Last Days of Summer

Quite literally, I think. I always feel a bit strange at this time of the year. This last week of summer for children across Canada. In a few days it will be the Labour Day weekend and then there will be school. For me, this was always the week that seemed to fly by the fastest of all. The week you tried to hold on to like sand slipping through your fingers. Eventually, September always arrived.

This year, this week is both a blessing and a curse. I suppose I could have let it pass by unremarked; simply continued on my usual routine, but I didn't. Instead, I jumped in the car yesterday to head up to the lake house for a few last days of peace and quiet and summer sun. But it has made this whole thing rather bittersweet. It is hard to look at the trees and lake and rocks and every little thing and wonder 'is this the very last time I'll see it?' It's very hard to say goodbye, not knowing if you're coming back. But I needed this.

Tonight the lake is quiet. Almost everyone is up, but the lights are dim and the noise is non-existant. The occasional car passing by on the highway and the crickets chirping are the only sounds. No boats, no animals, no people. Just silence. The novetly of sleeping with the window open never gets old. The sheer peace of gazing up at a sky strewn with ten thousand stars seen by the naked eye alone. The quiet of good company and good food and no need to say anything.

In two weeks I leave for California. Two weeks after that I leave for England. There is so much to do next month and so many things that will change. But for tonight, I can gaze out at my own bit of heaven on these last days of summer and smile.

ETA: There will be more about museums and such in the coming months, I promise.

Travel Plans

Flights are now booked, at least to San Francisco. September 13-21st. It should be a fantastic trip; even if all I do is sit around the house waiting for the sister to get home from work everyday! It will just be nice to see her for a few hours.

It is August 10th. The mandatory check in for Big Bang is in 5 days. I find this rather hilarious, as my Big Bang is not only done, but mostly beta read too and the second one is now finished at 35,000 words! Now I do wish I'd signed that one up too, but at the time I figured that was insanity. Of course, at the time, I had no idea I was suddenly going to be buried by plot bunnies. I dearly hope that is the last of them. I need a break and I have research to do.

I must get to booking flights to England. Hopefully the idiots will stop rioting in Leicester before then, but if not they're keeping well away from the university. And I never go to the city centre after dark anyways. I'm sure it won't last that long, since the rioting in London has already died down. Shite disturbing (excuse the Scottish) never lasts long, even when the disturbers are unemployed.

I have decided to ignore the news for the foreseeable future. I don't consider this burying my head in the ground. I just can't take the large amount of negative/tragic news coming from basically every country. I just want a good news story; is that too much to ask?

Onwards and upwards and the days are getting shorter.

Life, The Universe and Everything

It never ceases to surprise me how even the best of intentions are forgotten when life becomes hectic. In the last two months I have found and started a new (though temporary) job, undergone three different certifications, taken a university online course, moved to a different city 200km away and done what feels like a million other things. Neadless to say, a blog has been left by the wayside in all the mess.

But enough about me. I am going to diverge for a post, and I hope you'll forgive me for it. But this land I see from outside my office window is too great a thing not to write about. And indeed, I have been writing! (An aside: very little of it has to do with this place, but it's still counts!)

Muskoka is a land time once forgot. For nearly a century very little seemed to change up here. At least at a glance. Oh, many things did change, in actuality, but change came so slowly that no one ever really noticed. There were practical changes like paved roads, electricity, electrical stoves, power boats, etc. But they were just things added up for a hundred years. They didn't change this place.

In the last decade change has come like a sledgehammer beating against your head everywhere you look in every second of your day. Now there is a TV and DVD and satellite where once only a black and white screen with an antenna stood. Now the wireless carries down to the dock for lazy afternoons, instead of a book. Now the cell phone is as easy as the landline. Now when the power goes off the generator kicks in and nothing really changes. Life has become easier, I suppose, but not in a good way.

I remember this land before the people came. I say that like it is some grand declaration a century in the making. It's not. I was born in 1983, but I remember this land before the city arrived. When I was a little girl the cottage was almost no different from what it had been when my mother was little (a 35 year generation difference). In fact, very little had changed since my grandmother had been a child. It was still a place to come in the summer to escape the noise and heat of Toronto, to relax and unwined, to see the family and make new friends. It was the cottage. I remember it, before the people came.

By people I mean the yuppies from the city who, instead of 'coming' just packed up Toronto in the SUV and brought it north with them. With their loud boats and fast cars and drinking parties. They never got that the point of this place was to be different. They wanted everything. And now they have it. Toronto in Muskoka. With the high end grocery stores and the NYC shops and the race to see who can build a bigger boathouse. This place was once the summer retreat for the blessed.

You know what it is now? Disneyland for the rich.