Firsts and Lasts

My fingers are cold in The Post as I type this. Even wrapping my hands around my coffee cup does little to warm them in this cold Fall weather; I suppose the pumpkin spice Chobani cools my coffee down too much. Curse this creamer-with-a-splash-of-coffee addiction!

I see goose hunters across the Bay and hear their shots from time to time. Tony boated home early this morning from a night on Flag Island putting up game cameras and he still beat me to The Post. He gets the fire going, and more importantly the coffee, and now he's out on the docks pumping out the paddle boat because we have one last family with kiddos in camp. Me, I'm making a list of all the different close-down tasks - because I need lists so I can get that dopamine hit by crossing off a To Do item - but then my ADHD brain saw the blog option on the Website I've been trying to update, and ... well, now here we are.

I love the resort. I love everything about it. It has been THE BEST summer. I haven't slept as little or eaten as poorly and been this happy...EVER. We are beyond honored and humbled to be taking on this responsibility. It's costing an arm and a leg to bring everything up to snuff, and so far we don't even mind. We expected it would be that way these first few years, and of course there's no way to know what we don't yet know. Life has a funny way of offering up new trials and tribulations as soon as one gets the tiniest bit comfortable. But so long as Tony gets his hunting time and so long as I have a bit of travel and writing time this winter, it will have all been worth it.

Grandma Grace seems to be doing well in her new apartment.

A week or so ago, Iris, Julian and I stopped in to see her after we dropped off our family-foster kiddos for a supervised visitation. The joyful look on Grandma's face was priceless and made me realize how important visits will be over the winter. Every time we go to town will be the goal!

My parents are prepping for their trip south. The garden is empty, the canning nearly complete and Dad had a spare minute to drive truck for us yesterday. We had heavy equipment and the intrepid Robert Carlson here pulling stumps for us where Cabin 7 will live.

It sure was a sight to see: the way he would pull them out of the earth with a great metal claw, pick them up and drop them on another stump to shake off as much of the hard Angle clay as possible. Some of them old-growth popple, they'd fly through the air like nothing when he tossed them on the pile. Then he loaded the massive stumps into a dump truck and my Dad hauled them back to our land where they'll dry for a season and be turned into lamps.

Just kidding. Eventually we'll burn them.

My gratitude goes out to the trees each time I pass the clearing. They teach us so much.

My Mom and I will work on Grandma Grace's cabin for a while today. It's amazing what a full life collects. This incredibly special cabin will be available next summer as well, and I suppose we're doing it no favors calling it "Cabin 9", but it felt right to continue the numbering sequence they started. It will be the final one we add for many, many years, if not forever. One of our last guests of the season, John Franta, pointed out that we're effectively increasing the size of the resort by 50%. Sheesh, when you put it like that...

Speaking of cabin names, I was toying with the idea of naming them (alongside their numbers) based on what is on their window shutters. So Cabin 1 would be Wood Duck. And Cabin 2 would be Red Squirrel. But oops, cabin 3 doesn't have shutters. And Cabin 4 and Cabin 5 both have loons. Dale and Grace's Cabin could be Cabin 9 / White Pine. But the rest would need some work.

We took the shutters down this spring and re-finished them.

And of course, this is simply not top priority as compared to the fact that you have to hike up a hill to get to the dining room in Cabin 5, or that we have to install a mound system for Cabin 7 because it's not grandfathered into our existing sceptic. Or that both 2 and 3 need foundations, STAT. Or that the wash house and garage, which have been an ad hoc pell mell willy nilly dumping ground for the chaos that was our whole first season...needs some serious organization. But yes, it's soothing to think about completely unnecessary cabin names as I'm making beds or vacuuming floors as opposed to every other big and little thing that could stress me out. I swear I'm undiagnosed ADHD.

There's a lot to this job. This business. This life. But I really wouldn't have it any other way. I love the challenge of it, the freedom, and the growth I am experiencing with every single task, every single day. And, I do feel so incredibly happy and lucky to be here, carrying on for my Grandparents, meeting all the wonderful people they cherished and somehow convinced to return year after year. "Another victim..." my grandpa would chuckle. As if that were even remotely true...

So, I'll replenish my coffee, finish my list, and then get busy. But first, the reflection in the channel is really pretty right now. I should go take a picture. As I learned very quickly about resort life, there is never nothing to do. Not ever.

Welcome to my ramblings and whatever this Blog space turns into for Prothero's Post. I promise it will never be professional marketing; I did enough of that in my former life. Thank you for reading. And, I'm very glad you're here.

Love, - Kellie