Crab Man Metamorphosis

The local crabbing industry is a curiously constructed fleet of boats of all shapes and sizes, some owned by local rough necks, others by rich dudes in different time zones. They are loosely regulated from within by collective strikes, when they all impatiently wait to run their gear for an increase in price from the market. Other regulations are imposed by governmental laws and restrictions.
Some crews will run others' gear (harvest crab from another boat's pots, and bait!), and break the strike to harvest what crab are out in the water, whatever the quality or price. It's a pirate ship fleet, in the waters around here from December to Spring!

The three man crew aboard the Joyce Marie had a short season this time around.
The starting date was pushed some twenty days back and last Thursday, February the 10th was the date when the boat owner decided that the season was over for them. The income from the boat wasn't generating enough to fund the insurance.
A usually lucrative time for Fred, this year crabbing was a disappointment, to be put simply.
The few days on their small boat when the tides and weather allowed the guys to do their thing offered few crab, long hours and tons and tons of boobing.

We are glad it is over. Fred took a couple of days in the cocoon of Jack Daniels and computer Risk to change from Crab Man to Fred.
Fred has regular hours of operation, usually from five am to nine pm.
He no longer smells like the lingering aroma of fish guts bait, and he is rested and out going. Making friends with the locals is very easy and he will quickly have a schedule full of "jobs" to synchronize.  Today he is working at Bradley's. Bradley has a home and landscape design firm in Seattle, but purchased a home in Oysterville to restore. While the home renovations click along, he has been expertly developing the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. I will have pictures later on because I can do little to describe all that is going on round the home of Bradley in text.

Fred stays busy hauling and spreading mulch over the grounds, building all kinds of fences and structures, paving walkways, tilling new flower patches and always planting, always, ALWAYS!
Usually I would tag along with Fred and MJ (yes, he is glued to his man-buddy's side again!) to Bradley's to help with projects, but Friday night's crab cooking mishap keeps me home with a sick child.

Nine crab, a year's supply of Cod, three functioning burners (60 year old effing stove...$90 to replace!), chatting guests in the living room with Jack Daniels, and I am juggling.
Literally juggling boiling pots of water and oil, crab, batter, collander, oven and conversation.
And a cocktail. Why do I never give the booze it's proper respect?!
And Maggie is tripping me at every step. NO DOGS IN THE KITCHEN!

I tend to duck out of the whole entertaining bit in favor of hiding in the kitchen to selectively listen to the conversation, and have my own with my self in my head about the things I can understand, like mixing and heat adjustments. I avoid the tight rope of socialization by sipping attention altering elixir in my kitchen cave.
I make trips out to the living room as people try to include me in the conversation, which is only polite, and become dizzy and more and more scatterbrained, trying to perform a translation of the situation so as to not take things the wrong way, which I do too much, and keep from not interrupting people when they speak while also not providing input at the appropriate times, which I also do too much.
I'm swimming in my head, juggling, spinning the plates. I am busy, I am dancing between hiding and engaging and I am accomplishing the task of cooking a snack, and crab before they get not-fresh. I convinced that I am doing it right. Convinced that it is all necessary, and that I need to do it all right now.

I think I have written on this blog about the importance of fessing up to your responsibilities. I forgot about the spinning plates that always spin. I forgot about the person I am when no one is looking. I put the performance of what I think I should be before the person I am and I forgot to be the Dog's Buddy.

So Maggie gets scalded when I trip over her with a crab on it's way to the sink after his twenty minute sauna, and I have just enough booze in me to make it the absolute worst thing anyone could fathom happening. I scream and cry and scare everyone off while applying cold water to my dog in the bathroom. I wish someone would whip me and leave me out side for the night for not seeing this coming. Since no one else thinks this logic is correct, I just become more hysterical and not fun to live with.

Maggie is freaked the heck out, but she is drinking water and eating and being a very good pup.
Her burns will be painful and long to heal. The trauma is real, and trails behind like exhaust fumes. I am so sorry, Maggie-wag. Her tail still wiggles, she will get better.

Life experience tells me that I often bite off way more than I can chew. It feels good to surround myself with spinning plates full of activity, creativity, movement but it never seems to get less mortifying when the plates fall.
I feel like I am really doing something when I have piles of  different things to show for myself when I am done. But so often, I fail to bring my idea of what it should be into the world and call myself bad names. Or I give up when the speed and precision of a thing cannot last for long, I invariably lose interest, also that good feeling of accomplishing anything.
It is interesting the way it looks from an analytical perspective, as oppose to the emotional one I habitually use.

I see this in the garden path, and clearing project from last summer. I would focus on the garden path with Fred and the work would move along rapidly, and it was my favorite project. Then, as Fred began to work on other things and was confident in my ability to finish the path and clearing, the finished work came slower to me, and I quickly lost interest and fought myself everyday I was out there.
I see this also in my past modes of employment. I get the job and learning the job is exciting and interesting, but the longer I am there, seeing the flaws and difficulties in the system, feeling when the praise wears off and doing an impeccable job goes from appreciated to expected, the gas comes out of the  balloon and suddenly the damn thing is worthless.

Nobody was making me wiz around the kitchen, tipsy and halfway horrified of a social faux pas which had not yet happened, or that had happened years ago.
Fred would have been happy to have fish fry for dinner and drinks with friends, then help me cook the crab when things calmed down.
I could have surrendered to the social atmosphere, to the slow relaxed gathering. I chose to avoid what was going on, and retreat into my own world, where a pile of accomplishments are calling urgently.
  
The days go by and I try to keep the animal house moderately dustbunny less, I cook the meals and try to keep up on the dishes. There is definitely a rhythm and plenty of things to do to keep busy. Life is different from the way I assumed it would be, the demands I'm faced with are not necessarily ones I would ever imagine they would be, but why should that keep me from loosening up and enjoying the ebb and flow of the now?
If I look at my life with the critical eye of my younger hysterical self, I see a clumsy failure.
If I look at my life with the accepting eye of my wise, ageless self, I see a person quite different from the one I expect and that is acceptable.

La Que Sabe, the one who knows, Old Wild Woman, does not judge her heart with hate, or trauma. She knows these things burn through good canvas.
I may not have fulfilled the immature and uneducated notions of the imaginary future I've spend my adolescence preparing for myself, but I'm doing life now. It's different.

There is a Star Trek marathon playing this afternoon. Maggie and I will be watching it together.
I will clean the house and try to start re programing my thought patterns by watching them closely.
I think I will make a potato salad and stuff a cod fillet with crab, shallot and dill.
I will definitely be grateful for my dog, and all of the little things that make it possible for me to do what it is that I do, one thing at a time from now on, let's hope.