Relaxin'

I feel like I need to catch me breath. I am not the type of person that does spontaneous fun things. I just read that last line and it made me sad, but I know it is the truth. That is why the last 48 hours have been exhausting for me, but all in a good way. It started at lunch time on Wednesday, I was down in the lunch room, eating my PB&J sandwich and reading a book, like I do every single day. Then, Craig calls and says his boss got jury duty so he has to go to this conference, which just happens to be at a resort, so do I want to join him. Instinctively, I said no, because that was not in my plans for the week, but the more I thought about spending the day at a resort, the more I was drawn in. There were a lot of good reasons to go:
1. Our anniversary is the 13th so this would be a good way to celebrate.
2. We had made plans to watch Harry Potter that night, so if he left me I knew I would just sulk all night thinking about how I should be watching that.
3. Do you really need a reason to take a day off work and relax at a resort?
So, I called him back, we rushed home and packed in about 15 minutes (which is why I forget my belt and toothpaste), and I came back and had to fill out the paperwork to take the last hour of the day and the whole next day off of work, get it signed by the appropriate people, and make sure everything that needed to be taken care of at work was all done. It was very stressful.

4:00 came around and off we went. The resort was so great. The area was green and lush, the weather was cool (unlike Logan). Craig had the conference dinner to go to so I just walked around the calming resort and then grabbed dinner. I had never eaten at a restaurant all alone before and it was a bit unnerving but I survived and spent the next bit sitting on our rooms porch watching the fountain in the pond. Craig came back and we spent the evening swimming in the pool and relaxing in the mineral bath, which is basically a hot tub with naturally heated mineral water. Luckily this water was mostly calcium and very little sulfur so it didn't smell like rotten eggs like most other mineral water.

The next day, Craig was off doing conference-y things until lunch time so I grabbed breakfast by myself again. This time it wasn't as bad eating alone. At first I thought that the people around me were thinking that I was some weird cat woman that was only there because her mother paid for her little trip to the spa in an effort to get her to fix herself up and meet a guy, which would never happen if she just stayed in her house all weekend, reading romance novels. Which was obviously not working because look at the poor girl, she is wearing her flip-flops and her hair is in a pony tail. Doesn't she know this is a resort! But then, I realized I was wearing my wedding ring, so maybe people were thinking that I was just eating breakfast while waiting for my husband to finish golfing so we could go off and enjoy our couple's massage at the spa. This was a much better scenario to me and would also explain the flip-flops.

[FYI: I am not really that full of myself that I think that all the people eating there were thinking about me, but eating alone gives one lots of time to think. I also don't want you to think that I look down on people to go eat at restaurant by themselves. If you want to do so, more power to you. But this wasn't a typical restaurant, this one was part of the resort - a very couple-y resort. The two couples we know that have stayed here before have come on their anniversaries and the woman I met there that day had gone there on her honeymoon.]

Breakfast was also more fun because the porch was open so I ate outside by the pond, watching the fish and the ducks swim, with the waterfall in the background soothing away all the stress of the previous afternoon while dreaming of my life full of couples massages with a golfing husband.

After breakfast, I went swimming in the crater (don't worry, I waited 30 minutes so I wouldn't die) From the outside, the crater looks like a weird hill made of limestone with a hole in the top. But inside it is full of nice warm mineral water. By itself, that wouldn't be very cool, but they have made a tunnel into it so you can walk in and go swimming. And the hole that was originally there, serves as ventilation so it doesn't get humid and smelly down there like most caves.


On my way, I met another wife who had been abandoned there while her husband was at the conference and she was nice and took pictures of me enjoying my therapeutic soak. . .


...and swim. It looks like I am the only one in there, but there were quite a few scuba divers, they are just underwater. The water was a very pretty blue-teal color and it looked like it was clear but the divers disappeared fairly quickly, apparently they hang out 65 feet below on the bottom.

When I first got in the water, the divers were still getting all their gear set up and I didn't really like being in there by myself. I know that there wasn't anything in there, but being in a pond in a cave where you can't see much beneath you but you know it is very deep is scary. I tried really hard not to think about all those scenes from movies and books where creatures emerge from caves and ponds but all I was hearing in my head was "my precioussss." (In the BBC book on tape reader's voice). Luckily, it wasn't long before the divers were in there and I could rest assure that if there were monsters below me, they would go after the divers first.

After my refreshing swim I hung out with the other wives and then Craig and I headed back. The drive was about 3 hours but it was pretty and it was nice to just hang out together before we rushed around to make and eat dinner in time to head over to Harry Potter with enough time to get good seats.