Today is Jan. 7, 2011. This blog is about Dec. 30-today.
The picture is of the "School House" at The Clearing where I took my first two classes. The first class was "Putting Friction in Fiction". My second class was Beginning Knitting. When I knit, I can feel the wrinkles and gray hair growing.
Between Dec. 29-31 we had customers arriving and a lot of activity. The weather was cold but there was a lot of snow for now. It was supposed to get a lot warmer in the next few days after their arrival so the customers were worried. Some went sledding, ice skating and ice fishing during the day.
Every evening the customers/friends came into the lodge. There we ate snacks, watched football and played board games. For a couple days this was the norm. Some customers went up to the skiing mountains. Some went snowshoeing at waterfalls. Some got rained on pretty good. But all in all they had fun. The rain soaked everybody one day and dampened some spirits, but John cheered them up with his positive outlook, etc. He can make the most miserable day seem like the best he ever saw.
When a customer was thinking of leaving early because of the weather, John talked about the positives of staying and they eventually agreed. The ended up very glad that they stayed. We had a lot of fun.
During the day I had to do some packing, cleaning and laundry. We were getting ready to close down for the winter after the 1st of January. I started a pile of items we needed to bring with us. I also worked on the computer a lot.
I went into town one day to say good-bye to some friends. It will be so strange to be gone all winter. Winter is usually the season where we can catch up with friends. There aren't as many tourists which then allows us more time for our social activities. I will miss those.
At the resort, I made a lot of meals, set out a lot of snacks, cleaned the lodge every morning, called telephone & insurance companies, visited with customers, served a lot of drinks and had fun doing so.
For New Year's everyone was in the lodge. In preparation for this inevitability, I moved in a table from the basement, more chairs from our kitchen, rearranged the lodge, vacuumed all the sofas and furniture and cleaned everything very well. (My brother's dogs shed a lot and they loved the sofas.) After the New Year's celebration, in which everyone stayed up until 12:15 a.m., John and I cleaned up a little of the mess. The next morning we cleaned up the rest and had it all ready to go again by 10:30 a.m.
All but one cabin left on 1/1. When they left, John and I went into the cabins and turned off the hot water, refrigerators, and gas to the stoves. We turned down the heat also. After the last customer left on 1/2, we drove to visit my mom and step-dad.
We got there in time for the Packer game and stayed for quite awhile. One of their presents to us was a big bottle of moonshine. It turns out he made a still in the basement. I had to check it out. It was very high tech. There are sanitary pipes, cleaning to do, testing of the moonshine after its made, etc. I was impressed. So I had to try some, of course. That bottle he gave us will be free to try to anyone of legal age when they come into our bar. Of course we can't charge for it, and would not anyway, but it sure is fun to say that I've actually tried moonshine.
When we woke up Jan. 3, we had a load of work to do. John and Dave (our caretaker) went into the Alder, Aspen, and Spruce cabins and spent hours shutting them down. They drained the pipes, emptied water out of the toilets and elbows in the pipes, blew water out of the pipes with air compressors and then poured in some RV anti-freeze.
I cleaned Ironwood cabin, which took hours, went into the other 3 cabins and stripped the bedding off entirely, took curtains, pillows, towels, shower curtains and anything that wasn't attached and put a lot of the items in the basement to wash. That was a lot of trips and a lot of work.
When the guys were finished, I made them dinner. Then John and I finished packing our items for the next day's trip to Door County.
On Jan. 4, John left earlier than I did because he had a doctor's appointment. His shoulders and elbows are very sore because of all the work he does around the resort. He has been wincing when he moves his arms, and has had difficulty sleeping. So he went to the doctor to see what he could do.
I left later after I cleaned out the bar refrigerator and ice maker, did another load of laundry and packed up my car. My car door behind the driver was frozen shut. I wrenched it open but then it wouldn't close. Everything was frozen under a half inch of ice. It had rained for 2 days straight. So far John can't get the door fixed, so we will have to take the old Lincoln into the shop. We are not looking forward to it since these cars are not cheap to fix.
I visited my son and saw his first apartment - a full-sized house - on the way to Door Cty. He and his roommate are having fun being on their own and I was glad I could see his place. It actually was pretty clean and I was surprised. I took him to lunch and then bought him some groceries. I felt so good to be able to do that.
Door County has been fun so far. It still feels like I'm visiting even though we have a lot of our stuff here. We took some classes at The Clearing and they were really fun. The classes were our Christmas presents to each other. I took beginning knitting and putting friction in fiction. John took a class called Pubs & Parks. He eats lunch at a pub and then hikes in a park. He will also take chip carving and landscape oil painting. He and I both will be painting in that class. It should be fun.
We also went to the movie, "Feed the Fish" which was made in Door County. If you get a chance, see it. It was great and should be in all the major theaters. It won a lot of small movie awards.
Our mail hasn't reached us yet via forwarding and I am getting worried. If we don't get any mail tomorrow, I will call Dave and have him check our mailbox there. Maybe he'll have to send us some.
Tomorrow and the next nothing is going on. But I will post again soon.
