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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I went up to the cottage yesterday and came back today - the bit of time I could catch between not-quite dream_tutoring. Things are busy because the English test for teachers is next Wednesday.
My parents are there for the whole week with the dog. Dad agreed to pick me up from the nearest train station, St. Jerome - except I missed the train I meant to take and by the time I got there, it was pouring rain. We drove slowly through the downpour.
When I called to update Mom on where we were, she said the power was out, so Dad decided to stop at the next car-charging station - who knew when the power would go back on? The car had enough charge to get to the cottage, but not enough for Dad to drive me back to St. Jerome. We drove slowly through the downpour.
There it was. Finally! We pulled up. The screens on the machines were dark, blank. Yup, the power there was out too.
"Should I call Mom again?" I said as my father turned around and continued down the road.
He shook his head. "No need, since we won't be stopping."
Visions of $100 ($150? $200??) taxi rides danced through my head. (At first I wrote "heads"; evidently when you appropriate Christmas song lyrics you add anther head to your shoulders.) Worries about the drive danced around them, but nervously.
Still, the striped birch trunks glistened as the rain slackened. They grew deserving of their name - silver birches - as the clouds lightened.
It never got sunny that day, but the ease in wind and rainfall meant that electric crews could repair whatever was wrong pretty fast. I saw a light in the cottage window. "Candles," Dad said.
"No, it's the lamp, look." And sure enough. Mom was bright, Shiloh sparked joy, like when I named the MiEV "Sparky" because of its puppy face.
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David said if gets his own car, he'd prefer a hybrid. (A gas-electric hybrid, not a car-dog hybrid.)
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Supper and the evening passed calmly. I tried to write but mostly read Far Side comics. At midnight, I turned off the light before climbing the ladder into the far room's top bunk. I knew that ladder well enough and wanted to marvel at the almost pure blackness. But then I discovered the top bed wasn't made - only one sheet, not tucked, covered the mattress. No pillow graced the space. And so I climbed back down, found the bottom bunk done up, and read more Far Side cartoons until I was sleepy.
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The dog woke me up sometime between 6:30 at 6:45, whining softly but persistently at my door. I put a hoodie over my pyjamas, still-wet shoes on my bare feet. I went out all grumbly-tired-yawny until Shiloh, having peed, wanted to go down to the dock. He raced down the path, rousing me to call out a caution, and then led me from the dock to a jutting-out patch of rock.
He lapped the water and I looked around, awake now to the sun poking out above the trees. Grumpiness melted. When I got back in bed, my thoughts hummed along pleasantly until sleep claimed them (to do some dream_tutoring).
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Today I wrote a little and picked blueberries. Barely a cup, if that. Many were obtained by inconvenient scrambles up rocks and straining straddles of rain-reinforced ditch-streams.
So this is how to do very short vacations:
1) Feel lonely.
2) Go to where other people are.
3) Ramble alone with dogs and blueberries.
4) Attempt poetic descriptions.
because why not?
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