Riffday: buried

Dh had a four-day weekend this past weekend so we went out to our favorite lake.  It's far enough out that there is no internet access and cell service is spotty.  Sometimes we can text if we stand at precisely the right point with cell phone held high overhead; sometimes we get "Searching for Service" for hours, sometimes the signal is clear and we can even make phone calls.  The cell gods are in control.

It's usually relaxing and fun, and it was this time, except for one thing.  We've already been gone so much this summer that I keep getting further and further behind, both at home and on the internet.  But we needed to get away, so it was worth doing.  I just feel buried in stuff to do, not the least of which is the half dozen blog posts that have been bouncing around in my head clamoring to get out.  The weather was absolutely perfect-- low 80s, clear blue sky, just enough breeze to keep it from feeling hot.  If it hadn't been for the mosquitoes, it would have been the iconic perfect summer weekend.  Actually, maybe mosquitoes are necessary for iconic summer.

Wildlife spotting report:  at least a dozen tiny bunnies (pygmy?); a mama elk and her adolescent twins; more deer than we could count; a family of ground squirrels; and we just missed seeing a yearling black bear according to friends we ate dinner with.  Although of course any bear is not to be trifled with, black bears are sort of like bumbling, lazy cousins of their more ferocious grizzly cousins.  I wish we had seen it.  Last Wednesday we saw an adolescent moose standing in a stream up at Glacier National Park.  Even for the natives, sighting a moose is cool-- they are pretty reclusive.

I'm punctuating this post with trips upstairs to try and drag madMax's lazy ass out of bed.  He is not a morning person ever, but in the summer, he drags it out to extremes.  He would sleep until after noon if we let him, which of course we don't.

Anyway.  Leaving for the weekend forced me to quit obsessing about one thing, which was that I posted the link to this blog on the Bettyverse last week.  Even though I was very deliberate about it, and even somewhat determined since I had to get the webmaster's help to do it (the standard anchor tag didn't work), I still just about had a heart attack after it was done and worried off and on all weekend about who might find their way here and whether or not they would like me.  Sorry, I know that's a little pathetic, but it's true.

However, it seems to have been yet another tempest in a teapot, since on my stats page this morning there is not a single link from the Bettyverse, so there was nothing to worry about after all.  the stats page is notoriously flaky about traffic sources, though, so if I'm wrong and you're new here, welcome!  

As some of you know, I turned 50 last week. I thought I was going to have some very wise and witty things to say on the occasion, but at the last minute my mom decided to come up for the week, and every possible thing I could think of to write about dissolved into guilty reflections on the steadily mounting pile of unsorted mail, dirty laundry, and stuff from our summer trips that still has not been put away.  So I decided it would be better to hold off on that for a few days.

I did have a lovely day, though.  Dh had to work on the actual day, so he took us all out to dinner the night before at a very nice restaurant, where we sat out on the lakeside deck and ate wonderful food.  I had goat-cheese ravioli with lamb meatballs in marinara, which probably sounds strange, but it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten.  Then the next day, I was nearly inundated by calls, texts, facebook messages, and friends coming by.  That night we took my mom up to get ice cream at Apgar Village and watch the sunset over Lake MacDonald.  It was one of the nicest birthdays I've ever had.

That's all for now.  This is my catching up week, more soon.