*That* was the text message that appeared on my phone at 0-dark-30 this morning when I woke up. Sent by one of my own loverly little beach urchins sometime during the night. They are obviously having too much fun out there in Cally while I slog along through the dark and snow here in the Great Lake State. Anyway, I had forgotten to take my phone off of vibrate for the weekend, so I didn’t hear the doodle-oop when that text message came in. I am not exactly sure what it means, my poor old addle-brain is having a bit of trouble with the double negative. But the GG was, in fact, cooking a can when I met him. He had a cute little stove that was made to, well, cook a can. I had never seen anybody cook a can before.

The occasion was a raft trip! Down the Youghiogheny River over/down in the beautiful state of Pennsylvania. I was skeptical when the Grand Poohbah and the Marquis invited me to go with a bunch of people from Pooh’s work on a raft trip. I was all about going to Pennsylvania but, quite frankly, I am afraid of water. I know. I am Kayak Woman. I grew up on a beach on the Great Lake Superior so what is up with that? I’m not gonna try to ‘splain it here. It would probably take up about three blahg entries. I am afraid of water but I also love it and am a decent swimmer despite my fear. And I adore kayaking! But I am into flat-water kayaking. Oh a little bit of bounce is a lot of fun but anything above about Class I rapids? Naw. I’ll leave that to UKW and NP Jane and some of those folks.

The Marquis told me it would just be floating down a lazy river drinking beer and I was up with that, so off we went. In his pretty then-new vee-hickle. There was the Marquis, Pooh, and me. And a very nervous little man from Iraq. Most likely even more nervous about white-water rafting than I was. Hmmm. Why is this guy on the trip? Well, of course, because there were “single women” on the trip. Now, technically, at that point, Pooh was a single woman but, c’mon, not really, since she was pretty much with the esteemed Marquis since high school. So that left? Me and a few other gals. Yeek! I’d be lying if I said that meeting someone of the opposite gender that wasn’t ugly (sorry), stupid, or just plain weird wasn’t in the back of my mind when I said I would go on that trip (or any other event) but I didn’t expect much of anything to happen. And meeting our Iraqi friend didn’t do anything to increase my confidence that there would be anyone interesting. Oh well. It’ll be fun anyway. And it was except that after the guides thoroughly scared the devil out of us nervous nellies before we got on the river, the first thing that happened was that Pooh, my beloved cousin, fell out of the raft! The Marquis pulled her back in and the rest of the trip was uneventful and it was even fun but I decided I didn’t ever really want to do that again and I haven’t.

But there was this guy who was cooking a can… And he worked with Pooh but he had driven down there separately, in his loverly old purple Gremlin. And he was fun and interesting and he got himself placed into our raft. It was a number of months before we actually got together. I was pretty skittish about “men” in those days. But it’s been 29 years since we met and 26 since we married. And we haven’t strangled each other yet. Although I felt like doing that a few times today. So, there in the pic is the Grumpy Growler with his best friend Frooggy. They’re looking at the computer and I don’t know what is on the screen. Probably porn, knowing them. Er, that pic doesn’t exactly show the GG as the skinny guy that he actually is.

P. S. I do not know what happened to the nervous little Iraqi guy. I hope he didn’t go back and die in Desert Storm or Shock and Awe or whatever. I hope he has a wife and kids now, here in the relatively safe United Snakes of America. I hope he is a little less nervous…

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