A Weekend Of Solitude, Fresh Air And Exercise

Now that it's officially summer I guess it's safe to say that it's going by quickly. No surprise there. Here it is the 24th already and one week left before we head into July, which I'm sure will go by even quicker.

As I said last week I had nothing big planned for the week and true to my word I didn't do much of anything. I should be working on painting the garage, or at least cleaning it out and organizing my work area, but rather than get that ambitious I did some work on the sideyard that needed doing. Cleaned up the huge pile of leaves from last fall along side the garage and got out the hedge trimmers and cut back the spirea bushes so there was room to walk between them and the dog pen again. Just doing that killed a couple evenings and I'm not done yet. I've done even less so far this week than last but I will get out there and finish it up before it snows again.

During the week it came to light that the wife was going to have to stay home for the weekend because of a special event at the high school so I determined that I was going up to camp anyhow. Christopher didn't want to go along cuz of the girlfriend in town so Friday afternoon after work I packed up some stuff in the truck quckly, Opened the door so Mercury and Bailey could jump in and headed up north to camp. We made a stop in Muskegon at a lady I work with's house and picked up a "sit and spin" that we had plans to use at camp. More on that later.... We got there about 7:00 and after opening the place up I set about making myself a hamburger for supper. After dinner we all jumped in the truck and headed up to the lodge to see if our favorite girl was there to make us a malt. She was and after paying the lady we took a ride around the roads while we polished off the ice cream. When we got back to camp I got a fire going and we spent the rest of the evening taking turns snoozing around the firepit.

Saturday morning I got up early so I pulled the leashes down and the 3 of us took a hike for about an hour, down past the lake and back around thru the hills. When we got back it was time to make breakfast, bacon and eggs over easy. I was going to start off quietly but by the time I finished eating the guy across the way already had his tractor out so I pulled out the mower and fought with that damn thing for about 10 minutes until I gave up, jumped in the truck and headed into Scottville for a new spark plug. That trip killed an hour easy so when we got back I put the plug in, gave the old thing a couple serious pulls and it decided to come to life. I spent the next couple hours mowing the east side. I took a break about 1 and made a PB & J sandwich for lunch and then ended up napping for an hour.

After recharging I fired up the mower again and went after the ferns that had taken over the tire swing. I also mowed out an area where I wanted to plant the remaining pine trees. Once the mowing was done I undid the tire from the tire swing and replaced it with the large, circular plastic seat that had been the largest part of the Sit and Spin. The tire just wasn't getting it....it was heavy, hard to swing on and retained water in the bottom half. The light plastic disk from the Sit and Spin worked great. I put several knots in the rope to hold the seat in place and then gave it a test with my bulky frame. I figured if it could hold my fat ass in the air for a couple swings back and forth then it'd hold anybody else likely to get on it in the days and months ahead. I also had to restack one of the woodpiles as it had decided to fall over again. This time I didn't stack it quite so high. By the time I got that done it was time for supper. I got out all my fixin's to make tacos and had a small feast. I gave each of the boys a plate too, minus the shells and their plates were cleaner, quicker than mine.

After dinner I decided a shower would be a great idea so I grabbed a towel and the shampoo and headed up to the lodge. After a nice long, hot shower I had the girl make me my chocolate malt and we did a repeat performance of the night before, riding around the place until it was time to go back and get a fire going. I got out the guitar and actually played it for awhile. Once my fingers got too sore to play I put it away and turned on the Ipod for the remainder of the evening. It was a beautiful night, lots of stars and night sounds, owls hooting....no coyotes this time though....we all finally gave up and went to bed about 12:30

Sunday was another busy day. I didn't get out of the sack until Mercury's insistent pawing got me going. It was 8:30 by then so I set about making breakfast right away. We all had pancakes and bacon and then I started right in on digging a shallow trench from the deck to the outhouse to lay the patio blocks flush to the ground in. There hadn't been a cloud in the sky when I got up but that changed and while I was laying the blocks it started to sprinkle, which was good cuz it got rid of the gnats. After a while though it started coming down hard and with the thunder and lightening there was nothing else to do but get under the awning, put some Lyle Lovett on the Ipod and take a break.

A short nap later the sun was shining again so I got up and finished the patio walkway. After that project was finished I got the wheelbarrow and shovel and went about planting the rest of the pines that we didn't get to a couple weeks ago. The next project after the pine planting was complete was to get the weedwacker out and clean up the east side of the driveway, down by the road. Once the weeds were gone I hauled the big rocks me and Chris had gathered up last time and put them in a nice row down to where the trees started. By the time I got that done I was runnning out of gas so I decided to finish off the day with some more mowng down on the east side. I wanted to finish cleaning up that section but it was slowing going and I just ran out of gumption and decided to call it a day, It was 5:00 by then and it took an hour to clean up, put things away and lock stuff up so we got head home. I got in the truck after putting the chain up and started heading down the road before I remembered I didn't take any pics of what I did, but I was too tired at that point to care so next visit I'll shoot pics of my "improvements". I never took one shot all weekend. Pretty abnormal for me.

We got home about 8:00 and after a shower and some crummy pizza for supper I was pretty much done for the day, It was a beautiful weather weekend and I really enjoyed just bumming around with my 4-legged buddies. We'll more than likely be doing that again come fall and the football season.

One more thing I wanted to mention that I haven't mentioned in awhile was the road project.They started tearing up our sidewalks and street last week and so I got out there and took some pics of what it looks like around here these days. It's a pain in the butt to get in and out of here on the bike and the hot rod cuz of the very bumpy dirt road but so far it's not been too big of a pain......it's gonna be going on until the end of September so we'll just shut up and make the best of it.

More next week.

TC