When Junior and I met, one of the things I thought was, “Woohoo! Someone to cook for!”

So of course, we both promptly gained 20 pounds. I was really feeling it this hunting season. I was in the worst shape of my life, but too busy to do anything about it, what with the getting married and buying a house things. We’ve both been comtemplating going on a diet, but that enforced one in December really had me bitter about it. I do not like to diet, no I don’t.  And you can’t make me, so there.

But someone at Junior’s work signed him up to be on their Biggest Loser team. After three months, the team with the most weight loss all gets treadmills. Seems like that could come in handy earlier in the game, but whatever.

Junior jumped in with both feet. He’s been admiring a friend doing Weight Watchers, and that’s the one my mother always pushes on me, so we had some stuff floating around. I figured that I’ve always had a hard time dieting alone, so to make it easier on him, I’d do it with him. Besides, I’m fat too, and I sure wouldn’t like to be the only fat one in the family.

The first week was OK. We each lost a pound or two. I was (and remain) bitter that as a man, he gets to eat so much more than I do and still lose weight. I showed him though! I cleverly went out and got myself the stomach flu! I was flat on my back for five days, hurling effluent out of the major orifices and consequently not eating either. I lost 12 pounds! Way to get a jump start on a diet!

Of course, it didn’t last. When I could look food in the eye again, I gained back a few of those pounds, but not all of them. I didn’t go overboard with eating again after my recovery either.

That’s when it got hard. I hit that “I hate to diet” wall. All we ever talked about was the stinkin’ diet, which I hated. I hated feeling hungry all the time, I hated that I was dreaming about things like pizza, and I hated life. I blew up at him one day, and the talking about it dropped off considerably, but then I got to feeling bad about blowing up. I couldn’t win.

Except by the next day, I must have passed that hungry plateau. I was actually feeling OK about it. What I was eating didn’t feel like deprivation any more. I started to get into it. I realized that I can’t do it without exercising, so I went out and bought a couple of pieces of clothes that fit and a couple of new videos.

I’m starting slowly on the exercising. I used to be a crack hand at yoga, but the beginner pilates DVD is kicking my ass. I’m keeping with it though, and will soon expand into something aerobic. I bought a video for that too, even though I’ve been hopelessly uncoordinated all of my life. Who knows, maybe I’ll rejoin the gym, but I’m going to see if I can stick to the concept for a while on my own first. It’s cheaper.

I don’t know that I have a number goal. I probably should. But I want to not look like a fat slob for my hot younger husband, and I want to be able to get to those bear trees without falling over for lack of air. I was getting too fat to do things that I like to do, and that won’t do at all. So, three weeks in, I guess it’s a go.

Last night we were just sitting down to dinner when I got a phone call from my friend Marv. He said, “Jules, I need you,” in a tone that made me think someone had died.

Well, someone hadn’t, but something definitely had. He and Connie were on their way to visit their son in Texas when his Ford took a dump on him going up the Tehachapi mountains. Really long-time readers might remember that I’ve had to go get him in the middle of the night once before, from Pismo several years ago when his transmission took a dump. That was an all-night trip, and I was close to hallucinating from exhaustion by the time we got home.

It was his transmission again, even though he’d had it rebuilt even sturdier and wasn’t even putting much of a load on it. I thought that at least he was closer and at least I wasn’t alone this time. We only had one kid with us, John, and at fourteen he’s old enough to spend a few hours at home by himself. Junior called in a vacation day to work and I serendipitously had the next day off anyway, so we went over to Marv’s to grab his car trailer for what I thought would be a seven hour trip, max.

We got the car trailer all right, but the lights didn’t work and by now it was fully dark. Junior took things apart after figuring out that a loose wire in the trailer plug had shorted all of our truck’s fuses. Wire fixed and fuses replaced and a quick pickup now had us an hour behind.

When we got to them, they’d been towed off the pass to Bakersfield, into a nicely lighted gas station. Marv’s put a winch on the front of the trailer since our last adventure, so getting the truck on it was fairly straightforward even if it barely fits. We were back on the road by about 10:30 and headed home.

But just north of Bakersfield, we heard a “pop.” One of the tires on the trailer had blown, and we didn’t have a spare. Marv hadn’t remembered to tell us to get it and where it was, and we hadn’t seen it to remember ourselves when we were loading up things. And by now it was 11 o’clock, and of course there aren’t any tire shops open that time of day. It was a three-hour drive to go home and get the spare, and another one to come back to put it on. We unhitched the trailer and put the tire in our truck optimistically hoping to come across a place open late, leaving Marv in his truck to keep it from being stolen off the side of the highway.

We’d discussed AAA coverage, but sicne that seems to be limited to towing, initially dismissed it. I finally realized that at least they might be able to refer us to a 24-hour tire shop, and called. I spent, no joke, an hour on the phone on hold while they dicked around with trying to see if I had coverage for a trailer tire. I could not make myself understood that I didn’t need a tow truck; I needed a phone number to a tire place. I know there are roadside services for the commercial truckers, so finally I got through to the operator’s head that that’s what I needed.

