Lakery part iii

Day three of lakeiness.

There is a band of wild children that are living two doors down from us. Their major summertime activity seems to be yelling. I had sort of hoped that it was a children of the corn/anarchy situation. Unfortunately they appear to have learned it by watching their parents, who are just as loud, and are currently screaming from a boat in the middle of the lake. at 8AM. This is almost an hour later than they started yesterday, and I am not thrilled that I am awake to know this.

Apart from the Screech Family Robinson, who find themselves cropped from my photos, the lake was serene and flat this morning, and the sun was out. It is really a shame we aren't staying one more day, because it looks like perfect swimming weather today. 

Hopefully we'll come back sometime soon and stay again, or at least have a swimming party. We realised its been 12 year since we came here regularly, and 5 since our last visit to the public boat launch for swimmies.



We spent the morning packing up leisurely and filling out the guest book. Portia was able to lay to rest the ongoing feud he had engaged in with the robotic trash can, and they're getting along now.








Our guest book entry will probably not go over that well with our hosts, but it is a fairly accurate representation of our weekend.













We arrived at the Bremerton Ferry Docks just in time to wait an hour for a ferry. This worked out well, because we were able to have some lunch, chill out, and catch pokemon. Apparently Bremerton is lousy with Pokestops, and Sharon was convinced every person on their phone was playing. He doesn't get out much.



We were surrounded by a Squirtle Squad on the way out, but I took care of it, and we were able to depart without a hitch.

Mount Rainier was visible during our ferry ride home, giving Portia a chance to use one of my least favourite local expressions "The mountain is out!"



Now we are all home, and recovering from social fatigue. Why are relaxing lake vacations so damn exhausting!?

The majority of the photos I took this weekend can be found on flickr.

Lake Weekend II, electric bugaloo

By the time our Oregonian counterparts arrived, things had mostly dried out and even the sky showed signs of clearing up. After some lazing about and catching up, we all slowly migrated down to the water to engage in various activities.



Sharon's primary motivation was to get other people wet through a combination of godzilla moves and jumping on the floating island that came with the cabin.

The rest of us spent a lot of time staring at the water.



Three of us took the paddle boat over to our old cabin to check it out. As I am not really able to pedal, I sat on the back while the boys worked out. I totally got the better part of that deal, despite not being able to see where we were going. The new owners weren't there, and appear to have made some changes. I'm hoping their kids are too old for it now and they're looking to sell, but we haven't heard anything yet. I may write them a letter at some point soon.



Staring led to sunset, and sunset led to skipping stones. There was varying success with this, the boys lamented that all the good flat stones had already been used. I did enjoy taking pictures of it though, and got some of my favourite of the trip. I was about half dead from pain at this point, so I'm happy i was able to get outside and take these.

Sunset made its way into firetime, and we all sat around getting smokey for a while. No one brought marshmallows, so we just pretended to make smores, and played charadesy games. 

Our friends managed to make it out before midnight, technically ensuring our adherence to the cabin rules. They didn't stay over!

Lake weekend, Part i

We set out Friday morning, four in a car. As we boarded the ferry, someone suggested we make up drag names to use on the ferry. Our group currently consists of: Portia Potty, Sharon Aspergers (nee Ass), Sandy Crackers, and me, Trucker McGee.


The sky was blue, and the weather was beautiful as we left Seattle behind for the wilds of Mason County.


We took our luncheon at that bastion of haute cuisine Big Bubbas Burgers, where the young lady who served us was not amused that Sandy gave our name as “Bernie Sanders for President.” We are deep enough in Trump country here, that I was concerned the owners would have issues with two of the three boys being gay and evict us before we could even begin to unpack. That hasn’t happened yet, though I suspect they have just decided we are all “fishin’ buddies” or some other acceptably hetero arrangement.

When we arrived at the cabin, things were more overcast, but it was a long trip and I don't think anyone cared.

Once we dropped off the luggage with the bellhop, Portia and I headed in to town to buy groceries. This worked out well, because we have a similar shopping style, which led to us spending way too long admiring new things on shelves, while managing to avoid buying most of the food we needed. But we have snacks! Oh boy do we have snacks.

