Yes. Today was the day. There’s also Crabby Lobster Day (my favo-rite because of the “crabby”, roight?) and I think there’s a pig roast and I fergit what else.

A few years ago, we went to another Cajun Gumbo day at the ski ranch. We met up with The Engineer (aka my brother who is now hanging out on the other side) and Dogmomster and their beach urchins, Valdemort and Pengo. We ate gumbo and we posed for pictures that I don’t have time to post today and we listened to a wonderful high school jazz band while we ate. It was a festival at the end of winter (er, don’t tell Ol’ Man Winter I said that) and the weather was warm and the skiing wasn’t all that great because it was spring conditions, which aren’t great for XC but we all had fun anyway.

Sometimes, we would be up at Houghton Lake back in the old days when the beach urchins were young and we had to pump water at our old cabin hazardous waste site in the winter and whatever. We would go out skiing and we would end up at the ski ranch and we would be surprised to see The Engineer!!! Who had made a surprise trip to the ski ranch with Dogmomster and the girls and Sam (dog, not archaeologist). Cousins would squeak with glee at the unexpected chance to play in the snow with each other and. Well. I dunno.

I miss those days. They were happy times and they will never come back, at least not in that form. But we have learned to pay our happy times forward, I think. We have to, despite days like today when I spent the whole day thinking back to an earlier year at Cajun Gumbo day. We have to go forward. It’s our only choice. And I am convinced that it’s what The Engineer would want us to do. Love you, ol’ boy, wherever you are.

* Ski Ranch = XC Ski HQ Mouse made up the ski ranch name when she was maybe about four.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.