The Anecdotal Life Part. 101
Going to "the lake" is a pilgrimage. The first leg consists of the anxiety of packing, organizing and lugging everything you can think of for three weeks of hot or cold weather (it dropped to 36 degrees one night) and crossing the country from the waters of the East Coast to the waters of the Upper Midwest... with two disgruntled cats.
We were busy being drowned, terrorized and exhausted by some hell-bent, late spring storms on our route. My one planned visit to Ohio fell through for a variety of reasons, some puzzling to me. One motel I stayed in near Ann Arbor, which had looked perfect, came under severe weather warnings as I got there. Looked like the storm was directly aimed at us....oh, and was it ever.. I found low sheltering trees for the truck and cats and , while their nerves took a beating, they didn't. During the night what was a "totally blowing sideways storm" dashed birds up against the building and they were lying around the grounds like the "dearly departed" when I did finally manage to venture out in the morning . "Venturing out" was a real trick since all power had gone out in the area; no elevators forced me, having a second floor room, to go down a pitch dark stairwell, hoping that I was stepping down the right way and praying on each trip that the magnetic stripe on the card to my room would hold out. If it wore out, it would lock in all the luggage I now couldn't get down the stairs by myself. The replacement machinery for the cards depended upon electricity. Breakfast was weird at best. I finally talked the only clerk with the one flashlight in the place to go to my room with me and help get all the "stuff" down the stairs. Lesson learned. Get a small flashlight for my purse. Again.
There was one colossal respite on the way. Two actually, if you ignore the embedded warning in the second. The first was one of the sweetest anniversary celebrations I had ever had the honor of attending. A sixtieth. For dearly beloved, old friends living in Ann Arbor. They had the kindness to take me into their home prior to the party so I could get out of that unfortunate motel. I would see them again "Up North".
Second stop was at my niece's house. She always apologizes for a beautifully kept and appointed home which completely blows my mind every time. At the end of this "overnight sanctuary" she suggested quietly that I should check out wiring for the light in the kitchen of our 1920's former fishing shanty. You gotta watch out for Ginger's quietness. She is quite possibly the quietest member of our "chatty Cathy" family. When she pipes up about something, you had better pay attention.
Some hours later I made it to the cottage to the immense and furious relief of my cat Winston.
Cathrine, the second cat, by now seemed perfectly content and pleased with all the hauling around. I let "F troop" and myself in the front door and was confronted with an empty wall. I had left a large watercolor, the one seen on the front of my book, hanging there. Hmm, again, my favorite line, "This bodes ill". I dug it out from behind the couch where it had fallen when the wiring had ripped loose at one end. Then I went straight to the kitchen to check the now open to public view, fixtureless, electrical wiring. Not so fine here either. The wires were shot. Frayed and ancient. It looked like a burnt out hole. I thought to myself, " there is no reason to believe that any of rest of the 1950's wiring job that my father did in his Rube Goldberg fashion, was any better. " I went out on to the back porch. Aha. No better out there. I found only two boards safe enough to walk on. I was a tad tired just from driving three days, so I , like Scarlet, refused to think about it until morning. Good try. Another storm barreled in during the night. And this was the storm that in my estimation toppled any illusions about what all we had to do and what we could get away with. Everything threatened to wreck "the house that Jack built."I got up around 1:30 a.m. , stumbling through the dark to the bathroom and as I stood in the doorway of the pantry that leads to it, I was drenched with water pouring through the door frame from the ceiling. " I see." I said to myself wearily .
I don't think God does vacations. At least not for me. In the morning I called Ginger, our current manager. I called Ginger a lot. I called a man named Scott House, who I remembered as one of the most decent and honest builders I ever met. We started through the cottage enumerating everything and I then called or emailed the other three owners. Peg and I got a number in our head. $18,000. It turned out to be only $74. dollars below the final price after all the owners chimed in with things we "shoulda" done all those years. New linoleum, restore all the cottage windows and add new frames for them, a new deck, all new wiring (including a new fuse box since it took a wrench to throw the main switch on the current box ), a new portion built to divert the flow of water on the roof, rip out the old rug, tile the bathroom, fix the leak behind the toilet, raise the kitchen sink to 37 inches to accommodate bad backs and tall people. Finally, we needed to create cabinets we are not afraid to reach into underneath. Oh, and the landline gave out right after I got hold of the other owners. Majorally , as the kids say though, that was it. I began to feel better as we all agreed at long last and fast to do everything we could think of at the moment. I realized it was the opportunity of lifetime to set this place on its feet. I was excited.
