The Perfect Weekend

Have you ever had a magical weekend? One where the world outside ceases to exist, and everything you could ever want is right there in front of you. Well, it finally happened for me after a long dry spell, filled with anxiety-ridden workloads and schedules that need a map key to understand.

My boyfriend and I are the epitomai of workaholics. With multiple jobs and a master's program for me, our schedules seem to be complete opposites. I work my "real" job Monday through Friday from 7 am to 2:30 pm, my side job on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 3:45- 5:45, and my side-side job Tuesdays and Fridays, and sometimes weekends as well. My boyfriend works his "real" job on what feels like a randomized cycling schedule that switches from days to weekends every other week and from days to nights every other month. But, on one perfect weekend, the stars aligned, and we finally had nothing to do. Being the adventurous pair, we never spend our off time at home. Nothing crazy, but something to get us away from the exhausting atmosphere of our North Jersey home, where time seems to go x2 speed no matter what you are doing. So this time, since we only had three days, we decided to go to our buddy's Lakehouse.

The Lakehouse is a quiet, twoish story house out in upper New York, where civilization becomes scarce, and time seems to slow down to a palatable speed. However, it's only two hours away, and we figured it was the perfect short-term getaway for us to reconnect and have some time together. So Thursday night, while we each had a long day that didn't end until approximately 9 pm, we packed our things and made the two-hour drive up so we could capture as much time away as possible. It was just about 2 am when we got there, and as we brought our stuff in, I could see the stars playing peek-a-boo through the trees as if to welcome us for our short stay. As you can probably guess, we were exhausted and went straight to bed.

I woke the following day to the sound of "Drink in My Hand" by Eric Church and the smell of fresh coffee. My boyfriend was making us breakfast in the kitchen, drinking his "morning brewsky" while whistling along to the song. He slid over to me, gave me my morning forehead kiss, and handed me my coffee, already made up the way I like it. Our plans for the day were breakfast, firepit, lake, firepit, dinner, and end with some drinks at the firepit. What more could anyone ask for?

The Lakehouse had an old-fashioned charm; it had been in our buddy's family for a while now, and they had just started tearing away the 70s vibe and putting in a more modern feel. But, the old school doilies and outdated wallpaper in the living room were still very much present.

We had our breakfast and started up the firepit. My boyfriend is a firefighter, so he has to make the perfect outdoor fire for us to cuddle around. As the fire started to catch and the sparks danced in the sky off of it, I grabbed the somewhat stale bag of marshmallows and leftover chocolate bar, and graham crackers. My boyfriend always makes fun of me when I make smores because I'm too impatient to do his rotating on and off the fire method for my marshmallows. I prefer to stick it in the fire, let it catch, then spin it, so the whole outside gets a little burnt and smokey. The perfect smore marshmallow.

We killed the fire to pack a lunch and head out to the lake. It was a beautiful sunny day, 80 degrees with a slight breeze. I was paler than the doilies that hung around the house, so I couldn't wait to get out and soak up every sunray I could. I put the bare minimum amount of sunscreen on my body and the most full-coverage sunscreen I could find on my face. Because we came on such a random weekend, there was barely anyone at the lake, and the beach was wide open for us to walk around and have our pick. We set up our little camp with our cooler and towels. My boyfriend enjoyed his people-watching, though there were slim pickings for today, and I wanted my rhymic sunbath, get too hot, go in the lake, get too cold, repeat. We ended our lake day by walking around hand-in-hand and talking about our lives as if we didn't live together.

We ordered from our favorite BBQ place in the area for dinner and ate around the revived firepit. The stars came back out as the night came on and lit up the sky like everlasting fireflies. The air was still warm but just cool enough for me to wear a sweatshirt and be cozy. As we sat next to each other, talking about our future together and separately, I finally felt something that I had not felt in the past several months: Serenity.