Because we were good in the store, we got to stop at Dairy Queen on the way back and pick up blizzards. Mine was Cotton Candy flavoured (Duh). In truth we probably did not deserve those blizzards, because all we bought in terms of real food for the weekend was 12 frozen burgers and a 2-foot scooby-doo-sized sandwich. The remainder of the cargo was water, soda, chips, popsicles, alcohol, and mixers for alcohol. We may have priorities, but we will probably not have full stomachs.

We spent Friday night chilling out and playing games mostly. Everyone was in bed by 1:30AM. This isnt that unusual for us out here, once the sun goes down we all tend to fade pretty quickly if there isnt a skinny dip. I’m not sure the set up here will allow for that, but remain ever hopeful on behalf of my mother.

Its currently 5:30AM Saturday as I write this, having not gotten much sleep. I will probably try to catch a nap in the real bed later in the day, I slept on the sofa “bed” last night, and it fully deserves its quotation marks. Who knew there was a 5:30 in the MORNING!?

I meant to be writing this from outside as I watched the lake, but the weather had other ideas. We had a beautiful clear day yesterday, but when I stepped onto the deck I was met with a squishy wet carpet, and the outdoor table is covered with water. I’m not sure why the carpet is out there, but I can say that when my family bought their cabin, most of it was covered with carpet… including the deck and dock. My family laughed about how crazy it was to put stuff on the wood as both deck and dock were rotting and needed replacement. So they were rebuilt, and covered with a plastic mesh material. I’m not sure that lesson was fully learned.  Maybe it is a Thing Unique to This Lake.

Everyone is still asleep right now, so nothing fun is happening yet, but we expect our visitors in a few hours. I plan to pretend they’re locals, hopefully no one notices their Oregon plates.

Countdown to Lakery

I have become sort of reconciled to not leaving the house without a driver or extreme pain. I was able to get delivery of both restaurants and groceries during my captivity when needed, but even that wasn’t terribly convenient as my livingspace is on the top floor of the house and stairs are still required. While I can walk enough to go down stairs, they’re still not fun, and large grocery orders mean multiple trips up and down the death-boards.

I had my first solo visit to a grockery store on my own last week, and it was much celebrated. There is something especially difficult about not being able to buy your own groceries, and I found it independence-sapping. The main impetus behind this shopping trip was to purchase supplies for an upcoming road trip. The combination of shopping freedom and impending escape from the city was heady, and led to the purchase of far too many portable snack foods. If we decide not to pick up real supplies on the way there, we will still have plenty to eat before resorting to cannibalism. 

I am ridiculously excited about the opportunity to get out of town. I haven't really had much to post about, or any decent pictures to put up, because every day is pretty much the same when you're bed-ridden, and there are laws about posting too many pictures of cats on the internet.  

When I was growing up, my family kept a lake cabin on Benson Lake in Washington. I always spent the bulk of the summers there, often with my uncle’s family who relocated from California every summer.

The lake is tiny, warm, and clean, and I always liked swimming in it, despite my mother trying to make lake sharks a thing. (Side story: I once pitched a tent on the dock to sleep in while staying at the cabin with my parents. My mother convinced my boyfriend to wear a wetsuit, and swim underneath the dock to shake it and pretend to be a shark. I’m not sure he fully understood the plan, because at one point after a few minutes of me not reacting, he started yelling “Dock shark! Dock shark!”)

When I was in my 30s, my friends and I began to have regular cabin weekends, filling the car with costco burgers and eating nothing but that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We had some great times out there, and were starting to get very attached.

Then one day, my family told me they were going to sell the place. Several of my friends were interested in buying it, and my mother promised me she would tell me when they were ready in the coming year. She called back a day later to say it was sold. My friends have never really forgiven my family for selling it for a criminally low price to someone else, and depriving us of our summer playground.

We looked for a comparable place to buy, but they were all 2-3 times the price and in much worse shape. One we went to had a deck so rotten that our feet went through the wood. It was two doors down from our cabin, had no indoor plumbing, and was listed for 100k more than ours sold for. None of the cabins we saw really suited our needs or were right.

During my captivity, I randomly looked at airbnb, to see pretty apartments in other places. During my searches I put in Benson Lake just to see if anything was available. This isnt an unusual search for me, every now and then I look to see if our cabin is listed on real estate sites. I have a lot of strange dreams about just going out to it and using it without the new owner knowing. We never have, though we have gone to the lake’s public boat launch to swim and hang out a few times.

