I can count…all de way…to schfifty five…
Oh my gosh am I bored today! My boss is in PEI and when she’s not here there’s not much to be done. However, being bored does have its perks, like sneaking into my blog and posting on the absolutely fantabluous weekend I had this past weekend at Shannon’s cottage! Good times full of food, friends and fun, not to mention great weather!!The gang (minus Karen who was still at camp) headed out Friday evening for Shannon’s gorgeous cottage just outside Beachburg, Ontario. It’s about an hour and a half outside the city, so we busied ourselves in the car with good music and good conversation, mixed in with the odd banter on the walkie-talkies between the girls and guys cars. As is tradition, we went to the Beachburg Family Restaurant for a late dinner, squeezing in just before they were about to close (that’s also tradition!). This year, before going to eat, we made a quick pit-stop to see Shannon’s grandmother who also lives in Beachburg. She showed us around her lovely new home, and wouldn’t let us leave without a batch of homemade muffins and a warning about the storm-clouds ahead (such a grandma!!). The rain came down in sheets almost as soon as we got inside the restaurant, and our dinner was almost compromised as the power went out right after we’d ordered our meals. The owners of the restaurant didn’t seem at all phased by the blackout, and instead of telling us to leave, they brought out mood lighting and assured us that our hungry bellies would be full in no time. Such small-town hospitality!
The storm raged as we ate, but as soon as the bills were paid the rain slowed to nothing more than a light sprinkle and soon faded into sunshine. It would be the last we’d see of it until Sunday night! Shannon’s parents (who, oddly enough, were also in PEI!) would not be at the cottage this year, so we were invited to sleep inside instead of pitching tents on the front lawn as we’ve done the two years previous. There were enough beds for three of the five of us, and Lauren and I quickly offered to sleep on an air-mattress in the living room. The two of us are going to have to get used to less-than-perfect accommodations while we’re away on our trip, and we were more than happy to get an early start on our training ;). With night-time approaching, the boys and I unpacked the groceries and the bags from the car as soon as we got in. Lauren and Shannon had a special errand to attend to: the dock that was slowly fading away under the unusually high tides. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer, and as such the docks were having trouble staying above water. Lauren came equipped with a rope and her trusty hip-waders (Captain Entomology to the rescue!!) and she and Shannon securely fastened the dock to the nearest tree to keep it from floating away in the night.
The first night was a lot of fun. Another new addition to the cottage tradition this year was alcohol, and we brought it in spades. Coolers, beer and hard liquor (vodka and rum) filled the fridge, and we wasted no time cracking them open along with a deck of cards to play a few drinking games. We didn’t over-indulge by any standards, but we wound up having a lot of laughs (oh, and a lot of chocolate! Malt balls will be the death of me!!) before crawling into our pjs and drifting off the bed.
Saturday morning was a lazy one, as mornings usually are at the cottage. Tim brought Zavida’s coffee with him, and he wasted no time making a pot while the rest of us went out to greet the day. It was warm and sunny, which we were all ecstatic about, but looking out onto the water from the deck we saw a not-so-pleasant sight: though Shannon’s dock had survived the night virtually unscathed, her uncle’s dock (he owns the cottage next-door) was almost completely submerged, and was missing three large pieces of wood which plank the top. Lauren and Shannon ran down to see if they could spot them, and were relieved to see they had only floated a little farther down the bay and were presently stuck on the other side of the boat house. Confident that they would be going nowhere fast, we went back inside and prepared a big breakfast of pancakes and fruit. After the clean-up it was time to decorate the cottage for Karen’s surprise birthday celebration. Lauren and I won’t be around during her birthday, as it takes place while we’ll be in the UK, so we decided to start the celebrations early, and hung balloons, streamers and even a “Happy Birthday” banner outside the front door. Also, knowing Karen’s track-record for getting lost, we made a huge sign with her name on it to put out front of the cottage so that she would know where to turn when she got there. After that we went into Beachburg for some cooking spray to make the cake, and of course to the LCBO for some more drinks (our stock was getting low!).
