Countdown to vacation

It's finally in sight. After a VERY long, hard year, I can finally see vacation coming...

If you had told me years ago that my idea of the perfect vacation would become going to the same cottage at the same time every year, I would have said you didn't know me very well. We always took "go somewhere" vacations, going different places every time. Many times they would be road trips, using airplanes or highways to get to the area and then doing the back roads and small towns. Finding all kinds of little gems along the way. Like discovering Michael Hedges "Aerial Boundaries" while driving Highway 1 through the redwoods in California with the top down. Ahhh...

But times have changed and boy, my idea of a vacation sure has! Because I travel so much for work (doing art fairs), I want to relax and do nothing on vacation these days. To me this means a large body of water with waves, a hammock and lots of books (from the library).



We rent a cottage right on Lake Michigan with woods on 3 sides and the lake in front. It's tiny and very much just a cottage. But to us, it's our little slice of heaven. We take the cats and fill the van with all those items I think we might possibly need. When we get there, takes maybe an hour to unload, rearrange the furniture on the deck, set up the hammock and settle in. That's it, we're on vacation.
We grill dinner every night and I nap constantly when I'm supposedly reading (it's the sound of the waves). Dick cleans the beach daily, hauling back bags of trash every day. We walk on the beach during the day, look at more stars then I ever knew existed at night and hope for at least one storm to come across the lake just to see the lightening.
Once I catch up on sleep with all the napping, I start making lists of things I need to do, want to do or dream of doing. The cottage is the perfect place for this kind of thinking because there's no pressure, no expectation. And it doesn't mean I'll actually look at those lists after vacation...

So, it doesn't matter that it's no longer "fiscally responsible" to rent the cottage. I work hard the rest of the year and we deserve it! Hooray for vacations!!!