Mr. Furley and the Frog

So, I know it's been awhile since my last post. But, I had a moment. One of those moments when you realize "its all worth it". So, in order to set the scene, I will try to paint you a little snapshot of life as of late. It may be a little long winded and blended, but please bare with me (or not..whatever).

Oliver now goes to pre-school. That means every day he needs to have breakfast fed to him and lunch made before we leave to drop him off and go to work. I'll pretend I help with this, but Automme really takes on most of that load which in itself is quit impressive as she is 9 months pregnant. On top off general parent requirements for a 2 and a half year old, and the spousal requirements to ensure a happy wife and in-utero child, we are busy. Automme is busy at work, I'm busy at work, and we're both busy nesting. I have had a project going on since last summer to landscape the back yard. We built a deck, and fence, we have a new driveway coming in a few weeks, and most importantly..did I mention, a new baby coming in a few weeks also. So, at the end of the day, I pick up Oliver and we go outside and play for a few hours before dinner, bath, reading, and bed. After dinner, Automme has usually been doing the last three while I go into the back yard to work.

The back yard has been quite a project. Mostly to create room to sun and play on the side of a hill. I won't go into it too much, but is basically, the new deck, a rock wall, a new flat yard, another rock wall, and a pond/waterfall. So, we're already seeing the benefits with Oliver playing in the yard, and looking at the rock wall and waterfall out our own back yard. The cost has been the time and work that it has required. This is summer work and summer isn't that long up here so its quite the hurry.

So, I'll purposely sidetrack this for a minute......Alaska is full of wildlife. We have moose in our back yard and all over, bald eagles, bear, fish, sea otter, beluga, humpback, and orca, ....etc..etc. I mentioned the sealife for a reason. Last weekend we got to go out into Prince William Sound thanks to our friend Ted "The Lonewolf" Barnett. Ted, as busy as he is, has found time for the last 6 or 7 years to take me and my friend Krag out about once a year with his son Cody and/or daughter "Bossy" or "Daughter". You seriously can not believe it unless you have gone as to how beautiful it is out there. The landscape, weather, wildlife, and water must make it one of the most spectacular places on earth. We also harvest quit a bit on these trips. Generally we drop some shrimp pots, fish for a species or two of salmon, go out to a halibut hole, and round it out a the oyster farm on Perry Island. This years trip was no exception except for a few things. The first day we dropped the pots and went for some salmon (skunked on salmon). We then went to Perry Island for some Oysters for dinner. When we got to the Perry Island Oyster farm, something was wrong. The oyster farmers skiff wasn't there and two people were running into the house. It turns out, the oyster farmer had lost his engine in his boat the night before and spent some time in the rain and water trying to get it back. He had called the Coast Guard because he was severely hypothermic. We put hand warmers all over his body, started a fire, and fed him warm Gatorade for a few hours until he stopped shivering. He most likely wouldn't have made it thought the night in the state he was in. We called the Coast Guard to tell them he was stabilized and spend the night outside his house in a tent eating oysters and telling stories.

The next day, we departed, but left our tents there. The next day we left. We went out by Night Island. We saw humpback whales, orca, and sea otters. Porpoises road the wake of our boat for a mile our so on our way to limit on halibut and fill our shrimp baskets. Kind of a nice day.

Okay, here I'll try to come around the bend to the point of the story. Out there, we often play jokes and kid each other a lot. In a loss for better terminology, I'll just say its a lot of "sh1t giving". So, for some reason that was funny but didn't make much sense we started calling Krag "Little Billy". My friend Krag, in retaliation happened to remember an old nickname he thought funny to call me. I manage a large commercial office building and he thought it funny to start calling me Mr. Furley. This is after the quircky apartment manager on Three's Company. Who knows, maybe he's "Jack".

And finally, to tie it together and put it to rest. Well, when I returned home on Sunday I was really excited to see my son. I pulled into the house and he came downstairs to meet me. He ran up to me yelling "Daddy Daddy" and gave me a big old hug. I didn't even change out of my fishing boots and nastly cloths, I gave Automme a peck of a kiss (she was happy to see me, but happens to have a heightened sense of smell right now). Oliver and Mr. Furley went into the new back yard and played on the lawn, went to see the fish in the pond, played on the swing, and ran around having fun. I started to putter a bit and looked over at Oliver. Oliver reached down to touch something in the lawn and it jumped scaring him quite a bit. I ran over there and found the frog on the lawn and we started to chase it together. I don't think I've ever had more fun. "Here comes the cheesy ending".......All the the wildlife I had just seen and the experiences and fun, that frog and that chase with my son topped it all.

The End.

Post Script......we are expecting a new baby here in a few weeks or so. I expect the frequency of my posts to become more dismal. If you find yourself hard up for Circosta content, please see my brothers blog or reread my archived masterpieces on this site.