Crab Feast

We took a break from the weekend-house hunting today...... my husband needed a break, and I can't say as I blame him. He drove to the fish market by the Kemah/Seabrook waterfront and bought a dozen fresh blue-crabs. We invited C and her mom over to join us, and L baked delicious spinach enchilladas to have with the crabs.

Poor C....... she couldn't stand to be in the kitchen while my husband put the crabs into the boiling water, so she went into the living room while that was happening. At one point, one of the crabs slipped out of the tongs and fell onto the stove..... at the very second that the crab hit the stove, my husband jumped back out of the crab's reach and we heard C scream from the living room. We all started to laugh.... all except for poor Miss C, who thought that the crab had jumped out of the pot and was running for his life.

Not easy to put those crabs into the boiling water.... and not easy to watch, either. Young Miss C thought the crabs would be yelling for mercy, so she sat on the sofa with a pillow over each of her ears. She had never picked fresh crabs before, so we had to show her how to do it. That girl loves crabcakes, but she just hadn't realized that the crab in those crabcakes comes from real live crabs. This afternoon was, in my husband's words, a learning experience for C.

This entire week has been a learning experience for C... between the crab-cooking and the driving lessons she's getting. It goes without saying that she now wants to drive everywhere she can, and she's doing better and better each time she gets behind the wheel. She has yet to drive in the rain, or in the dark, but that will all come in good time. She told me today that she was more nervous driving my car than her mom's, because mine is newer and more expensive. I told her to never ever think a car is more important or more valuable than she is...... the car, any car, can always be replaced, but there is only one Miss C in this world.


As for the latest on the weekend house....... we made an offer on the cabin-style house on the open water part of Lake Livingston.... and the seller rejected the offer yesterday. Our realtor believes the seller wants to sell that house for as close to the asking price as he can, which includes the boat he's selling with the house. We don't want that boat, so we wanted that taken off the price of the house..... the seller didn't want to do that either. Fine. We don't want to pay the asking price. It's far too much money, even if he did take off the price of that boat.

We most likely won't make another offer on that house....... the realtor told us exactly what my husband was thinking..... that the seller wanted very close to his asking price. We just thought the seller would go down on the price because he's moving out of the country. Apparently, the seller isn't in a rush. Well, neither are we. Or maybe I should say-- neither is my husband, who has the patience of a saint when it comes to making a deal.

My mind keeps going back to the big house in Nacogdoches...... it's bigger than we need for a weekend home, but that seller is under the gun to sell that house because of the Enron mess. I figure that we could make the same offer on that house that we made on the Lake Livingston house. We already know the Nacogdoches seller is more motivated to sell....... he's made it clear to his realtor that he's willing to take a loss on that house just to "get out from under it."

And as much as I like the realtor we have in Lake Livingston, I just prefer Nacogdoches and the lake up there to the much larger one in the Livingston area. My husband will tell me that Nacogdoches is an hour farther than Livingston. I will tell him that the town of Nacogdoches is more quaint. Plus, I like the fact that Lake Nacogdoches is much smaller than Lake Livingston.... 2200 acres of water vs. 93,000 acres of water. Does he really need that much water to go fishing? I mean, really...... how much fish can two people eat?