No one would call me a morning person. Nor could I be accused of being an extrovert. So why would I want to spend my vacation time socializing with strangers, first thing in the morning?

You can believe I was asking myself this very question on our most recent vacation, when we decided to go the B&B route for lodging. Bed and Breakfasts look so appealing from an architecture and off-the-beaten-track perspective. You get to check out someone’s fancy old, or new, house and whatever crazy furniture they’ve put into it. Plus, B&B’s tend to be in neighborhoods rather than tourist areas, so I can pretend for a few days that I’m a local.

We had fancy, rich breakfasts, with plenty of eggs and tomatoes, while we chatted with our fellow guests around a communal table. Sounds great, except I would dread coming-up with chit-chat before my coffee. After the social hour, those composed breakfasts would sit in my stomach like a lead weight, making our long days of adventure off to a series of rocky starts and irritability.

This post is more a reminder to my future self, than a particular story. Remember Marijka! B&Bs may not be the right place for us to stay. We’d be better off with an apartment rental like Air B&B or VRBO or even a regular hotel.

The photo above is the wallpaper in one of our B&B rooms. I’m still trying to figure out how I can hang some of that paper in my own house! Reminds me of the British Sherlock rooms.

I love this anguished lion statue, seen at Hatley Castle on my recent trip to Victoria, BC. The human eyes, the mouth gaping open, could it be more dramatic?

When I return from an unplanned blogging break, I feel I need to recap everything that happened since my last post. Besides working much to much this summer, my monthly music goal totally fell apart, I knit a couple things that I really hate and I didn’t even blog about it. How’s that for anguished confessions of a guilty blogger?

With snow coming down, this is a time for closure and looking forward to the beauty of winter. This weekend I dug up my zinnias and cosmos, replacing them with spring bulbs and poppy seeds. It was a wonderful summer of gardening successes, even with the hardships of draught.

Today I voted, marking the end of a perpetual barrage of political angst that has gone on for years. This is it, the final day. Tonight the results will come in and we can all move on. Holiday food and winter vacations can take over the space I’ve devoted to indignation and concern.

On Friday, the Department of Energy is coming for tea. I’ve been joking that Dr. Chu is coming to chat with me about physics. In reality, it is an insulation inspection, to see how the federal dollars were spent on our modest home. The final step in our Green Madison journey.

It feels good to blog. Why did I wait so long?