God Bless Claritin D and Places of Rest

Tonight, my mind wafts out of the Claritin D haze back to earlier tonight to a raging sinus headache that laid me up and forced me to come to terms with my late thirty-something development of allergy symptoms that crop up at least once every spring and fall. I avoided admitting that fact today until I could barely move and my physical reflexes slowed to a deliberate medium. Taking the medicine that has to be checked out at the pharmacy sometimes makes me shaky when it is not what I need but think it is but tonight it must have been the right thing because I feel actually sane now after hours of barely functioning through dinner, dishes and laundry piles. I don't get the normal stuff like a runny nose and itchy eyes - just powerful headaches behind my eyes that I realize clear up with sinus and decongestive medicine in no time after suffering for hours.

"Mommy tea'd herself," came the clever input from the peanut gallery at dinnertime when I grabbed the full new tea jug from the refrigerator while everyone at the table watched it hit the ground and bust all over my cream sweats. I'm telling you that raging headaches do nothing for the reflexes. I have officially given up for the night and can barely sit here but needed to bring you evidence that a place of rest does exist. And, that going away is a wonderful respite to the mind, even if it probably brought on my extreme allergy symptoms.

This last weekend, my little family went up to our cottage to help with spring clean-up. Another camper remarked, "Why isn't this as fun at home?" Well, because teamwork always is more fun and it is even more fun to catch up with these summer dwellers who you see periodically through the summer but then disappear back into their own lives for about seven months. This opening weekend gives you little chance to cover such a timespan but you get the highlights and and its nice to see everyone.

My husband had fun last year spearheading the cleaning of the property line and found old supports for a walkway that used to take travelers from the train (whose tracks are now long gone to make way for progress). His own mother's father came up this path to meet and fall in love with her mother once upon a time. It felt like stepping into one's own personal Bridge to Terabithia (after the popular book and movie).

Here's a snapshot I was able to capture over the weekend. When the mind has time to rest, the creative juices start to flow again. Below this picture is our cottage (the first on the left) and my little teapot (given to me as a housewarming gift by another gracious camper) which I use I make my hot water to wash dishes. We get our water from a natural spring well which is cool and clean and incredibly refreshing. Hot Water Wash Recipe = 1/2 water jug of cold water in stopped up sink or wash basin, 1 kettle full of boiling water poured over dishes and a generous dollup of dishwashing soap.  Nothing like going back to the days of old to loose a few pounds (between trips to the well for water and trips up or down the hill to the modernized public restrooms).

The sounds down in the woods are filled with trills and squeals, warbles and woodpeckers and though only about 1/2 mile from civilization make you feel you are in the middle of the rain forest (only I have never been there so it is probably totally different) or at least in the middle of nowhere. Everything is sooo green.

There is much more to tell on this topic but I will have to spread it out through the week because it is now past bedtime and I get to finally rest for the day.