P is for Prizes

P is also for pooped.
Man, I'm pooped.
It always happens when old farts like myself go out on a weeknight. We don't get to bed until midnight and the next day we're drooling on our desks.
P is also for pee, puddle and pants. I went to the can to decaffeinate (no, I did not say defecate - please refer to the L is for Lavatory post), shut my eyes for a second and woke up with a puddle of drool on my shirt and my pants on the floor. Suddenly I had flashbacks of myself as Ned Beatty in Deliverance.
P is also for party animal because, as you can tell, that's what I am.
Yup I was out drinking coffee at Deb from My Great White North's house and she plum wore me out. (Oh, another p word - plum - and here I thought I wouldn't be able to come up with one.)
WAIT - did you get the significance of what I just said? I went to Deb's house! Deb, a fellow blogger, one of my favourite bloggers who just happens to live down the road from me  – well, 40 minutes down the road and around a lake from me, but who's counting?
Compared to the journey it would take to visit my blogger friends in Florida or Newfoundland, New England or old England, Minnesota or Maxisoda, Italy or Little Italy, what's a 40 minute drive?
I love meeting other bloggers. Last fall, of course, Dave and I met Laurita Miller and Alan W. Davidson in Newfoundland and it was the BEST experience, best, best bestest because, even though they're complete strangers and they live a bazillion miles away, they're still JUST THE SAME AS ME. Really, they are.
Meeting blogging buddies is like hooking up with perfect guys on the dating sites where they match your personalities. Of course, that's not the kind of dating site where Dave found me. That was one of those ribald "kiss me you fool" kind of sites and me being such a flaming goddess of love, that seemed the best place to meet a stud-muffin like Dave.
I'm digressing again, aren't I?
Sigh. And here I thought I was too tired to write anything tonight.
OK, so last night I went to Deb's house!
Deb, you see, won second prize in my doors contest and she suggested I bring the prize booty over to her place so we could pose in front of her pretty paddled (more p-words) boathouse door. I was so excited about this. I had met Deb, briefly, at my work one day but really didn't have much time to do more than hug her and admire her famous golden lab, Lucy, and say hello to her husband whose name, coincidentally is also Dave. Actually it's just Dave. Not also Dave. Not even just Dave. Dave. That's it.
So Dave and I went over to Deb and Dave's and we spent, like, three hours chatting. Three hours, and it wasn't enough. There was so much to say – it's like we were running out of oxygen and had to spill everything out before we turned blue.
They are fabulous, Deb and Dave. Fabulous people. And they live in the most fabulous house.
Deb should be an interior decorator, she really should. Her rustic, cottage- themed home on one of the most gorgeous lakes in Muskoka, looks like a spread from Cottage Life. That's the first thing that came out of my gawping mouth when we walked in: "Your house looks like something from a magazine!" Oh yeah, I was cool as a cucumber... sigh.
They bought it when it was a sad, ramshackle cottage, unloved and musty, and they turned it into a living museum of what it means to be a cottager in Ontario. Everywhere you look is a moose or a paddle or an antique boat motor; an antler chandelier, a birchbark canoe planter, a pike wall hanging or an ancient Thermos. In the bathroom decrepit skis have been transformed into a towel holder. As I describe it, you might think it is crowded or messy, but it's not. Clean as a whistle, neat as a pin, warm and welcoming, glowing and fun.
Sorry for going on but if I won the lottery tonight I'd hire Deb tomorrow to make my house look like hers. I told her, "You should really go into business offering decorating advice." And she was like, nah, she'd have to be attached to a store. But I think there would be a call for someone with her taste to offer advice for people like me who want the look, but don't want to remortgage the house for real designers.
And she laughed and said something like, "Well can you imagine the look on their faces when I show up wearing my jeans and my plaid coat?"
If you'll notice, both Deb and I have plaid coats. It's what we call the Muskoka Dinner Jacket. I wear it whenever I want to put my best foot forward: splitting wood, going for walks along the river, or meeting kindred blogging spirits 40 minutes down the road.

Come payday, I'll be putting on my plaid jacket and heading out to the post office (another p-word) to mail all the door contest winners their prizes.
I hope you see them and will feel ... Pleased.