We spent Labor Day weekend up at the cabin. We had vacationed there in July, when it was cold and rainy. When we returned in September, it was bright and sunny and the water was 70 degrees! Weird!
Day 1:
Mark kept throwing a ball far into the bay for Lexi to chase, and then another ball near to the shore for Lucy, who doesn't like going into the water if she can't touch the bottom (she usually just jumps from rock to rock). Most of the time she did not feel that the ball was well-placed enough for her preferences, and would just stand on a rock, staring alternately between the ball and us, as if to say, "You'll have to do better than that."
...and she would do that until Lexi, having fetched her own ball out in the bay, swam back to snatch Lucy's ball, too. Of course, no water is deep enough to keep Lucy from besting Lexi.
O played with Grandma:
and read with Nana:
I took photos of pretty things. Surprised?
That night JB, Grandpa, Mark, Marty Feldhake and I went salmon fishing. Well, I did not fish; I was the staff photographer. No fish were injured in the making of this trip, much probably to PETA's pleasure, but our dismay.
Grandpa and Mark fished from Pooh Bear. The lake was smooth as glass!
JB and I took to the waters in Marty's boat.
Us girls also went shopping in Detour, where Olivia wowed the shoppers and shopkeeper with her love of jewelry. Marian would put a bracelet on Olivia's wrist and Olivia would hold out her arm to admire it. She's a girl through and through!
We also stopped at my favorite jeweler's: Dave's Up North. He seems to have erratic hours, so it was a treat to see him open. Oh, the treasures! There were 3 pendants that I loved, totaling $375. That's affordable, right? :)
JB and I are big fans of This American Life. We’ve listened to almost all of its shows, including a segment titled “The Hills Have Eyes.”It is a true story about a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon and her near-disaster experience with trying to get a rabies vaccine (which costs thousands of dollars, by the way). At one part of the show (14:35 minutes in), the interviewer took an aside with the audience and said that rabies is REAL and DANGEROUS and if you ever find a bat in a room where someone was sleeping, you need to have that bat and/or person checked for rabies, as they may not have known that they were bitten.
That, coupled with Michael Scott's Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run for the Cure, has made me very serious about rabies.
So when I learned that the squeaking I heard in my bedroom in the cabin was a bat and not a mouse, I was a little unnerved.
But just a little, as it was apparently in the walls, and not actually in my room.
We heard them for two nights, scratching and squeaking in the walls, and in what sounded like the heat ducts, right by my side of the bed. Marian said she’s heard them in the cabin for years.
The next day, as Mark fetched something from the cubby hole/attic space right next to Olivia’s bed, he discovered a dead bat and showed it to us.
Aha! Mischief managed, I thought. I didn’t know that bats live in droves.
A few hours later I take Olivia to our room to nurse her and take a nap. I grabbed the blanket out of her bed (it was chilly the whole time we were up there!) and threw it on my bed and sat down next to it. As soon as I got situated with her, I reached out to grab the blanket to pull it over us. Then I noticed that my hand wasn’t about to grab the off-white blanket, but something black and sinister instead.
A bat! In the blanket, 7 inches from Olivia’s head!
Eeee!
Then it started squeaking.
Eeeee!
I actually wasn’t as frightened as I would have been if it was a mouse or, God forbid, a snake. I probably would have cried if it had been one of those. The bat didn’t disturb me, but the idea of rabies did.
So I summoned Mark and JB for help, and they removed the bat, which was fortunately stuck in the blanket, and not able to fly around and get stuck in my hair. Or bite Olivia.
That night Marian and Austin counted 38 bats flying out of the roof, on a hunting expedition. Mark speculated that there were probably 100 in there in total.
Eee again!
Grandma and Grandpa found one flying around in their bedroom the next morning. They opened a window and it flew out. Grandma commented that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about over these bats. I should have pointed out my rabies concern to her, but I did not. I was trying to be brave, I guess.
