A small winter story

A couple of weeks ago the Gentleman Caller and I thought we'd get out of town to chill out, to relax, to be silent and still. So we headed out to my family's cottage. It's winterized but it's a rather lot of work to get it fired up and shut down. The furnace takes a while to heat up, the water takes a while to run through the pipes and requires a bit of coaxing. It was the first time that I'd ever attempted to do this.

Getting the cottage fired up was pretty easy. Fortunately, my dad was able to turn on the furnace so we didn't have to leave for three hours while it became livable in there.

We had a lovely time. Reading books. Stoking the fire. Watching New Girl. Cooking and being awesome.

We even went snowshoeing. It was a bit of gong show as neither of us knew what we were doing. We had borrowed the snowshoes and the cold weather gear. Sadly, the ski pants were mighty tight. So much so that I couldn't really use my legs to their full advantage. And also snowshoeing is damn hard work.

EWWWW ALERT: The chilled out weekend was rudely cut short when I heard a sound and smelled a smell. Our cottage is not on a sewer grid. We have out own sewer pump and, disgustingly, a pipe froze solid and there was a small overflow into the basement. We shut everything off and then cleaned up our mess at 11:00 at night and drove home. The expert (my great Dad!) had to go out the next day to sort it out. The problem was much smaller than expected and all is well. So other than a gross and disappointing end it was a lovely weekend!

Today I'm thankful for small adventures with this wonderful man.