Summer Vacation Chronicles: First Day of Girlcation (a Girls’ Staycation)

Girlcation (Girls’s Staycation) Day 1

The characters in this post are as follows: the photo pictured below on the left is Demi the Grea Pyrenees, the middle picture is of Liz and Katie (the author of this post), and finally Marnie the beagle is pictured on the right. We are the Girls or the Ladies who are vacationing (really staycationing) together while the men folk are away at scout camp.

[This post was written on Sunday, June 21st.]

My sister Liz arrived last night, and we introduced our dogs to one another. We know Marnie the beagle well. Obviously, we also know Demi the Dog. However, the two dogs do not each other. We hoped their introduction would go well. I took it as a given that of course they would get along and we would get to do some of the things on my Ideas for Girlcation list that I had been generating over the past week. Very few of the items on my list were very elaborate but most of them were based on the premise that the dogs would get along with each other and that everyone would be able to hang out in the same room.

Demi the Dog is a Great Pyrenees, as you probably also know. Great Pyrenees are a breed that is bred to protect livestock, work independently, be gentle with family, and protect their home at all costs. Beagles like to bark if they feel threatened and Marnie is kind of nervous dog. So far, the two dogs haven’t exactly hit it off.

They did a lot of barking last night but have not seemed to have worked out their differences. Right now, we are managing the dog situation by keeping the dogs in separate rooms or one dog on the front porch and one dog outside.

Liz and I never made it to the Lady A. concert that we were planning on going to last night. It was the 3^rd that she had signed up to attend through the Pennsylvania250 celebration series and the 2^nd for me. It would have been the 3^rd concert both of us would have attended this month and we were both starting to flag.  I guess my career as a music critic probably isn’t going to get anywhere if I can’t bring myself to attend 3 or more shows in a week!

Jan Wenner isn’t going to be calling me anytime soon, which is a shame because my husband looks a lot like a younger Chuck Klosterman and I could really see myself as like the main character of Almost Famous if I were just given a shot.

Anyway, back to Girlcation . . .

By the time we got the dogs to settle down enough to potentially drive to Wilkes-Barre we were too spent to go. Pizza and some time hanging out with the boys was just what the doctor called for after a long day.

This morning Mr. Katie and the boys loaded the truck and left for scout camp in the Poconos. It was hard to say goodbye but also, I am looking forward to 6 days off from being a caretaker to two active boys. I am slightly worried that something will happen to them at camp but not so worried that Liz and I didn’t go out to brunch once the boys left for camp.

We went to the Hotel Bethlehem for a fancy brunch buffet. Liz just has a milestone birthday earlier this month and I thought that we should celebrate. The last and only other time that I went to the Hotel Bethlehem for brunch was on my 5th wedding anniversary with Mr. Katie. We brought a six month old Patrick with us dressed in a sleeper that looked like a fancy suit. It could have potentioanlly been the disaster that we feared in the back of our minds but he slept almost the whole time. We had plenty of time to eat macarons and salmon cakes.

Bunch was fun and delicious. This time we also ate macarons and brunch delicacies. The we walked around historic Bethlehem afterwards. We browsed the Moravian Book Shop. We generally did the kinds of things that the boys aren’t that into.

Now it is late afternoon, and Liz and I are back at home, relaxing separately. I am on the front porch with Demi, and she is in the backyard on the hammock with Marnie lying beside her. I finished the book that I was reading this morning, and I spent some time on social media soothing the restlessness that temporarily visits me after meeting a goal.

[Side note: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is maybe Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery level loco. Before reading it, I had never known that it was as scary (but in a good way) as it was.]

I hear children playing with what sounds like an adult male voice and I smell burgers. Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers. Thinking of my father Bob today and wishing him a Happy Father’s Day. (We celebrated Mr. Katie a week early due to summer camp.)

Perhpas, I will write more this week.

How to Subscribe to this blog!