Building The Love Shack

Once upon a time, I lived in the world of fantasy. I had this idea that we were going to be super cottagers. I said… We’re building a cottage. Cottages are for outdoor living. We do not need cable. We do not need internet. We do not need central air. It’s a cottage.

I said… We’re going to spend all our time outside. That is the reason we are buying a cottage. We’ll be at the lake. That will be cool enough. We’ll be sitting in front of the fire, not the TV. We’ll only be inside to sleep.

Internet! Really! The idea is to turn off that crap and get away from city life.

I gave in a couple of months later and bought DVD Players with the reasoning that if we got rain, we could watch something while riding out the storm. Then came fans to keep us cool at night.

With-in the second year, I admitted we just might need to use the internet once in a while and we added data to our phones.

By the third year, not being able to sleep because it was to hot became to much. I gave in and bought portable air conditioners. The sleep improved, but it was still warm in there.

As it turned out, not every night was a build the fire night. Sometimes sitting by the fire could become painful. Like when the mosquitos are in a full swarm. Or it could be dangerous. Like when the winds were too strong.

Add in sudden thunderstorms that blow in from nowhere or it’s just to cold to sit out. And then there is last but not least, the nights that you were too tired to build a fire. These kinds of nights bring you inside.

It turned out those nights came more often than I had expected. By the fourth year, I gave in again. And in came the satellite.

The fifth year, I decided to go back to school. Thanks to Covid, all my schooling was online. As it turned out, the cottage was the perfect place to do my homework.

The extra data I added to our phones came in handy and my cell phone became my hot spot. At this point, I hated to admit it but maybe we do need internet at the cottage.

The problem with needing internet at the cottage is all the spaces for hook up were full. There’s also a waiting list of two years before a spot will be available and when you get it, the reception is poor and iffy at times. There is also a small detail of the thousand dollars to add a tower for the reception.

The good news came in year six… A company planned to bring fiberoptics to cottage country. It is expected to have unlimited TV and internet for the same price as the satellite.

Of course, we’ll take it. After all, I am planning to work partly from the cottage once I graduate. We signed up for it knowing it has an indefinite date when it will come.

It seemed like as each year passed, I changed my mind about what we needed and each year I gave into another luxury.

And do you know what came next?

Well, you know all those times I said we were going to do the kitchen and it got put off for one thing after another. It turned out it was a good thing. You see if we would have finished that kitchen we would have had to take those kitchen cupboards down because that is where we had to put the CENTRAL AIR!

Yes, I gave in completely. I can justify it by saying the dogs could not be left alone on warmer days because I worried about them. This is true. I can say that there were times it was just too hot and we had to head home back to the city to Central Air. Or I can just admit that I really enjoy the comforts of home and want them where ever I am because I’m going to be sixty this year and I want to be comfortable.

This new air conditioner is a ductless unit. It took the team six hours to install and it is whisper quiet. You don’t hear it inside or out and it is also a heating unit.

I no longer live in a fantasy world. I do enjoy my time outside at the cottage and I spend as much time outside as I can. But when it’s a hundred degrees outside, I’m quite happy to sit back and enjoy the cool air watching a cooking or garden show.

Am I laughing at myself for thinking it’s a cottage so tuff it out? Of course, I am. At the same time when I slept with the cottage at a comfy seventy-two instead of eighty-something this past week, I thought, now this makes more sense.

Maybe there is something to this getting older stuff after all. Comfy is good. Why tuff it out. Logic is coming with age. So is comfort.

Year seven is starting and all my delusions of tuffing it out in cottage country are now gone.

The fiber optics company will be starting in our area this Summer. We are on their to-do list. There will be more cooking and gardening show for me as I’m sitting on the couch when it’s hot out.

I’m not sure we can still call the Love Shack a Cottage. It has become more of a Summer House now that it has all the comforts of home. But I’ll still call it the cottage and pretend I’m tuffing it out.