How to Have a Great Weekend Away

Step 1:
Invite yourself to a good friend's house where you like visiting. Make sure that friend's house is full of things you really like (like books and comfy chairs and chocolate cake and wine). It also helps if that friend lives in a town called Paradise.

Step 2:
Get another good friend to join you for the weekend so you don't have to make the journey alone. If you're really clever, you'll even get that friend to do all the driving while you do a somewhat poor job of navigating while singing along to their CDs.

Step 3:
Arrange for Mother Nature to provide some unusual weather and therefore affording you with dramatic lighting on cityscape views and streaks of lightning crossing the sky.

Step 4:
Arrive and immediately be presented with a glass of wine followed by a delicious home made dinner. A dinner that you didn't have to shop for or prepare at a table already set. Eat, drink, talk, eat cake, talk. Be amazed by such a wonderful meal.

Step 5:
Enthusiastically sample the local delicacies -- especially if those delicacies include sticky buns and coffee cake. Eat and talk.

Step 6:
Buy a few pounds of chocolate at the local chocolate shop.

Step 7:
Wander through little shops then drink tea and eat crumpets and scones from lovely floral china.

Step 8:
Open a bottle of prosecco and horn in on hosts' tradition of picking winners for the Preakness. All pile onto a bed and root for your horse (always pick the favorite) with lots of shouting and cheering. When your horse wins, feel like you've actually won, even though no actual bets were placed.

Step 9:
Get gussied up in dresses for dinner at the local pub and take photos in the yard like you're going to the junior prom.


Step 10:
Bring and excellent bodyguard to dinner at the pub. Eat, drink, be merry, talk, and get Blizzards from Dairy Queen on the way home just to make sure you are good and full.

Step 11:
Fall into bed and sleep like a log. Wake up an loll about in the morning while hosts are busy getting ready to attend to their responsibilities. Finally clean up and go out for a diner breakfast.

Step 12:
Pack up all your stuff and goodies acquired along the way. Reluctantly say good-bye to incredibly generous and fun hosts.

Step 13:
Sing along to every song on Madonna's Immaculate Collection CD to pass the time while stuck in traffic.

Step 14:
Arrive home to big hugs from Zoe.