of "me" back before I even started blogging - THEN fell off the wagon. 

That Cedar Chest

The dark yet comforting void that is a cedar chest...  Where objects go to be kept safe, secure and in the dark...

Several years ago my cousin and I had to move her mum into an assisted care facility. Her mother was not of sound mind and could not assist in any fashion when it came to sorting out her near 80 years' worth of possessions. We were on our own.  My cousin mentally and emotional locked up (as often happens to people when they simply cannot wrap their minds around the enormity of a task or event). So this packing up of her mother's life was left largely to me.

Now, mind you, "The Mother" did not have an actual cedar chest. But in a way, her apartment of roughly 26 years was one huge cedar chest. The Mother was old-school. If you pissed her off, you were "marked off her list". No more party invites for you! She was very crafty, artsy and an awesome cook/hostess. She turned simple lunches into a special event. She was much of my inspiration to travel, cook and entertain, yet I was not close to her. She seemed to drink a bit much and could get right cranky.  Over the years I started understanding why...

We went cabinet by cabinet and drawer by drawer. Pulling out, sorting, keeping or donating objects. Books, dishes, silver, china, jewelry, you name it...  There were oddities from assorted travels through the years. Books about various art, travel locations and historical events. Even clothing from back in the day! Mink and fox fur stoles!

At one point we reached the basement storage room. There is where it got interesting. No one had bothered to go through the stored items down there in years. Maybe not since they moved into the apartment after "The Father" passed when we were 7 years old.  What we found were photo albums from back pre-us-children era.

The photos showed "The Mother and Father" at the beach down in Alabama. They would spend a month or so in the summer at a beach house down there. I have no idea if they owned it at the time or simply rented it.  They would take kids from the family, as at the time they had none of their own, and introduce them to a different life. My family was by in large not well to do. So for kids to get to go on what amounted to a long vacation was a huge thing. I wish I had access to these photos to post here because they were so interesting as these were circumstances, situations and dress that I had never seen my adult elder cousins in. I remember Rena normally wearing dresses and skirts throughout my life and that was the same in the photos, but of course she was much younger and seemed so happy. "Doc", for the period of time I knew him, as he died when I was 7, was always in a bow-tie, dress slacks and an arrow collar shirt. In these photos he was lounging in chairs with a cigar, a low-ball glass and an undershirt.  Think 'wife beater' shirt. There were children playing in the sand in their cute little 'covers everything' swim suites.  The year had to be the 1950's.

We also found in one album a letter confirming a room reservation in an Atlanta hotel (I have long since forgotten the hotel name but seems it is still there near the stadium). Obviously there were no internet sites back then. And, apparently at this point the phone was still not the communication of choice in the south? The room confirmation was for a 2-twin-bed room costing something like $10 or so. They were going to watch baseball.

The twin bed deal was no shock. They slept in separate beds the whole time I knew them (5 out of the 7 first years of my life).

While we poured over the albums, it became clear why "The Mother" drank and would get cranky. By that time she had lived without the love of her life for maybe 27 years.  She missed him. She never got over losing him. She never dated. She did everything with her mother (until she passed) and her daughter.

We ended up stashing the mink and fox stoles we unearthed in my cousin's steamer trunk. The jewelry went into her jewelry box, furniture into her house in the basement and the silver (that came from OUR great grandparents) placed on cabinets.

Several months after The Mother passed, we were doing that age old ritual of getting ready to go out tramping as we called it. This actually means we were going to a nightclub to dance. We almost always had a new outfit each to wear.  Her mother used to help us get ready when we were younger. Critique our outfits, doll us up, take photos of us, keep us on task and on time. So, this night, as we ran around her house half (mostly) naked trying to get our outfits together, we pulled the furs out of the steamer trunk and we draped them around us and laughed hysterically.  We both thought how funny it would be when we were old and in a nursing home together. In our rooms would be these cedar chests and steamer trunks full of oddities from our parent's and grandparent's.  We would probably visit, and dawn, the stashes daily and race our wheelchairs down the institutional hallways - half naked (hopefully not mostly naked) wearing these furs, and costume jewelry.  All the while orderlies would probably chase after us.

Off We Go… The Maiden Voyage! (Or So I Had Hoped…)

Such foolish expectations... Just Say'n. And yes, it has been since August that I wrote. Finishing grad school and working full-time killed a semblance of a life.

So it is Friday!  The day I have decided the boat hits the road on a camping trip and maiden voyage! This week was an insane week! Jim worked on the motor that probably had not seen action in maybe 10 years. Luckily, it isn’t a use it or lose it item!  The boat rebuilding triad had worked on the boat at night, in the heat, and the humidity. Those couple of nights I sweated like I have never sweated before – in my daytime office-work clothing! It was hot and the humidity, I swear, was 4 million %.  I was tired.  I had wanted, dearly, to go pick the boat up Friday early, but Jim was still working on the motor AND I was still at work running around like mad. We had a special event that day which had been planned for long time and I could not leave as it ran longer than I had hoped.

My best person volunteered to go get the boat from Jim’s and that made things go a little faster.  Actually, it probably made them go a whole lot faster.

