My Happy Place

It sounds pretty ritzy to have a house on Lake Oconee. And I suppose it is. It is quite the luxury. I know how fortunate I am that I can take an actual photograph of my happy place.  

We bought our house there in 2007. I call it my 401k. I think we were the last people to buy real estate before the bottom fell out of the market. The Powers that Be were waiting for us to sign the closing papers before they allowed anything to go south market-wise, because that is the sort of thing that happens if you are a Duff. We bought the house, fully furnished, from an older couple who were weekenders who didn't want the responsibility of keeping up two houses any more. As a result, the decorating scheme can best be described as "1970s elderly lady." Everything is a blah blah blah denim colored blue, with fussy valences over the window, and motel-grade light fixtures. 

I'm pretty sure the house is constructed of bubble gum and plywood. It sways with a stiff breeze. When the washing machine is on the 'spin' cycle, the floor of the kitchen shakes. The floors are not exactly flat, such that if you put a ball in the center of the floor, it will roll around for quite some time until it hits the wall and eventually nestles in a corner or depression. The floors are carpeted with speckled berber carpeting that would look exactly like the padding underneath if, in fact, there were any padding underneath, which there clearly is not. The upside of the carpeting is that it hides dirt very well. You can drop anything on the floor (as my kids do on average every 9.3 seconds) and not see it.

On the downside, this also includes your keys and your wallet. If you drop them, you might not find them for a week. The military should use this carpeting as a cloaking device. To provide complete contrast, the vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms are a stark white (well, usually a dull streaky beige) and a single human hair, Rice Krispie, or splotch of coffee makes it look as if wild animals have been nesting on it for weeks.

Our pontoon boat came with the house along with the boring blue sofas and the king sized bed in my room which has an elaborately carved, hollow, wood-colored plastic headboard. The pontoon boat is a lot of fun. The registration calls it the "Sea Nymph," but we dubbed it the "Mother Ship." The Mother Ship seems like a much more appropriate name for a vehicle whose reliable engine, instead of going "Vrooom" as an engine should, says, and I quote, "puttputtputtputtputt." We haul it out to the big water and anchor it. We take our other boat, called the "Weehoo" (so named because its semi-reliable engine does go “Vrooom” and makes you say "Weehoo!!"), and use it for skiing and tubing.

The Mother Ship is used as the, well, the mother ship where people get on and off and hang out or swim off of between turns. It is our floating living room. It is probably the only living room uglier than the one inside the lake house. It is carpeted in moss, which is a lovely green color and very soft under the feet. Every year, to keep the boat tidy, I reupholster it in nice, fresh, white duct tape.

This past weekend, an unseasonably warm and sunny 80 degrees in March, was the official re-duct-taping weekend. I scrubbed the nasty vinyl with Mr. Clean Magic Erasers which, as far as I am concerned, really are magic. Then I used Clorox wipes, then a semi-dry towel, then I scraped off whatever was left of last year's duct tape with my fingernails, and went to town. I duct-taped everything with a crack or a seam. I'm pretty proud of my handiwork. If you look quickly out of the corner of your eye, especially if the sun is shining directly at you resulting in a glare, it looks shiny, new, and white. 

Once upon a time, I went to one of those leadership training thingies where you have to do team building exercises. One of the things we had to do was to build a boat out of cardboard and duct tape and get it across a swimming pool more quickly than the other teams' boats. Heck, I thought. I can do this. I'm an expert. I build a boat out of duct tape every year. Naturally, our entry sank like a brick. 

I'm not complaining about any of this, I'll have you know, nor am I apologizing for the hard work and perseverance that gave me the financial freedom to make monthly payments on my happy place. I’m just keeping it in perspective. I'm typing this sitting on our covered porch looking at the Oconee National Forest and listening to the calls of no less than seven different night birds. The air smells fresh. Everything is peaceful. The only things even remotely annoying are the moths attracted to the light of the screen. When I try to swat them away, the supernatural warmth of my hands makes weird things happen on the touchscreen of my laptop. 

I’m enjoying it all, because I know in 10 hours I'll be sitting at my desk at work, and in 14 hours, I'll probably put my head in my hands and close my eyes, trying as hard as I can to recall the sounds and smells of my happy place. Maybe I'll bring a roll of white duct tape with me and keep it on my desk. The feel of duct tape against my skin always makes me think of summer.