And a well needed holiday came and went. The past week or three have been mounting stress and tasks to do at work; what with some of our clients being schools, session is back in, and naturally, everything is suddenly problematic. In fact, right up until the hour of the morning I left home, I was still dealing with work-related issues. But thank goodness, Wednesday arrived, and for several days, I didn't need to worry about whether such-and-such client had problems.
The occasion was a family reunion (on my wife's side), and it was quite a fun one! It's never an easy thing to say one way or the other, "well, I'm fairly poor" or "I'm pretty well set". I won't call myself very poor by any means, but my wealth isn't particularly high. For the most part, we get by okay. Sorry, that was a side tangent. Where I was going with this is, as a larger family group, we decided to splurge a little for this occasion, and we rented out a really nice cabin by a lake not terribly far away from the Yellowstone area. Along with it, we also rented (on different days) a boat and jet skis.
The cabin and the scene we had of the lake was frankly beautiful. If the cabin was the only thing we had splurged on, that would have been enjoyable enough by itself, just leisurely enjoying the view of the lake and relaxing. But we rented the boat on the following day, and boy was it good fun! I haven't pulled on a tube behind a boat in well over a decade, so it was superbly fun to be able to do that again, and no less with family! There were some fun moments had with that. And the following day, we rented two jet skis, which we took turns having fun with- and I have to admit, I don't know if I'd ever be the kind of person to own a jet ski, but the experience of both riding and especially driving one was really quite fun! It certainly is a whole different beast than driving a car, but man was it fun!
And then there were the storms. We had the rentals each day until 5, which happened to be (on both days) about the time a summer storm would roll in over the lake. They seemed to come out of nowhere, as the rest of the day would be mostly pretty sunny. But when the storms hit, it was such a beautiful sight to see. And it was fun introducing my almost 2-year-old niece to such a beautiful phenomenon and gorgeous view.
Truly, besides some gnarly sunburns, the only troubles there seemed to be for me was losing my phone. On our last night, I foolishly left it on a table at the beach, about .2 miles down the road from the cabin. When we walked back and rinsed ourselves off to hop in a hot tub, it suddenly struck me I was phoneless. I ran back to the beach, only to see my phone was not there. Thinking I had perhaps just not looked close enough at home, I ran back to check there, but it was of no use. Pulling up my device location, I saw it was reporting as being at the beach. I ran back, again, this time with my wife's phone, to see if I could find it. I had no such luck, even with the help of two kind older people who I did not get the chance to thank. I checked the lodge front desk, but they said they had nothing. More searching, and then, timing as it was, I had to run to the outhouse. As I had a moment to sit, I pulled up my device location again, and found it was supposedly right at the front of the lodge. So, I went back in one more time, showing the probably underpaid waitress who happened to be within view that my phone was showing as being here, and upon her asking someone else, my phone was then located at the front desk. So, that was a close shave.
But it really was a fun time away. And honestly, it was a nice opportunity to connect with some family I don't normally get to see. My own family is rather small and somewhat broken, so I see them often enough, and we have fun of our own. But for me, my wife's family is in some ways an even closer family to me than my own, so it really is nice to see them. Granted, when I say that, I have a strange way about myself. I'm not exactly social or antisocial, but in a larger group or gathering, I tend to become a little more anxious and don't like socializing, and often just take to my own corner or space. In that light, understand that it wasn't like that silly picture of a "perfect" family you might see in your imagination. In fact, each of us mainly spent time in small groups or by ourselves. But I was still glad to be there with them, and have the opportunity to do fun things with them.
And at the end of the day, (or week, in this case), it's been a good one, and I look forward to a next meeting. And was I ever glad for the time away from work. I suppose it will be a good moment until I have my next "vacation", though perhaps time will only tell. Until then, see ya!