There was a time in the not-so-distant past that a day or two with an out-of-town husband meant late nights catching up with girlfriends over cocktails in high heels. Tonight, however, finds Seth on the road to West Point with Ashton for the Grad Marchback, and me on the couch with a Whole Foods salad and a bottle of mineral water, wearing one of Seth's old tshirts. Which may or may not even be clean. I'd be tempted to wallow in nostalgia for my wilder days, but it is Shark Week, after all. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday evening. 
Not to mention that we had, as per usual, managed to wring every usable second of fun out of our weekend, and I am beat. We escaped the summer gridlock and heat early Fridayand headed for the cool, uncrowded green hills of West Virginia. (I had leftover yurt reservations from a girls' weekend that didn't pan out, and we had started to think in terms of our weekends of spontaneous getaways being numbered.) 
So, uncharacteristically (for me, especially), we jumped in the truck and headed for Summersville Lake without a plan or a packing list. Which meant that, of course, I ran out of clothes and we spent a lot of time hoping it wouldn't rain (it didn't) because of a dearth of dry ones. 
But it wound up being an idyllic weekend. The rain drummed softly on the roof of our dry, cozy yurt at night (I was hoping to win Seth over to mine and Missy's love affair with "camping lite"), and the days were cool and cloudy (Seth's favorite, although it didn't do much for my pre-Hawaii tan plan.) We had such a nice time trolling the lake with our rented Triumph, I forgot-mostly- to mourn my current inability to cliff dive off the beautiful sandstone cliffs or scuba dive the clear, green depths of the manmade lake. 
I played (knocked up) trophy wife for much of Saturday, stretching out catlike in the bow with my burgeoning belly on display, thumbing through "The Economist" and fetching sandwiches from the lunch I had packed. When I started to feel impossibly lazy, I took myself kayaking in the no-wake zones, enjoying the quiet solitude and glass-like water. Seth fished obsessively and had to be dragged out of the water (I made a mental note to thank Missy for the "one last cast"s), although we didn't get much but this tiny rock bass thanks to low stocking levels and (in my opinion) lethargic-looking bait. 
Still, we enjoyed each other and the downtime, and agreed that it had been a terrific and much-needed weekend getaway. And that Summersville was quite a discovery. And that- I'm a sucker- we would try our luck at Deep Creek Lake, a little closer to home, next weekend.
Tomorrow starts the third trimester! Crazy to think about. We had stopped on our way to WV Friday for pizza and a beer at the Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton, a place we had last been to- and loved- when we were first dating, when I first moved to Charlottesville and not long before Seth left for Afghanistan. We couldn't help but marvel at how far our lives had come since that September afternoon just two (two!?!) years ago, and raise a glass to our good fortune. We could never have imagined... but feel lucky indeed. If you make a toast this week, join us in celebrating life's unexpected- but unimaginably wonderful- twists and turns. May your lives be as full of surprise adventures as ours.
The photo of the week should be called "recipe for a perfect day."
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