Friday the 13th is often considered unlucky.

Last Wednesday, which was April 11th, I had a really bad headache at work.
When I got home, I took my temperature, and it was 101 degrees.
With chills and aches racking my body, it looked like flu season was taking another shot at me.

So I went to bed and stayed there until Friday morning.

Laura flew in from San Diego late Thursday, April 12th.
Bernie drove to the airport to pick her up, and brought her home.

Nothing like being a nurse and getting to visit a sick family member when you were planning time off from work!

She was so sweet, she came in to see me right away and asked how I was doing.
We talked a few minutes, then she headed to the bed in the guest room, and I rolled over in my bed in my room, and we both conked out.

She had been up since 4 am in order to fly from San Diego to Houston with layovers in Denver.

By the next morning, which was Friday the thirteenth, I was still feeling pretty wobbly, so we just hung out around the house, and slept late while Bernie worked from home.

Laura mixed up some No Knead Bread, a bread that takes 18 hours to rise, but other than that, activity around our house was pretty slight.
At one point we sat outside in the garden, just long enough for Laura to feed the mosquitoes from several places on her body.
Unlucky for her, as the bites itched the rest of her visit.
(Hope they are better now Sweetie!)

By seven on Friday night, both Bernie and Laura were feeling a little restless and a lot hungry.
They wanted to go out to dinner, and were asking me where I, as the "Birthday Girl", on the eve of her birthday, would want to go out to eat?

I decided that I could handle a trip to the low-keyed Cedar Landing restaurant which is a short drive from our house and over a bridge across part of Lake Houston.
The restaurant itself sits on the waterfront, and at sunset sometimes I can almost imagine I am back in San Diego, eating at the Harbor.

Now Laura learned to like Cajun food while she lived in Texas going to college, and also visiting us over the years.
I also like Cajun food, and about once a year I enjoy a big ol' plate of crawdads, (AKA crayfish or crawfish.)

Below is a fine example of a plate full of the crawdad critters.

The crawdads are boiled live in a pot with corn, potato and very spicy Cajun seasoning.
The seasoning tends to seep heavily into the crawdad head, and people who are born into Cajun families enjoy the spices so much that they typically suck on the head of the crawdads to maximize the pleasure of the fierce seasoning.
There are questionable tee shirts suggesting the joys of that means and method of culinary gusto, but I won't elaborate on what is suggested on those shirts on this post.
You'll just have to visit our area in order to have your suspicions confirmed.

In order to eat the crawfish, you snap off their heads and little front claws, and break the tail down the middle.

Then you pull out a piece of meat that looks like a tiny lobster tail, about the size of a small unshelled peanut, about one inch long.

Bernie is about to enjoy a crawdad tail from my plate.

Eating crawdads is a very social experience; you use your hands and get all messy.
You've got to have loads of napkins to keep up with the mess and buckets available in which to toss empty crawdad shells.

I enjoyed every bite!
There were also Jalapeno Hushpuppies as well as a tangy Honey Mustard salad dressing on a green dinner salad.
And for dessert the three of us each had a bite or two from one slice of Banana Fosters Pie afterwards.

Absolutely delicious.
Truly a Southern treat from beginning to end.

We drove home and exactly one hour later, (it still being Friday the 13th) I busily sent all those crawdads that I ate right back out to sea.

Turns out that my reaction to shellfish, of which I was well aware from past encounters, now includes crawdad.

Bernie thought that might have made an interesting blog picture as well.

(Boys can be SO gross sometimes....)

Unlucky Friday the 13th.

I'll say.

Yuck.