She gave me some phone numbers as my phone died and I started calling them. The one name I recognized, no answer. The next guys answered, but shot down my rush of optimism when he told me that, “Sorry honey, we only carry commercial truck sizes.” But he knew of a shop that might, so I called that one. Got his answering service who forwarded me through to him, waking him up. It was a large amount of money for him to come out and fix it on the road, but since we had the tire with us and were mobile, we suggested bringing it to him. That was slightly cheaper, and he agreed to meet us at his shop way on the opposite side of Bakersfield.

We flew back by Marvin, letting him know what was up, and found the shop, on the Taft Highway in a not-so-nice neighborhood. After sitting there for over half an hour, this adventure was getting really stale. I called him back and sure, enough, he’d fallen back asleep. Another fifteen minutes and finally our savior pulled into the lot beside us and opened the shop. What a nice guy he was too; I doubt that I’d have been so friendly at 2 AM.

We finally got back to Marv and the tire back on with a jack that was starting to bend from the weight, and were back on the road by 2:30. It’s a good thing Junior’s a night person; he’d at least had some sleep that day and it was his usual time to be awake. Me, I curled up against his coat and fell asleep in the back seat, mouth open and neck crinked. I got maybe an hour of fitful sleep, so I wasn’t quite up for 24 hours this time. We pulled in and dropped Marv and Connie off at 5:30, just a hair before my normal alarm time. I hadn’t meant to leave John home alone all night, but he was fine. I was housesitting by myself at that age, so there’s no reason he wouldn’t have been OK, but I was worried. It’s a good thing Seamus was at camp; I wouldn’t have been able to leave them both alone for that long.

Junior and I slept in, but I had a job to do at noon today. Junior’s off with Marvin hauling the truck back to the shop and I’m contemplating a nap. It’s not exactly how I wanted to spend my day off, but it’s going to have to do. These are some of the friends that I will drop everything to help, and who have done the same for me. I’m incredibly lucky to have found a husband who will also do that for my friends and not just his. But I’m not encouraging any more trips to Bakersfield in the near future.

Seamus has expressed an interest in taxidermy. He’s a really artistic kid and he loves hunting, so it seems like a natural combination for him. Even before touching a knife, he thought that he might want to go to college for it. I’m not so sure there’s a taxidermy major anywhere, but there sure as hell are some good wildlife management and other outdoorsy majors, and I’ll take any excuse to get that kid engaged in his own future.

So for Christmas, I talked to our taxidermist friend, who gave me some recommendations and said that he’d be happy to show him a thing or two. Mike’s already got a 15-year-old under his wing and he’s really patient with the kids. I bought Seamus a kit to completely do a squirrel, and you never saw a kid so thrilled to get a box full of chemicals and some knives. I was hoping that either he or one of us parents would shoot a squirrel for him to work on, but they were a little thin up there this year and we didn’t take one after I’d decided to do this. The skinned one in the freezer sure isn’t going to do him much good, except maybe with dumplings.

When we were fox hunting the other weekend, Junior spotted a road-killed grey squirrel on a corner. He joked, “There’s your squirrel for Seamus.” I took him at his word and asked him to stop the truck. I hopped out and it didn’t look too bad; fresh and only a little squished, so I scooped it up and threw it in the back of the truck with the fox. The guys spent the rest of the day poking fun at me for collecting roadkill, but that’s fair; so did I.

A roadkill squirrel was perfect. If he messed up, it wouldn’t devastate him as much as if he cut a hole in his first trophy. I put it in the freezer when we got home, and when he came home later in the week, proudly showed it off to him.

He was a little confused. Mom was giving him a frozen dead animal why, exactly?

Once he figured it out, he was all for it. As soon as he got home this Friday, he asked if this would be a good squirrel weekend. I thought it would be (I also thought I would be over this crud by now) so we took it out to defrost. It’s a good thing we have two fridges going. I don’t mind game in the drinks fridge, but I don’t think I’d be too cool with fine fluffly hair wafting over the butter.

So after the girls went home and the distractions were minimized, he and I got the tools out. We looked at the instructions, since I’ve never caped anything myself, and certainly haven’t worked on something this small and fussy. I made the initial cuts, but after that, I just held skin back out of the way and kept pressure on it while he did the cutting. I tell you what, it takes a lot of trust to let your ten-year-old wield a scalpel a quarter inch from your finger which he can’t see.

He did fantastically.  All 20 of our fingers are still intact; he listened and paid attention, and learned a lot of anatomy without being aware of it. All of those little nitpicky areas we took very slowly, but he did them perfectly. Getting the face skinned was an adventure, partially because it turned out Mr. Fluffly died of a squashed head and we didn’t have a lot of reference points. He did it though; got teeny little eyelids removed intact and itty bitty nostrils removed perfectly. We’re only a little hung up on the tail; it’s not pulling like it should. We’ve put it up for now, and we’ll get back to it tomorrow if he gets all of his homework done in time. I think that’s an excellent incentive.

It was oddly some great mother-son time too. This is something we’re learning together. I may know a little more about the basics, but I haven’t ever caped a squirrel either, and he liked figuring it out with me. I think it more than made up for mama being too sick to take him shooting today; he can beat me in trap another day.