cabin number six

I did it.  Or rather, we did it, Mike and Claire and I.  My first night away since she came into our lives a bit over three years ago.  This past weekend saw me driving up to Hot Springs with a dear friend, watching the flurries falling and catching up on each other's lives in the way we have very rarely been able to do at birthday parties and at each other's houses as the kids run around screaming.  You know how it is.  We landed at cabin number six in the Hot Springs Campground on the French Broad river.  While we waited for the third member of our mamas' weekend away party to arrive, we sat on the floor eating popcorn and dark chocolate, the game of Set spread out before us but largely ignored.  Because of the catching up and all.

Then an arrival, and a bit more snacking and chatting followed by a nice little hike on the AT on the other side of the river.  Very cold.  Very windy.  Beautiful bluish-greenish-greyish river far below our perch atop 'lover's leap'.  We returned just before it started getting dark to start dinner and a fire and open up the wine.

A late hot tub soak, way more wine than I'm accustomed to these days, (truly, I'm typically a one or two beer kind of girl) and up way past my bedtime.  I woke Sunday morning and, unable to get back to sleep even though I so wanted to, I read in my bunk for an hour, working my way through the second half of Gone Girl.  A book that I really wanted to love but found to be a little too predictable in parts and perhaps just so far away from my typical read that I just couldn't quite embrace it.  Not that I don't occasionally like to add some variety to my reading list, but I am definitely anxiously awaiting my turn to get Flight Behavior from the library.

So anyway~ this mama now has a weekend (or, nearly 24 hours anyway) away under her belt and a whole new world of possibilities has opened up.  And she (Claire) did fine.  Of course she did.  She woke in the middle of the night crying for me to come home right now!  Mike had her 'call' me on her phone to tell me she missed me and wanted me home, and then he brought her in our bed for stories until she fell back asleep.  When I got home around noon on Sunday I found her on the couch under many blankets, looking through a colored toilet paper roll (her telescope) and declaring herself to be a pirate.

Yep, just fine.