orleans lake house
This past weekend was the second "Cape Cod bookend".
Among the volumes wedged between these bookends was Balco’s Finest’s softball playoff game. Standing in our team’s way, and providing little resistance, were the Aces of the Geriatrics Department. We disposed of them by 15-4, but they were apparently so impressed by our good sportsmanship that they invited us to stay after the game and help them finish their beer and snacks, including homemade cookies! They thanked us for a fun game and lauded us for having a much better attitude than some of the other teams that they had played this season. This is not a trivial achievement, because sometimes our team’s talent and success can be slightly offputting to our opponents, but this was a gratifying vote of confidence for our underlying good-heartedness.
On Friday, I left work early to drive with Kristie up to Cape Cod again. We arrived at the Anchorage just in time for the last dinner with the whole extended family, since checkout was the next morning. In the evening, we all watched the Red Sox game and played Outburst together, then, after everyone else had retired to their own cottages, Katie, PJ, and I played a game of Settlers of Catan. Then it was bed time, and just like last weekend, Kristie and I had to share an inflatable mattress that steadily lost its air throughout the night. Not a sustainable arrangement, but for one night at a time, it was at least sufferable.
Despite only staying at the Anchorage for two nights total, we valiantly helped with the packing and cleaning for checkout at 10 am. Before leaving, we walked down to the beach one last time, took a bunch of pictures, including the traditional big family portrait, and even randomly played hula hoop in the gravel parking lot. We then issued the erratic wave to each carful of relatives as it departed. When it was just our immediate family remaining, we drove into Provincetown to bide our time until our next cottage’s check-in. We walked all the way out on Commercial St., past all the shops and restaurants to a residential neighborhood. As the sky grew ominously dark, we turned around to head back into town. Just as we arrived at Bayside Betsy’s restaurant, the clouds opened up and it began raining hard. We had scouted out the menu earlier as a potential lunch option, and this gave us the perfect impetus to follow through on that. By the time we finished eating, the weather had cleared up again, so we walked back to our cars and drove to Orleans, where my parents had rented a lake house for the second week of their vacation. For the past few years, in fact, my parents have been using their second week to explore other areas of the Cape, and this place was quite a departure from the typical bayside experience. We weren’t near to the bay at all; rather, the backyard led directly down to a small freshwater lake, which eventually feeds into the ocean. It was also definitively a "house", with its multi-story layout, several bedrooms, and high square footage, as opposed to the cottages along Beach Point. The place still had a Cape Cod feel to it but was a distinctly different style.
As soon as we arrived, Kristie and I had to go park outside the local library so Kristie could use the internet to solve a bank account issue, then we met the rest of the family at Nauset ocean beach. We jumped in and out of the cold water a few times, and PJ, Katie, Kristie and I threw the frisbee around in the nice soft, flat sand. As afternoon gave way to evening, we all returned to the house for dinner, then played a big game of setback. Afterwards, Mom and Dad called it a night, but we siblings stayed up for a round of Settlers of Catan.
Sunday was my and Kristie’s last day at Cape Cod. I started off the day by reading the comics while eating muffins with Mom and Dad. My top priority for the day was to take out the kayaks for an exploration of the lake and its connected network of channels and marshes. PJ was the next person awake and ready to leave, so we set out together for the next 45 minutes or so. Later in the morning, when everyone was up and hanging around the house, we started up one last game of Settlers of Catan, which I would ultimately win, ending my Cape Cod drought. During the game, Katie also showed us the pilot episode of one of her favorite tv shows, Psych, which was good enough for me to borrow the season 1 and 2 DVDs from her. For lunch, everyone ate sandwiches together, then we went for a stroll through downtown Orleans. We popped into a few shops, but overall, it was far less intriguing than Commercial St. in P-town. When 4 o’clock rolled around, we set out for Nauset Beach, again enjoying the usual beach activities. Back at the house, we had a cookout dinner on the deck, overlooking the sailboats moored in the lake, as the late afternoon sunshine faded to twilight. Once the sun had set and dinner was over, Kristie and I packed up our stuff, taking a few extra provisions for the road, and I drove us back to New Haven.
I was welcomed back to the real world with my double wisdom tooth extraction today. It proceded quickly and smoothly, and I’ve been surprisingly relatively pain-free for the rest of the day so far. Directly after the appointment, Kristie took me to Target to buy some soft foods to eat while my empty sockets heal, and since then I’ve just been hanging out at home all day because my mouth is still to gross and bloody to be presentable at work.