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Happy days are here again
Jul. 16th, 2020 12:50 amSo the Scottish Pinewoods group is going to have an auction this upcoming Saturday, but last weekend there was a super quick-and-dirty 48 hour silent auction for "come spend a day and a night at the family house on Long Pond!" offered by my friend Thom.
(Long Pond, of course, is one of the two ponds Pinewoods is on. The camp is approximately 50 degrees diagonal from the house.)
I accidentally1 won the auction, and decided to be very magnanimous and give the trip to jere7my and Kendra, as a sort of half-anniversary-present, half-y'all-both-do-a-shit-ton-of-work thank you. Also because they're both super keen people, and I know jere7my for sure will get a lot of good out of going to long pond for a bit, and I imagine Kendra would certainly also appreciate sunshine and the porch and reading a book in a nice breeze.
...But then Thom texted me to be all "okay but like I'd be happy to see you and younger-sibling Sam would be happy to see you and why don't you just come down for a day if you can". And I could! So I did! I left the house a bit before eleven and got there a skootch after 12 and spent ten straight hours Not At Pinewoods But Damn Close.
It was...unbelievably refreshing.
I did not actually propose any sort of going to Pinewoods camp --it could've been an option, I could've canoed there or walked (a long way) around the pond, and like...waved. But I figured that would've tipped it too far into the "this is actually really sad because no one is here".
So I hung out on the dock and chatted with Sam3, and went for a swim4, and rambled a bit (wasn't really energized enough to be a hike) and ate a wintergreen leaf, and chatted with Thom and his dad, and drew some damselfly pictures, and took some damselfly pictures, and read some book, and chatted with Bean (Sam's partner) and Meg (Thom's mom), and ate take-out fish and chips, and chatted with the whole family (I am jealous of a porch big enough to have five separate pods of people each with 6+ feet between them), and failed to spot the comet, and chatted with Sam and Meg and Ruth (Thom and Sam's sister), and looked at the stars.
Oh, and somewhere in there I also ate an ice cream sammich. Like, if you said "make a list of all the things you like to do at Pinewoods alone" my list probably would've been like...stick feet in water, take pictures of bugs, draw, read my book while eating a camphouse treat, and go on a hike. Like, it really was an exquisite microcosm of Pinewoods solo-time that I managed to cram in!
Also, just...I'm an ambivert, I know I'm an ambivert, but *wow* has my extrovert side been neglected lately and so this felt _so so good_. I've known Ruth and Thom and Sam for ages, and I met Steve several summers ago when I had to go out into the middle of the woods and be taught a 500 year old ritual dance by a magical hippie wizard, but this was my first time really getting to spend any time with Meg and she is *lovely*. Technically Thom was my host (since he invited me) but Meg did a superlative job of making sure I felt included, especially in the post-dinner conversation (which occasionally veered into in-jokes and family references). Spending time with new people who I get on with is one of my favourite extrovert charges, and this was a-plus.
Especially since there have been some rocky times with the Pinewoods thing (like, I literally spent _all_ of therapy yesterday venting/processing some bullshit I've been dealing with, see also my previous two posts, christ) this was _such_ a necessary recharge. I'm also really happy with myself that I decided to really truly take the day off from Pinewoods responsibilities, and set things up accordingly --I was going to throw together a postcard exchange today, but that can just as easily happen tomorrow, and all the other events were posted about yesterday and don't need processing until late tonight/early tomorrow.
So it really was a day to just...fuck around and enjoy myself. And it ended with driving home, late at night, by myself which is honestly a thing I'm very fond of and get to do very little of (loud music heck yeah!).
As I answered to Ruth, when she asked me "how are you", it's a local maximum. I don't think home could ever compare to just perfect weather (it's been super hot so the lake was nice and warm for swimming, but it was not super hot today, so I didn't get all gross and sweaty the rest of the time) and a lakeside place to read my book, but I hope I can carry some of this positive into the next few days.
And I hope you are finding things that feed your soul. I love you!
~Sor
MOOP!
1: So, I am very excited to be financially solvent enough that I can look at things and say "this is a low-but-not-insulting offer, that of course I will be outbid on, but I am happy to have started the bidding!". (I accidentally won a Peet Pot2 this way too.) I didn't _need_ a lake vacation day, yanno?
2: There is a woman who makes exquisite pottery every year for the auction, and it tends to go for _a lot_. Last year had my favourite ever piece, it had magnificent rainbow celtic knotwork and the Pinewoods trees on it and I actually called my mom to ask for her to throw in half as a really expensive birthday present and I still tapped out of the bidding when it crested $500. But the year before, in the silent auction, I had bid like...$50? bucks on a small cereal bowl with a cute little mini knot in the bottom, just to keep the auction moving along, and was _extremely_ startled to find I won that won. It is dishwashable and microwave safe and I still keep it in my room because when it eventually breaks I want that to be my fault and not a roommate.
3: From a safe distance, both with masks on --I had confirmed with Thom beforehand that the safety precautions were happening and made sense to me and everyone followed things well. Assume that I said this for every single thing I did, because the fam did a great job with the safety.
