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1904-01-01 - 6:55 p.m.

I spent a lot of time yesterday building a pipe dream in my head.

When I awoke early yesterday morning, constructing the perfect clubhouse wasn’t exactly my plan for the day, but my wayward mind latched onto the notion and held fast. Amazing how childlike ideas can so easily kidnap me and hold me hostage for hours. Days. Weeks.

I hang out on a message board, and during the past week two members had posted their version of the Friday Five (a journaler’s prompt site sponsored by smatterings.org) for the rest of us to answer. Not wanting to welsh on my responsibility to the board, I tossed out the clubhouse idea as the Saturday Six. This wasn’t an original idea, I’d run across it a long time ago when exploring writing sites for young people. Obviously, my childish pea brain had grasped the idea and tucked it away. Yesterday I pried it loose and tossed it out as a harmless bit of fun. The damned idea proved to be anything but harmless. I was hooked and wanted to build a clubhouse. I went about my day, not doing much of anything, trying to ignore the clubhouse, but my head was wrapped around it and damned if it was going to release it.

I went in search of a perfect location for the place. I first settled on a little piece of secluded beach. Warm white sand. Aquamarine waters. Palm trees and lush tropical foliage. Quirky little sea birds. I encountered my first predicament when I started considering clubhouse plans. My image of the ideal clubhouse wasn’t suited for beach front living. Then a little bit of reality bit me: I’m not going to live in this place without a 45-foot SeaRay to cruise on, and the reality of that happening is slim to none (Thank you, Mr. Gadabout, for pointing out the cost of maintenance, operation and docking, to say nothing of the half mil price tag on the boat. You sure know how to burst a bubble, Bucko!). Still, it is a pipe dream and I can certainly pretend. I could, in fact, spend the whole damn day pretending, but somehow this place I had concocted in my mind didn’t fit.

No, my clubhouse belongs on a fresh water lake. A large lake, surrounded by towering pines, with rocky shores and sheer stone cliffs out in the wide main channel. A water paradise offering isolation and quiet. I’m not sure where this lake actually is. Not Minnesota. Although a beautiful state, it’s too cold for too much of the time. Not Missouri; the only lake fitting my lake in Missouri is Lake Ozark and it’s too crowded--too commercial. But this is all Saturday make believe anyway, so I just made up a place. Snow only in December (lakes and clubhouses are beautiful in snow), a nine-month long summer season, leaving a month for spring, a month for fall.

I’d tuck my little place far back in a cove, and mine would be the only clubhouse in the cove. It’s not going to be a large building, so very little of the original landscape would be disturbed. The house would be a small log cabin, a real one, not one of those fake, fabricated homes. Since this is a fantasy, I can ignore the labor-intensive cost of building a log cabin, and also ignore the cost of maintenance on the damn thing. The cabin would nestle close to the water and have a large deck surrounding it. The deck on the waterfront would extend out over the lake. Of course, I’d have to have a dock for the pontoon somewhere near the deck.

There’s nothing fancy about the clubhouse: galley kitchen, bath, bedroom and large family room with an antique brick floor-to-ceiling fireplace on the lower floor; a loft and extra bath on the upper floor. Plank oak flooring with some area rugs. Large windows, sans window treatments. A full wall of window on the lake side of the clubhouse. Comfortable, well-worn furniture and not much else. I’m sure as hell not going there to learn the joys of becoming domestic.

Clubhouse alludes to a membership of some sort, and Emma and BlueDoggy and Mavis would have to be charter members (they wouldn’t let me go without them). And I wouldn’t want to hog all the beauty of the place, so I’d give my good buddies a map directing them to the secret place. Everyone else could stay the hell out.

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