After the cake was safely in the oven, Lauren, Shannon, Andrew and I got our suits on and went for a lie in the sun while Tim worked away on a report he had due this week (it sucks that he had to work, but better a Tim with his head buried in a lap-top then no Tim at all!). After we felt sufficiently baked by the hot sun, we decided in was time for a swim. The word ‘cold’ could not begin to describe the feeling of the water. It was FREEZING! But we stuck it out and after a while you got used to it (either that or my entire body went numb…). Shannon, Lauren and I fetched the wood from her uncle’s dock and brought it to shore, and decided that we’d had enough of the water when the goose-bumps started to arrive.
Just as we were setting out a late lunch, Karen arrived from her last week at camp. She’d been volunteering at a Christian camp for the last three weeks as a councillor, and had to stay there until Saturday as part of her commitment to the camp. We were all really happy to see her and to hear about all she’d done over the past few weeks. Things got really silly once she unravelled one of the leis we brought as a birthday favour and decided it was time for the human edition of cat’s cradle. We made a few unsuccessful attempts and then wound up wrapping it around Andrew about 60 times so that he would turn off the video camera :P.
That night we made our big pasta dinner with garlic shrimp, mushrooms and a chipotle pepper pesto sauce. It was really good, but a little rough on the tummy! Cake was for desert. After dinner we just sat around for a while, talking about life, love and the lack there-of. Talking openly and honestly with my friends is one of my favourite past-times, and I’m really lucky to have such a great group of people I can open up to. It makes me feel like no matter what happens, there will always be someone there for me if I need them!
Now, you really can’t have a cottage weekend without a campfire, so after a search for logs that weren’t too wet from Friday’s downpour, we got a fire going and had a sing-along with the guitar passing back and forth between the only two who know how to play: Karen and Tim. I wound up going in early because of my stomach ach, and after a can of ginger-ale proved futile, I crawled into an empty bed as some more deep conversation carried on in the background.
Sunday morning also began with coffee and a big brunch. This time it was bacon and eggs and the rest of the mushrooms and fruit (though not together. Ewwww…). More clean-up (we were forever doing dishes! Nasty hobbitses who like to eat so much!!) and then it was time to throw on our suits and get ready for another lazy day! Being Sunday, Karen and Tim decided to have their own worship service outside in the sun. Lauren, Shannon, Andrew and myself busied ourselves inside the cottage for a while, and were well entertained as Andrew took to bouncing a left-over birthday balloon with his head. His happy grin had us all in stitches!!
Sunbathing and swimming were also on the agenda for Sunday’s activities (I mean really is there anything else you’d rather do at a cottage??). We finally got Tim off the computer and convinced Andrew, who is not an experienced swimmer, to get in past his knees for a lesson or two in the basics of floating. Not wanting to have a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen type scenario, I distracted myself with a mass of dragon-flies which had accumulated on the remains of Shannon’s uncle’s dock, and also took to sunbathing on the floating dock (AKA the barge of hotness).
After we’d all had quite enough of the sub-zero temperature water, we got dressed and resumed our lounging in and around the cottage. Shan, Lauren, Andrew and Karen had the urge to go for ice cream, but Tim and I chose instead to stay behind and watch a movie. James Bond: Die Another Day was one of the only ones he’d brought that I hadn’t seen, so we threw it on the lap-top and vegged-out with a couple of pints while the others went to town. The movie was horribly cheesy to say the least (what was with all the lasers???) but it was a good way to spend the remaining hours of the afternoon (after-all, we were at a cottage…who wants to THINK?).
Dinner that night was a simple BBQ with chicken burgers and whatever else we had left that we didn’t want to take home. After that a MAJOR clean-up ensued…rolling up sleeping bags, packing up clothes and bathing suits, washing out all the left-over containers in the fridge, sweeping the floors and generally rendering the cottage in as good a state, or better, as when we arrived. We had aimed to leave for 7 p.m. and our planning was perfect, save for a small incident involving two bees which refused to vacate Shannon’s car. But that was remedied as soon as I got hold of a fly-swatter…yea, I squished ‘em good. We got back into the city at about 9 o’clock, relaxed, happy and eager to go back again next year!
Thanks so much for a wonderful weekend gang!
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