After the hard work of residency, I opted for a little down time before jumping right into my first packet. Hopefully, if any of my advisors are reading this - Tim, Ellen - they won't be upset with me for skipping school those first few days.
Please [she begs]. I'll read extra books!
Even if I have to read twenty extra books, it was so worth it. A friend of mine was vacationing in Stowe at the Trapp Family Lodge, you know, the lodge the family from the Sound of Music built after they arrived in the U.S. I'd been wanting to go there ever since this friend, my roommate from my freshman year at Notre Dame, Julie, had told me about the lodge and how her family vacationed there every summer. I mean, honest, I'd watched that movie every Thanksgiving since I could remember. I just had to see the lodge!
Seeing it turned out to be a long time in the making. Twenty-two years. Still, the idea simmered in the back of my mind, waiting.
When I found out the first residency for Vermont College was in July, it bubbled to the front again. I emailed Julie, trying to keep my excitement to a low but pretty sure I totally failed. I asked if her family was, by some wild coincidence or the lucky alignment of all the stars in the heavens, going to be there. They were!
Gleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!
On Tuesday morning, after a night of celebrating the fact I'd survived my first residency, Jules arrived in Montpelier to bust me out of the dorms. It was pretty surreal. My roommate from college meeting up with me in my new dorm where I was in college...again.
When I walked out of the dorm, I felt drained. It had been an amazing residency, but my head was mush, full of stuff to sort. Stowe, Julie, the Trapps, the mountains, running, sleeping, chilling out, shopping...just being, rather than thinking, put me back on the road to writing. I filled up again, especially on Ben & Jerry's ice cream. The plant is about fifteen minutes from Stowe and Jules and I took a tour. They give you ice cream at the end! Perfect temperature, not too mushy, not too hard. And it was a new flavor. So delicious.
Hiking up to the Trapp family chapel was pretty amazing too. It's not often I get that far out into nature. Jules had me petrified of bears, but anyone who's read my post on the bear encounter in the Shenandoah's hopefully understands my paranoia about bears in nature. The only thing we ran into were gnats. Huge relief.
Then there was the shopping in Burlington. And eating at the Trapp Family Lodge. Tasty. Very very tasty.
But most of all, there was spending time with a person I'd lived together with in the closest of quarters for a year. Someone who knows as much about me as pretty much my husband because of that intense dorm living, and who, after all that, still likes me. 
It. Was. Awesome.
I can't wait to do it again.
Whaddya say, Jules? I promise, you won't have to pose with me in the Ben and Jerry's ice cream lid again...probably. I think.
