Friday Confessions

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend.

As you might know, I have no children right now.

(insert Brea either doing the Happy Dance, or taking a nap just because she can)

The older kids are with John's mom, and David is with my mom. I go pick them all up tomorrow afternoon. Since they've been gone, I've had some time to sleep in late get stuff done. Time to play on the internet finish up some projects. Time to watch lots of the Discovery Channel think deep thoughts about life. Today's confession?

I totally want to be an Alaskan crab fisherman.

However, there are several problems with that. Let's talk about them:

1) I don't eat shellfish (with the exception of crawdads, and then only about once every two years). I think if I worked on a crab fishing boat, I'd have to eat crab.

2) I am extremely sensitive to motion. I can't handle being the passenger in a car for 15 minutes without getting nauseous, so I'm pretty sure I couldn't hack it on a boat for days or weeks at a time, in what seems to be fairly bad weather many times.

3) I really, really, really hate the ocean. My idea of living in hell is being stuck on an iceburg for eternity. Which brings us to

4) I hate being cold. We've talked about this in the past, so you know that this is no secret.

5) It's all guys. I am not a guy. You do the math.

6) Those guys are gone from their families for really long stretches of time. I get cranky when I have to spend more than 2 hours away from home.

7) Did I mention the part about hating the ocean and being cold?

8) I'd have to come into contact with Edgar, and I might have a problem with that, because I really, really love admire him.

This is Edgar. He's my homie.


(He did a really good interview, a livechat, here. It's pretty funny.)

Edgar works on the Northwestern. His brother, Sig, is the captain. Edgar is the deck boss and engineer. Their family is Norwegian.

Here's Edgar with his brothers. Sig, the captain, on the left, and the other brother whose name I can't remember, on the right. The other brother avoids the camera at all costs, so we don't know much about him.


(Google tells me that the third brother is Norman. Sorry about that, Norm!)

It seems to be a prerequisite in crab fishing that you have to smoke. I think maybe when you fill out the application, there's a question that says, 'Do you smoke?' and if you say no, they just throw your app away.


But it's not just Edgar that I'm completely and utterly obsessed with I like. This is Johnathan and his brother Andy. They're co captains of the Time Bandit.


They're very funny together. They take turns driving the boat. I like their crew, too.

This is Phil. I used to be really afraid of Phil, but now I know that he just has to pretend to be tough. He's really a big softie.


Phil is the captain of the Cornelia Marie. His two sons, Jake and Josh, are also on the boat. Arguments and yelling ensue, often. But everyone is always friends afterwards.

A few episodes ago, Phil had to be airlifted off the boat, because he was coughing up blood. They thought he had broken a rib. Or three. But when he got to the hospital, it turned out that he had a blood clot that started in his leg, passed through his heart, and was in his lungs. Hence, the coughing blood. We haven't found out yet if he'll be back on the boat this season. It's all very suspenseful, I tell you! (And he's not helping himself by sneaking out of his room, going outside, and smoking. I'm just saying. Phil probably smokes at much at the rest of the fleet, combined.)

There's other boats the Discovery Channel follows, too. Keith is the captain of the Wizard. Sten is captain of the North American. And Rick is captain of the Early Dawn. Keith is pretty funny, but he's a little too prone to drama for my tastes.

Now, this is not a show you can just watch one episode of and be hooked. If you haven't seen it before, wait for a marathon to come on, sit down with the world's largest pile of laundry, and watch you some Deadliest Catch. You won't be sorry.

(Don't worry, we don't have to keep this one from John. He knows and is totally ok with my obsession um crush um no wait, obsession with Edgar this show. He was sick a while back, and basically spent two days on the couch, when they happened to be running a Deadliest Catch marathon, and he's also obsessed, too, which is funny, because John never gets excited about any TV, unless it's the Astros, but they way their year is going, we really don't need to get into that right now. I'm just saying. Wouldn't be good for my blood pressure, which wouldn't be good for the baby. For real.)

(Bleeping Astros. Grrrr ...)