Staycation

My original plan for last week was to take a writing-ish retreat, since my last at-home writing retreat was two years ago.

I say "ish," because I now have a corgi who needs significant amounts of attention (which is never "signifcant" enough for him).

Also, Rebekah was off that week, too, and we decided to plan a few fun activities.

We planned enough that the "retreat" part of the week pretty much vanished.

But we had so much fun that we forgot to take photos of most of it.

So what did we do?

Saturday: We attended an in door garage sale at Critical Grind Board Game Cafe in Shorewood, because Rebekah likes to shop bargains (and she found them!).

Sunday: We popped into the farewell party for Critical Grind, where Bertrand begged to get into the photo booth.

Monday: We focused on "life" and "BryonySeries" catching up on the most critical items that needed attention.

Tuesday: We relaxed - until we ran into a WriteOn Joliet anthology issue and spent a good deal of time on the phone and figuring out next steps.

Wednesday: We stopped into the Joliet office of my gastroenterologist to drop off paperwork only to find the office was closed that day. We also dropped off a blanket Rebekah had made for a rescue dog (who loved it!), and then finally checked out the BookBar in Mokena for the very first time (great coffee, wonderful atmosphere, loved the giant pretzel).

Thursday: We shopped two bagfuls of bargains at Big Frog's closing sale (which had supplied T-shirts for B.L.O.C.K.S. and WriteOn Joliet) and watched a movie.

Friday: We had coffee with Cornell Dyer illustrator, paranormal romance writer and WriteOn Joliet member Sue Midlock and started a second movie...until Tiny swallowed a piece of string and we headed to the doggie ER. As of Monday morning, the movie is still unwatched.

And miracle of miracles, I actually did some prelimary work on "A Room for Laura," the sixth book in the eight-book Girls of the BryonySeries subseries.

I worked Saturday and Sunday since it was my scheduled weekend to work.

Among all these activities, Rebekah and I battled some chronic health issues, too.

But none, thank God (I'm really thanking God) impacted to a serious degree our ability to move through the week with some enjoyment.

And on this second day of November in a month were gratitude and thankfulness should reign, I am very, very, very grateful and thankful for that.