Send lawyers, guns and money

I just have a feeler that it is going to be one of those days.

As I was puttering around this morning, I noticed that there were patches of blue in the sky for the first time in a week or so, so I decided that today would be an outside day.  I had big intentions of taking a boat ride up the river and getting back to nature, but evidently nature has other plans.  In the last hour it has clouded back up and gotten gloomy again, and the air is beginning to have a damp feel to it.  I still may get a wild hair up my arse.  Depends on how things play out around here.

The first couple of years that I lived out here, there was kind of a cycle.  During the summers, the place just sort of sang with activity-kids splashing and playing in the river, boat motors, three or four country music stations vying for supremacy, and sun and alcohol soaked mothers screeching at the top of their lungs for their children to "Stop hitting him" and "Dammit, I said get out of that water and come up here and EAT" and "I TOLD you to stop hitting him" and "HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU TO STOP HITTING HIM!?!"  The winters were different though.  For the most part, I was the only one out here.  If I heard anything, it was the sound of birds on their way to someplace warm, or wind whistling up from under the houseboat through the cracks in the floorboards.  Houseboats were camps to most people around here, not homes.  If they came out at all during the winter, it was usually just older men bent on fishing.  Nice and quiet and peaceful.

I guess it is a sign of the times that that has all changed.  This year, every single houseboat on this side of the Shingle Mill is occupied.  I wish I could say their owners had all realized what a winter paradise this river actually is and had decided to ride it out, but sadly, I can't.  It seems that almost all of them have been rented out, some with different tenants every week or so. YAY.  Not just renters, but TRANSIENT renters!  The words "It's the economy, stupid" keep running through my brain.  

Most of these new neighbors are PARTY PEOPLE.  And today, my friends, is Turkey Shoot day. So far, we have party people, guns and beer (the beer is a given-where there are party people, there is beer).  Now, add to that that I just found out that there will probably be a new 80' long houseboat (new to the 'hood, not a 'new' houseboat) being moved in today RIGHT NEXT TO MINE.  Do you get the picture?  Do you understand how many EXPERT ENGINEERS under the influence of alcohol and armed with guns are going to be guiding this monstrosity in?  I'm torn. I don't know if I want to stay and be a witness, or if I want to get the hell out of Dodge and hope my home is still here when I get back.  And I have to wonder what is going to be parked next to me when I return if I do go.  The Innocent Bystander is going to jump up and down and shit popcorn if he comes home to something like this:

Lagniappe: