Mini Vacation

at the lake 1
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Yesterday, I cleaned out the car and made tofu salad and some extremely hot sort of pico de gallo type salsa stuff from the garden and then loaded A, young M and the QOB into my aged Saturn wagon and we all set off for Conestee Falls, where H's parents have a summer home. They went to Florida, leaving H & Z the full run of their house, and, since H & Z are totally cool, naturally they threw a party and invited me. Yes, you might think we are all a little old to be doing the party while the 'rents are away thing but, hey, you would be wrong.

I saw this as an awesome chance to finally take the QOB to a lake, since she's been going on about wanting to go swimming since she got to Asheville and I hadn't, until now, figured out a way to make that dream come true, since we're sort of short on easily accessible lakes around here. But Conestee Falls, which is one of those gated communities near Brevard, has a ton of lakes and all of them are excellent. It's a long drive but we got there and found Z & H & J & K & S & C kicking back on the porch (J & D showed up later.) So we milled around a bit and then went on down to a lake - a fabulous clear lake full of water that is just exactly the right temperature.

Taking the QOB swimming was a little nerve wracking. No, wait, it was a lot nerve wracking. First we got her down the road to the water and then we got her into the water and then, as she slowly waded in, I suddenly thought what I should have thought ages before, which is to say, "Oh shit! What if she doesn't remember how to swim?" Well. She did, more or less, and I stayed nervously right by her and thank the GODS that A, who has a lifesaving certificate and also knows how to hold up people who are having trouble walking, was with us.

The QOB did wonderfully in the water right up to the point where she announced that her legs didn't seem to be working and, oh well, she guessed she couldn't stand up ever again. We got her up, though, and onto a cooler which S had thankfully dragged down to the lake and she went through a whole lot of peculiar gymnastics to get her bathing suit off and her clothes on while young M and A, relieved of great aunt duty, swam across the lake and it was good. Then we all went back to H's parent's fantastically wonderful house, which has everything you could ever want, including a Wii Fit and a ping-pong table and a pool table and a kick ass high porch looking out over a zillion miles of green trees. I dubbed it Awesomia. Yes. Yes, I did and I'm not ashamed.

Then, because I am a bad, bad parent, I wheedled A into driving young M and the QOB back to Asheville while I stayed the night in Awesomia having a completely marvelous time playing ping-pong and pool and Wii Fit (I am not fit but I need one of those machines, I really do) and all in all I think it was maybe the most fun I've had in about 15 years. You know when you're young and you're playing ping pong in somebody's basement and you're all, this is boring, I wish I was old enough to go to a bar? Yeah. Now I'm old enough to be playing ping pong in somebody's basement and all I can say is, "OH MY GOD this is so much better than a bar." Actually J said that but the sentiment is certainly true. We had an fantastic, wonderful, totally great time.

Today when J & K were driving me home we were all bemoaning the fact that we didn't study the right stuff in college which would enable us to get lake houses where we could go and swim whenever we felt like taking a break from hard rounds of ping-pong, beer drinking, listening to Z & C play music and, oh yes, H's award winning cuisine. Not only was the food amazing, we got to throw watermelon rinds and corn husks off the porch and into the woods. It was the most perfect summery day and a night and a half a day I may have had since I was a kid. Fuck eating the rich; I think I just want to join them.