Embracing the "staycation"

Two of my roommate's were away last week. Not that George and I, in our early 30s, don't LOVE living with my parent's but it's not exactly the ideal situation (for anyone I presume). Even though I grew up here, there are some rules that I have since let go of and some ways of doing things that I forgot were the norm. And seeing as we are the guests and it is not our house, we have been adjusting to the way of life at 135 Carmen Road. So, when the roomies went to Maine and Canada last week, you could stay that George and I had a "staycation" of sorts. (Staycation of course, being the new catch phrase of the summer of '08. Don't spend your gas money on a fancy trip to Canada, instead stay home and be entertained ("cationed") by the daily, severe thunderstorms.)

A staycation is really no substitute for a vacation. However, it did provide for some "scandalous" deviation for standard operating procedure and gave us a glimpse into home ownership. Here's a bit of what we learned and fun we had:

1. Home ownership is not all it's cracked up to be. What happens when lightening strikes? Not that it actually struck anything but what if it had hit a tree that then crashed into the house? As the rain and hail came pelting down, cascading over the gutter that looked clogged, I got to thinking, who wants to clean gutters? (Not to mention the "how" of the equation.)

2. Flowers, while lovely, are delicate little creatures. Too much sun, too much rain, too cold, too windy - they're like whiny, little children. Gardening is not for the lazy (I suppose neither are children for that matter).

3. Opening windows does wonders in cooling down a big wooden box baking under the summer sun. Some people, who are arguably set in their ways, sometime long ago - ten? twenty? thirty? - years ago decided that it was just silly to open windows in the house for fear that when (not IF), when it rains, we won't have to worry about the inside of the house getting wet. So, on bright sunny, summer days, we won't be made fools. You know how quickly those summer clouds can creep up.

4. The dishwasher. An amazing invention. Instead of you, washing dishes, they have these machines now where you put your dirty dishes, fill it with soap, push a button and voila, an hour later, your dishes are cleaned. This machine doesn't get much use around here because my father likes to say, "with the few dishes that we accumulate, it's just easier for me to do them." I have no doubt that when it's just he and Betty Crocker (with all their home cooking), this is true. But he's been saying this for years - even when he had four kids dirtying dishes throughout the day. "You keep filling that stupid machine up with dirty dishes, then any time you are looking for a clean one, there aren't going to be any. They'll all be sitting in there." The thing is, my parent's have enough dishes to entertain half of Milford.

5. I'm not sure if this is sad, scary or funny. But we kept the Jeopardy! torch alive in their absence. A strange thing happens here at 7 pm. It's like a gravitational pull that circles the house, pulling my parents in front of the TV. When they are not here, I think whoever is around just gets sucked into the pull.

6. By the end of the week, I think we were actually starting to grow into our roles as homeowners. George was found crouching over the lawn, analyzing the difference between lowering the lawnmower blades and raising it. He was mumbling something about the dampness due to the rain. While I could be heard yesterday saying, "stop getting crumbs all over this rug I just vacuumed," after the niece and nephew stopped by.

7. Last, but maybe the most fun of all...we didn't clean the garbage. The same man who doesn't believe in dishwashers does have a thing about smelly garbage. This may sound ridiculous to you but how many of you can say that you've never had some creature of the night break into your garage, lured by the intising scent of garbage. That's what I thought. Because our Chinese food containers are soaped clean, we can proudly proclaim, "our garbage doesn't stink" and mean it.

And even though my father will read this at some point, I'll also confess that we broke one last cardinal house rule: we took the garbage out on Wednesday night. Papa roommate doesn't do this. Ever. The garbage men come on Thursday morning ergo, the garbage goes out Thursday morning. We risked a potential garbage disaster and came out ahead. Said animals did not come and knock any of the cans (containing, dirty, smelly trash) over. We even had fish remains from (gasp!) Sunday night. (Also a big no, no. Fish or other foul smelling foods should ideally be consumed on Wed. so that it can be hauled away promptly in 12 hours.)

We really lived it up during our staycation. We sure did.