I am(mo) an idiot sometimes

My husband has been after me for weeks to go out and shoot.  He says I will get "rusty" if I don't.  Of course I didn't believe him because, after all, I hadn't even ever touched a gun until I met him and I seemed to have picked up on it pretty darn good.  In my opinion.  And in his.  And to make matters worse, one of my Deputies told me the same thing.  Is it not enough to have my husband harp on me???

So I dedicated my Friday off for some target time.  I got up Friday morning and it had rained all night which was a little bit of a debbie-downer for me because it meant I was going to have wet feet.  I can't stand wet feet.  It's a wonder I even like to swim!  And as I was getting my ammo ready, it started raining again.  Hard. 

Screw it.  I will wait until it's done raining.  So I get comfortable and sit down in front of the tv and play on Facebook a while.  Yes, I do them at the same time.  No wonder my attention span is the length of a gnat's peter. 

Finally, Quintin comes homes on the end of his lunch break, to fix his door handle, and asks me how target practice went and how did I like the new bullets he got me?  I'm pretty sure the look on my face clearly said "DUH IT'S RAINING!" But he wasn't getting the message.  "It's raining cats and dogs out there.  Do you expect me to shoot in this???"  Stupid stupid question Shellie.  What was I thinking??? I knew what the answer was going to be. 

"Does bad weather keep people from doing bad things?"  I hate it when he's right.  So I load up my ammo and head to the car when he says to me, "Aren't you going to take your holster?"  And I told him I wasn't because I didn't want to wear my belt and my other holster is all the way upstairs and....well you know where I'm going with this.  Isn't it enough I'm going out...against my will...in the cold rain...to shoot imaginery bad guys and zombies?  I think he knew he had pushed his luck enough and just got in his pickup and went back to work. 

Now...here's where I want to insert what probably every person that grew up hunting, may not realize.  When I first went trapping, I had to "train" my eyes to see the paths and learn to distinguish a coon's path from let's say, a deer's path, from the road.  You might think it would be easy but if you have never done it, how would you know the difference?  You don't.  Until someone teaches you what to look for and how to recognize it. And as with anything else, when you do ANYTHING new, you have to "train" yourself...and your eyes...to see what you need to be seeing.  

So...to go on with my story; I get to the farm and set my board/target up.  I spray paint one area of the board so I know that is where I'm supposed to shoot these new bullets. They are Hornady Critical Unit.   They are a little too expensive for my taste so I only shoot 5 of those.  And I will say right now that they are cool little bullets and the end result is pretty fun.  But I like my hollow points and full metal jackets a bit better.  10 years ago, if someone would have said hollow point to me, I wouldn't have had a clue what they were referring to.  Guns have never been in my world until Quintin came into my world.

I picked a wide open, grassy area to shoot in.  I wasn't anywhere near the highway and I wasn't pointing my gun in any direction of the road either. I had my board set up against this tree that wasn't much wider than my board and I had another tree not too far away so I could use that as my "second target."  I had two spots picked out to shoot from.  One about 20 feet away and the other about 30 feet.  

I start shooting and have about 30 rounds popped off and it hits me....he told me to save my brass, didn't he?  For those of you that don't speak ammo (LOL), this means that I am supposed to save the piece of brass that shoots out the side of my gun at discharge.  Herein lays my problem.  That stuff flies off faster than I can usually get my eyes around to see where it lands.  Oh crap.  Remember above where I said I picked a "grassy" area?  Oops, I almost feel as if I did something wrong.  Grassy, in this case, means almost mid-calf on me.  Not too bad.  As long as you're not looking for something itty bitty.  

I am used to shooting the shotgun and picking up my shell casings and stuff like that.  They aren't too hard to find.  Ever.  You wanna know why?  Because they are BIGGER.  I start looking around at the grass thinking, "How am I going to find these little boogers?"  Usually Quintin is with me and we shoot together and he just sets up the targets and tells me where my area is.  What was he thinking insisting I do this on my own???  

