We're back from the cottage. I love cottages, because what I really want to do on vacation is lie around reading my book, swim, cook, and argue with my friends. It's true. I'm funny that way.
It's also neat what things you learn when you spend a few days living in the same space with people. For example my friend Greg, who is much admired among those of us who know him from work for his handiness at any number of tasks, built the most crazy-ass incompetent fire I have ever seen. Sorry, dear, but you know it's true. Some kindling, and then some juniper branches, and then a giant log plopped right on top.
Greg: "I'm waiting for all the apologies I'm going to get when this burns."
Thea: "I'm rehearsing, wait: 'You got lucky.'"
Peter: "If that actually catches fire, I will walk into town, buy the ingredients, walk back here and make you a pie."
Alas, I foiled my own chances to get pie when he kept adding more and more and more juniper, and cardboard, and then some juniper branches approximately four feet long, draped over the fire with their ends dangling.
alex [quiet, but incredulous]: "On top?"
Me [laughing hysterically, intervening]: "Oh my god, stop. Stop. Stop."
Greg: "It would have worked."
Me [stuffing kindling into the hot part at the bottom]: "Seriously, no."
It rained all of Sunday, so of course we had to go get in the lake and toss a frisbee and a miniature football back and forth. I can neither throw nor catch, which caused no end of trauma in gym class, but it was very pleasant to play with people who didn't care. Eventually Greg and Peter started throwing rocks at each other again (Me: "Use your words!") and I got cold and got out and went back to reading my book.
The hijinks did not extend to the food, the brilliant food, at least not unless you include the addition of copious volumes of butter. So it was with a heavy heart (but grateful arteries) that I got in the car to come home yesterday morning. I was shaken out of my melancholy by the necessity of fitting myself into the front seat with the better part of the 120 beer bottles we were returning. I'm glad to be home. I missed Lizbeth, and I wanted to sleep in my own bed. But you can bet I'm plotting next year's trip already.
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4 comments:
Did somebody say FIRE?
kindling on top? Even I know better than that and nobody trusts me with anything more complicated than mixed drinks and breakfast at the cottage.
I mean, I go swimming drunk at night at the cottage; I once knocked my non-swimming fiancé into ten foot deep water (causing the fiercest doggy paddle I've ever witnessed); I've even accidentally rolled a cargo van down a steep hill at a cottage (my life and the cottage were saved when the right rear wheel was stopped by a cooler) and I've never put kindling on top. Of course, no one lets me near the fire, but I hardly see how that's relevant.
Also, juniper is for gin.
it's bad that I read that as "when the right rear wheel was stopped by a toddler." although in my addled misreading, that seemed cool, like Super Toddler, rather than like the more reasonable and distressing interpretation. maybe I just figured I'd have heard the story if you'd crushed a kid with a cargo van.
the juniper does smell really nice when you're burning it, though, which is more than I can say for gin. and yes. the kindling on top was perplexing. it's weird; he's good at so very many things...
Next time let me do it. I love fires so much that I actually have a police record that mentions them...but aside from the crazy, that means I'm good at making them.
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