Beers, Boats, and Tunics

Last weekend, my dear friend, Morgan, who lives in a lake house, was kind enough to invite all of her hooligan friends (myself included) to come spend the 4th of July with her family. She lives in Peekskill, just a quick 90 minutes outside of Manhattan. (Fun piece of trivia: Peekskill is the town where The Facts of Life was supposed to take place! I have sort of a fantasy--which I spoke to Morgan about this weekend--of opening up a bakery in Peekskill called Edna's Edibles, though I am unsure if the locals will A) get the joke, or B) want to run me out of town with torches. Also, I'm not that great of a baker [see previous post.]) Anywho, there were six of us and a large 130 pound dog named Biscuit who piled into a car fit for only five people. That is how determined we all were to get the hell out of Manhattan and onto the lake!

This is Biscuit, in case you were wondering! And also Julie!, who got a tummy ache later from drinking too many sugary malt-liquor beverages.

This is pretty much how the day was spent: Get in your bathing suit and climb onto something that floats. If your inflatable thing has a cozy, attempt to keep your beer from tipping out of it. Dry off, get a fresh beer, repeat. 

Chris, Shana, and Tessa...don't their tattoos all look nice together? 

In this photo, above, we have a combination of floating things: one is the "pod," which Chris snagged, and the girls are reclining on the little sailboat that they called Son of Deck, since, when tied up to the dock, it was basically just an extension of the deck. Since none of them knew how to hoist the sails, they somehow convinced Chris to tow them out to the middle of the lake via kicking and paddling on his pod. He then left them out there to die. Well, that is, until Shana took matters into her own hands by diving into the water and swimming back toward land, towing the boat behind her with a rope. Tessa, who is seen here holding a paddle, was useless. But we love her!

And finally, because I was wearing my tunic and had my lakey mermaid hair going on, I insisted that Robb take a photo of me wearing my Alabama Studio Style tunic--my most beloved hand-stitched garment that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Here it is on on an actual body! Mine, in fact! And though it looks like I'm wearing an obscenely short dress, I assure you that there are shorts on under there. No really, I wouldn't just walk around in front of my friends in an uber-short tunic. I promise.

After a round of s'mores, we watched the sun set, our idyllic day of pastoral fun times having come to an end. And really, it looked just like this, all pinks and blues. We huddled on the dock, some of us sleepy, some a little tipsy, and some a bit nostalgic for summers past. All together, we watched the neighbors shoot off fireworks over the lake. And then we piled back into the car, cramming our behinds into the back seat, and sang stupid songs (I don't even think the radio was on), just as though we were coming back from camp. And actually, I guess that you could say we were.