Recharging

Spent this weekend crawling in the headspace, making things right (Rather, as right as they ever get up there). I actually sat down and did some writing on Bridge of The Broken, which I have been absent from for about two weeks.

I have said before that I rarely remember my dreams. Saturday morning was one exception. I woke twice in the early-morning hours, vivid recollections of both ringing through my head. One was a horror, the other sexual. Both are still bothersome. The latter dream kept me from returning to sleep at O-Dark-Thirty, so I spent some time in the living room reading.

Regardles of my subconcious' gymnastics, I spent a pleasant Saturday with my daughter, goofing off on the computer and generally basking in the kid's glow.

Sunday morning was raining cats and dogs, a problem as I was to go hunting with Doc Chris. We drove through even heavier rains to get to Suisun Marsh. I was concerned as my rain-gear is pretty pathetic, and I do not like getting my feet wet all that much, not to mention my great-grandfather's gun. On our arrival at the club house it started to rain harder. As we stood on the back porch, waiting for our rental dog (The hunting demi-god, Rebel), it continued to rain even more heavily.

Doc Chris, who is a generally positive guy, said, "I'm sure it'll stop raining for us."

I looked at him.

"You have to be positive."

I shook my head, "I am positive. Positive it's raining like fuck out there."

We waited a bit, chatted with the kennel-mistress, and picked Rebel up. A few more minutes of jaw-jacking and we drove out to our field.

The skies didn't exactly part, but the rain eased, becoming a light mist. It was 0817 when I left my phone in the truck.

Rebel charged out the gate and immediately went on point. Bird up, Doc puts it down. Rebel begins to retrieve the bird to hand. There is a ruckus in the next field over. Their bird flies into our field. Thirty yard crossing shot. Doc takes it with a nice shot. The neighboring hunters' dog, Greta, picks the bird up and begins to retrieve, but then puts it down on command.

To cut a short story shorter, it took forty minutes for us to get all eight birds remaining on our card. We were done hunting by nine, and I was home by ten AM. My feet barely had time to get wet.

Quite the feat.

I cleaned my great-grandfather's LC Smith shotgun when I got home, prepping it for off-season storage, reflecting on why I so enjoy hunting. Later, I bragged to my father about what an excellent day we'd had. We had quite the conversation about it.

All in all, a damn fine weekend. I am refreshed, for the most part.