When I met up with my person, I noted we had A LOT of gear for two nights of camping, fishing and golf.  Wow, how had we managed to stuff all this gear in the vehicle on previous camping trips?  Ok, the golf clubs normally did not go and the fishing gear was not a normal addition, but still?  The boat and the vehicle were packed full!  What was the one thing I could not find that morning – when ready to go?  My life-vest.  Tired, now grumpy and bummed because I have a NICE vest somewhere…  No fear, WallHell will have them! Right?

We get on the road at maybe 5:30p with the plan to go to General Burnside Island in Kentucky. Some of the best fishing is on the Cumberland – so I hear… We get gas, a quick bite to eat on the road and drive, drive, drive.  We are not even out of Knoxville before my exhausted ass has a complete and utter internal (and sooner than later external) meltdown.  It is the after work Friday traffic and we are towing my little boat. Yea, this boat might as well be worth a million dollars because I have emotional stock in it. Weaving in and out of traffic we go.  All I can think is – I don’t weave in and out of traffic when towing (because as you have probably read in an earlier post, I have SO MUCH EXPERIENCE in towing)!  Why are you weaving in and out of traffic?  Why can’t we just stay in one lane? Why?  Why? Why? Whine…

‘Nough said on that part of the trip…

The plan now?  Stop at WallHell and pick up a cheap life vest on the way. Two WallHells later and nadda! Seriously? WallHell has everything…   But not a vest in even remotely my size. I made the command decision to give that up and decided to get one the next day.  Great plan!

We did not get to the campground until maybe 10:00p, got unloaded, got the tent up and I, by cracky, am in my “going to cook the baked beans with beef and onion mixture that has been the first meal of each camping trip if it kills someone” mode.  It must have been midnight or later before that was done and food was eaten.  Dishes?  Not happening tonight!

At somewhere between 1:00a or 2:00a I realize there are still kids playing and making noise and also a camper moving in next to us – noisily. I have never experienced such campground noise in Tennessee.  Is it a cultural thing in Kentucky? Kentuckians are not concerned with reasonable quiet hours? Say, oh, I don’t know, Midnight? It took awhile to get to sleep.

We get up in the late morning, drag around and eat leftovers after not getting a lot of sleep due to the seriously loud and rude late camping arrivals one space over. We managed to get up a little too late to hunt a life vest, try the boat in the water or go fishing before the heat strikes - so we decided to go play golf.

Uh, little background with me and golf – I have played very few rounds of golf:

One round at Dead Horse Lake in maybe 1997

Two rounds at Silver Lakes in Alabama around the same time

One round at Dead Horse in about 2002

One round at Millstone in Morristown

Now I have this set of golf clubs, new, fresh out of the box – for a lefty.  Note, I am now and have always been a right handed person.  But my thinking is – golf is a foreign activity no matter which team I bat for (insert obvious crude joke here) so why not go left-handed. When trying the clubs out, I tried a left and a right handed club.  With the left-handed I was consistently bad. Right-handed I was inconsistently worse!

Let me just say, 9 holes of golf in 90+ degree heat wore us out. I think par was 32 or so.  I shot 96.

We are done, it is maybe 3:00p and I STILL need a life-vest. We drove to 3 places and finally, after a marina made a couple of calls, we found ONE store open that had vests.  Who knew that boating places were either closed on Saturdays (in a heavy boating region) or closed early. So, while I am no fashionista, I am not overly excited by my “man-vest.”

We get back to the camp-site and hook up the boat trailer. Off we go to the park ramp.  All 40 football fields’ worth of ramp.

Flash-back in grand southern style to follow.

Fishing Tackle Shopping?

Yea, so I am a girl and by that I should like shopping, right?  Well, I don’t…

On that note, Bass Pro Shop rocks when you want to look at fishing gear! Apparently I DO like Tackle shopping.  No, not full contact football-esk ‘tackle’ shopping, just shopping for fishing tackle!  I have zero clue what fish are found where, what bait they require, what bait goes with what – but I can tell you my reel is pretty…

It’s July 3^rd and my daughter and her fiancé have come for a visit. Future Son-in-law wants to go to Bass Pro Shop.  I am secretly like – YAY!  A little group of us are on the road, in Old Blue, rolling with the windows down!   Everyone takes off in different directions – “ooh, guns!” – “ooh, boats!” – “ooh, fishing gear!” – “ooh, Starbucks!!!”  Yea, I can sniff out a venti iced caramel macchiato at 2 miles!

At this point I got a little bonding time with my daughter (who I do not see nearly enough).  She went to the fishing ISLES with me. Aisle after aisle… Fishing rods, bait and reels as far as the eye could see.  Ok, I was blinded by it all and could not see past the tackle and my macchiato…

I start shopping and my daughter starts saying things like “do you have sinkers?”  “Do you have bobbers?”  “I remember fishing with these and they seemed to work well!”  And I am thinking – how does she know all this?  I never took her fishing.  She fished with her PopPop Delaware (her name for GrandPa Carson).  I think she may have fished with Wiley as well.  I am not sure.  At any rate, we tooled through the isles and found me all manner of tackle, a little RED tackle box and even a small tape measure to measure the fish by (her idea - such an optimist!).  My idea in bait shopping?  If the lure was pretty, I bought it.  Yea, daughter and my best person can attest to this.  All in all, it was well over $100 which is sad because I did NOT get that much!

