Lucy is at her post, supervising all of my morning routines…
The house we rented is lovely, although not without its quirks. But a lake house without a level of quirkiness is not a lake house at all. For starters, we couldn’t find the carafe for the coffee maker. When we finally did, we discovered that it had a huge crack in it. The prospect of having no coffee this morning was too horrible to contemplate so I texted the indomitable Tif Ford at On The Water in Maine last night around 6-ish explaining our crisis. Within an hour the owner of the house, (a big league quirk in her own right), shows up at the house with a brand new Perculator…
This was the coffee-maker of choice for my parents not to mention millions of Americans before Mr. Coffee came along. As I write this I am enjoying my first cup of coffee from a percolator in probably 30 years. Frankly, its not bad at all, although it will take a few pots before I figure out how to get the right brew strength. There are other options here..a French Press and another single cup thing that also looks French somehow. Hard pass.
Beside the coffee kerfuffle, there’s the case of the wall clock that bellows out a different bird song at the top of every hour…
My Mom had one of these and it was the subject of much trash talk back in the day. I would harass Mom about it nearly every time I was over at the house. Of course, Mom’s version of the birdsong clock was defective. The owl, woodpecker and eagle didn’t work, and all the others sounded garbled and grotesque, like a recording of Helter Skelter played backward at the wrong speed. Oh the fun I had giving Mom grief over that clock. Anyway, this one works perfectly, which is even worse than a defective one. Last night we are all sitting on the sofa busy with nothing…
…when the screeching song of the Purple Martin starts bouncing off the walls! What in the Sam Hill?? Oh, its just the clock!!
Finally, there’s the matter of the haunted ceiling fan…
Aside from the obvious issue of it being the subject of many side-eyes from Lucy, our girl having a long and troubled relationship with the appliance, this particular model seems to cut on and off of its own accord, independent of human instruction. Everyone remembers it NOT being on when we arrived at the cabin, but while we were eating dinner we all noticed that it was on. As day follows night, the women in the house complained about the draft it was causing and asked Ron to turn it off. Thus began an hour long search for a switch that would perform this simple task. Turns out there was a remote control in one of the bedrooms that had been employed to operate the bedroom ceiling fan. But for reasons that are unexplainable whenever it was used in the bedroom, it had the opposite effect on the one in the living room. Quirky.
Lucky for us, Lucy has made her peace with the overhead menace…
This morning we are heading into Camden for the Harbor festival/book and craft show. Awesome pictures are sure to follow.
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