One Last Day

My sister and I went up to the cottage yesterday just for the day.  For me, it will probably be my last visit of 2010, which always leaves me feeling both a little sad and little relieved. Sad, because it is the end of another season and I know it means a long, cold six months before I will be back there again.  Relieved, because it means I will no longer be away every weekend and that means I can focus some time and effort cleaning and organizing things at my apartment, which always seems a complete disaster zone after a summer of spending every weekend at the cottage and not enough time at home.

Two surprises awaited us when we arrived yesterday.  A tree we have been meaning to cut down all summer had finally fallen over. Luckily, it doesn't appear to have done any damage to the building it landed on!  So now we'll just have to arrange to have it cut up into pieces, but at least half the job is already done!!

The second surprise was inside the fridge I had just cleaned and defrosted last weekend:  two exploded pop cans.  Probably a combination of too cold a temperature inside the fridge with not enough stuff left inside to absorb the cold and too cold a temperature outside in the unheated cottage.  Drat!  That means I had to clean the darned thing all over again! Oh well, these things happen.  Serves me right for leaving the pop in there in the first place.

But overall, it was a lovely fall day, quiet and still, just enough sun and not too cold. Janine got 10 more bags of leaves raked up and I packed everything away indoors that needed to be protected from the mice that will be moving in for the winter, cleaned ashes out of the fireplace, swept up, dusted one more time, emptied the cupboards and the fridge for the last time, etc.