lazy q cabin

just as i realized i had not taken any photos today, i checked my email to find that my mother had found the photo of my grandma and aunt arm wrestling.

helen's in the blue, my grandma in yellow.  my dad's looking on, and watching through the window is my other grandma (my dad's mom) and my older sister, becki.  they were sleeping outside on the "davenport" on the front porch.  it's 12:10 a.m. on august 3, 1980, so i am, presumably asleep in the bathroom (where it's dark and you can fit a little baby bed and people aren't up arm wrestling), or, given that i am less than 2 months old, perhaps i'm awake too...

this is the cottage my grandparents (dad and helen's parents) built on a lake up north in michigan.  it's three rooms-- a kitchen, a bathroom, and a large open living/sleeping area with two sets of bunk beds built into the wall, divided by a small walk-in closet.  you can picture something roughly like this (only the ceilings were higher so you could throw a ball back and forth between the two top bunks and store all your inflatable duck-shaped swim rings).  during my elementary and middle-school years, we would go up there for a couple weeks every summer, sweeping off the steps to the lake, raking the badminton court, swimming (while trying to avoid 'the mushies'), catching toads, hunting for turtles, spotting the occasional snake, and developing a fondness for daddy-longlegs which were all over the outside of the cottage.  what else... the mork and mindy poster on the inside of the kitchen pantry door, playing the pump organ in the living room, trying to watch tv through the curtain of the lower bunk after bedtime, reading chapter books, going to the laundromat, doing dishes, throwing balls over the roof from the front to the back of the cottage and back again, making little worlds in the sandy area outside the bunk windows, watching a long line of ants march through the little woods between the cottage and the lake, eating breakfast at the picnic table inside, swinging on the porch swing outside, sleeping on the davenport once with my grandma and talking about flying squirrels, my older sisters wearing my grandpa's old fleece shirts that lived in the closet, changing in that little closet, wimbledon and oliver north on the tv.  the model ship up on the mantle, everyone getting one drawer to themselves in the chest of drawers behind the green couch. the big yellow smiley face painted on the side of the shed, the footprints and initials pressed into wet cement.  the tall bell.  bug spray. badminton games. wiffle ball games on the sandy, dirt road outside with neighbors.  or in the words of my six-year-old self (pretty sure i can quote myself verbatim from my diary back then)-- i woke up, i got dressed, i ate breakfast, i played, i ate lunch, i swam, i ate dinner, i played, i went to bed.  i'm sure we all have our own memories of our time at the cottage, but those are  some of mine.