But the devil he won't notice when I die

But the devil he won't notice when I die
Don't you figure he's got bigger fish to fry.
~Lyrics from Bigger Fish to Fry
Brad Paisley

Meet Travel Bear -
That's not really his name, to be honest I don't know if he has a name. But since Michael and I met, we've collected pins/trinkets of places we traveled to (the back is also full of pins). Why is the bear significant for today's blip? It's a bit of a long stretch, but basically we were at the NPA all day today, filing, labeling, re-stringing ... and singing. I lost the toss so we were 'stuck' listen to Michael's MP3 which has a lot of Brad Paisley whom he was first introduced when we made a trip to Louisiana to meet my biological father. We were already flying to Florida so just added a few days and flew to New Orleans (during Mardi Gras!) then drove the back-roads up to Ebarb, Louisiana - a small, and I mean small town where catfish is deep-fried in the garage and where up until about 5-8 years ago, they never had street names (the federal government insisted on street names due to the mailman requiring it).

It's funny when songs make you re-live the experience that you felt the first time you heard it. One of the songs we listened to today was Bigger Fish to Fry (the lyrics are here) -- I remember we were about an hour outside Ebarb and a pack of wild dogs just ran in front of our truck and hearing:

'Cause we cuss, we smoke, ee laugh at Tater's jokes.
[Spoken]
Tell one Jim. You know you're old when your wife says honey
let's run upstairs and make love
And your answer is "I cannot do both."

We just laughed. Non-stop. Even then, we knew it was one of those moments that would stick with us forever - and in a good way. Today, when that song came on, and I was knee-deep in labels for the files and Michael and Charlotte were working on re-stringing puppets it was nice to be transported back to Louisiana, even if just for one song.