At the Cabin

Saturday, 23 June 2012

 Last night was most unusual: I slept at home.

After two nights in The Land of Lincoln, I returned home around 8:00 PM to an empty house. My wife and kids left back on Wednesday (the same day I left for Illinois) to spend some time up at the family cabin. I’m going to join them today. But, for now, I have the hosue to myself.

I’m happy to report the cat is still alive.

Speaking of the cat, I woke up with a jolt at around 2:30 this morning thanks to a very loud noise. I sat up in bed and looked around. Of course, it was too dark for me to see anything, so I turned on the light dimly. I then hobbled into the other bedrooms a bathroom looking for what might have caused such a loud noise. No luck.

So I went downstairs.

I looked around, couldn’t find anything suspicious. I even went down into the basement – the cat following me with a look that said, “Hey, human, what’s your problem?”

I went back upstairs and peeked into my son’s room again, and noticed some of his toys on the floor were askew. I think what happened was the cat was sleeeping on Owen’s bed, jumped down, and then knocked into his toy train or marble works and startled the both of us.

By this point, I couldn’t get to sleep. So I grabbed my laptop and searched on Netflix for something to watch. I watched Jim Gaffigan’s Mr. Universe, which I highly reccommend. It was good fun sitting in bed, computer on my lap, watching a stand-up routine at 3:00 in the morning.

That’s the sort of thing you can do when you have the place to yourself.

Sunday, 24 June 2012

 Well, I arrived at the cabin safely around 1:30 yesterday. It’s been mostly a lazy time, which is good after my stressful week of giving a presentation, dealing with Hamline’s accounting department, attending a 3-day class, and twice flying on an airplane.

Today I mowed the cabin’s property. As luck would have it, the mower ran out of gas when I was about 95% done with the job. This wasn’t really a problem, Jennifer said we had to go into town anyway to get some food.

While out, we stopped for ice cream at Joyful Morning coffee shop. It looked like just a nice, normal place to buy ice cream, but…

Imagine some taking a bible, folding it in half, and trying to force it into your mouth. That’s kind of the atmosphere they’re going for at Joyful Morning. I didn’t realize it at first: I paid no attention to their road sign that offered:

Coffee, Ice Cream, Cheese, Bibles, Gifts

Bibles? Who singles out bibles like that?

Then, when we walked in the door, I saw that old scripture from Joshua that I think came standard with every house a Witness purchases – you know, the one that says, “As for my and my house, we shall serve the Lord”? I just passed it off as a standard Christian decoration.

But then, the guy who served us ice cream had a shirt on that said he stood with Christ. Every table had a donation box on it for Feed My Starving Children (a Xtian charity), approximately 99% of the gifts for sale and decorations on the wall were Christian-themed. They all had these beautiful pictures – you know, of wildlife, sunrises, and soldiers – and “inspirational” messages like “God watches every breath you take” and “Jesus loves me…because I’m straight.” Owen asked me to read one of the messages to him and, after I did, he said, “That’s not true.” I had to shush him, lest we be thrown before the inquisition.

My favorite gift item for sale was a “Jesus loves me” money clip. My least favorite gift item was a bible that intersperced scriptures with images and “facts” about our founding fathers. Christians, please: don’t mix your religion with the US government. You do both a disservice.

The shop’s website says “We would love to host your bible study.” Au contraire: I don’t think you’d love to host my bible study.

Monday, 25 June 2012

This morning, there were geese outside the cabin. Later, a heron landed on the dock. Then there was a giant turkey on the beach (no, it wasn’t me – I’m talking about a literal turkey). All that fowl is very cool to see, but I gotta tell you about the reptile we saw last night.

In the evening, after going into the cabin for the night, I went back outside to get something and I saw this turtle on the beach:

I’m no zoologist, but I think it’s a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta). I tried looking up info about her last night, but there’s no internet access at the cabin, so I used my wife’s cellular telephone and the best I could find was info about a Blanding’s Turtle.

Anyway, this painted turtle was laying eggs on the beach – right where we had been weeding and digging and hanging out for the past two days. After Jennifer and Owen went out to look at her (and snapped the above image), I watched from the cabin windows until I saw her covering up her work and lumbering back to the water.

I was a little concerned that the eggs might inadvertabtly be disturbed by other family members who come to use the cabin later this summer, so I set up a small fence around three sides of the nest. My work looks like this:

To the right of this “fence” is the sidewalk leading to the pier. The open portion leads out to the lake. Jennifer was a little concerned that a wayword hatchling might head the wrong way and get hung up on the fence, but I figure the improved chances I give them by putting up this guardrail more than makes up for the one or two losses that might occur – almost assuredly will occur – during their mad scramble for safety in the water.

This morning, some of my wife’s family came to the cabin to begin painting it. They arrived even before we left. Two of my wife’s cousins headed down to the lake and immediately began pulling weeds. I walked down there and told them about the turtle eggs. To my delight, one of them said, “Yeah, I figured something like that was going on, so I made sure to stay clear.” Good. Now if everyone can be like that for then next 80 days.