However, the fates weren't quite done with me. A big fourth of July picnic loomed large in the coming days and my sister, Diane, who always spearheads the Cottager's Association's Annual Reunion Picnic, got a virus, and it became clear that I was "on scramble". We get between forty to seventy people at this thing! Everybody helped. My son, and his partner, my nephew and my niece in law, their children and all the neighbors seemed to jump at the chance- knowing Di had been doing too much again. Between contractors, owner's questions, and neighbor's questions, we did it. I had begged poor Choo Choo to come down and help us get started with the grill ( which he had to haul to the beach), and even though he had to go home and go through a " whole nother" stint of grilling for his crowd, he agreed. He probably didn't know or would not have believed that we had never used a grill any bigger than a boot before. So he taught us in order that we could do it ourselves next year. My friend, Cathy, helped me create a sign-up sheet to be filled out at the picnic-- for the picnic in 2011. That relieved my mind enormously. I will be able to send it around to whomever shows up at the cottage next year and relieve their mind. We had a great time and later saw really, surprisingly, fine fireworks at the Frankfort harbor, toured the town, got my book ensconced in the local author's nook at the neat little corner bookstore, bought t-shirts, a playsuit for THE KID (my grandson) and the next morning we all started cleaning and packing for home. Three hard days of driving followed due to the astounding and reassuring use of the stimulus money from Maryland to Michigan. Granted all the construction was a pain but at least the roads that were completed were great to drive on. If you don't believe the stimulus money is being used well..... just hit the road.
Then I got home. Home to a boat situation in which I was accused of damaging a neighboring boat. It resolved itself as it should. Or it seems to have. "Wasn't me" and I didn't think it had been. THEREFORE... I think God may not do vacations, but he does do solutions. Or as Markie would say, " the force was with me."Or as Gramps would have said, "It all came out in the wash", depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I believe this blog is a "twofer"it is so long.
Copyright: July 14, 2010.
We were busy being drowned, terrorized and exhausted by some hell-bent, late spring storms on our route. My one planned visit to Ohio fell through for a variety of reasons, some puzzling to me. One motel I stayed in near Ann Arbor, which had looked perfect, came under severe weather warnings as I got there. Looked like the storm was directly aimed at us....oh, and was it ever.. I found low sheltering trees for the truck and cats and , while their nerves took a beating, they didn't. During the night what was a "totally blowing sideways storm" dashed birds up against the building and they were lying around the grounds like the "dearly departed" when I did finally manage to venture out in the morning . "Venturing out" was a real trick since all power had gone out in the area; no elevators forced me, having a second floor room, to go down a pitch dark stairwell, hoping that I was stepping down the right way and praying on each trip that the magnetic stripe on the card to my room would hold out. If it wore out, it would lock in all the luggage I now couldn't get down the stairs by myself. The replacement machinery for the cards depended upon electricity. Breakfast was weird at best. I finally talked the only clerk with the one flashlight in the place to go to my room with me and help get all the "stuff" down the stairs. Lesson learned. Get a small flashlight for my purse. Again.
There was one colossal respite on the way. Two actually, if you ignore the embedded warning in the second. The first was one of the sweetest anniversary celebrations I had ever had the honor of attending. A sixtieth. For dearly beloved, old friends living in Ann Arbor. They had the kindness to take me into their home prior to the party so I could get out of that unfortunate motel. I would see them again "Up North".
Second stop was at my niece's house. She always apologizes for a beautifully kept and appointed home which completely blows my mind every time. At the end of this "overnight sanctuary" she suggested quietly that I should check out wiring for the light in the kitchen of our 1920's former fishing shanty. You gotta watch out for Ginger's quietness. She is quite possibly the quietest member of our "chatty Cathy" family. When she pipes up about something, you had better pay attention.
Some hours later I made it to the cottage to the immense and furious relief of my cat Winston.
