Octopus

Hello, everyone.

I suppose y'all can tell that the Christmas seasonal rush has been keeping us busy. The group activities are done, but there are still many family things. Gift shopping. Cookie baking. This year, for my first time, cookie decorating. (I think I don't like almond extract.) Fruitcake baking. Wrapping. Checking the delivery progress of mail-order things that haven't come yet.

Today, as I was getting ready to roll out a ball of dough, my sweetie said, "What are we having for dinner?" Umm. So we pulled an octopus out of the freezer and put it into the sink to thaw. Then, because the food that goes with octopus is baguette bread, pulled the two frozen loaves out to thaw and rise. And when I sat down at the computer and riffled through the pictures in it, I came across this:

The old fortress of Carlos V--or is it San Carlos?--in Fisterra. The nice man who showed us around the Fishing Museum inside is on the right. Check out the gorgeous hydrangea bush!

 And especially this:

Lobster traps/octopus traps.

The man told us that these round boxes are lobster traps. They put the bait (chicken necks or something like that) into the trap and leave the little door open for the lobster to go into it. Apparently the lobster can't figure out how to get out again. Or he is trying to take the food with him and won't leave it. At any rate, it developed over time that the fishermen would pull up the trap and find, not a lobster, but an octopus. The octopus would come along and either go for the lobster bait himself, or even more likely, go for the lobster. Then he would look around and say, "hey, nice cave. I think I'll just live here." And he'd stay. He'd even stay while they pulled the trap up. All because he's greedy (for the food) and lazy (just moves in on this little "cave.")

I wonder, now, how many of our bad habits that we get are basically us acting like octopus? We do something because it's easy and seems to solve a little problem. Then we get comfortable in it, and don't even think about changing. Even if the little habit turns into a bad problem, often we don't open our minds to getting rid of the habit. And all the while that rope is getting tighter on the trap, and pulling it up and up...until our self-created bad habit make a big wreck of some thing that we really care about.