Summerlude

In case you were wondering, I haven’t disappeared entirely. I just spent the long weekend at my Mom’s cottage/house up near Wakefield with my sisters and brother and some of their assorted partners and children.

My mom and one of her exes own this place together and they take turns living in it. The old cottage is in the foreground, and the new house is being built in the background.

My mom’s living in the new house now. She’ll live in it year-round for the next ten years, except for every second summer, when he’ll have it and she’ll travel to Africa. Then he’ll live in it year-round for the following ten years, and she’ll have it every other summer.

This past year has been devoted to building the house and bitching about the violent alcoholic bipolar contractor who flew into a rage and quit before the job was finished. My mom inherited his helper, who was apparently incompetent but nice, so she kept him around. Consequently, many things were installed upside-down and backwards and inside-out and in the wrong places.

But it’s a very, very nice house, all things considered, and will be even nicer when the outside of the building is put on and the mistakes are all fixed.

This winter the old cottage will be torn down and carted away across the frozen lake. So sad.

This is the kind of weekend we had. That’s my mom playing Scrabble with my brother Rob. We had two Scrabble boards going at once: one for the amateurs and one for the professionals. There was also much eating and drinking and general merrymaking, along with a little fishing, some stick-throwing for my mom’s dog Kenya, and a few handyman projects for the menfolk.

There should be more weekends like this, but summer’s so short. By the time I get myself into the swing of summer each year, the seasons start changing again. I noticed some red-tinged leaves on a maple tree today….