Tripping Over Typeset

I’ve been living my life out in yoga pants and a zip-up hoodie for the last week…heaven in the making! 

We’ve been reading books, climbing mountains, strolling along waterfall gorges and watching storms from the tower.  I can honestly say none of us wanted to return to real life…but life calls and we have returned.

After signing off here last week, I headed to the dock: book in hand and relaxation on my mind.  As I sat down, I noticed a plastic wrapper floating in the water.  I recognized it as the snack my kids had brought out with them on the water.

As a conscientious mother, I didn’t want to leave it there as evidence of littering children so I headed in to retrieve the incriminating wrapper.  I couldn’t reach it from the dock so I decided to climb into the small row-boat nearby and grab that wrapper floating further from shore.  The bottom of the boat was watery and slippery but I was now invested in the quest and wasn’t going to give up easily.

Through some topsy-turvy maneuvering of my ankle-length sundress, I arrived at the back of the boat, leaned over the edge and grabbed the sought after cracker wrapper.

Feeling accomplished, I made it back to the dock, stepped onto the boardwalk and smiled!

{Now this is where I must interrupt and say:  I really wish someone would have been there with a video camera to capture the following 10 seconds because we could have made some real money off the footage!}

I smiled confidently on the dock, yet my equilibrium was not quite equaled out.  Swaying back and forth, I tried to lean toward the dock but instead fell back toward the boat.  I stretched out my left arm to break the fall but failed.

My left hand landed in the boat, which was sitting lower than the dock, it hit the watery bottom and slid underneath the seat in the boat.  My full body weight smashed into my shoulder and my legs followed, making their own imprint on the edge of the boat.

My children happened to be sitting a few hundred yards off shore.  They heard the clunk of the boat as it smacked the dock and looked to see only their mother’s legs fling through the air and come to rest halfway out of the boat.

They began to yell, “Mom, are you okay?”  Of which, I came to my quick sense and thought, “How did I get here?”  I could see the metal lining of the boat so clearly from this angle.  I raised my good right arm and waved to the children,  “Uh, I’m okay!” I lied.

As they rowed frantically toward me, I thought:  “I can’t let them see me like this!!”  I went beyond my excruciating level 10 number, pulled myself up and straightened out my dress.  I mean really, what teenager wants to see their mother sprawled out in a boat with her sundress hiked up???

By the time they reached me, I was wobbly, but standing.  The mother doting began and they all felt horrible for me.  Truthfully, I was really in a lot of pain, but my mind kept going to…“I really wish someone would have caught that on video….we could have really made some money on that.  Maybe I could check with the government satellite spy program…I mean, all this government intrusion should pay off some how?”

I walked, accompanied by my son, toward the house.  Dave emerged from the tower and asked, “What were you doing?”  To which I quickly and proudly answered, “I was picking up litter out of the lake!”  Yet now, I had no proof of that fact because in the excitement of it all, the cracker wrapper had fallen back into the lake and was escaping the shore once again….the futility of a good deed gone bad!

Despite this little mishap…and some others which I will tell tomorrow (tease)…we are coming home refreshed and ready for the noise of life to begin.

It was so quiet at the cabin; waking up when the geese honked, “Good morning!”  {I’ve been told by the locals that they find this more annoying than appealing yet it beats waking to traffic and sirens.}

This morning, the cell phone signaled an incoming message at 7:21 am and the people business begins once again for us!

WELCOME, LIFE…WE ARE READY FOR YOU!

{Stay tuned for more Quigley Pointe vacation adventures tomorrow}