your glimpse of Heaven for the day

There it is. My lake. Stiles Reservoir in Spencer, Massachusetts. See how there's two coves in the little tail thing on the bottom? My cottage is on the left side of the second one up. The big island in the middle is Ropeswing Island, and the small islands above it are the Blueberry Islands.

My mom co-owns the little cottage that was built by my great grandpa (I think his name was George) with 6 brothers and sisters and 3 cousins. Yep, I have a huge family. 53 first cousins, baby. Anyways, each family gets a week there in the summer...except this year, we're not going. So...I'm left to drool over this bird's-eye view of the place and reminisce about all my past memories and traditions.

the Leicester drive-in, going off the ropeswing, picking wild blueberries and making blueberry pancakes, eating "lobstah" (and affecting a Boston accent whenever possible), lounging in the hammock, floating on a raft in the middle of the lake and feeling more at peace than I do anywhere else in the world, being the ghetto house...everyone else on the lake has speedboats, tubes, wakeboards and jetskis while we have a paddle boat and a motorboat with holes in the bottom, getting to watch Are You Afraid of the Dark and other cable shows cause when we were growing up we didn't have it, getting to pick your own sugary cereal for the week, eating at Dairy Queen...the good old brazier, s'mores by the fire outside, catching bass, inevitably getting stuck in the middle of the lake, playing American Gladiators on the raft

...next year