Photos from our 2021 weekend retreat

 

Must have cheese

One last meeting for 2020

 It's winter solstice, the shortest night of the year.   The Seattle weather people are predicting unusual weather.  It was 57 degrees at my house at noon, and now, at 4 it's 49 and raining like a boat will be floating by shortly.   The kid thinks that she heard about "low land snow". 

So, it's dark, rainy, and there's also a pandemic.  Best have a book club outside!  We are hearty northwestern ladies so that's exactly what we'll do.  Melinda has a tent and heaters.   We have rain gear, blankets, and face masks.   It should be fun!

 I'm happy to report that even though the year was not as expected, we managed to keep up our reading schedule and actually accelerate it for the last two months of the year.   I mean, it's not like we had to commute for hours each day.

Think dry thoughts! 

Whidbey

Most of us

 Ah, the annual weekend getaway.  This year, to reduce the chances of scheduling conflicts we picked our weekend early in the year.  Sadly, one of our members had the crud and didn't join us, but the trick of picking a late summer/fall weekend in January paid off as we were all free.

Unfortunately, our selected location spot was virtually uninhabitable due to the smoke from the Eastern Washington fires, so we (Melinda) scrambled to locate an alternate spot.  She worked her connections and came up with a cabin on the water on Orcas Island.  Sounds awesome right?  Drive up to Anacortes and take the ferry to beautiful, isolated Orcas Island.  We were happy until someone figured out that not only are there only 3 boats a day to Orcas, but that there was a girl scout event taking place and 500 dads and kids were going to be jockeying for the same boats.

Scramble again, and we (again, Melinda) used out (her) super powers and found a THIRD, vacant cabin for the weekend.  This gem was on Whidbey Island, not as isolated, but boats every 30 minutes.   Yeah!

This place was cute as a button. We were warned that it had a "camp kitchen" but other than the tight space and the shorty refrigerator it was perfect.  We whipped up  a couple great dinners, and two marvelous breakfasts.  

Saturday night we sat down to discuss our book club selection. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo.

I don't think I was the only one who was surprised to learn that this story about families living in the slums of Mumbai was not fiction.  The tales of what was happening to them seemed so far fetched that it had to be a conglomeration of events that were molded into an interesting tale.  Nope - all true.  

Let me just say this, the US legal system may be difficult to navigate and skewed to a point where the wealthy have an advantage, but you do not want to be dealing with the legal system in Mumbai.  Everyone you come across has their hand out and are working you for a payment to make your case go away.  Not all of these folks have the authority or ability to do what they say, but they will gladly wipe you out to do it.  

The discussion about the book was good, but there was little controversy and we all seemed to like it equally.   That makes for a quick talk and little fireworks.  Note to authors everywhere:  our write ups will be far more interesting if you can irritate all or parts of us.  This business of writing an engaging, good book is boring.

Other topics discussed over the weekend was our health.  Mostly everyone is fine, but have typical aches and pains associated with not being 22 anymore.  

A discussion arose about affirmations and how women don't typically get all the affirmations they need from their husbands but get (and give) lots of affirmations to friends and colleagues.  Men typically get all the affirmations from their wives and get little if none from their friends and colleagues.  We commented that our one member who has a female partner must get really tired of  must get so tired of validating each other all day long.  She said it was terrible; they can never get up from the dinner table

H: That was a great dinner
G: Thank you for saying that, you’re so nice.
H: It’s so kind of you to notice, you’re very observant.
G: That’s sweet.  I love that about you.
H: Thanks! I noticed that you moved those dirty socks, you’re so tidy.
G: I get it from you, you’re very easy to live with
H: thank you
G: no, thank you

H: No!  Thank you 

During the day Saturday there was a bike ride into Langley while a couple of us took the less active route and stopped by a farmers market.  We met for lunch and enjoyed the Djangofest festivities.  For the uneducated (or regular) people, Djangofest celebrates the gypsy jazz style of Django Reinhardt, who was a Belgian jazz guitarist and composer.  As we dined Al fresco at the Useless Bay Cafe a gaggle of guitarists were jamming on the lawn.  It was very pleasant.

We didn't have time for a fire or a trip to the hot tub, but it was a relaxing get away none the less.

Our borrowed cabin

try doing this at night...

Missing in action

Whoops – there has been quite the break in service at this blog.  What in the heck have I been doing? Oh wait, I had a baby.  I hope that is excuse enough for the delay in write ups for multiple books.

Since I’ve been missing in action we have read and discussed three books:

• War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The “we” in that above sentence is rather generous as I did not read nor really attempt to read War & Peace.   I will write each recap to the best of my ability and then post them as if they were published in a timely manner.

We also brought our better halves together for a lovely dinner at Melinda's.  It can be a challenge to cook dinner for 14 people, so we were all assigned a group and that group made a specific element of dinner. It was interactive and fun.   Who knew that a zucchini patty could be so darned tasty.

The idea that we were able to find a date when we could all attend was noted as a book group miracle.

A Book Group Miracle

With only 3 weeks notice we were able to pull off a book group miracle and gather together on a Friday night with our significant persons for a fabulous dinner. This is the same group that has troubles picking a week night to gather with 6 weeks notice and no child care issues to work out. Amazing! We cozied in around Melinda & Mark's dining room table and chatted away about current events, (Is Sarah Palin really considered an "author"?) Hobbies, kids, recent social events and of course... books. We rounded the table sharing which books were our favorites as kids, titles included:

Little House on the Prairie

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Ayn Rand, The Fountain Head

Larry McMurtry

A Wrinkle in Time

Monster at the End of this Book

Where the sidewalk ends

Some of the more "adult" Judy Bloom titles even made an appearance.

Each title was met with oohs and chatter. We did discuss at length whether or not "The Giving Tree" is a good book or very depressing. We did agree that while it has been used as a corporate gift that it is a questionable selection. Are they saying that the receiver is the tree, who gives and gives until it is dead, or the human that takes and takes until it is filled with regret. Either way, not a merry sentiment.

Another book that we decided was creepy is "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch.

The story goes like this: A mom goes into her son's room and rocks him to sleep professing she will love him forever. As he grows older - um, like to a teenager he's not so excited about being rocked to sleep so she's forced to sneak into his room after he's asleep and cuddle with him while he is unaware. He, getting irritated at waking up in footed pj's eventually moves out of state, but she continues to commit crimes of breaking and entering to assault him in his bedroom.

Eventually, she gets too old to make the trek across the state and the son, never having been able to form normal man/woman relationships starts to do what he knows with his mom. He starts to sneak into her room and rock the feeble old woman with no boundaries to sleep professing he will always love her.

Then, they buy a hotel, a cute hotel and they name it after themselves. Thus is the story of Mrs. Bates and her sweet boy Norman.

Anyway - back to the party. We had lots of laughs, enjoyed each others company and celebrated the simple miracle of scheduling.

Look at us

Here we are goofing around at someone's wedding.