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A couple of friends called telling me it was time to go fishing and they’d pick me up at 4:15.

I hesitated.

I’m not quite sure why all this manly shit has to happen so early in the morning.

But Miss Carol pushed me out the door and there I was, bouncing over the Atlantic swells in the pre-dawn darkness hunting fish. On wrecks. There were four of us and the other three had decided we needed to sidestep the rockfish tournament boats and head north to fish the wrecks for sea bass.

That’s cool, I’m good with that, I’ve never done it, so hey?

So we get out there and come to find out wreck fishing is a LOT like fishing off a bridge except the bridge is 40 miles offshore and you’re in a couple of hundred feet of water. But it’s just as boring. You’re bobbing the bottom and hoping you catch something before you snag the wreck and spend an hour freeing your line. It’s fishing gone super annoying- kinda like trying to watch porn while your wife talks to you.

I love to fish but I wasn’t ready for this shit. The reason I go offshore is to catch fish that’re wildly athletic and as big or bigger than you are. When you hook up you’re in for a fight. So bobbing for tiny sea bass just wasn’t doing it for me. Add to it that when you catch one, chances are it’s undersized and it’s stomach has expanded choking it and when you throw it back you watch it slowly bob on the surface dying and I’d had enough after about an hour.

And don’t even get me started on the dogfish. Dogfish are 2-5′ sharks that haunt the wrecks and eat EVERYTHING, especially your tackle. You sink three baited hooks and when you snag a dogfish it somehow manages to roll up into all the tackle on the way up so you’re confronted with a toothy snarling piece of dogfish shithead and after one or two you feel like just cutting the whole mess loose and let Mr. Dogfish swim around for the rest of his life wrapped up in hooks and monofilament.

But you don’t.

You wrestle with him and pull all the shit out of him and slide him back into the water and curse him.

So anyway. After an hour or so I was over it. Wreck fishing sucks. So I stopped and started drinking beer which was a problem since I hadn’t bought any because WHO KNEW you couldn’t buy beer at 4:30 in the morning in Virginia?

Not me.

Finally the other guys got sick of wreck fishing and me drinking their beer and decided to head inshore for striper. I thought inshore meant running back down our outbound track but I was waaaay wrong.

It meant a 90 mile run to Kitty Hawk NC. I was sooo happy.

We got down and set a spread and finally got into them about a half hour before we had to run for home. After 14 hours of fishing, in 12 minutes of wildly intense catching we’d caught our limit.

And we were all friends again.

Room by Emma Donoghue is the story of a 19 year old woman abducted from her college campus and held captive for seven years in an 11 x 11 foot  shed. She’s sexually abused nightly by her captor leading to, among other things, pregnancy and a stillborn daughter and then Jack.

The story is told from the viewpoint of five year old Jack and it’s filtered through the lens of his childish naivete and unknowing innocence, which somehow kinda makes all of it that much worse.

Sometimes the implied, the left unsaid, is made more poignant and powerful by its omission. And man oh man, that’s what’s goin’ on in this book. I’m thinkin’ huge fistbumps and jumping chestsmacks for the untold, the unsaid, ’cause that’s what makes Room the stirring story it is.

It’s a disturbingly good book and the best thing I’ve read this year.

Honest.

Get it and read it and weep. But, you know, in a manly way.

Don’t you just love a New Years Day with symmetry? I know I do.

Ones and repetitiveness aside, what I love most about New Years is it’s bright freshy clean new-car smell of newness headed our way. The implied hope. The yearned-for change. The expectant want.

And honestly?

I think that one.one.one-one promises all of these things and maybe, just maybe, if we’re lucky, just a little bit more.

Hey, a girl can hope.

I’m scratchin’ my head and I’m thinkin’ to the way-way back when Miss Carol and me moved to the beach to escape cold weather and snow and all the things I hate about winter so’s we could spend our lives warmly tanning in bikinis and thongs and drinking beer and foot-ploughing furrows in the hot sand.

