boats and boating and boatbuilding

Color me wrong about surviving the Spring Flood of 2010 with minimal fuss.

My older sister being present at the time, I maintained a stoic demeanor when I found the blueprints for my skiff moldering in the corner of Ma's basement.

To wit:

I built some beautiful little skiffs from plans purchased from an online designer. I built and demo'd one, then built and sold another, then built and sold a matched pair before losing my shop to a brother's ridiculous purchase of an overpriced high-performance vintage muscle car a few years ago. To make a long story short, one of my brothers had his midlife crisis 20 years early and bought a 600hp 70's cock rocket, then parked said cock rocket in the middle of my lofting space, never to move again, to this date.

Anyhow, no more skiffs, and now, really no more skiffs, as blueprints aren't water-soluble.

So, without too much fuss beyond my internal turmoil and some acid-reflux, I threw away my skiff plans, and also a bunch of crapola. I am the youngest son of a long line of packrats.

Tomorrow's a long day. While I had originally hoped to buy a kayak tomorrow for myself, I instead got to pay some unexpected dental bills for my family today, which is almost as good, except, of course, for me, the only guy with good teeth who is now distinctly kayakless for another year, but is paying for the dentist to send his kid to Harvard. So seeing as my original plans are already smoked, I will work on filling up a dumpster with 40 years of Christmas ornaments, paintings, old unused books, couches, chairs and such.

Should be awful. I'm packing my hip flask, and filling it with some 20-year old single malt. If I'm going to wallow in the wet crap my family didn't need but couldn't bear to part with, I'm going to do it stinking of wet basement AND expensive scotch, dammit.

Hell, it's not like I'll get to go out in the damn kayak I can't buy, anyhow.