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In the hizzouse
Nov. 3rd, 2007 06:41 pmI've been house-sitting for my parents for the past couple of weeks (they're on a 40th-anniversary cruise). They're coming back on Thursday night, and I'll be glad, glad to see them again; it'll be so nice to be back in my own house again, with my own pets and my own routine.
I shouldn't really complain about spending two weeks in a modern house with wireless internet, cable television, free food, a couple of beautifully-behaved dogs to show mine how it's done, and a fenced yard for everyone to play in, should I? And those things have been great. But. My mother's style is very different from mine, much heavier and more formal, and incidentally more cluttered, and I am starting to feel claustrophobic in a house twice the size of my own.
And God, the dogs only make it worse: three big dogs in a house with very little open space feels like a veritable animal flood. Plus, it's twenty miles from my work, whereas my house is like two miles away from work, and running back and forth, their house to my house (one does like to make sure one's last surviving cat is fed and happy and, you know, not missing or dead) to work and back again, and I've put five hundred miles on my car while I've been here, on a car which took me ten months to get to four thousand miles. Two houses of pets, two houses of mail, two houses to make sure are not burning to the ground. It is way too much responsibility for responsibility-phobic me, and besides, I just miss my shabby hand-me down house and my shabby hand-me-down life. I wasn't cut out for the new hotness. I admit it.
Oh, I forgot about the bed, though. Their bed is almost enough to make everything else all right. It's a king-size soft-sided waterbed with a memory foam cover, and it's like nothing I've ever slept on before. It's like sleeping on a cloud supported by rainbows, my friends, and I like sleeping as much as the next person, even on an ordinary, non-rainbow-cloud mattress, but this thing makes sleeping more of an event than a life necessity.
Okay, maybe I'll be sorry to see them get back, after all. A little.
I shouldn't really complain about spending two weeks in a modern house with wireless internet, cable television, free food, a couple of beautifully-behaved dogs to show mine how it's done, and a fenced yard for everyone to play in, should I? And those things have been great. But. My mother's style is very different from mine, much heavier and more formal, and incidentally more cluttered, and I am starting to feel claustrophobic in a house twice the size of my own.
And God, the dogs only make it worse: three big dogs in a house with very little open space feels like a veritable animal flood. Plus, it's twenty miles from my work, whereas my house is like two miles away from work, and running back and forth, their house to my house (one does like to make sure one's last surviving cat is fed and happy and, you know, not missing or dead) to work and back again, and I've put five hundred miles on my car while I've been here, on a car which took me ten months to get to four thousand miles. Two houses of pets, two houses of mail, two houses to make sure are not burning to the ground. It is way too much responsibility for responsibility-phobic me, and besides, I just miss my shabby hand-me down house and my shabby hand-me-down life. I wasn't cut out for the new hotness. I admit it.
Oh, I forgot about the bed, though. Their bed is almost enough to make everything else all right. It's a king-size soft-sided waterbed with a memory foam cover, and it's like nothing I've ever slept on before. It's like sleeping on a cloud supported by rainbows, my friends, and I like sleeping as much as the next person, even on an ordinary, non-rainbow-cloud mattress, but this thing makes sleeping more of an event than a life necessity.
Okay, maybe I'll be sorry to see them get back, after all. A little.
