Storytorch

Before I retired last night in the "Elinor" room on the second floor of the inn, I unplugged the candlesticks on my windowsills. I moved the small, antique table into the wedge-shaped space between the wall and my diagonally-positioned bed. I hoped the little lamp, with its quaintly beaded lampshade and dim bulb, would cast enough light for a little bedtime reading.

After relocating the many ruffled toss pillows from four-poster to tufted vanity chair, I slipped between satin sheets and stared at the ceiling through artificial vines draped across the canopy high above me. "I'm just not a good B & B person," I admitted to myself (recalling a line from a great little movie called Flirting With Disaster).

Arriving earlier in the day, I followed signage from the parking lot to a side door labeled REGISTRATION. In calligraphy, a note card taped to the glass directed guests (with their luggage) around front and up the steep steps of the Victorian porch. Another pretty note on the oval-windowed main door told me to use the telephone on the wicker plant stand nearby to call the innkeeper, who let me in.

At my registration interview, I received the list of rules. Since I had an 8 a.m. meeting next day that included pastry, I signed a slip of paper officially declining breakfast (an extra $10 is charged if you don't say so the night before). I asked, and was granted, permission to come down to the kitchen in my robe in the morning to get a cup of coffee to take back to my room.

Bumping down the stairs next morning with my bags, I was greeted by the aroma of bacon and eggs.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will get some exercise.