Leaving the family

I got up around 8:15. I brushed and swished, then checked e-mail. When the swishing was over, I ate the first pre-made breakfast. I wanted to go to the beach because Marie had taken the dogs and said the water was great. But there wasn't time. Then I packed my suitcase and food boxes. I combined the remnants of several packages into one to save space. Chris took stuff out to the car. Cecily gave us food from the fridge to take, like watermelon, spring rolls, grapes, and cheese. And a tomato that wasn't in the fridge.
When I took the last of it out, Jasper squeezed between me and the door and ran out. I ran after him but he was soon out of sight. So I went back inside and hollered up the stairs that he was loose. Then I ran back outside and to the next house over. Jasper was coming around the corner and I called him. He didn't come to me, but when Marie called, he ran up to her and Alfred collared him. Phew! It would have been bad if he had gone in the street.
When it was all packed in the car, we did one last sweep. I pulled the linens off of the bed and threw the towels on top of the pile, just as the instructions said. Then we hugged everyone and said goodbye.
We got underway about 10:15. We continued the book on CD from the trip up. We made two restroom stops. I ate a hard boiled egg from the food box and Chris ate some kind of leftover french fries.
It was a little after 4 when we got to the hotel. We checked in and carried two loads of stuff up to the room. I plugged in my laptop and fired it up to read e-mail. A little later, I got Chris' keys and went to get my sewing kit from the car. On the way back I stopped at the front desk to request that we NOT get a wake-up call. She asked me for my room number and I was chagrined to realize that I did not make a note of it. But she looked it up and assured me that there would not be a wake-up call tomorrow. Having made a mental note of the room number, I was able to find the room with Chris in it. I am not sure what I would have done if I hadn't stopped at the front desk.
I sat down with my sewing kit and bag of fleece strips. I listened to an episode of The Broken Brain podcast while sewing strips of fleece together and crocheting them. The information was around dental health and better treatments for teeth. I ate a piece of seed cracker, the tomato, some cheese and two spring rolls.
The headphones were bothering my ears, so I took them off and played the next Aurafest session out loud. When it was over, we watched the last episode of Continuum, and two episodes of the newly posted season of Death in Paradise. Chris went to bed, while I brushed and swished and typed up my blog.
* This is the picture Becca took the other day. *