I don’t remember this crap being a part of our Welcome To Your Dream Life At The Beach brochure.

Either somebody lied to us or something else is going on.

Whatever whichaway, I’m wonderin’ if maybe we’re not building far enough south.

I hate this shit.

Miss Carol and me hope your Christmas and New Years are full of tiny sparkly bikini angels surfing into your home on waves of golden light bringing you oceans of happiness in 2011.

I’m constantly amazed that you folks actually take the time of out your busy day to read my drivel and I want you to know much I appreciate your support.

Thanks for everything and I hope all y’all have a wonderful year.

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I wrote this post last year and included the recipe for Apple Crack and I know it’s lame to double up on posts and even lamer to foist a link on ya’ll, but this stuff is freakin’ amazing.

Try it and I promise, you’ll believe and come into the light and eventually hate me.

Merry Christmas.

I wrote and re-wrote the stupid Christmas letter that we send out each year, refining it, making it flow, making it something that I didn’t want to just ball up and throw in the trash.

When Miss Carol read the final iteration last night she looked at me and said-

“Is this different from what you wrote before”?

So.

How about some bikinis instead?

Merry Christmas.

Is there anything more sadly pathetic than an unornamented Christmas tree?

I think not.

It’s Christmastime once again and so once again I dragged a dead shrub into our house and leaned it up in the corner. We’ll cover it in lights and ornaments and call it beautiful.

And it will be.

But, more and more , I wonder why we do it.

It’s just Miss Carol and me and Cutter and Tug and I know I could care less and I’m pretty sure Cutter and Tug are fairly unaffected about the whole Christmas thing so that leaves Miss Carol boldly pushing our holiday down the well beaten path.

And you know what?

It’s a good thing she does, ’cause otherwise I’d probably be spending Christmas on a lonely barstool bitching and moaning about life and Cutter and Tug wouldn’t have a blazing tree to bask in.

I loves my Miss Carol.

When I started reading this I was, like, it’s amazingly effervescent.

And then I hit mid-book and I was, like, it’s OK cute.

And then I kept reading even though I didn’t want to, and by the time I finished it I was like, whatever.

I wanted Robert to do BIG- he was a blogger gone novel and I’d wished he was gonna push the envelope.

But he didn’t.

But he DID get published. And distributed. And all that stuff. And I wish I could say the book is better than it is but it’s not.

And that’s not to say it’s not worth reading ’cause it is- kinda the same way cotton candy’s worth eating.

It’s starting.

The oft prodded slowly awakening juggernaut has been loosed.

I met the contractor whose gonna push the fill around and install the septic system and pilings on Sunday and we put up the construction post with our lot number, building permit, and plans and stuff and made it real.

It’s happening.

And I’m excited. Kinda. But I’m also starting to realize what it is I’ve done. I’m an idea guy. I like dangling what-ifs out there over the fence of actual reality. It’s fun and not real and imaginary and therefore, inconsequential. Who cares if I fuck around for three years drawing and re-drawing a make believe house?

And usually, looooong before the reality rubber hits the road I’ve pulled out of the parking lot, tires smoking and squealing. I’ve got lots of other fun thoughts to play with.

But not this time.

Standing there yesterday morning staring at the beginnings of what I had wrought, I suddenly realized that pulling the trigger and doing something is waaaaay different from messing around with the what-ifs and the maybe-somedays. It was a scary grown-up feeling and I didn’t like it one bit. It’s funny-you work for something and then when you get it you’re not sure if you want it anymore. Weird.

So I took a deep breath and thought WTF. We’re gonna do this thing. At some point, you gotta stop dreaming and start doing and keep at it ’til it’s done. I’m sure my enthusiasm will wax and wane over the next several months and I’m pretty sure I might even regret ever having prodded the beast in the first place.

It’s hard to stuff the genie back into the bottle.

It’s starting.