Thursday afternoon

Information I was exposed to after the fact that may or may not have been more helpful before the fact:
- Vitimin B1 taken a day before and every day will keep mosquitoes at bay.
- DEET is your friend.
- After several years of drought in a marsh like area, and when rain has been recently abundant, you are wise to just stay home, or indoors, or drunk.

We frolicked and giggled and caught up on the five hour drive from Atlanta to Brunswick, through the rain and over the most boring major roadway known to man: I-16 between Atlanta and Savannah. It’s boring not only because of a lack of stopping points, not only because of all the lush green (oh, the HUMANITY) and not only because of the straight roadway. It’s infinitely more boring because of the well known speed traps. One solution for this is cruise control, the other is tying a string between your steering wheel and your gear shift and taking a nap.

Obviously, that’s not an option, and our girl Gwen did a fine job returning us to the place of our bonding and our disco-tent (that’s for you, Kel), the place where we became The Hostile/Hostel Girls, the place where we may have shared too much, but felt safe enough to share as much or as little as we liked.

We arrived in once piece, just as a lecture on transcendentalism or something was wrapping up that most of the visitors were attending. We waited in the main dome with our offerings of rosemary and sage plants and a box of quinoa and and tea and organic/fair trade/rain forest certified java, and Dr. Bonners. There also may have been some men’s swimtrunks in there, though I’m still not sure how or why. Eventually – as expected – we were greeted by a lovely, smiley, adorable, barefoot young woman who gratefully took our $25/night pp lodging fare and showed us to what would be our home for the next three days.

Our loft in a tree held a few extra special isosceles triangle windows, a half circle window, a screen door and holes in the floor boards (just big enough to let in insects that could survive a nuclear war, ifyouknowwhatImean). There were words etched on walls and paintings on other walls left behind by previous visitors, there were shells lined up on a window sill and a notebook and pen, there was an incense holder and there were many dream catchers and from our perch 15feet above ground, there was good juju.

Looking back, we had no idea just how much time we’d spend within those walls.

Late Thursday evening after hauling a round of bags to the treehouse, we ventured into Brunswick for dinner. Traveling over the big bridge that The Mc loves so much, we fell onto her sleepy streets. Most spots were closed by the time we landed in a parking spot and ogled the stray cats that were being fed on her city streets by local shop owners.

Eventually we found an open locale with tapas and live music called Pranzo Portside, and a lovely waitress named Barbara who was unfazed by this pack of city dwellers who lumped themselves at one of her tables when she was probably already winding down for the night. Nary an attitude was had from this lovely creature, as she loaded us up with wine and noms.

Smelling sweet and ripe and upon arrival back at the castle, we were devoured. Nearly carried off by mosquitoes who had mated with roaches to be abundant in number and impossible to escape. During the two minute walk from the car to the tree house, we sustained what must have been 20 bites between the three of us, and that’s a conservative estimate.

We fell into our respective beds wearing coats of Calamine we’d hoped would get us through the night.