zen moment of the month: hunting

It's been over two years since I last held a shotgun in my hands and walked the fields of Kansas in search for pheasant.  Two years doesn't seem that long, but coming from a family that goes hutning and fishing like it's a job, two years is an extremely long time.

I didn't go out hunting at all last year, even though my parents were so kind and bought me a fishing and hunting liscense combo, because at the time of opening weekend for pheasant rolled around, I was using a wheelchair to get around.  There was no way in hell my mom would even think about letting me take a two hour drive out to the farm to walk in misery for a weekend.  Although I was upset I couldn't go, I know deep down inside that it was the best choice we made. I woudn't have been able to last half a day out in the field if I had gone.

I went out to the farm with my dad and my uncle to give it one last chance since it was the closing weekend for pheasant and squirrel.  I hadn't been able to go out in November for the opening because of the show and other things going on, it just made it impossible to take off of life for three days.  Unfortunately, we didn't evens see a single pheasant while we were out there.  It was pretty disheartening since it was the first time I had been out int he field since I had my hip replaced.  We did see a few deer though, and a couple of squirrels that we managed to lose sight of before we could get out of the truck and get to a place where we could have a clear shot at them.

When we realized that we weren't going to get any squirrels from the property down by the creek, we set up a small target on one of the dead trees that had fallen down during a storm a couple of years ago.  Dad let me shoot his .22 revolver, the one that I've been working with a lot over the last month; my uncle I think was a bit surprised at how well I could shoot, since I managed to get a bullseye on my second shot.  Then, my uncle was ever so nice to let me shoot his semi-automatic 9 milimeter.  I didn't do too terribly bad since that was the first time I shot a 9 mil at a target, and only the second time shooting a 8 mil in general.

Although we didn't get any game on our trip out there, or to even shoot my shotgun, I still had a lot of fun.  I enjoyed being around my dad and uncle, listening to them banter back in forth retelling stories of when they were kids.  I also really enjoyed the simple act of walking down the road, blocking for my uncle who was in the field.  Riding in the backseat of the truck as we drove nearly every road in Pratt county, I was in awe of how simple it was out there compared to the area around Mulvane.  My favorite part of the entire trip was when we went to the old creek bed that had dried up for the winter and made our own shooting range.  My dad asked me to go to the truck and load his revolver.  He's never asked me to do that before, it made me so incredibly happy to know that he trusts me with his beloved .22 revolver.

Link of the Day: Adventures of 2012 I haven't been on the interwebs too terribly much over the last week, so I don't have any new gems for you to go visit, so I'm sharing my adventure blog.  My goal is to document 2012 in a way that is special since this year has a lot of special things in store for me.

days until MDT: 6
days until Valentine's Day: 16
days until graduation: 110

BEDA 6: weird day

Today was such a weird day.  I got up at 4:30 so I could head to the lake with my dad and go fishing while it was still some what cool, only to get woken up to lightening and my joints hurting which obviously meant it was raining.  Though I guess, since I hadn't even bother to look outside, it was actually pouring.  Which don't get me wrong, as badly as I wanted to go fishing I could deal with a nice torrential down pour considering how dry our spring and summer has been. We needed it.  Mom was still nice enough to make us cinnamon rolls, so once dad got here we chowed down like we were getting ready to head out for a long day of fishing.  Two hours later I went back to bed and slept for what seemed like forever.

My mom woke me up once again about one in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to go with my dad to Wichita to Gander Mountain.  I didn't know why we were going to Gander in the first place but I agreed since I hadn't been in this summer I wanted to see what new stocks they had and to see if I could find that turkey shot gun I had found a couple of years ago, though I'm positive I may never find it again...I eventually got up and showered and went to pick my dad up at four.

The trip to Wichita was tense but uneventful, unless you count too much road construction.  Wichita has always had major construction somewhere in the city and we always end up getting stuck in it wherever we go.  In at Gander, I didn't really find anything that caught my eye except for a man that looked strangely similar to my brother, except he was extremely rude, and a nice chair that I would have sat in for the rest of my life if my dad hadn't ushered me back to the hunting section of the store.

The thing about Gander is I usually find all this stuff that I really like but it's so freaking expensive. I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother asking for anything from Gander because I know the answer will be no and that I don't have enough money to purchase it from my own bank account.  The price of ammunition has sky rocketed even over the last few months, I know it was expensive before but now it's just outrageous.  A box of ammo for my .22 that I was looking at was $54.00, I nearly had a heart attack on the spot. Needless to say we usually only go to Gander to drool every once in a while and left empty handed. Side note, I wore one of my Bass Pro Shops shirt into Gander, I felt like a beast.


And then, of course, I got a random text message from Jake, someone on the debate team, telling me a bunch of the team was getting together to work on debate stuff and just hang out as a team.  So after I got home and then went back out to do a couple errands for my mom I went to Jake's.  Ended up, since I arrived a bit later than everyone else, that we were just watching Star Wars and talking about random things, some of it pertained to debate but most of it didn't.  It was fun, I love being around my debate team, it's always a good time.

Came home early per request of my mom, which I was okay with because my joints were starting to hurt again.  I really hope it starts to rain again, so I can sleep peacefully tonight, but I want it to stop in time for dad and I to go fishing tomorrow.

And I just now realized, that after writing all this I haven't explained why I thought to day was so weird.  I just felt like I did a bunch of random things that was productive but yet I slept nearly all day...