I work from home and have a baby. That basically means that I never leave the house. So when an opportunity arises to do just that, I jump on it. My friend Elizabeth‘s family owns a condo in Wintergreen, one of those lovely all-season resorts in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She also invited our friend Lauren and her 2 1/2-year-old son, Ethan, so with dreams of mountain hikes, swimming pools and baby playtime dancing in my head, we set off up the mountain.
Things didn’t exactly turn out the way we had hoped.
It wasn’t exactly sunny in those mountains. So while there was no swimming and no hiking, there was a lot of reading, and drinking, and eating, and sitting around doing nothing. It was amazing.
One of my biggest problems is that I can never relax. Literally. I’ll often be going about my day, not actively stressed or concerned about anything, and realize that I have been clenching my jaw long enough to cause pain to shoot down the back of my neck and to give me a headache that lasts the rest of the day.
Just this morning, I tried to get a little sleep during Cooper’s morning nap, since I’ve been sick the past few days. Instead of getting rest, I spent an hour tossing and turning; freaking out because the reason I was able to take a nap was because I don’t have enough paying freelance work to do, and I was going to run out of money, and on and on and on. I annoy myself.
So a weekend in the mountains sounded like just the thing I needed. A few days before we left, however, Elizabeth called me and dropped a bomb:
“They don’t have internet at the condo.”
They don’t have what? How is that even possible? I simply could not wrap my mind around it.
“Wait, so there’s like, no wifi?”
“No. No internet of any kind. there may be wifi at the cafe, but that’s about it.”
“Okay… So they don’t have a computer?”
“…No.”
“But how do they not have internet?”
“sigh”
It kind of went on like this for quite a while. It simply did not compute. So even though Elizabeth and I had this conversation, I still packed up my laptop, figuring that someone in another condo would have wifi that I could piggyback on. You may call me delusional– I prefer optimistic.
So here’s where it gets hilarious. Not only did nobody have internet, but there was no cell service either. I’ll repeat. My cell phone DID NOT WORK. I didn’t even know this was possible. All the sudden, we were in the fucking Blair Witch Project.
So even though I was faced with this awkward situation, I would not let it die. There were several times that you could find me outside climbing up hills, walking down hills, standing still, all while holding my phone up to the sky like an offering to the technology gods. Sometimes I would get a bar that would let texts come through, or let me see that I had voicemail. The thrill this would produce was almost narcotic.
It was never enough to actually check the voicemail or send a text though, so on Saturday, while Cooper was napping, I snuck down to the cafe just to bathe in cell reception and wireless for like 20 minutes. I didn’t even do anything with it, really. I just needed to know it was there. I’m pathetic.
Eventually though, I gave up the ghost and embraced my disconnected state. When it wasn’t raining, I loaded Cooper up in the front pack for the first time in about six months and took him for a walk.
He is much heavier now.
As crappy as the weather was, it made everything look super cool– like we were in some sort of apocalyptic Science Fiction movie or something. It was also so quiet– eerily so. Outside of the 20 minutes at the cafe and the people I was with, I only saw two other people the entire weekend.
So I didn’t work. I didn’t write, I didn’t Twitter, I didn’t facebook. For an entire weekend. It was lovely.
I drank wine and played Take Two,
While Cooper and Ethan got to know each other.
When we left, it was sunny, and I remembered just how beautiful the Blue Ridge Mountains are.
When I got back home, I was exhausted, sick, and very, very relaxed.
