weekend pass to cottage country

it was friday evening and i was an urban virgin, embarking for my first time on the journey so many city folk take every weekend: fleeing to cottage country. i was off to whitestone lake, and could not be more thrilled. grinning and humming in the passenger seat, i was a tangle of giddy excitement and profound mellowness. ahhh, the weekend at last.

it was somewhere around barrie that i noticed the air had shed a few pounds. released from the shackles of humidity and smog, she danced naked and unfettered in my hair and lungs, and swam through my veins making me feel calm and luxurious. i gotta tell ya, there's nothing more exhilarating after a few weeks of intense heat than feeling the air's cool bite as you race topless (car, not me) through the countryside. as the sun fled to the other side of the world, i craned my neck to smile at a sky shimmering with stars.

finally we arrived and gathered on the beach to swill cool beer and swap ghost stories. the goosebumps charged over my flesh and Bruce made me yelp and jump with the ol' hand-on-the-other-shoulder trick. fucker. (giggle)

a night and morning of giggling in bed and our saturday began. i moved steadily but slowly, from the patio where we feasted on eggs florentine (how civilized!), to the chair under the tree, to the chair on the beach, to the raft on the water. and such water! not too cool, not too warm... had my fingers not been uber-pruned, i would never have left it!

then we got all energetic-like and rented a boat. a boat that would take us to cliffs ripe for jumping off of. i love riding in boats, and since i was knee high to a grasshopper, my favouritest thing, as the wind and spray whip through my hair, has always been to daydream about boys. being kissed, specifically. mmm, eyes closed i savoured each succulent thought.

as for the cliff diving, well.. i'm glad i did it. the best part was the anticipation. as i peeked over the edge to the water far below, i realized i'd never really done anything dare-devily before. lived in the downtown eastside? yep. put myself in precarious positions around the globe? you bet. but nothing like this. the anticipation was great, the soaring through the air was amazing, but the hitting the water... well, i could have done without that. but even the raging pain that seared through my freshly cleansed colon could not take away from the yay of it all.

saturday night we sank comfortably into some poker. but you know, as a side note from someone who doesn't watch tv, all i gotta say is: hey, there are more games out there than texas hold-em! christ. well - we had a great time anyway, recklessly gambling away all our little risk men until exhaustion carried us to another night and morning of giggling in bed.

sunday was mellow. the sky was gray (rain at last! hurray!), the souls were quiet, and i sat and listened to keane and mused and watched the water and wrote until hélas, at last, we donned our brave faces and made for the city...

so a giant thank you to Bruce for inviting me, and to Lindsay and Michael for hosting us and to the countryside for being so damned lovely. whee!