I am a 38yo wife, mother, friend & sister. I have been married for 17 years, and I have two children: Music (formerly Karate Kid) my 14yo son, and Drama Queen, my 12yo daughter.
Saturday was The Hubster's company float trip. I use the term "float" very loosely. I don't know why they always wait until mid-August to schedule them. Apparently the powers-that-be that schedule the trips are the same ones who skip the floating to supervise the food. If they tried to float just once, they'd realize that the water that used to be deep and moving at a pretty good pace in early June is now ankle deep and barely moving. This is Oklahoma, people. Land of little summer rain. It's hard enough to float in a canoe, but we always get a raft. The raft always slows the whole process, but when the water is so shallow that we have to carry/drag the raft, those 6 miles feel like 20. All-in-all, we were only in the raft for 1 of the 6 miles.
You know how hanging wall paper tests the bonds of matrimony? Well, floating did it for us this year. We've been many times before and never had any problems, so I don't know what it was about this year. If I didn't paddle, I was supposed to. If I paddled, I wasn't supposed to. At one point I suggested that The Hubster get in the back of the raft so he could steer us since I couldn't do it. Remember that. It's important to this story.
After bouts of paddling/not paddling, The Hubster was still sitting on the very front of the raft with his feet hanging into the water in front of him. All of sudden he just fell out of the raft and into the water. I, of course, being the good wife that I am, laughed my head off. Until he came up, that is. He was fighting mad because he had hit a stump under the water that had branches shooting out all over. His foot had snagged in one of the branches and pulled him under. It got him good enough that he tore the top of his aqua socks. Yes, aqua socks. Sexy. *rowr*
That must have been his undoing because even though I was paddling, he began yelling at me to paddle, why couldn't I steer the raft, etc. After I gave him my two cents worth, I bailed. I decided right then and there that I was walking/swimming/whatever-ing the rest of the way. We probably had 2 or 3 miles left. Do you know how hard it is to be dignified when slogging through ankle-deep water, slipping on slime-covered rocks? Or marching on the thousands of shifting rocks on the shore? All while wearing a swimsuit. Gah. I actually had two different sets of floaters offer me a ride with them the rest of the way. I declined. I had a point to prove, dangit!
In the midst of all of this fun, I had forgotten to bring any good river shoes. The only ones I had with me were the flip flops that look like straw on the bottom and thin fabric strips to hold them on. Have you ever put straw in water? Do you know what it does? It doesn't hold it's shoe-shape, that's for sure. I HAD to wear them, though, because walking on those rocks was killing my feet! I tried off and on to do without but always had to put them back on. I found a sturdy flip flop floating down the river at one point and scooped it up in case one of my shoes broke. Once they broke (you didn't doubt they would, did you?), Karate Kid actually offered me his strap-on sandals on two different parts of the journey. I love that boy! Why didn't I wear the shoe I had picked up? Because since I was determined to walk, The Hubster and the raft had already passed me by. I could see him but couldn't get to him.
What seemed like 3 days later, we finally made it to the stopping point! The Hubster, who stays mad all of 5 minutes and was already over it, noticed me limping and pointed out another flip flop on the shore and reminded me I still had one in the raft. Believe it or not, I had a right shoe and a left shoe, both black flip flops. The only problem was that the right shoe was a woman's semi-nice shoe and the left was a man's very casual shoe. And it was about 3 sizes too big.
I promptly forgot all about them being different, so happy was I to have any kind of protection for my sore, sore feet (I ended up with stone bruises, and they still hurt today!). Once on the bus to take us back to the office/vehicles/bathrooms, a woman sitting across the aisle from me asked how I ended up with two different shoes.
Because pride goeth before the fall, baby!
Posted @
10:18 AM ~
6 comments