Cathrine, the second cat, by now seemed perfectly content and pleased with all the hauling around. I let "F troop" and myself in the front door and was confronted with an empty wall. I had left a large watercolor, the one seen on the front of my book, hanging there. Hmm, again, my favorite line, "This bodes ill". I dug it out from behind the couch where it had fallen when the wiring had ripped loose at one end. Then I went straight to the kitchen to check the now open to public view, fixtureless, electrical wiring. Not so fine here either. The wires were shot. Frayed and ancient. It looked like a burnt out hole. I thought to myself, " there is no reason to believe that any of rest of the 1950's wiring job that my father did in his Rube Goldberg fashion, was any better. " I went out on to the back porch. Aha. No better out there. I found only two boards safe enough to walk on. I was a tad tired just from driving three days, so I , like Scarlet, refused to think about it until morning. Good try. Another storm barreled in during the night. And this was the storm that in my estimation toppled any illusions about what all we had to do and what we could get away with. Everything threatened to wreck "the house that Jack built."I got up around 1:30 a.m. , stumbling through the dark to the bathroom and as I stood in the doorway of the pantry that leads to it, I was drenched with water pouring through the door frame from the ceiling. " I see." I said to myself wearily .
I don't think God does vacations. At least not for me. In the morning I called Ginger, our current manager. I called Ginger a lot. I called a man named Scott House, who I remembered as one of the most decent and honest builders I ever met. We started through the cottage enumerating everything and I then called or emailed the other three owners. Peg and I got a number in our head. $18,000. It turned out to be only $74. dollars below the final price after all the owners chimed in with things we "shoulda" done all those years. New linoleum, restore all the cottage windows and add new frames for them, a new deck, all new wiring (including a new fuse box since it took a wrench to throw the main switch on the current box ), a new portion built to divert the flow of water on the roof, rip out the old rug, tile the bathroom, fix the leak behind the toilet, raise the kitchen sink to 37 inches to accommodate bad backs and tall people. Finally, we needed to create cabinets we are not afraid to reach into underneath. Oh, and the landline gave out right after I got hold of the other owners. Majorally , as the kids say though, that was it. I began to feel better as we all agreed at long last and fast to do everything we could think of at the moment. I realized it was the opportunity of lifetime to set this place on its feet. I was excited.
However, the fates weren't quite done with me. A big fourth of July picnic loomed large in the coming days and my sister, Diane, who always spearheads the Cottager's Association's Annual Reunion Picnic, got a virus, and it became clear that I was "on scramble". We get between forty to seventy people at this thing! Everybody helped. My son, and his partner, my nephew and my niece in law, their children and all the neighbors seemed to jump at the chance- knowing Di had been doing too much again. Between contractors, owner's questions, and neighbor's questions, we did it. I had begged poor Choo Choo to come down and help us get started with the grill ( which he had to haul to the beach), and even though he had to go home and go through a " whole nother" stint of grilling for his crowd, he agreed. He probably didn't know or would not have believed that we had never used a grill any bigger than a boot before. So he taught us in order that we could do it ourselves next year. My friend, Cathy, helped me create a sign-up sheet to be filled out at the picnic-- for the picnic in 2011. That relieved my mind enormously. I will be able to send it around to whomever shows up at the cottage next year and relieve their mind. We had a great time and later saw really, surprisingly, fine fireworks at the Frankfort harbor, toured the town, got my book ensconced in the local author's nook at the neat little corner bookstore, bought t-shirts, a playsuit for THE KID (my grandson) and the next morning we all started cleaning and packing for home. Three hard days of driving followed due to the astounding and reassuring use of the stimulus money from Maryland to Michigan. Granted all the construction was a pain but at least the roads that were completed were great to drive on. If you don't believe the stimulus money is being used well..... just hit the road.
Then I got home. Home to a boat situation in which I was accused of damaging a neighboring boat. It resolved itself as it should. Or it seems to have. "Wasn't me" and I didn't think it had been. THEREFORE... I think God may not do vacations, but he does do solutions. Or as Markie would say, " the force was with me."Or as Gramps would have said, "It all came out in the wash", depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I believe this blog is a "twofer"it is so long.
Copyright: July 14, 2010.
posted by The Anecdotal Life at 8:12 AM
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