The Cabin gets shut down for the winter.
Sure, there’s the odd weekend between Christmas and Groundhog Day, weekends that see at least one Rank return to our heirloom estate in the woods.
But for the most part, The Cabin is too cold, too remote to access in the winter.
Winterizing The Cabin means shutting off the water, draining the pipes so they don’t freeze and burst. The chips and Petey food get sent home. The refrigerator is emptied.
Winterizing The Cabin reminds me of the days I’d slip into an operating room, tucking myself into a corner. I’d watch as a section of skull was removed to manage an injured brain.
Injured brains swell. The rigid skull, which normally keeps the brain safe, compresses it instead, sometimes damaging the brain worse than the original injury.
But remove a bit of that skull and now the brain can expand through the hole you’ve created. It ascends through the void, steady as a head of beer rising in a pint glass.
The winterized cabin is not unlike that operating room. Under normal circumstances, The Cabin is quite capable of safely holding its contents, just like the skull.
But a winterized Cabin’s usual contents can’t be contained by the walls of the winterized cabin any more than a swelling brain can be contained by the skull.
That’s where the similarity ends because opening a window or door at The Cabin won’t fix things the way removing a section of skull does.
What I’m trying to say is you can’t leave any food at The Cabin. Unless you want to return in the spring to find that Fievel Mousekewitz and every mouse on his ship have set up housekeeping in the kitchen cabinets.
So The Cabin is emptied of the marshmallows and mustard, the toaster waffles and Pop-Tarts. Cereal and Tostitos become bar patrons at 2 A.M. – they don’t have to go home, but they can’t stay at The Cabin.
They can, however, stay at my house.
For years, The Winterized Cabin contents went to Don’s parents’ house. Now it’s our turn to host the cookies and bran flakes, especially when one considers most of the supplies are there because of me and my children.
So each winter we become gracious hosts to the Chip Clips that stow away on the half-eaten bags of potato chips, to the shelf-stable milk I keep at The Cabin for my tea, to the butter, mostly gone and riddled with crumbs.
And to the marshmallows.
I keep enough s’mores supplies at The Cabin to make s’mores for the entire Pacific Fleet.
Daily.
For a year.
This overstock stems from a fear rooted deep in my early days at The Cabin, when I was still learning how to be The Pioneer Woman of central Pennsylvania.
Making s’mores falls under the heading of Things We Do Every Time We Go To The Cabin. For example, we always stop at McDonald’s on our way to The Cabin. We always go for ice cream at our favorite ice cream stand, 3B Ice Cream Shop – the one on Peter’s Mountain Road, in the middle of nowhere, not the ones in Harrisburg or Duncannon.
Harrisburg and Duncannon are a little too city for The Cabin.
We always go to The Carsonville Hotel, where our waiter Brandy strolls over with Cokes for the kids and hazy IPAs for me and the Dons because we all order the same thing every time we go.
We always watch Svengoolie, which is my proudest accomplishment because we actually turn on the TV.
And we always make s’mores.
But once, when the kids were still little, I erroneously thought I had all of my s’mores supplies – graham crackers, marshmallows, Hershey’s bars, men with fire-making abilities I lacked at the time – at The Cabin.
But I arrived that Friday evening to find I was missing critical s’mores supplies.
And it wasn’t my firestarters.
To skip s’mores at The Cabin is to risk having my children gut me with a spoon while I sleep. They’re as blonde-haired and blue-eyed as the kids in Village of the Damned. Breed humans like that and tell me if you ever sleep with both eyes closed again.
Grocery store options are limited at The Cabin. There’s Redner’s Wholesale Market and Wal-Mart, each a half-hour drive from The Cabin.
That’s an hour roundtrip, plus the hour you spend in the store because A) you’re not familiar with the layout so who the hell knows where the marshmallows are and B) who really leaves Wal-Mart with only the thing they went in to purchase?
Weighing out whether to be murdered by The Bad Seed blondes you managed to create with a guy who has jet-black hair or visiting a Wal-Mart in rural Pennsylvania at eight on a Friday night is just a Sophie’s Choice of indecision.
So now I keep an indecent amount of s’more supplies at The Cabin. Or, as we’re now on the cusp of winter, on top of my home refrigerator.
Funny how the surplus beer never makes its way here.
The only problem I have with any of it is the condiments.
Don believes, Buddy the Elf-like, that condiments are another food group. I silently rage when I see the nine varieties of mustard we own. Rest assured Don knows of my silent mustard rage; we just don’t discuss it. We both know the real problem isn’t the mustard but my unhinged Obsessiveness.
Winterizing The Cabin rehomes the likes of relish, ketchup, and mayonnaise out of The Cabin and into my refrigerator. I’m never looking to fill my fridge with more condiments any more than I’m looking to fill my life with more outdoors. I’m just really bad at avoiding both.
When Don returns home from winterizing The Cabin, he always has a smirk playing about his lips. He knows I’ll unravel as The Cabin condiments join our regular condiments, a Brady Bunch of squeeze bottles.
He knows I’ll complain, which I think is probably annoying even though he just laughs. He knows I’ll do what I normally do when I feel the universe spinning out of control, which is to clean the refrigerator. He’ll reassure me it’s just ketchup, to which I always whine But why so much? Was there a hot dog convention at The Cabin?
And then he’ll point out how very awful I am for putting ketchup on my hot dogs, and leave me to my cleaning spree while I mutter hot dog/ phallus jokes to myself.
I’ll throw away a few things that are mostly empty but not quite, and when Don asks me about them later I’ll lie and say I don’t know where they are, though we both know I do. I’ll grumble and huff, then feel marginally better when the fridge sparkles, the condiments lined up in tidy rows.
The worst part is that the condiments never make their way back to The Cabin come spring. There is no homecoming, no joyful reunion.
The old condiments stay in my fridge, replaced at The Cabin by sexy new condiments, full and robust, instead of mostly empty and incredibly sticky.
Should I take this as a warning? If I don’t accept the annual condiment expulsion from The Cabin to my fridge, will I, too, be replaced?
I have often told Don he should have a second wife, one who not only goes to The Cabin but enjoys hikes and camping outside and bugs. One who can actually cook. One who doesn’t pine for Starbucks and tall buildings.
Don says he has enough trouble with the wife he already has.
Which is ridiculous. Just this weekend, I threw away his jar of olives containing a grand total of ¾ of an olive, didn’t cook dinner at all, made him watch a Christmas movie, and recounted the plot of The Mandalorian, even though he doesn’t and never will watch it.
And I didn’t even complain when he made himself an egg and pepper breakfast, which I don’t like because it smells.
Yes. He emptied one of the ketchup bottles on the eggs. That’s why I didn’t complain.
Even though ketchup on eggs is gross.
And the jokes aren’t as good as the ones you can make with ketchup on hot dogs.
