How do you make your husband smile?

Well, here at our house, you ask him to take you fishing. Poor Hubs misses our son; the two of them spent every weekend fishing. And after Scott went to school, I freely admit I was not filling in as fishing buddy. The poor guy was good about it, though. Oh, I used to go fishing. Like 30 years ago. In fact, our honeymoon was spent fishing in Quetico in Canada and we had an amazing time.

But for the past 29 years, I was not so interested.

Then suddenly, a few weeks ago, something changed. I don't know why, but I asked him to take Wrigley and me out on the fishing boat. Since then, we've been 4 times and I've been pretty much skunked. (That's Fishin' Talk for not catching anything.) Kinda boring.

Until today!

The clever man decided we would hunt the eager, hungry, not-discriminating-at-all panfish at a small pond in Barrington. And we caught fish! In fact, I caught a 12 inch crappie, which is apparently a Big Deal!

Fishing has a lot of perks which appeal to me: being outdoors in a beautiful setting, with lots of birds and other wildlife about. We saw a beautiful sunset tonight. There was a tiny hidden creature making odd noises down by my feet, buzzing and chirping away. Turned out to be a little black field mouse. A homeowner was burning leaves on the other side of pond, which smelled heavenly and we could hear the snapping and cracking of the fire. The ducks were quacking in that homey way they have as they paddled among the reeds.

And the fish were biting.

And the Hubs was smiling.