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Ode to OMSH
So that was fun. OMSH (aka my friend Heather from Texas) flew into San Diego for a quick whirlwind visit this weekend with Bethany and me and the rest of the gang. We had a blast. I’d never met Heather in person before but we’ve known each other online for a long time. And all I have to say is that she is even better in person. OMSH is a trip. In a good way.
Let me paint in some details.
She breezes into the airport. She is tall and her hair is like a shampoo commercial. It flounces and falls around her face in pretty wisps. It’s also bright platinum gray. Is there such a color? Yes, there is and it is beautiful. Then she smiles and her whole face cracks in half. Her smile is as big as Texas and when you hear her soft honey-dripped drawl that comes afterwards, you just want to follow her home and eat fried food all day.
Besides being stylishly dressed, she is wheeling behind her the smallest carry-on suitcase you have ever seen. It’s bright orange. It’s hard plastic on the outside and it sort of reminds me of cross between my old hot-rod vacuum cleaner and something from outer space. It’s the coolest. If I ever travel light again I might have to buy one in red.
These are all things I notice from the outside but those are just small details that make 1/100th of who she is. Heather has a heart as big as Texas too. She’s not loud like I expected her to be (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) but if you read her blog you’ll think she’s cracking jokes every other minute. She is quite funny of course and we did find ourselves cracking up at the silliest things (ask her about the wine-garitas) but she is also a really good listener. I just wish we had had more time for some really long talks. The weekend flew by.
I’m probably embarrassing her by writing all this and I know I’m hopeless in trying to capture what it is really like to meet a good friend in person for the first time but I thought I’d just share a little tiny bit.
We did a lot of fun things. Painting pottery, picnics on the beach, walking around Old Town looking at odd trinkets from Mexico but I have to say that really the best part of this quick visit was listening to her laugh. When it all boils down, there is nothing like having happy friends. I know there is a time for sadness but there is also a time for happiness and this weekend was definitely one of those times.
Miss you already OMSH!
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Vacation Highlight: Eating Trout
Here’s a little highlight from our trip: Toby caught a fish, a trout. Actually he caught a lot of fish—maybe twenty a day. But on the first day he caught a fish, we took it home and he cooked it. He fried it up in about a pound of butter and some sliced apples that he picked off a tree that was growing by the cabin. He said he wanted to eat a meal that came from the lake. More power to him.
Personally, I do not like fish. But to be a good sport I tried a bite. I figured it couldn’t be that bad since it was fried in all that butter. Surely the butter would at least taste good.
It did not. It tasted like swamp. I suppose it didn’t help that I had seen what was inside the fish when he cleaned it. Some seeds, bugs and a shiny Lifesaver wrapper. I don’t know, something about a fish eating trash just doesn’t do it for me. But then it could also be that trout are just fishy fish and I do not like the taste of fish. Anyway, at least I tried it.
After Toby ate the fish he admitted that it wasn’t all that good. Hmph, I thought. He could have told me that before I tried a bite. Oh well. That’s what camping is all about I guess. At least if I ever get stranded out in nature some day and I’m forced to fish to stay alive, I’ll know that horrible taste is totally normal and I won’t die from it.
It was such a pretty fish. Too bad he had to die, though I suppose he was going to to die anyway from that Lifesaver wrapper. I’m sure that wouldn’t digest very well. Good thing we let all those other fish go. I do have some really great under-water movies of catching fish. I’ll try to put a short one up one of these days.