So about 45 rounds in, I figure I better go and start picking up my brass.  I don't see any.  I don't see any.  Oh there's one.  One.  ONE.  I don't see any.  I don't see any.  I don't see any.  Crap!  This is hard.  Until I found the first one, I really didn't know what to look for.  Let me tell you, they are small and they blend right in with the dirt and grass.  Oh, I found another one!  I got two!  TWO!!  I keep looking and it took me about 15 minutes total to find the THREE that I could spot.  Oh crap, Quintin is going to kill me!  So I text him...he is at work..."I seem to have a little itty bitty problem."  

I know it will be a while so I head back to town.  I know what I will do!  I will go get his magnet and take it out there and find all my brass and then I will just finish shooting.  I was very proud of myself for this one.  I head to town.  I look like a drowned rat and I have mud from the bottoms of my (white) shoes to just below my knees.  I have NO IDEA how that happens.  It doesn't matter though, I'm having the time of my life.  

I get home and realize that there is a padlock on the shed.  Shat!  I suck at combination locks so this is going to take some real patience on my part.  I go in the house...mud and all...and get the combination.  Back outside to the shed.  My feet are wet.  They are getting cold.  But I keep pushing on.  First try and I'm in the shed.  Oh yes!!!  (Someone is growing up!)  This is going to be a good experience after all!!

I drag the magnet out...along with the log chain...and tried to pull the CO2 tank with it.  That was almost a huge disaster!  Lock the shed back up and head for the car.  I better check this thing and make sure it will pick these bullets up before I get clear back out to the farm to find it doesn't.  Pull the brass from my pocket, throw them down on the ground and run the magnet over them.  No dice.  They are not magnetized.  And why would they be when you really think about it??  You don't want someone screwing with your guns/ammo with a magnet.  Duh.  Crap.

Put the magnet away and ended up slamming it into my knee to get it off the CO2 tank.  Ugh!   Then I got it stuck on the pile of log chains and that didn't go well at all.  Oh dear, I may need help just putting this little magnet away!  I hope the neighbors aren't watching.  Torn jeans, wounded legs, curse words flying at every avenue, wet feet, who knows what my hair looked like.  Oh...and did I mention that when I put my phone in my pocket, it made my pants fall off???  I knew there was a reason I stopped wearing these pants to work!!!

Shed is secured and I am back in the house.  Gotta find a belt and get my shoulder holster on.  That holster sure makes a difference when you are searching for a needle in a haystack.  Don't have to worry about holding the gun in your hand and it saves you from going back and forth to the vehicle.      

I go back to the farm.  I still can't find any brass.  So what's the best thing to do?  Shoot some more.  I mean, Quintin is going to HAVE to come out and help me find this stuff after work so I might as well get my shooting in, right?  So I shot about 45 more rounds off in the same two places.  THEN, I started feeling guilty.  How unfair is it that I was out here shooting and not paying attention to where my brass was flying and to make Quintin come help me find it all after a full day of work.  My phone is about dead and I wasn't sure what time he was getting off work so I left him a voicemail telling him I really needed him out at Great Grandpa's farm when he got off work and I hoped he wouldn't kill me.  You know, kinda put that out there so he can expect something really bad like...I shot my tire...or something like that.  That was at 4:00pm

At 4:30, I hadn't made anymore progress and didn't really know what I was looking for at this point.  I mean, I had had some brass hit me in the forehead a couple of times (that's what I get for being a left-hander with a right handed gun) but come on, do you know how fast bullets are discharged? Well, neither do I but it's fast!!  It's hard to see something that fast fly away from you when you have your sights fixated on a target!  So there's something I need to work on as well.  Using my peripheral's WHILE I'm focused on something in front of me.  Good luck to me!

