Salmon to Watch Over Me

I used to send postcards to Sarah that were all from her imaginary lover, Raoul. Raoul was also the father of Coyotito, their imaginary child. Over the years, Raoul traveled around the world, professing his love from afar, & Coyotito got really good at soccer.

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The first postcard in the series was particularly entertaining for two reasons. One, the image was of a salmon in a bonnet pushing a baby carriage. Two, I sent it to her when she was living in E______ with her parents. Her mom would pick up the mail on her way home from the library, & Sarah would usually end up at home a bit later. One afternoon, Sarah got home to a slightly frosty interrogation.
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"And who is Raoul?" queried the mother of all mothers. (Or should that be the Mother of all Mothers? If you've met Sarah's mom, then you'll know what I mean.) (And don't get me wrong, I love Sarah's mom.) To this day, I still don't know if Sar's mom thought the whole thing is as funny as we did.

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Have you guessed the secret word in the above ramble yet? It's SALMON!

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We were in Salmon Arm for the long weekend, to join the rest of the extended family in celebrating Gramma & Grampa's 60th wedding anniversary. The date isn't actually until Nov. 19th, but at 59 years, 10 months, & 29 days, they've got me beat solid. As much as I try, I just can't imagine being married for twice as long as I've currently been alive. And I'm very happy to be married. It's just to be married for so long... wow. It was wonderful to see everyone, and we took some great photos, but they're all of family so I'm not posting them because I know I don't mind my pic on my blog, but who can say about anyone else's feelings.

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The other thing we took pictures of was the salmon run! It was pretty astounding. And, contrary to my fears, I was not skeeved out by the fish - they were fascinating, although the dead ones smelled very very very bad. And I'm not posting the photos the man took because I don't think I have enough strength to overcome the gravitational field of the couch when I walk past it to get the camera. Instead, courtesy of the intarweb, here is a picture of two salmon at the culmination of their run, when they quit running & instead swim very hard to stay in one place. The good looking salmon is the girl.

You can't tell? They're both girls, actually. The boys have these bizarre hooked jaws/snouts. (Can a fish have a snout?)

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Actually, yes, at least one can. The Fishy-Baby is now about the size of a large avocado (bigger than a pear), and his little nose is finished growing. He's working on toenails this week.

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I'm going to go & work on an experiment involving my gravitational forcefield joining that of the couch, & also possibly dessert.