This January, we celebrated out two year anniversary.
(Wait, save some ohhh's and awwwww's for the pictures.) (And possibly grab your favorite barf bucket.)
Yes, that's two years of a lot of love and laughter between
two writers who keep each other glued to the page. Literally! When I'm excited
about something I'm cooking up, I always run and show it to Zach. He inspires me.
He keeps me honest. My plot lines might be outlandish and my characters may be
flat, but he's the one who will tell me. And he'll even help me fix those
problem areas! And I'm sure Zach agrees that the critique-road runs both ways. (Yup, sure does!) Outside of writing, the chemistry between us boils down to the same elements.
Love, laughter, honesty, and inspiration!
Well, this year we thought there was no better way to reward
ourselves (for enduring all that love, laughter, honesty, and inspiration) than to go to a nice hotel. Get away from our mountains of school-work,
nagging daily word-counts, piled up emails, dusty dresser tops, and any other
chore/task/obligation competing for our attention.
And by nice, I mean Nice! We didn't break the bank, but we
invested a bit of time researching which hotel would offer the right mix of
luxury, room service, and square-footage in the bathroom.
Sigh. Let me unpack that a little. One of the things we take
for granted in the States is the size of our bathrooms, showers, and tubs. The
best analogy I can come up with is this: bathrooms in the States (usually) ::
Titanic and bathrooms in Europe (usually) :: S.S. Minnow. Suffice it to say,
you can't wash your hair without banging your elbows.
So we splurged a little on space. We booked a one-night stay
at Harrington Hall in Dublin. As you can see from the pictures, it is schnazzy!
We booked their only suite room, which meant it had an
upstairs and a downstairs! We got the room, gawked at the elegance, dropped off
our bags, played tag indoors (sshhh, don't tell our mothers), ran up and down
the stairs, flicked on and off ALL the switches, and then remembered we had
dinner plans! We strolled from our hotel to St. Stephen's Green, which is a
gorgeous park full of ambling by-ways, ponds, swans--in short everything romantic.
Then we made our way to the Temple Bar district and enjoyed the fanciest plate
of fish 'n' chips. To our surprise a band showed up and we got to enjoy
some live, traditional music.
Then it was back to the hotel where we pampered each other
with foot rubs, back rubs, and bedtime stories! Yes, bedtime stories. As
children who were regularly read to (thanks moms and dads), we continue the
tradition even as adults, and regularly take time out of our evenings to read
stories to each other. Sometimes our own work, sometimes our favorite childhood
books. (Just ask Zach to do his impression of Toad from Toad Hall in The Wind in the Willows.) (Poop poop, I say!)
And, then in the morning there was room service! This was a
big deal for us. Neither Zach nor I had ever ordered room service at a hotel
before. But we were soooo glad we splurged. We spread out the extra bathroom
towels on the floor of our living room and had a splendid picnic!
We lived it up like royalty and then had a mad-dash to get
packed up in time to check out. We journeyed home to Sandycove, and we knew
that even though it was a quick jaunt, we must have done something right
because we felt like we'd vacationed for a month! We were restored and
energized. We were ready to embark on yet another year of laughter, honesty,
inspiration, and oh yes, love!
