myurbandream | see chameleon, lying there in the sun, all things to everyone, run run away.....

OMG THIS WEEKEND WAS AWESOME.

so, don and i flew up to chicago o'hare on monday afternoon (june 30th) from abia, and i spent that night and the next at my dad's parents' house in mchenry. that was pretty cool- mchenry is one of those ancient midwestern towns that has the really old town center on the river and a whole bunch of old catholic churches within walking distance of everywhere. on tuesday jess and i walked to the mchenry theatre and saw wall-e for just 3 dollars each, and then we walked back- i wish i had gotten pictures- the walk is only about ten or fifteen minutes. it's a beautiful old town and most of it hasn't changed at all in the last fifty years.

early wednesday morning we drove up to wisconsin- comstock lake near montello and princeton, about three, three and a half hours' drive. it's seriously in the boonies there- my phone had so little signal that i couldn't even check my messages. i just gave in to the inevitable and turned it off for the next five days. wednesday was really stormy and we got some rain in the afternoon, as well as driving through a thunderstorm that made it so we couldn't see more than twenty feet in front of us in the road. but after that the weather was beautiful- more than once it made me think of that part in 'good omens', where adam always makes the weather perfect. it was that wonderful.

so, wednesday we got to the cabin, and i took off my shoes and immediately lost them. but not to worry! i didn't need them, which was awesome, so i went barefoot until sunday morning. ahh, country living. the lake was wonderful- pretty high compared to previous years, but nice and warm in the afternoons and not too weedy. the first thing jess and i did when we got there on wednesday was roll up our pants and wade into the shallows to clear the cattails from around the pier.

we were the only ones there at that point- my sibs and i, my grandparents, and my uncle dirk and my dad. by thursday everyone had arrived, and some of the huemanns and the ericksons- second cousins of mine- arrived later wednesday night, i think, but for a while it was just us. that's one of my favorite times at the cabin, when there's just a few of us there. it's really pretty up there, and quiet, and the sky is so clear at night that you can see the arm of the milky way behind the nearest stars. i like the feeling of connection that i get to the world when i'm sitting on the pier at dawn, watching the mist clear over the lake, and the only sounds are fish jumping and birds chirping. it's a beautiful time.

it's been two years since i've been up to the cabin- i went to new mexico with cait and bri last fourth of july- and the littlest kids have changed so much since then!! aidan, my only first cousin on my dad's side, he's just shot up, and sammy is like two feet taller! i feel weird calling him sammy now- he's twelve years old but he looks so much like his older brother jack, who's my age, that i find it hard to think of him as one of the little munchkins anymore. george and zach are older too, but i guess they haven't grown as much physically, so it didn't strike me as hard. and i feel older, more connected to the huemann kids now too. they've always been older than me by four or six years, so i never really hung out with them much. it didn't help that they all lived close to each other, but i only see them once a year. so that was cool. i also had a great time hanging out with christina, who's four years younger than me. previously i hung out with her sister lindsay and our cousin katie, and she was always a little younger and out of the loop with us, but this year i had a blast with her.

there were 67 people (and four dogs) up there this year- a new record. some of those were friends or significant others and not actual family members, and a few people had to leave early, but still- that's a lot of family!!! and we spanned five generations for the first time this year too. it's pretty incredible- from nine-year-old zoe (my step-second-cousin-once-removed) to ninety-four-year old granny eunice (my great-grandmother), all of us are related. this weekend was a really good year because the fourth was on a friday, so everyone took off thursday and had a four-day weekend. those are the best years, when the fourth is on a thursday or a friday or even a saturday, because those are the years when we get the entire family up there. allison lives in las vegas now, and of course my uncle dana and i come in from texas, and lindsay and her family come up from kentucky, and a lot of the older cousins are getting into their full-time post-college jobs now, getting married and everything, so it's hard sometimes to get everyone together, especially when the fourth is on a wednesday or something. but this year was wonderful.

*sighs* so yeah- the lake was great, the weather was gorgeous, the family ambiance was delightful, the food was delicious, and the camp fires (and booze! *lol*) were raucous. i had a great time.

speaking of booze... most of my cousins got completely trashed and stayed up until dawn on the fourth and the fifth. i actually don't like alcohol much at all, so i was refraining from partaking, until lindsay introduced me to what she was having- smirnoff (sp?), and another drink that was some kind of sweet-and-sour cherries-and-whipped-cream thing. very tasty!!! yum. so, yeah, i've discovered that there are alcoholic drinks in the world which don't taste awful to me. i didn't get drunk, but i did have two smirnoffs, one each night. of course, they have like 5% alcohol, so you'd have to have gallons of the stuff before it could affect you. i think church wine has more alcohol in it than that. *eyeroll*

i also got sun-burn on my nose!!! *pouts* and i got a nice tan on my upper body from all the swimming i did in the lake. although apparently my legs don't acknowledge the existence of melanin??? i don't know what happened there, but they're still pasty-white. -___-' whatever.

still i had a great time, and i wouldn't have missed it for the world. that whole place smells and sounds and tastes like family to me- the mud between my toes, the lake water under the pier and the raft, the wind and the grass and the pine trees... all of that means family to me, and relaxation, and i really needed that.

.....so, anyway, that was my vacation. i hope everyone else enjoyed american independence day as much as i did!

EDIT: i met lindsay's fiance tanner! he's pretty cool. i had to give her my cousin-ly approval, but he quickly earned it. tanner's great, and i think they'll do well for each other. joy! (i can't believe she's getting married before me, though.... traitorous younger cousin of mine. *glares at you, nz*)