5 minute freewrite 2922 prompt fleet

This is my post for #freewriters 2922 prompt fleet hosted by @mariannewest

Today we were going to fish, but my sister wanted to sign up for the fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner that the food pantry will be giving out. She said this was the only day that you could sign up for it, and they did not open until 9am. At 8:30 there was a long line and it was after 10 when we got out of there and she brought our niece and grandkids, so she would have to take them back home. I told her instead of fishing, we could go get sandfleas, and we could take everyone with us.

I do not know what changed, but this year the seagrass has come back in the river, and I have not seen that many sandfleas in many, many years. Maybe since I was a kid.

My plan was for them to go south, and I would go north, but they wanted to go in the direction I was going, so I told them I would walk ahead of them to leave room for them to dig behind me. I walked far enough ahead and was looking at good fleas, waiting for the right wave, and both girls came running down the beach toward me, right on top of the fleas. I had to yell at them to stop and stay back with their grandma. I explained why they can not run ahead of their grandma while she was getting the fleas. They needed to stay behind where she had already dug.

I had my bucket as full as I could get it without them crawling out when I tilted it to pull. So I headed back toward them. I figured I would switch buckets and fill theirs. I thought by now they should have half a bucket full.

Every time I looked back at them, my niece was pulling the rake, and she wasn't doing it right, even though she'd been told. I am a little upset at my sister for not doing it. I understand it is hard on her body, it is hard on mine, too. She needs to understand that if you are going to fish for money, you have to do the work that it requires, and getting bait is an important part of it.

On the way back to the pathway that goes off of the beach, I got enough fleas to fill their bucket over halfway. I wanted to fill it, but when we got to the path, my sister headed for the truck. She was so far ahead of me and my niece down the trail that we could not even see or hear her and the kids. My niece got far enough ahead of me that I could not see her either. When I got in sight of her, she was kneeling on the ground, and I wondered what was wrong. When I caught up to her, I was pissed. She dumped half of a bucket of fleas and was trying to pick them up. How she did this, I have no idea. I was too mad to talk to her. My body was hurting, and the last thing I wanted to be doing was squatting on the ground picking up fleas by hand. It took some doing, but we picked them up. The last time my sister dumped my bucket.

At home, I blanched the fleas and dipped them in ice water to get them cooled down so they do not continue cooking. Then we lay old shirts on the ground and as I blanch them, someone would dump them on the shirts to get most of the water out of them.

Then we turn on the AC unit and put them on a screen tray to dry the rest of the water from them. The photo is of my sister, niece, and my sister's granddaughter. They are the fleet of workers I had bagging them after they dried. We dry them like this so they do not freeze in a solid clump. When fishing, we will dump some from the bag and put the rest back on ice. If you have too many off the ice, they turn black and will be no good to use. We ended up with 31 bags.

We stopped by the fish house to get our check. They paid 7.25 a pound. I was afraid the price would drop, so that was a nice surprise. We fished for 3 days and made $590.00, my husband fished 5 days and made $1,700.00, we could have made close to that if my sister had wanted to go.

The fish house was getting ready to load a truck and had pallets of fish sitting by the road. While my sister was backing out of the fish house parking lot, she backed into a pallet of fish. They wrap the fish boxes with plastic to hold them together, and one box was hanging off the pallet, the plastic was ripped. I started to get out of the truck to help fix it, but the employee told me he would get it, so we left.
photos are mine