At any rate, this particular search bore fruit. I found a single cabin on the tiny lake for rent. And so it was rented, and now we are going.  The cabin is tiny, one bedroom (“sleeps four” is optimistic, one of us slept on the floor) and we can’t have all our friends here because there are Rules about that. Additional rules included that the owner lives next door and his mother lives in the garage off this cabin, which means that although we intend to smuggle two more people in to hang out we will probably be caught.

Captivity

Currently I’m on month 11 of captivity. I haven’t been allowed to drive or walk very far since last August.  In that time, I have only been more than a few miles from my house three times. It began to chaff months ago, and now we have moved directly past the blistering phase and into callouses. I no longer really stress about it, but I do spend a lot of time hiding in bed so that the days all seem the same. I had to google what month it was a few days ago, because I honestly wasn’t sure.

The most accurate representation of the amount of time spent in bed is probably my cross stitch project, which has gone from this: 

To this: 

Though to be honest I haven't worked on it at all since my surgery, which was in May. It turns out high doses of painkillers make entertainment mostly redundant. I had a few weeks in a cast where I couldn't put any weight on my right foot at all. My father came to visit to play butler, which probably kept me from re-injuring myself. I also had a night nurse: 

When the wraps came off, it turned out I was in a Twilight Zone episode where all of the people have cankles and the surgeon gave me implants to look like them. 

A few weeks later I had stitches removed and was graduated to a walking cast. Currently I'm splitting time between that and a splint. As of late May, I am technically allowed to drive, but I suffer for it afterwards, and its a fairly painful process to brake. I am still pain-restricted to the area around my house, but it means I'm at least able to drive myself to physical therapy instead of taking a medicaid sponsored cab.

March, Mayhem, and Motherhood

As of this writing, it is March. I am now nearly at my Month Seven milestone.

I am tired of being in bed. I can kind of get around now, I walk almost like a human. But then I suffer swelling and pain for subsequent days. It turns out that I ruptured a bunch of ligaments in my right ankle, and my chronic under-reporting of pain made the doctor think my injury was less bad than it truly was.

I am now scheduled for surgery in May and FIVE MONTHS of recuperation thereafter. I won’t be able to drive during this time. This will put me at about 13 months since my fall. I am displeased with my inability to travel or perform other outside-the-house shenanigans. As a result, I have begun to act out of spite. The doctor has told me I shouldn’t drive “more than a mile or two.” and to “limit walking.” These seem like fairly vague suggestions. All I want to do is get out and about and stop feeling like a beached mermaid.

As I type, I am ensconced at a Starbucks in a maul, writing on my laptop just like a Real Person. Ok, I did commandeer an extra chair so I could put my foot up, and I brought my crutches so that I could steal a handicapped parking spot. I may also have forced the barista to make up my order. But other than all that: Total Real Person today.

Unfortunatey, its a Friday, and its unusually sunny. This is an outdoor maul, and it is full of Other Real People. I kinda hate it. I kinda hate it a lot. But now I’m entrenched and staying just because i’m finally out of the house. To add insult to injury (or something) the entire maul is decorated in Happy Face balloons. Between that and the sunshine, it is aggressively cheerful. I feel like i’m in a really bad remake of The Watchmen. I want to pop them all.

Maybe its the blonde caramel macchiato talking, but I’m starting to think the Real World is not really as exciting as Netflix made it seem. I haven’t seen a single super hero, and nary a mystery has needed solving since I arrived.

As I typed that, a woman approached me and asked me if I could watch her plants. Perhaps the day is perking up!! I am now RESPONSIBLE for LIFE! I did make her promise they wouldn’t misbehave, but we all know people make things up about their children. Not gonna lie.. hoping for a vegetative murder spree on my watch.

It is now Day Two of Plant Watch (translation: ten minutes in). I’m not sure how long I’ve committed to this venture. Maybe the plant mother walked in one door of starbucks and out the other. Perhaps they’ve been abandoned. Maybe i’m now a mother. I’m not sure about the legality, but if she doesn’t come out soon with a coffee, I may have to adopt. That’s probably legal in this state. I was going to get another coffee, but I guess I should start saving for plant college.

