Min’s business partner treated us to a night at the Pan Pacific this weekend and oh my. Complimentary espresso? Why, yes please. Complimentary glass of wine before dinner? If you insist. Turndown service? Well, we’re sort of in the middle of watching the Miss America pageant*, but if you’d like to tuck us in personally…

It was lovely. (They didn’t really tuck us in. Maybe if we’d asked, though.)

The transition to real life yesterday afternoon was not so lovely. I had to do my own laundry, plan dinner, and care for my own children. How ridiculous. Plus, I’d been reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion all weekend and in that book, even the poor and ill-used Mrs. Smith still retains a personal nurse.

Sigh.

I’m afraid it’s back to work this morning, though I may have to wait a while for the Jane Austen to wear off before I can write anything. Or maybe I can weave “her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity,” into my manuscript somehow. Would that be too noticeable?

* The Miss America pageant is MUCH more entertaining after having read Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens. I kept wondering which girl would turn jungle-Taylor in a crisis. My bet was on Ms. Texas.