A Day in the Life

Warning; The following blog might make you question everything you thought you knew about me. .  I thought I would once again try my hand at writing a blog with more on the uplift and less on the downcast.

We arrived at the cabin on Thursday night since Tammy was able to take a rare Friday off.  As a CEO, she works very hard making sure her rehabilitation  hospital runs well and that all of the patients receive the highest quality care.  I don't know how she does it.  As is our custom, we celebrated the week's accomplishments and discussed the coming weekend's adventures over glasses of red wine prior to our retiring for a night's well deserved rest.

Friday was a day for quiet reflection while lounging around in the cabin enjoying the tail end of the winter storm and the crackling warmth of the wood stove fire.  Tammy has begun to place a large pot of water with cinnamon sticks atop the wood stove and the wonderful aroma wafts throughout the entire cabin.  After a hearty breakfast of whole wheat pancakes and apple/pecan maple syrup we headed outside to begin the exhausting but satisfying task of digging out from the ten inch snowfall. Lunch was gourmet pizza at our favorite bistro in Phoenicia and then a few hours of splitting firewood and filling the bird feeders.  Now I was ready for a cup of steaming  hot cocoa, a hearty dinner of home made split pea soup and off to a well deserved early bed time.  Were it not for my exhausting day of woodland chores I most assuredly would have had a hard time falling asleep because of my eager anticipation of Saturday's planned day of cross country skiing.

If you've never brought your family to the Frost Valley YMCA camp in the Catskill Mountains they have missed out on a great outdoor learning experience.   While we were enjoying a brilliant sunny day of x-country skiing a New Jersey chapter of the Y-Adventure Guides was also enjoying the idyllic experience of pastoral play.  The Adventure Guides is the new, more culturally sensitive name for the old Indian Guides and Indian Princesses YMCA clubs we remember from our own childhoods.  While some may have felt the original name insensitive to our Native American friends I could not help but think about the noble aboriginal father, arm around his own son, teaching him about the ways of our great Mother Earth.  Perhaps standing atop what is now Peekamoose Mountain  staring out at the great eastern arboreal forest delighting in their disencumbered lifestyle.

While taking lunch in the beautifully appointed chalet style dining hall we had the great pleasure of watching all the young boys running around the tables in their youthful exuberance while the dads held their own "powwows" planning the afternoons activities. In the afternoon we took one more three mile glide through the woods and it was back to our cabin for a muscle restoring soak in the Jacuzzi. Too sore from our first skiing adventure of the season to do much more than lay in bed that evening, we decided to rent The Social Network and watch it on our big screen TV in the bedroom.  Those crazy dotcom billionaires and their kooky ideas about social networking really give me a chuckle.