Later that week I went to Bass Pro Shop with my best person and we looked around. Drooled over fishing rods and reels, purchased a trolling motor, fishnet (no, not the stockings I wear - and proof of optimism again) plus a bevy of things that I cannot even remember now.  That was a large bill.

So no one ever told me the incidentals for getting a boat onto the water (even a little nothing boat) would be so costly!


Lesson learned?

1. Motors are expensive.
2. Batteries are expensive (thank you 'best person')
3. Boats are a lot of work, no matter how small, how old, or how simple they seem.

"Old Blue"

I have to preface these posts with one about “Old Blue.”

“Old Blue” is a truck. Not just any run of the mill truck but instead a thing of mechanical beauty – rust spots and all.  “Old Blue” is a blue (duh!) 1986 Ford F350, dual-tank diesel, 4 door, manual transmission, long-bed behemoth of a girl who will not get anywhere quickly, but she will pull a house off its foundation in the process of going!  It takes the proverbial football field to turn that lady around in.  She is pushy, loud and takes up space.  Oh, wait – that’s me.  No, it’s her. No, wait…  Oh hell, not sure – I guess it is both of us.  Blue is roomy (unlike me)!  Two (count them) two large bench seats. Any human I know can sit in the back seat and their knees come nowhere near touching the front seat-back.

My cousin-by-marriage, Wiley, bought her new back in the day. He ordered her special out of Canada because Ford had just had some form of union issue in the US and he was worried about the craftsmanship. I always liked the truck - even though I hated Fords at the time. I had planned on telling him if he ever wanted to sell her to let me know.  Unfortunately, he passed away before I ever remembered to tell him.  I miss Wiley nearly as much as I miss my Dad.  I ended up buying it from my cousin Charline, his wife. This purchase was coupled with the old boat – and the prompter of this blog.

As it turns out, Blue needed a new vacuum canister (yea, try to find one of THOSE for an ’85 Ford truck), batteries (it takes two), A/C work, a new muffler, new plugs and her speedometer and odometer did not work. Lucky for me I have a friend who is “Mr. Ford” and was able to replace the gear needed to make the speed and mileage run right and who could replace the glo-plugs without sending me to the poor house.  We replaced the batteries. The rest will come in good time.  I personally hate loud cars – but the truck just sounds right as she is. The A/C is only a problem when it rains (fogging issue) or if I want to keep my hair looking nice (55/4 is windy you know!).  The vacuum canister was “repaired” by the now ex-husband who thought liqui-weld was appropriate…  ‘Nough said there.

Anywho – Wiley would have enjoyed watching me drive Blue about town, cursing the congested city streets and their small size.  At that point he would be assured that I was, in fact, related to his wife, my cousin, Charline.  No matter where Blue is driven, it is entertaining to notice how many drivers avoid a wild haired woman in a truck of that size and age.  Blue has just enough rust to indicate I am unconcerned with whether or not I bump their little vehicles.  There are also the occasional man stares…  That’s right – “I” am driving this truck. A woman. I drive her – and make no mistake – she is woman –both truck and driver.  And no, you cannot buy either one. You can stare, drool, cat-call, flip me off or anything else you want, just as long as you get the hell out of my way in the process!  In this truck I am large, in charge and have places to go!

            

Me at the farm - gardening!
Hell-a sexy happening there!

Yea, girl hands!

Fishing - If It Were Easy, It Would Be Called Catching...

Coming soon for your reading enjoyment (or at least a blog that will provide you with someone to point fingers at, shake your head toward and poke fun at) will be a series of posts chronicling my spiraling fall into pleasure fishing.  I call it pleasure fishing because I have no expectations of catching anything except a case of heat exhaustion, a sunburn, and maybe a hang-over while in pursuit of relaxation and happiness with friends on the water...  Wait!  Which part of that was pleasure?  Hummm...  Well, I am sure it will be an adventure rife with misadventure at the very least and fun bonding with a bud.

As a mid-life woman in the midst of a BOAT LOAD of change, I found myself needing to find ways to relax on the weekends. I fell into camping, when I could, which I had not done really since I was a child. I LOVE it!  The natural progression in my mind was to start fishing since I have an old boat collecting dust…

I have a sneaking suspicion it will not stop there.

• I have already begun searching for a camper to put near water – a little get-away really… 
• My old boat is being overhauled (oh yea, story and photos to follow in the very near future).
• Fishing rod/reel and tackle collection started (and yes, you may well be subjected to an inventory of said items).
• Trolling motor ready (no, I never thought THAT would excite me - but it does).
• Cedar scraps collected to start making fishing lures like my Grandfather did and had my brother and I doing at one time as kids.

This adventure promises to produce stories including shellacked fingers, trailer backing disasters, fish-bites, blowouts and bloodshed…

If I manage to produce a fish now and again - or my person does - so much the better.  I can re-learn to clean them and I definitely know I can cook them!

Stay Tuned!

~ Cookie Galore