Monday was the end of 
bunny_hugger's visit --- and, somewhere up north, the end of the Maine Gathering --- and our reluctant return to the common time of regular life. We got up in the late morning, possibly the early afternoon, and considered what to do.
Eating, for one thing: we went to the nearby Jersey Mike's to share a giant-sized cheese sub soaked in vinegar and oil and tasting as good as a sandwich that only has happy associations is able to taste. It may sound like the bulk of what bunny_hugger and I did was small talk, and perhaps it was, but it means something to us. And to cap off lunch on this surprisingly warm midsummer day we went down the strip mall a few stores to the ice cream shop. It's a tiny, fairly cramped location, but that doesn't mean they don't know how to have an array of really sweet ice creams with crunchy toppings, and we didn't just linger eating but also reading over the bulletin board and pondering the deeper implications of some of the postings. There were plenty of advertisements for pet-sitting services, or house-cleaners, and a modest number for clowns; but tucked on top of the bulletin board was a business card from a car dealer. How many people would go buy a car specifically from this person because he'd tacked his card to an ice cream shop's bulletin board? On the other hand, if even one did, then the investment in time was probably worthwhile. The logic of bulletin board posts are strange things.
We went back home, though, as bunny_hugger needed to finish packing --- she managed Tardis-like feats of spatial management to get everything in carry-on --- and saw my father. This was the first encounter with either parent since Wednesday night, and we started to smother him in incidents from the weekend and assurances that my brother was in good shape. It was also only now that I realized I'd left that Boston Globe in Massachusetts. Too bad.
The trip to the airport we tried to not feel too melancholy about, although somehow even though we left at a reasonable time ahead of the flight and encountered no significant traffic on the way, and all we stopped for at the airport was for her to buy a pack of Swedish Fish for the flight, we had about fourteen seconds before she had to go through security and board the plane. Possibly it only felt like that, particularly compared to earlier trips where the flight was postponed; here, we and they were on time. We'll have to get them for that.
Trivia: The first English colony in New England was settled, briefly, at Fort Saint George in what is now Popham, Maine. Source: A Voyage Long And Strange, Tony Horwitz.
Currently Reading: The Game Makers: The Story Of Parker Brothers From Tiddledy Winks To Trivial Pursuit, Philip E Orbanes. Tiddledy Winks wasn't created by the Parker Brothers, and they began licensing it over a decade after publishing their first catalogue. Just saying.