Paranoia

Down in our basement, tucked in under the front porch, is a little closed-off cold storage room.  It is a handy room in which to store canning preserves, extra foods, and other items that we can bulk up on when they go on sale.  Packages of toilet paper, cans of spaghetti sauce, Kraft Dinner, jars of baby food, and juice boxes, among other things, line the shelves and wait for their time to come.  What a handy room!  Why not store other things in there too... snow shovels and extra insulation, lawn chairs, garden hoses, extra tools, a kiddie pool, coolers, camping and fishing gear.  I'm sure that's not all of it.  You might be thinking - wow, what a large storage room but in fact it isn't all that large at all, but it is remarkable how many things you can fit into a small space when you stack, pack, and shove.  One of my future goals is to organize this room a lot better, but we will need to have a larger shed outside before that can happen.
When this organization happens, one of the things that I hope will change is the installation of a light switch outside the room.  Believe it or not, this will relieve me of a significant amount of stress each and every time I enter the room.  Why?  Well, because of an incident that occurred this spring.
We had occasion to need our cooler, which was packed deep within the cold storage room, so my dear husband unearthed it while I was getting some other things ready for a trip to Strathroy.  As we were pulling out of the driveway, I was informed that when he retrieved the cooler, at least 20 or 30 centipedes scattered out of it into the dark depths of the room before they could be smushed.   
Are you SERIOUS.  20 or 30 centipedes in the cooler certainly means a few hundred or thousand centipedes in the entire room... all waiting for me in the dark when I innocently come to retrieve a package of spaghetti noodles or a can of soup for dinner.  And before I can find those food items, I have to turn on the light - which is controlled by a pull-chain just inside the door.  Now every time I go in there and need to pull on the light, I cringe with uncontrollable squeamishness and my worst nightmares flash through my head.  I am certain that as I reach up to the chain, a writhing mass of sinister centipedes (waiting in their lair for my arrival) will skitter off the chain, down my arm and into my clothing, upon which event I will certainly have a full-blown panic attack and my dear family, when they begin to wonder where I have gone, will discover me writhing on the floor in the doorway of the cellar,  a silent scream frozen on my face as centipedes crawl around in my hair.
Pretty bad eh?  Certainly the installation of an exterior light switch would be worth it to save me all this psychological stress. While I know that my intense fear of creepy-crawlies is somewhat unreasonable, to me it is very, very real, and could probably be described as a bona-fide phobia.  It's not the only one I have, but unfortunately it is one that I have to deal with quite often, as I don't have another good place to store extra foods, although I've found that if I just leave the door open, the paranoia begins to subside a little.  I can't wait till my kids are old enough and tall enough to retrieve things for me - at least they like bugs!! 

Introducing...the CHAIN

 

A Week at the Cottage

To celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, Mom and Dad M rented a cottage for the whole family on Sparrow Lake near Gravenhurst.  We had such an amazing time!  After sorting through hundreds and hundreds of pictures, I've come up with a hefty bunch to share with you.  It's a mix of pictures from a number of different cameras, so I'm not sure who to give the photo credit for in most cases.  Enjoy! 

First I'll start off with a few pictures to give you an idea of what the cottage looked like.  

 A view up to the cottage from the dock

 Looking down at the dock and boathouse from the deck

 Looking down at the lawn mid-way down the hill, where there was a hammock and a tree fort

Another view down to the water from the deck

Typical muskoka tree by the lakeshore.  Makes me think Group of Seven!

We swam pretty much every day

 The boys absolutely loved the water and gained more confidence in their swimming every day

 Poor Aaron and the "big diaper butt".  The swim diapers were waaaay up the hill in the cottage, and I didn't feel like making the trek up there to get them.  It's amazing how much water a diaper can hold!

 Loving the water!

 A sea-creature emerged from the depths to vacation with us.  She turned out to be quite friendly!

Hey, who needs a lake when you've got a bucket!!

The anniversary couple relaxing on the dock

 Niki was feeling a little "deflated" so she came up for two nights for some cottage rejuvenation.  Danielle helped to pump her up

 Lots of relaxing to be done! 

Picture perfect place to read

Dad relaxing in the hammock

 We greatly enjoyed campfires on the dock in the evenings

 The firewood that Tom and Lauren brought up seemed too nice to burn, and the boys enjoyed building towers with it. 

 Little Nate enjoyed his week as well

 Lauren, also known as the Rabid Bunny-Human

 The weather cooled off enough from the week before that we were able to enjoy the nine-person hot tub most evenings.  That is, after adding some cold water - we couldn't figure out how to set the temperature lower, and the lowest we saw it was at 104.  One night it was at 107, and the only way we could spend any time in it was to keep spraying each other off with the garden hose.

 Enjoying the week

 We spent lots of time relaxing in the water by swimming, paddleboating, and canoeing.  Here's Timothy returning from a fishing trip with the boys

The family was kind enough to let Mom and I go paddleboating one afternoon, but they made sure we didn't get too far.  Note the rope holding us to the dock.  They sure busted a gut laughing on the dock, encouraging us to pedal harder. 

 The boys fishing on the dock

 They didn't have incredible success over the week, but there were a few good catches and we enjoyed some fish for dinner a few nights. 

 Fishing with Daddy

 I'm not exactly an expert, but Peter enjoyed fishing with Mommy too

 The boys taking the canoe out for a test-drive the evening before their scheduled early am fishing trip.  About five minutes after this, they tipped the canoe and had to swim it back to shore

 Chatting on the dock with Carina, who also joined us for a night

 I caught a fish! Just a wee little one, but that's ok

 My dear hubby

 Danielle caught quite a few fish - and even gutted a few of them herself

 Tom doing some fly-fishing

 Brotherly love

 Mike and I

 What's a week with family without some games?  We played Dominion, Cribbage, and lots of Bang!. 

 This guy sure is a Happy Camper!

 While at the cottage, we became see-through and some of us developed an extra head.  I suppose another explanation for those photos might have to do with camera-setting-exploration, with which we had a lot of fun!

 A rainy day

 We went to the Muskoka Wildlife Center one day, and saw a number of interesting animals.  I wouldn't want to get this close to a bear without a fence separating us!!

 The kids got to touch a snake - and Mom and Dad joined in on the action

We went to Coopers Falls one day, after reading about the ghost town online.  There wasn't all that much to see -  apparently an old general store-converted-into-a-house + a dilapidated storage barn/old court house + one old gas pump = ghost town.  I'm sure there were more abandoned houses around, but it wasn't quite as thrilling as we had hoped.  We made our own entertainment:

 Old gas pump

 Reading on the deck

 We don't ever want to be as close as this to being out of gas again:  Distance to Empty (DTE): 0 km.

 One morning we went to see one of the locks from the Trent-Severn Waterway.  Pretty neat to see it in action.

 Whirlpool at the locks - wouldn't want to get sucked into that thing

I don't even know what to say about the next few pictures....

 Another dockside campfire evening

Family picture!  This is one out of about 150. 

Not a view that we get to enjoy every day... beautiful!

Just gorgeous

I love this shot that Danielle took and I thought I'd use it to wrap up the post.  We had a fantastic week, and really enjoyed spending the time together as a family to celebrate Dad and Mom's anniversary.  Thank you so much for this lovely week of memories, Dad and Mom!!