I am 90 rounds in and not having any luck finding any brass.  How does that happen?  I only stood in 2 places.  Shouldn't be in a nice pile to my right???  Well, shouldn't it?  The answer is yes.  It should be.  But that isn't how it happens in the real world.  Pretty crappy deal if you ask me.  When I'm President, rule #1 is going to be that mornings don't start until later...at least 10:00.  And rule #2 is going to be that casings, shells, brass...whatever you want to call them...has to land in a neat pile that you can see.  And along with rule #2, everyone must know how to shoot. 

I really thought that after it rained and the sun came out...and made me sweat like a banchee...that those things would just glisten and gleam in the sunlight.  Guess what.  They don't!  So I took my crap and went home.  All the way in, I imagined the worst.  I knew my husband was going to kill me.  Dead.  The kind of dead that I insist he do to the spiders when they come into my home.  This is going to be painful.  I went home and tried to find the neighborhood slut cat's baby kittens that I saw her moving from one area to another that morning.  I'm just sure they are at the neighbor's house...under the porch...but I can't seem to find them. And the little slut won't lead me to them.  She just wanted me to sit and pet her.   

Back in the house and just get relaxed when Quintin calls and asks me what is going on.  "Just pick me up at home and I will explain."  So he does and I do.  And he just shakes his head at me and laughs.  THEN he sees where I have been shooting at.  And suffice it to say, it didn't make his day.  Apparently I was supposed to stay at the south end of the property where the gravel is because it's easier to find brass in the gravel than in grass.  No kidding??  Maybe you won't make me do this on my own if there are going to be rules, huh??  Maybe...just MAYBE...the next time you FORCE me to go out in the cold cold rain, you will write down some of the "do's" and "do not's" BEFORE shoving me out the door!     

So, after 2 1/2 inches of rain overnight and during the day...we are on our hands and knees, looking for brass.  He showed me the best way he knows how to find them and within seconds, he was picking up brass.  And that made me mad because I wanted to find it too!  He worked in one area that I shot from and I worked in the other area.  We started pulling the grass in the thick areas, and throwing them out of the way.  Little by little, we started finding brass.  It was hot and we were sweating.  Our clothes soaked and muddy from crawling in the grass and pulling it out.  My wrists were killing me.  After all, they aren't used to holding up this much fat at a time.  That is usually my legs' job.  

My arms are made of noodles so I kept trying to tell myself that this was good for upper body strengthening.  Hey, it may not be true but it got me through!  I ended up sitting on my butt for a while, searching.  All that got me a wet, muddy, butt and made me slower to find my brass. 

Quintin wanted to stop when we had found half of them but I wasn't about to stop.  There was still daylight left and I was determined to find more...even if he wanted to sit and rest...because I felt so guilty.  I apologized about every third piece of brass that I found.  About 30  "I'm sorry's" into this process, he admits that he done the same thing.  Not too long ago.  And that's how he learned his lesson.  The only difference was that he didn't have to crawl through WET grass looking for his.  And he didn't pass on his lesson learned.  Duh!

We found almost all of them and luckily for us, we have a friend that is going to let us take the metal detector out and find the rest.  Phew!!!  Thank you Lord for Swaney!!!

 As we were frantically pulling out grass, looking for this brass...I got to giggling.  What if someone that didn't know us, pulled in here and saw us?  Oh the look on their faces.  I'm sure they would think we were tweakers or dopers.  Lost in a haze of "I lost my stash."  I told Quintin that when he sees Aunt Joan today, he should warn her that the renters might mention it looks like someone has been out there "doing something in the grass" and to just reassure her that it was just Shellie out there learning a lesson.     

Oh and by the way...as much as I hate to put this in print...my husband was right.  My shooting got rusty.  I don't know which I feel worse about but I won't be letting that happen again...well either one of them!  I will be shooting more.  It seems to release a lot of stress for me.  And well, we can't have any men going around thinking their right all the time!!!  

I wish I had video of this whole caper because the visual HAD to be good!  Hope you enjoyed my day off as much as I did.  Until next time...thanks for reading!