My Secret Hideaway

The little cabin is mine, people!

I know I don't really have a claim on it, considering it's a good 50 years older than me. But I did finally today qualify for the frequent-user discount. (I love Steve. He's ever so much better than the funky drunk caretakers who were there before him. He actually returns calls, remembers me and even remembers if I've sent someone his way.)

Actually, it's been useful to get to know Steve. Not only does he give me a discount, he's become protective of his "regulars" ever since that goddamned Sunset Magazine blew the lid off the place and ranked my secret spot among the top 10 lakeside resorts in the West last year. Phooey to ruining quiet places with your insidious ink, Sunset!

Trust me people: It's a dive. You don't want to go there. No TV, no hot tub, daddy long-legs in the shower with you, the floor slopes just so, sometimes the fireplace doesn't pull well, sometimes the wood is wet, and every once in a while, the kind of windstorm that begat creation itself seems to come up and scare the living shit out of whoever didn't have the sense to flee once the pictures on the wall started rattling (such as me).

Anyway, I won't be getting up to the cabin this summer. I would've needed to book a while back, thanks to mutha-effin Sunset, to get it in the peak of summer -- and ended up choosing to take a trip down to Central California with my mula instead.

But I did get the baby for my birthday in October, which is when I wanted it. I will turn 40 at the lake. Can't think of a better place to be to usher in a new decade. Beauty, beauty. All is beauty when I get it in my head to go there.