The family lake house will be mostly empty this summer. Travel is difficult and risky, so the out-of-state families are unlikely to make the trip. Plus, being together means we’re expanding our social circle – especially sleeping inside the same house, breathing the same air. It’s hard to say when it will be safe to resume normal life, but it seems early. At least to us.
Anyhow, we were the first ones to use the house and the only ones there. Karissa and the kids spent most of last week up there without me. Besides having fun, they cleaned up the house a bit.
I came up to spend the weekend. We weren’t going to do much, but decided to put a few pieces of the pier in. It make the place look inhabited and cleared the sand for the kids to play. And just feels “right” to be able to walk out there a bit.
The grass is super long. It’s been (and still is) too wet for the mower to get in there safely. As someone who mows his lawn every 2-3 days, it was infuriating to have such long grass – but it’s understandable.
Karissa and the kids didn’t have hot water. The water heater had been finicky most of last summer. We thought it was the fan on top, but that is working fine. It used to light up fine and warm water, you just had to monitor and turn the water heater on and off to keep it from shutting down. Well, I became obsessed with it when even that didn’t work. So I took the burner assembly apart. When I blew into the gas line, it was clear that no air was coming out near the ignitor. It was rusted closed. So I’m hoping that a new burner assembly for $100 will fix the problem and save the $1,000+ to buy a new water heater. We’ll see!
We’ve also been having some fun at home. My parents brought us a Mexican feast. We ate in a socially-distanced way outside with my brother, our family, and my parents. We also had a fire with friends we’ve barely seen in months. It was much needed. It burned a circle of grass in the yard, but it’ll grow back.
We continue to do our best to have fun and make the most of this strange period of time. We hope you are making the most of it too!
