Nicole Tasker Woods

My long weekend in New Hampshire was full of relaxing hours spent out of doors, soaking up the sun. I actually got some really good sun on my chest and face on Saturday while at my brother, Curt’s graduation party, which my parents hosted out back on the patio.

This is a picture of me and my two brothers, Curtis (left) and Kyle (right).

Below are pictures of my cousin, Carrie and I in front of one of the crab apple trees in my parents front yard. This is JUST before the white petals snow down off the branches painting the ground. In just a few days, the slightest breeze will knock them all off.



Then on Sunday, I spent some time walking Sophie (my childhood black lab I picked out when I was 16), I also watched Sophie and Daisy swim (my other brother, Kyle’s dog whom I believe to be possessed by some kind of demon), and then I laid on the hammock with my mom eating a dozen sugar-free popsicles, just soaking up the sun. It was a really great weekend.

After the big party on Saturday, we were all tired from the amount of time spent in the sun and cool breeze that constantly picked up every few minutes to cool us down. There was a lot of food-preparing, food-laying-out, and food-cleaning up. Everyone was constantly walking up and down the deck stairs from patio to kitchen (well, all of the women at least) to make sure all the guests were full of food. Then when the last guest left and the last Tupperware container was sealed and stored in the refrigerator, we all congregated to the couches and chairs in the living room to relax for the rest of the night in front of the TV.

Sunday I got up at 5:30am to go fishing with my folks. We got on the water around 6:30am after getting some oatmeal and home-made cinnamon-raisin toast for breakfast from the diner. Despite the cool breeze, the sun was still hot when it hit our faces, warming our bodies as we enjoyed the peaceful lake.

We were the third boat to get in the water so much of the morning we had the entire, peaceful lake to ourselves. My dad and mom and I cruised slowly in the “Miss Nicki” with three poles trailing behind, while waiting to hear the beep from the Fish Finder that tells us when we are passing over fishies. It gives us something to do while we wait for a bite. But during this outing, we only got one bite; Daddy let me reel it in. After pulling it out of the water, we could see that the poor rainbow trout had hooked itself in the head above the eye.

When we dropped him in the bucket, blood and fish-brains were swirling as he frantically waved his fins. Dad kept saying, “He’s still kickin’ we could probably throw him back.” I think he saw how much I was looking at the fish and how hard it was for me to refrain from naming it. The no-name fish seemed to be doing OK despite the hit to the head, he was swimming upside-down for a while, but then righted himself and continued to swim in circles at the bottom of the bucket. I was afraid to touch his shiny scales (as if he had fangs and would bite me), but his under-belly was quite pretty—the purest white on the bottom, a pink stripe on the sides and then slowly the colors darkened to a green at his top to avoid prey. Dad ended up eating him for lunch that day.

I spent a few minutes in my Dad’s shop while he was fixing one of his trucks. I noticed that he installed a pull-up bar underneath the shield I made when I was in college. The shield was part of a project for a Medieval History course I took my Senior year. We could write a paper about some part of the medieval times or make something from the medieval times. The crest in the upper left hand corner is the actual crest for my family name ‘Tasker’ and the picture in the bottom right hand corner is something I created to represent what my family probably would have done in the medieval times (dig wells).

The antlers underneath the shield are from one of the deer my dad murdered on his last hunting trip. He took them from the poor animal’s head and mounted them on a piece of wood with the skull still intact. Lovely.