Mark and Marian found a guy who took care of the problem. This man rigged a sort of tube and flap in the hole that the bats flew in and out of. They could fly out at night to hunt, but upon return, could not go back in past the flap.
The in-laws said they counted over 100 bats leaving the joint.
Good riddance, you blind creatures of the night! Christian Bale may make bats seem sexy, but I know better. You can’t fool me, and you can’t come back into the family cabin and give us rabies!
As a police officer, JB’s brother gets out of a lot of traffic tickets. I guess there’s this “fellow police officer buddy buddy” code that they get to share with each other, letting each other off the hook in their jurisdictions.
Shortly after arriving in the U.P., Austin got pulled over for going 80 in a 55. He of course did not get a ticket, but had a nice chat with Officer Rambo (okay, that’s got to be one of the coolest names you could have if you’re a cop).
A few days later JB, Olivia and I head down M-134 enroute to #4 on our Top Ten list. We just get down the road when JB spots the cop car coming the opposite way. JB lets off the gas, unaware that he was going 70. Too late. The cop does the “hit the brakes and turn around” thing that I’ve seen too many times to count.
“He got me,” JB said. He was already annoyed that his brother, who was going 80, got out of a ticket, but that he himself would get one for going 70. Then he realized that he didn’t have his license with him. It was in his wallet sitting on his nightstand back at the cabin. When he told me that I knew it was over. It’s one thing to speed, but if you don’t have your license you’re toast.
(Though I do have to say that one time, when I didn’t have my proof of insurance in the car, I did get out of a speeding ticket in favor of a “no insurance card” ticket. It was $30 and no points. A bit easier to take than the $80 ticket and 2 points.)
As JB pulled to the side of the road, I started praying that God would have mercy. His Mom, who passed us on her way to our destination, was also praying that God would have mercy.
The officer walked up to the car. I braced myself for an insensitive interaction, as is what always happens to me when I get pulled over.
Instead, a friendly voice said, “Hello! How are you today? Can I have your license and registration?”
JB explained his missing license. So the man asked for his full name and date of birth. After hearing JB’s full name he asked him if he got teased in school about it. And things just got nicer after that.
It was so weird!
He informed us that we were going 71 in a 55 and asked if JB was aware of it, noting the baby in the car. After noticing the tinted windows in the back, he asked JB to roll up the front one, because it’s illegal to have your front windows tinted. I explained that they were not, because I knew better.
“You get those tinted for the baby?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I told him (back in 2003!).
(Hey, they are important for the baby! I am ever grateful that we don’t have to drive around with one of those cheesy “baby on board” sunblockers in our windows. Those things block the driver’s visibility anyway. Very dangerous, if you ask me.)
Then he bid us a good day.
OMG!
1.)16 miles over the speed limit; 2.) with a vulnerable baby in the car; 3.) no license; 4.) limo-black tinted windows. These are all things that annoy cops.
But Rambo isn’t just any cop.
The Lord had mercy!
Thank you, Lord, for Officer Rambo. Coolest cop I know (besides Austin).
Remember that one time, when I learned that my photo was picked to be in the Les Cheneaux 2010 calendar?
I saw said calendar at Safe Harbor Books in Cedarville last week. I got excited and flipped to the month of August, where I expected to see my photo. Instead I saw this lame photo of wooden boats. (I typically would like this photo, but since it was replacing mine, it was lame.)
Dismayed, I relayed this to JB. He then pointed out that my photo wasn’t there because it was the COVER photo.
Der! No wonder the front of the calendar looked so familiar!
One of my favorite parts of going to the cabin is watching Lucy run the beach. The first time she went up she wowed Grandma by running and running and running in circles on the beach at a breakneck pace, repetitively. Grandma was unaware of Lucy's dedication to aimless carefree running and was quite entertained by it.
