Reading retreat bliss

Our journey to Little Rock was a success.  We drove first to Mountain View, AR for a bluegrass festival at the beautiful Ozark Folk Center.   I enjoyed listening to the music and I was able to read while listening, which was important as I was desperately trying to finish Lucy Dillon's A hundred pieces of me for our reading retreat.

From Mountain View we headed South to the Little Rock area, staying in a gorgeous and new Best Western, picked because it had an indoor pool area.  Groovy Girl loves to swim and we love the hot tub.  I had one lovely night sleeping there and a relaxing morning before my friend V. picked me up for the first leg on the reading retreat.  We relaxed at her house for just a few minutes, waiting for A. to pick us up.

{cheers}

Our next stop was their local Whole Foods, a spectacular-looking store, basically a prettified Wal-Mart for natural food shoppers.  It doesn't give me the same healthy feeling to be in there like Whole Foods used to, it is different but it did have many of the picnic-type items we were looking for so we picked and chose carefully.  Oh, to eat like this all the time!  We had rice crackers, good hard cheese, a seedy hearty bread, a mix of olives, two delicious bars of chocolate, pears, apples, a box of salad greens, and two bottles of wine.  Except it was a Sunday and we could buy everything BUT the wine. Drats!

A. luckily had a friend living nearby that had a bottle of wine, the funny part was that the wine had been a gift from A. so she borrowed her own bottle of wine back.  We could live with one bottle of borrowed back wine and we headed to the hills of Greers Ferry.   I sat in the back and pulled out my book again to continue reading.  I wanted to finish before we made it to the cabin and they wanted me to finish so we could talk about the book.  It seemed to be the crowd favorite.

Our cabin was lovely with way more space than we needed. The best part was the large back porch that looked out on the lake.  It was a perfect spot to talk, enjoy the weather, and share a meal, family-style.

We had a great time. It was rejuvenating for me.  We talked about our books, friendship, the world (and all the world's problems). We talked about ourselves, our husbands, and our children.  Everyone has joys and trials, let me tell ya'.  We did a little bit of yoga.  We sat outside and inside.  We stayed up later than usual.  We laughed.  We drank just the one bottle of wine.  We shared chocolate with fruit.  We had 24 hours of solitude with each other; three strong women.

{breakfast}

And the morning was filled with sunshine and hanging in our jammies.  And then A. got the phone call.  The one where her husband told her that their borrowed cat had been hit by a car.  It was a sad note to end on yet it illustrated how life just keeps happening around us.  The cat was a hard loss for her family-hopefully they've found joy in their shared memories of their friendly feline mate.

I hope we will get to do this again in a year or two.  The theme of A hundred pieces of me by Lucy Dillon is about what's real and important to you and the memories of our reading retreat are high on my list.