Weekend Getaway

What a marvelous thing a three day weekend is.

I was recently considering the fact that it's a bit wearing that I don't normally get two days off in a row from work.  I have an assistant who takes one day at the store for me in the middle of the week, and I have Sundays off, but to not have two days off in a row means when I am home I have to decide between getting something done or enjoying myself, but not really both because time is limited.

Working outside the home means the house kind of slips into disorder while I'm gone, and my "days off" end up being cleaning and errand days.  Unless I decide to use that time to write or do something fun with the kids, but then I have to make a conscious decision to let the house remain a pit.  Two days off in a row means one day to clean and another to relax, but that hasn't happened in a long time.

For Memorial Day Weekend it was tempting to get a lot of house and yard work done and then just enjoy that whole Monday off.  But instead it sounded better to simply flee all of it and go to the cottage.  The house could be a pit by itself where I wouldn't have to look at it, and the cottage is easy to clean because there is so much less of it.

I love the cottage.  I've been missing my grandma a lot lately, and I feel like she's with me when we're in her cottage again.  She would have been so happy to know we still use it.


It occurred to us this past weekend that Mona is the same age I was when the cottage first got built and we started visiting there in the summers.  How amazing is that?  To watch her repeat some of my same childhood experiences in the same place I lived them?  It's surreal while also feeling exactly right.

needlepoint on the wall my gram did

That timeless element of the cottage is so rare.  The cottage has always been in our family and very little about it has changed.  It's set apart.  When I'm at the cottage I'm in the past and the present and imagine a future that looks a lot like both.  It's a refuge from not just our regular life (and messy house) but from time in some ways.  We may bring bits of our lives with us there in the form of work we have to drag along, but it's not demanding in the same way.  At some point you take a walk or have some ice cream or play a board game, because that's what you do at the cottage.

We read a lot.  Quinn caught and released many fish.  The kids worked on a sand castle.  We released Chipper to run freakishly fast up and down the horse trails.  We made s'mores.  The weather was perfect.  We saw an astonishing number of stars.

Couldn't ask for a better two days in a row before hitting the road for the long drive home.  (Which goes much faster when you're reading Harry Potter aloud to a car full of people who can't wait to hear what happens next.)

It was great.

Hope all of you had a lovely weekend as well.