Weekend Getaway

My sister, Jean, and I had agreed that once the funeral was over we would go away one weekend for some much-needed R&R. So this weekend we headed up to the Rocky Gap Resort near Cumberland, Maryland.

But first I finished up a week of achievement testing at school. In addition to being the librarian at Paul's middle school, I'm also the testing coordinator. Thankfully, our tests are not as stress-driven as those of the public schools, but they are still stressful enough. This year it was decided to give the tests in October so the school can use the results in planning appropriate instruction, so all the prep work took place in the short and busy six weeks since school started. The last day of testing is always the toughest on the teachers, so I made them a "Last Day of Testing Survival Kit" with Fuji bottled water, chocolates, power bars, and mints.


As soon as the tests were done, I was off! We stopped at the Hagerstown, Maryland, outlet malls where I did some serious shopping at Chico's, and then checked into the resort. It's on a lake and is surrounded by hills, and the leaves were very pretty.

On Saturday we went into Cumberland and checked out the historic downtown. The town is getting ready for Halloween in a big way, and we enjoyed seeing the decorations and a very cute display of cakes in the local bakery window.

Later that afternoon we each got hot-stone massages; ah, heaven! Sunday was devoted to catching up on our reading, another relaxing treat. I've been reading several books at once and wanted to focus on Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shetyngart, an adult novel (as opposed to the children's lit I read a lot of) which combines a good love story with social commentary. I quite enjoyed it and though I found myself reading slower and slower to slow down the inevitable end, I did finish it.

Back home, I found that my two boyfriends had had their own relaxing and enjoyable weekend, and that was good!