The kids and I worked all weekend on getting this boat ready for Jeff to hop into it and hit the lake when he comes home. It came home from the shop on Thursday, all mechanically sound, but was still full of cat fur (and pee – ewww) and a whole season’s worth of red dirt.

So, first we washed. And washed. And washed. Seamus gamely got under the bow and scrubbed the carpet where the cat had been living while I washed under the cushions. I’m not sure that they’ve ever been cleaned, at least not since he’s had it, and they were due.

I brought in the cover, which also reeked of pee, and had to sew up the rips incurred by my own knuckleheadedness before I could throw that in the washer. You see boats travelling with the covers on all the time, but apparently theirs are less flappy than this one, or maybe they don’t have sharp corners on the insides to rub.

It’s really a small boat, without room for three of us to work inside it, so I set John to the photography. He had strict directions to not take pictures of my ass, at which he failed miserably.

By the time it was dry, it was really too hot to think about going back outside and waxing it, so we saved that for this morning. Wax on, wax off, and both of the kids had a hand in it this time, although John was still being the crazy photographer.

Some of his photos were really quite good.

Some were a little sillier, but it was still fun to download them today and see the world through his eyes. Maybe that kid needs a camera too, but I’ve been letting him use my good one, and I’m afraid he’s become a bit spoiled.

But we ended up with a shiny clean boat, and now we all want to go out on the lake. Grapevine says that Jeff’s thinking of selling it, and all of this work has made me think that I might want to buy it, but I know the rule, and I know exactly how mucha pain in the ass a boat can be. Still, it’s sort of the perfect size for my little family, and it does have enough power to teach the kids to ski. I was younger than Seamus when I first got up on double skis, and about John’s age when I learned to drive a boat.  This bears thinking on.