It’s Been HOW LONG???

Yeah, yeah, I know… My blogs have been sorely neglected ever since we bought the baby. Ok, it’s not really a baby, but the hat shop has taken up every spare moment of time and ounce of energy Tam and I can muster, much like a real baby would do to brand new parents, so…

Here’s a summation of what’s been happening:

We bought the shop. We’ve been working like dogs with only one day off every seven or eight weeks. Still, it beats the hell out of my regular job, believe me. So far none of the hats nor customers have threatened me, sworn at me, or thrown furniture at me in an attempt to cause harm. While I’m aware that could change at any time, I don’t see it happening in the near future. Of course, there are some customers who have driven me to the point of wanting to throw things, swear, or shove their sorry asses out the door, but I have managed to restrain myself from doing such things.

It isn’t always easy. Especially when I’m chewed out for “being rude” when I tell a person we have no public restrooms. I wasn’t rude, we were busy and I didn’t have the opportunity to draw the person a map to the public facilities just three doors away, and saying "No, sorry," isn’t rude. Or when someone is complaining when I don’t have any plain beanies, yet I have hooks of them all over the place, yet they aren’t plain beanies like the one he’s holding in his hand, yet… it IS like that one…

One of the lovely parts about becoming part of a community is meeting the other area merchants and getting to know them from a whole different perspective. Talking to a shopkeeper when you’re a customer is much different than when you’re chatting merchant to merchant. Plus, there are perks… Perks like fresh crawdads…

Ok, to be totally honest with you, it’s been so long since I’ve had crawdads, I'm pretty sure I was still in the single-digit stage of life. I barely remember my mother fishing a few of them out of a stream and I got squeamish. I’m pretty sure she gave me a bit (after she cooked them), but I can’t remember. Now, I could be thinking of a totally different crustacean, one my mother and father referred to as a crayfish. Looked like a miniature lobster, about three inches long and very dark brown. The ones Tam and I were given to sample were considerably larger.

The fish market owner told us how to eat them and we took home our sample of four and went at them.

Much messiness ensued.

“Just snap off the tail,” he said. “Snap off the tail and pull it apart here,” he said, “then eat the meat. There isn’t anything worth eating in the claws, they’re too small.”

Just. Snap… Yeah, that was the easy part. Getting the rest of the shell apart was a trial and a half. Those buggers are tough (no duh!) and I nearly lost a few fingers attempting to gain a morsel of meat.

I won’t even mention the vein, because that was so disgusting.

Anyway, somewhere I read, or heard, or overheard someone talking about how they eat crawdads in the South. Something about ripping off their heads and just pulling out the goodie from there. I don’t buy that for one minute, but I would love to hear someone with first-hand knowledge share their crawdad moment with me.

Because I think I missed something, and damn it, I aim to get ALL the pieces.