This week is the last week of the summer for us. H starts her new school next week, as a high school freshman. (OMG! How did that happen?) We’re in North Carolina at our little lake house, eking out the last few days before we have to go home to sticky hot, humid Nashville. Seriously, if summer is supposed to be OVER, why do we still have a month (or two) of blistering temperatures in the Middle Tennessee valley, the steam bath of the South? North Carolina has been so incredibly beautiful these last few days that the thought of going back home just rips out our hearts. It’s funny, we built our “dream home” in Nashville and moved in a little over a year ago. It’s a great house, with a wonderful kitchen that I love, lots of storage, and his and her closets (which, if you know me and my tendency to be a little messy, is the saving grace of our marriage). Our house in North Carolina is half the size of our Nashville house, has a tiny kitchen with a tiny island, only one closet in the master, and one vanity that we share (another mess), but we never want to leave here. Just sitting outside on the balcony, watching the sunset over the lake, and feeling the soft warm (NOT HOT) air, is like a drug. It makes everything else feel unimportant.

Our dog, Rosie, becomes a mountain dog when she’s here. She hikes with us, covering two to three times as much area, because she runs ahead, and back, then down to the water, and back up, and I swear, I can tell she’s smiling.

I love the hiking, too. There are a zillion waterfalls in this area…at least four within this community and over 30 within a few miles. Today we saw wild raspberries, and J’s cousin and aunt ate a ton of them. Hopefully they weren’t poisonous.

We also saw a TON of butterflies today, and I’m thinking maybe it’s mating season, because they were just piling on top of each other and didn’t move, even when the dog went over to sniff around them.

This summer, after H had three weeks of summer basketball at the beginning of the break, we spent three weeks here. Home for a little while, and back here for the last week. It’s the first time we were able to stay for more than a long weekend in the eight years we’ve been coming. It’s a private lake at the top of a mountain (at 4500 feet) in a very small community-very secluded. No shopping, no theaters, not even a grocery store within 30 minutes. So we wondered if we’d get bored, or anxious, being so far away from a city. The answer is a resounding NO!. We have golf, tennis, boating, fishing, hiking, biking, canoeing, swimming, and just relaxing, so now we are frantically trying to carve out as many four day weekends as we can, so we can come back. High school and basketball are kind of cramping that plan, at least for the next few months. It’s a six hour drive, so it’s too far to come for regular weekends.

I need a jet.