We leave for Carmel on Saturday morning. Although I am usually one who goes with the proverbial flow, I created an itinerary for the whole week. I loathed the idea of sitting around for forty-five minutes pondering what we were going to do that day, and so I sat down in my office at 2:13 AM (as I am increasingly wont to do) and plotted out a schedule for what may prove to be our last trip out west for a while.
I sent the itinerary to Anna on Friday, and she glanced over it with approbation. We are going to visit Rocky Point, Big Sur, Big Basin Redwoods state park, and the Monterey Aquarium to name but a few. The trip was planned, the minivan rented, and the camera batteries charging when I got a text from an old college friend of ours. She had happened across a movie that the three of us watched together for the first time years ago, and she realized we had not talked in a while. She lives in DC, and, though Anna has seen her more recently, I have not seen her since law school in Richmond.
She was scheduled to fly out to San Francisco on Saturday, but she managed to change her plans and will be joining us Thursday and Friday in Carmel. We could not be more excited. EmGood has a joie-de-vivre that is insurmountable, and she has been down rocky paths (like the one that heads this post) only to come out even better on the other side. She needs a vacation, and we need a shot of EmGood in our life. We just didn’t know it at the time.
Needless to say, the itinerary is shot to hell, and I couldn’t be happier about it. For someone who hates change and loathes planning (and understands the inherent contradiction), I am wonderfully at peace with this. So now I will retire from this post to rearrange the days so that EmGood can see all of the highlights of Carmel while she is there, and we can enjoy them together.
ST. AMAND PHOTOGRAPHY 