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Frenchtown
Originally uploaded by Tavie

I hadn't swum for two summers running. It doesn't feel like summer to me if I don't go swimming at least once. It's just difficult to arrange and weekends are when I get stuff done around the house. But yesterday, Steph took me to a lake in central NJ at a place called Spruce Run State Park. The blocked-off area for swimming was pretty small, and thus overcrowded, but I managed to get some good dog-paddling in, and even a fair amount of floating-around-on-my-back. I am not a good swimmer; like Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride, "I only dog-paddle", but I trust my body's buoyancy and enjoy floating on my back like a fat otter and paddling myself around with my feet.

She also drove us down to Frenchtown, where she spent summers as a kid with her Swedish grandparents. It was kind of wonderful to see the place that my best friend has been talking about as long as I've known her. It's very rural -- well, was, now it's kind of antique-y and gentrified, but I'm glad she had a place like that growing up; creeks to jump in and places to fish and cows to poke at. I didn't have much country-time as a kid: a little bit of sleep-away camp (too emotionally traumatic for me to enjoy much) and weekends over a few precious summers that the Byros owned the house in Jeffersonville in upstate NY. Our parents took us on a lot of vacations as kids, but we had a lot more simulated Disney reality than grass-and-tree reality. (Ah, the blessed simulacrum, so much better than reality, and so much worse.)

Today, when she dropped me off at home, I got major shit done. I'm proud of myself, really. I even reorganized my closet.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 5:16 PM | shower me with attention