4: Okay, to be fair, I did not have a mask on in the pond and neither did Thom, but we were like...8-10 feet apart from each other the whole time and only actually had time overlap of a couple minutes before he was done swimming.
(Long Pond, of course, is one of the two ponds Pinewoods is on. The camp is approximately 50 degrees diagonal from the house.)
I accidentally1 won the auction, and decided to be very magnanimous and give the trip to jere7my and Kendra, as a sort of half-anniversary-present, half-y'all-both-do-a-shit-ton-of-work thank you. Also because they're both super keen people, and I know jere7my for sure will get a lot of good out of going to long pond for a bit, and I imagine Kendra would certainly also appreciate sunshine and the porch and reading a book in a nice breeze.
...But then Thom texted me to be all "okay but like I'd be happy to see you and younger-sibling Sam would be happy to see you and why don't you just come down for a day if you can". And I could! So I did! I left the house a bit before eleven and got there a skootch after 12 and spent ten straight hours Not At Pinewoods But Damn Close.
It was...unbelievably refreshing.
I did not actually propose any sort of going to Pinewoods camp --it could've been an option, I could've canoed there or walked (a long way) around the pond, and like...waved. But I figured that would've tipped it too far into the "this is actually really sad because no one is here".
So I hung out on the dock and chatted with Sam3, and went for a swim4, and rambled a bit (wasn't really energized enough to be a hike) and ate a wintergreen leaf, and chatted with Thom and his dad, and drew some damselfly pictures, and took some damselfly pictures, and read some book, and chatted with Bean (Sam's partner) and Meg (Thom's mom), and ate take-out fish and chips, and chatted with the whole family (I am jealous of a porch big enough to have five separate pods of people each with 6+ feet between them), and failed to spot the comet, and chatted with Sam and Meg and Ruth (Thom and Sam's sister), and looked at the stars.
Oh, and somewhere in there I also ate an ice cream sammich. Like, if you said "make a list of all the things you like to do at Pinewoods alone" my list probably would've been like...stick feet in water, take pictures of bugs, draw, read my book while eating a camphouse treat, and go on a hike. Like, it really was an exquisite microcosm of Pinewoods solo-time that I managed to cram in!
Also, just...I'm an ambivert, I know I'm an ambivert, but *wow* has my extrovert side been neglected lately and so this felt _so so good_. I've known Ruth and Thom and Sam for ages, and I met Steve several summers ago when I had to go out into the middle of the woods and be taught a 500 year old ritual dance by a magical hippie wizard, but this was my first time really getting to spend any time with Meg and she is *lovely*. Technically Thom was my host (since he invited me) but Meg did a superlative job of making sure I felt included, especially in the post-dinner conversation (which occasionally veered into in-jokes and family references). Spending time with new people who I get on with is one of my favourite extrovert charges, and this was a-plus.
Especially since there have been some rocky times with the Pinewoods thing (like, I literally spent _all_ of therapy yesterday venting/processing some bullshit I've been dealing with, see also my previous two posts, christ) this was _such_ a necessary recharge. I'm also really happy with myself that I decided to really truly take the day off from Pinewoods responsibilities, and set things up accordingly --I was going to throw together a postcard exchange today, but that can just as easily happen tomorrow, and all the other events were posted about yesterday and don't need processing until late tonight/early tomorrow.
So it really was a day to just...fuck around and enjoy myself. And it ended with driving home, late at night, by myself which is honestly a thing I'm very fond of and get to do very little of (loud music heck yeah!).
As I answered to Ruth, when she asked me "how are you", it's a local maximum. I don't think home could ever compare to just perfect weather (it's been super hot so the lake was nice and warm for swimming, but it was not super hot today, so I didn't get all gross and sweaty the rest of the time) and a lakeside place to read my book, but I hope I can carry some of this positive into the next few days.
And I hope you are finding things that feed your soul. I love you!
~Sor
MOOP!
1: So, I am very excited to be financially solvent enough that I can look at things and say "this is a low-but-not-insulting offer, that of course I will be outbid on, but I am happy to have started the bidding!". (I accidentally won a Peet Pot2 this way too.) I didn't _need_ a lake vacation day, yanno?
2: There is a woman who makes exquisite pottery every year for the auction, and it tends to go for _a lot_. Last year had my favourite ever piece, it had magnificent rainbow celtic knotwork and the Pinewoods trees on it and I actually called my mom to ask for her to throw in half as a really expensive birthday present and I still tapped out of the bidding when it crested $500. But the year before, in the silent auction, I had bid like...$50? bucks on a small cereal bowl with a cute little mini knot in the bottom, just to keep the auction moving along, and was _extremely_ startled to find I won that won. It is dishwashable and microwave safe and I still keep it in my room because when it eventually breaks I want that to be my fault and not a roommate.
3: From a safe distance, both with masks on --I had confirmed with Thom beforehand that the safety precautions were happening and made sense to me and everyone followed things well. Assume that I said this for every single thing I did, because the fam did a great job with the safety.
4: Okay, to be fair, I did not have a mask on in the pond and neither did Thom, but we were like...8-10 feet apart from each other the whole time and only actually had time overlap of a couple minutes before he was done swimming.