Lots of Time on the Lake

The last two evenings we've gone out on our boat, then gone out off our boat and swum in Lake Washington. It's been hot the last couple days here, in the high 80s and maybe even low 90s, and the boat has been such a blessing. On Friday night we had planned to take our friends D&K out for a ride and to dinner over in Kirkland (the last time we tried to take them out was 1 July, the evening I spent in the ER before being admitted to the hospital with pneumonia—I suppose Ian technically could have taken them out without me, but it's probably a good thing he didn't), and about 4:00pm I got a call from M, a mutual friend. "I kind of hate to ask," said M, "but could I crash your boat party tonight? It's just so hot!" Turns out she was stuck in westbound traffic on the 520 bridge, watching people boating and skiing and swimming, on her return from a meeting on the Eastside where the client didn't show up, in an old, non air-conditioned car. A perfect recipe for just abandoning the car and leaping over the side of the bridge, but she managed to control herself and call us instead.

So five of us went out, and the lake was a rocking, rollicking mess of waves from all the boat traffic, but we swam out in the middle anyway and it was great. I wore my lifejacket in the water because it didn't work so well to wear the oxygen and I didn't want to overexert myself and sink to the bottom (or to farther than 4 feet below the surface where the sea monsters live), and aside from cutting into the underarms a little, it worked very well.

The wave action (and the fact that there was a bit of breeze in addition to boat traffic contributing) made me a little nervous about a late-night dark and rocky return from Kirkland, so we decided to head back in to calmer waters while we could still see. We ended up down in South Lake Union at the Blu Water, where the deck seating was quite the crazy SoCal scene with all sorts of beautiful young people and alcohol-infused laughter and talking, boats rocking in the harbor, deep orange sunsets over water. Our quiet, slow, moonlit cruise back up to moorage was the perfect ending to the evening, and at 10:30pm our marina guys were still hauling boats around. And lots of boaters were arriving home all the time.

Oh, to tie this (somewhat remotely) to my summer of recovery, we took the opportunity to check my oxygen levels when I was driving the boat without using Moxy, and I was at 98. Pretty good, so I've stopped wearing oxygen on the boat. Another step!

Yesterday afternoon we had a Mathewson family barbeque over in Kirkland and the compound there, and we decided to take the boat over. Fortunately, Uncle K has a slip in the marina there, because Marina Park would probably have been crazy full. Anyway, Cousin S rode across with us, and the three of us stopped and swam in the middle of the lake again . . . which meant we actually arrived at 5:00pm for the 4:00pm party, because none of us had a watch and we were really, really hot. I wore my lifejacket in the water again but . . . sorry Dr. Jason . . . I stopped wearing it while I was driving the boat. Honestly, while I am willing to believe there's still some chance that I'll have a seizure, I haven't had one, I'm taking anti-seizure meds, and my brain lesions have been steadily shrinking. Also, with the poles to the bimini top and the windshield blocking me in, there's really no way a seizure would make me fly into the water. And Ian promised to dive in and get me if I did manage to squeeze through one of the holes. And it was HOT.

It was great to see all the cousins (first time all together in at least 1 ½ years) and eat tasty food, and then Cousin S and Mom and Marsh worked out a deal where she would drive their car back to Seattle to our house so they could come back across the lake on the boat, and so we stopped again, this time about 30 minutes after sunset, and Mom and Ian swam. Ian was a little chilled, but Mom was completely thrilled, because she got to float on her back in the now-calm lake, while the last bit of orange glow faded off the surface of the water and the full moon rose over the hills behind her.

And then we had a glorious skim across the dark water at 30 mph, and only hit an uncomfortably jarring wake once, and no logs.