This year proved no different, but with the added bonus of her bff Lexi accompanying her. Over the course of the week the dogs had several different people throw tennis balls for them. Most memorable were the Schreimer girls and their cousin. They marveled at how high Lucy can jump and how fast she can run. (A random couple who were walking the beach also marveled at Lucy's abilities--apparently it's legal to walk the beachfront along the lake, even on private property, and these people were not shy about walking through our yard. The man said that I should enter Lucy in races.) Typical Chewba beach routine:
Run.
Run.
Run.
Watch tennis ball get launched into water.
Consider racing Lexi for it. (Only like going in cold water if there are enough rocks to hop in order to get to my destination.)
Let Lexi chase ball while I bark at the human's feet.
Jump up very high in attempt to steal human's other tennis ball.
While Lexi swims back with her ball, watch other tennis ball fly down the beach, not in water.
Tear up sand chasing ball and barking madly.
If Lexi is out of water by then and chasing new ball, will easily outrun her.
Bring ball back, shaking it in mouth in very fierce, vigorous fashion. I am to be feared!
Listen to human tell me to drop it.
Or, I mean, DON'T listen to human's command to drop it.
Prance around with ball in mouth, wanting it to be thrown again.
JB and I have decided to do an "Upper Peninsula" top ten, counting down the 10 most exciting/memorable parts of our vacation at the family cabin on Lake Huron.
So our number 10 memory was our trip to "the big city." Read: Sault Ste Marie. No, there isn't a mall here. There isn't Starbucks or Jimmy John's. You won't find a big museum or art gallery. Or a hot music scene.
But they've got a Wal-Mart and TSC, which I bet is big city enough, if you ask any Yooper.
JB, I, Austin, and Lauren first hit up Karl's Cuisine, our favorite Soo restaurant. While we are partial to this man who catered our wedding and made our wedding cheesecakes, Karl really is a great chef. We met friends and fellow Spartan alumni Mike and Cassie Panik there for lunch. The last time I ate at Karl's, I had this amazing chef salad. I wanted it so badly yet again, but also wanted to branch out and try something new. So I got something new. And a side chef salad. Which really was more like a regular-sized salad. Plus a large piece of our wedding cake: turtle cheesecake. I ate all of it. Then we got a massive stromboli and two pasties to go. A trip to the U.P. really isn't complete without pasties, ya know.
After lunch we went to the super awesome Soo movie theatre, where they take American Express, but they don't take Visa. Who doesn't take Visa??? Hicktown movie theater. Who doesn't have a Chase ATM within a 50 mile radius? Hicktown Soo. (AND Hicktown Nashville, I learned. Definitely can't move to Tennessee now!)
We saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I enjoyed it.
While there, we saw giant movie posters advertising Tim Burton's latest adaptation: Alice in Wonderland. Has anyone else seen the scary Johnny Depp rendition of the Mad Hatter? It's even freakier in bigger-than-life movie poster size and you're minding your own business at the theater when BAM! there it is. This happened to me at a Grand Rapids theater. Celebration Cinema is lucky I didn't have a full bladder because they might have had a mess to clean up.
I love Alice in Wonderland and also Johnny Depp, but seriously, I don't like his Mad Hatter. CREEPERS. He looks sort of like Madonna here, if you ask me. However, the colorfulness of the other posters won me over, so I want to see it. Just not the part with Johnny Depp. Then again, I was fearful about watching Transformers, and ended up loving it. We'll find out March 2010 if I pee my pants in the theater or not.
I couldn't resist. I just started to look through the 631 photos I took on vacation in the U.P. last week (yes, I may have a problem) and one of the first shots was this stellar catch of dogs at play. Yes, Lexi is completely in air, like Lucy. JB and I have talked about doing a vacation top 10, so I will post more photos as we post our list, but I just had to share one...
(the girl in the photo is JB's second cousin, Clara. Or first cousin once removed. Something like that. A nice girl.)
Oh my gosh. I just found more "dogs having fun." Agh. Will have to do "dogs having fun" post.
...and she would do that until Lexi, having fetched her own ball out in the bay, swam back to snatch Lucy's ball, too. Of course, no water is deep enough to keep Lucy from besting Lexi.
