I'm back ! Huzzah !

I wish I weren't back, but I am, because real life has to happen no matter how we try to stall it. I love my cottage. There is no other place on Earth that I would rather be. We've called it many things, including Paradise, and for me, that is truly what it is. Paradise with distant chainsaw sounds. My cottage is nothing like the typical 'cottage'. There are no motor boats on our lake, only one other cottage (albeit owned by crazy people, though mostly they don't bother us), and a wide expanse of forest and overgrown farmland surrounding us. Up the road there are three other cottages (including our lake neighbours) and one permenant residence. Below us, there is another year-round house (owned by our close friend Jean and her son, Michael). My oldest friend lives around there, Kristina, the one who I visited in May. Anyway, it is quiet, beautiful, and technologically unburdened.

I was there for two weeks, about a third of which I devoted my time almost entirely to producing artwork for this weekend's SFX. I brought my cat, Willi, who got to be a real cat for a change, going outside, catching mice and other things. She was so happy up there. I have never seen her so totally thrilled and excited. She and Mom's cats, Chester and Melody, got along well, for a change, and she followed Chester around in the bush learning how to hunt. It was like he had a little shadow. There were no mice in the house, and seemingly there were few in the house through the winter. The damage was nil, but cleaning was still a priority as the old tenants didn't do much of a job worth mentioning. Mom bought a vacuum for the cottage and made good use of it, filling it with tons of the tenants' dog's hair. Ew. One thing that Mom did (of a few notable jobs) was to put up a shower.

Yes. A shower. This is a big thing for us. Previously, all bathing was done at the kitchen sink or in the lake as we have no bathroom per se, just a rather pleasant outhouse. The shower is a long-handled gardening tool affixed to the side of the covered work table in front of the brick barbeque. A coiling hose is attached to this tool and run into the house to the kitchen sink where you can adjust the hot and cold water. I suggested a large piece of plywood to make the shower floor, and Mom hung a curtain from the clothesline. My gosh, what an innovation !! While lake bathing is fun when the weather is hot and the water is nice, it's a good deal less so when the weather is inclemant and the lake is frigid. Also, because the weather up there had been so hot and muggy (far moreso than in just about any other year), it was super nice to have a quick shower to scrape off the sweat.

There was a great deal of damage in the bush this year from windstorms. Last year was a horrible drought that weakened a lot of mature and otherwise healthy trees. I took a hike around the camp in the first week up and I counted no less than 27 trees that were down, roots-up in the air, moss and soil peeled right off the rock. Many of these were mature oak and beech trees, as well as a few pine. It's a real mess. Many other trees have come down on the point around the path to the swimming point. Michael's cut up some of it and cleaned aside other bits, but even while we were up there, an oak tree that had fallen against another tree came down taking the other with it. Add to this the amount of beaver damage of half-girdled trees and it just gets worse. Anyway, sad as the damage is, it's testimonial of the ever changing state of nature.

Rick joined Mom and I for the last four days I would be there, arriving in Ottawa by bus and leaving with me on the 20th and driving back to Toronto. This year was more smooth a visit than last year. My mother is more comfortable with Rick, and he is more comfortable with the space up there, enabling me to go off and do my own thing once in a while. He even borrowed a tackle box in order to go fishing, though, I must say, he spent more time talking about fishing than he actually did doing it. *laugh* Maybe next time he'll bring his own stuff and he can start fishing right away, that way he can have 'his own thing' to do up there like Mom and I do. For her it's doing things and swimming, for me it's hiking and canoeing. We played uchre (sp?) on two nights, on one night myself winning, the other Mom (I'm sure this was irksome for Rick), and a game of Scrabble, too, which I won and much to my mother's horror, she came last. It's okay, though, because before Rick came up, Mom had pretty much flogged me in several games.

Anyway, I'm home now, and though I have lots of other stories to tell, I can't really go into them now. I'm late for heading to Kinkos to make prints for this weekend. I'm exhausted, having slept very badly the night before, too. I'm currently getting Willi used to a harness so that she can maybe go out on the porch in a leash. I don't trust her not to jump off, but this way she can sit outside and stuff. We'll see. Maybe, if it works out, she can do it in Peterborough, too. It can't be bothering her too much, though initially she was slinking all over uncertainly, as she's just finished washing herself and has now gone to sleep with the harness on.