It took me several days, but I finally woke up.

Totally overestimating my energy level, I assumed I would “hit the ground running” the minute I arrived at the lake, as I’d done in years past.

Uh, no.

Banjo Man and I trudged to town Saturday morning to buy supplies. I’d refused to get back in the car on Friday, so we’d taken that day off to unpack the car and stagger around the house looking at the lake.

Even with all those groceries waiting for me, I still couldn’t drum up the energy to do anything in the kitchen. I told myself that I needed to recover from a nine-day road trip I still worried that I was suddenly too old to cook, that my family would arrive in June to find frozen pizza and do-it-yourselves burgers.

After several days of semi-consciousness I awoke on Tuesday with a thrilling desire to cook my 27 pounds of ribs (on sale at Super One, hurray!!!). After they were in the oven (275 degrees for 5+ hours) I continued on to make two crockpots of lasagna sauce.

Not done yet, I made a 7-quart pot of turkey vegetable soup.

And then I drove over to My French Friend Janou’s house to finally say hello to her and pick up the packages I’d had delivered to her house in the past two weeks.

Yesterday I went to water aerobics. Heaven! I came home and took a one-and-a-half hour nap, but still…

Today I’m assembling lasagnas. Then Banjo Man and I are going to deal with the tree that is blocking the path to the beach. He is going to saw a chunk out of it, but we’ll save the rest of the job for when the boys arrive. We’ll move a couple of chairs down to the beach and I am lobbying for an afternoon campfire.