There is something about the crawfish boil that has always appealed to me on some intrinsic, aesthetic level.

First, I would need crawfish. Preferably live ones, I suppose? Lobster is supposed to be killed in the pot by boiling; are crawfish the same?

I would also need a few other tools that I don’t have. A giant pot. A picnic table. An outdoor kitchen, better than the ones on HGTV, older, moss clinging to the stone. The perfect day, with the sun just dipping over the horizon, a photographer’s dream of perfect light falling on my family, both father and daughter wearing napkin bibs, eagerly awaiting my pour. The pour appeals to me a lot. Dump those steaming crawfish down on the table. I would probably also need another child; on top of, not instead of. I need at least one kid that’ll scream “BUGS IT’S BUGS.”

Mine might very well do that, but I think she’d be enamored by the meticulousity of eating them. Peeling them open and consuming their sea bug flesh.

I’d definitely need to have a different house–one by the ocean. Do crawfish live in the ocean? If I look it up I’m not going to finish this piece so you’ll have to.

I think the house would also have to be high up. It’d be a combination of Sosuke’s house in Ponyo and Ursula’s house in Kiki’s Delivery Service. A little cabin on a cliffside. Not a dangerous cliffside. One of those safe, easily traversable cliffsides, so my kids (cuz remember–there’d have to be more than one) could easily dip down with their buckets and boats and play in the water.

My husband, I think, would need to be different too. He’d have to like crawfish. I’m not sure if he likes crawfish. In fact, I didn’t realize this was something I wanted until I saw the question.

So, yeah. I’d love to do a crawfish boil. I just don’t think I can really do that yet.