Three minutes later: Alas. Bio-mother has returned. The plants have continued on their way. She did ask me “Did anyone swear at them while I was gone?” I’m not sure what that was all about. Was she questioning my maternal skills? Because I hardly even talked to them, I just let them have a little coffee and people watch. I told her there had been nary a murder spree. She exited quickly. Real People are weird, I’m going home to Netflix and chill-my-ankles.

Haystacks Not Included

On day three of my 8-10 weeks, I was trying to lay in different parts of my bed just to see if things seemed new, fresh, and exciting from a positional change. Day four I decided I had watched all of NetFlix, and by day five I was also out of internet to read. Driving is basically impossible, and having visitors would meed negotiating stairs, which is unappealing at best, and dangerous at mediocre.

At some point during this first few weeks, after thousands of boredom-spurred calls, my father and mother both suggested perhaps a new hobby was in order. New hobbies which don’t require leaving bed or other people are few and far between, as it turns out. Wishing for excitement, I wound up ordering a cross stitch kit from Amazon, thinking that I would make it for my grandmother.  At least this would give me something that felt productive while I watched television.

After months* of waiting, the kit arrived, and I started work on it. Reviews had left me with the impression that this kit would provide years worth of work to do. They were probably not wrong, but I had 10 weeks. Challenge accepted!

And so, wishing upon a star for excitement, and praying that I wouldn’t prick my finger and get blood on the embroidery cloth (which Disney has taught me would knock me up), I started making tiny, colourful x’s. I started thinking of this whole process as Minecraft for old ladies: tiny x’s to make tiny squares to make a bigger picture.

It was on the third day that a snag was hit.

I took a break, had a vicodin for lunch, and started on a new colour. A few minutes later, I was ready for a nap. I set my threaded needle on my laptop on my bedside table and crashed out.

I woke up a few hours later and went to pick up my needle. I was pretty sure of where I had left it, but I couldnt find it. My foggy brain wasn’t entirely sure about anything though. I spent the next 16 hours hunting for the needle. This was especially hard given I couldnt really stand. I swiffered my floor, I tried to move my mattress to check under the bed… this resulted in me being stuck between the very heavy mattress and the boxspring for about three hours.

I became, at some point, convinced that the needle had been eaten by a cat. I wanted to blame Dickypaws the Destructor, but I wasn’t sure how he could have planned a heist that involved breaking into a locked room, jumping up onto my laptop, and consuming more than his daily share of iron. This left one suspect:

As I had little outlet for complaint, I called various friends and family members. “There’s no way he ate it.” was the general consensus. “But it was attached to thread!” I argued. “He really likes eating thread! Sometimes when I’m sleeping, he eats my hair. Mostly from the brush, but I would not be surprised to wake up with a bald spot one day.” “No way!” they argued. “He wouldn’t eat a needle. Unpossible.” And so, I let myself be swayed by the court of public opinion. I continued to search for the tiny, tiny needle.

And sure enough, 24 hours into the ordeal, I found it. It was even still threaded!

The culprit was clear, and he seemed no worse for wear. I don’t know what that cats guts are made of, but they are stronger than one magnetized piece of metal. Intestinal fortitude indeed.

*actually a day or two

Busted Stems

I haven't posted in a while, but I wrote some entries which I am now getting around to almost a year later. Enjoy the ketchup.

This one time, last August, I went to visit some friends who were showing an outdoor movie at their house. They had chosen Showgirls for the camp value. As I arrived and descended their grand, curving, outdoor staircase, something along the lines of this happened. Except with more clothing.

After visits to the ER and what my mother has referred to as an “Arthropod” but is actually an orthopaedic surgeon, I was prescribed 8-10 weeks of NetFlix. This may sound like a nice vacation, but really it is a lot like being stuck in the movie Misery, without the benefit of Kathy Bates bringing me things.

The problem with having two jacked up ankles is that even crutches are not much help, because you can’t put weight on either of them. The first few weeks I was crawling to and from the bathroom and kitchen because it was easier than trying to walk. The stairs and small spaces in my house meant a wheelchair was not feasible, and the surgeon had essentially told me I could get a tiny scooter in six weeks “if I was good.”

Dickypaws the Destructor found the crawling situation untenable and seemed to be concerned I was trying to steal his food. As a result he threw any roadblock he could think of into my path. Generally this consisted of his rather prodigious body weight, but he was also creative enough to hack a hairball or two into my path. It was like the worlds worst version of the Wacky Races.

There were no winners.