We have a houseguest this weekend.
You realize how much stuff you do when you’re alone when you can’t do it anymore because you’ve got a houseguest. Feel like burping the alphabet? Wait, better hold back. Everybody is upstairs. Feel like doing the tearaway pants thing the second you walk through the door? Wait, better hold back. We have guests. And don’t even think about peeing without shutting the door first. You know what? Just pee in the basement bathroom. Leave the other ones alone.
So I’m back to having to merely burp my cheeks full, wearing clothing, and peeing in the basement like it’s 1990.
If you can’t burp the alphabet in your house, it’s not your house.
But it’s always good to be hospitable to company. I get to cook for strangers again and that always gives a little inspiration to kick it up the proverbial notch.
Which means that, this weekend, we’ll be entertaining. I’ll squeeze some of the usual around the entertaining, though. Visits to the grocery store and doing laundry. We’ve got the post-funeral “we want to hang out with chosen family after spending a week with assigned family” meetup with our friends who recently lost their mother, and the usual library trips and little straggling errands on Sunday. (We also say our goodbyes to the houseguest on Sunday morning.) Then, after getting home from the errands on Sunday, drop kicking my blue jeans down the basement stairs about 20 seconds after the front door gets locked behind me.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
oh god, i hope when i visited you weren’t trying to be on your best behaviorReport
Well, it’s easier to have to wear pants when it’s cold outside.Report
(These houseguests – the one this weekend and the one who’ll be staying with us for a while – are strangers or near strangers to Jay. You know that’s quite different, right? Maybe in degree rather than kind, but a couple orders of magnitude of degree.)Report
True. I have seen Jaybird in his underpants. The vision haunts me as Walt Whitman haunted Oscar Wilde.Report
@professor-esperanto Believe it or not you are not the only person to feel that way, though the rest of them aren’t that eloquent about it.
(Personally I don’t see the problem, although I wouldn’t.)Report
Last weekend was my big exciting weekend – went to visit a friend, went places I’d never been before. (And then Sunday, filled the pulpit at church – long story but: yes, it’s okay for a layperson to do that in my denomination)
This weekend is just going to be being quiet at home. Clean the place up a little bit, maybe do a little sewing, maybe do a little reading towards one of my fall classes (classes start in just over 2 weeks)Report
Well, this weekend was for TSPing the trim on my porch in preparation for painting. Or it should be, as I tweaked my back a little bit and am not feeling too keen on pushing my luck with that. But we are joining another couple at a cabin Mon-Wed coming up, so that should be nice.Report
So we have this houseguest, and I wore out myself cleaning (not at all her fault, she is laidback, but I come from a hospitality culture and Obligations are Obligations) and then I didn’t sleep much and now I’ve had about 6 hours sleep in 2 days.
Which means I will have all the fun tonight and tomorrow, then sleep through Sunday for the most part.
Except for reading!! I am reading a book that won’t be out for years (by an established author) and it is SO GOOD in this early draft stage and I cannot wait until I can hawk it to everyone. I’m about a third of the way through already even though I only started reading it at 10 pm and the act of noting my feedback slows me down.
Monday I will mostly spend cleaning up more, because our next houseguest will be with us for a few weeks and the Holy Obligation of Cleaning for a new temporary housemate is more sizeable than that for a 3 day houseguest that you’ve known for a decade. (Kidding, but also not, y’know? I mean, I think I’m kidding intellectually but if you were to watch my behavior on Monday, that descriptor is what fits best…)Report
I am going tubing. I gather this involves sitting in a tube, on a river, and drinking cans of alcohol. It seems simple enough but I always associated tubing with laying on a tube being hauled behind a high speed boat and trying not to fall off so I was very confused when husband dragged me out to get drinks to have while on the tube.Report
Tubing on a pretty, lazy, slow moving river is a lovely way to spend an afternoon! Have fun!Report
Make sure you wear sunscreen (it’s weirdly easy to forget).
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I thought that this was in response to…
You know what?
Never mind.Report
If you’re walking out of the house without pants, you should also wear sunscreen, fwiw. Melanoma can occur anywhere on the body, Doctor Internet tells me.
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Bob Marley eventually died from a melanoma that started under his toenail, if I remember correctly.Report
This. Not only is there sun overhead, but there’s bounce off the water. Long ago, when I was a graduate student in Texas, the Pedernales was a popular tubing run, where you had sun, the bounce off the water, and the bounce off all the limestone. Sunscreen wasn’t as much of a thing then — especially for dumb college students — and I never hit the Pedernales before July, when I’d had time to get good and dark first. Still got burned, but only enough to give the tan a nice “glow”. I suppose one of these days I’ll pay for all the shirtless-on-the-water time from my youth.Report
Yeah I’m a maritimer so I know about how sun and water interacts. I’ll be sufficiently doused for sun.
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I’ve spent my share of time in the tropical sun, but seem to forget sometimes when I’m gearing out in the shade of an Appalachian/Allegheny forest.
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Well, after reading Andrew’s latest article, I know exactly what my weekend plans are. They involve swimming in a pyramid pile of p****.Report
Flying to Zurich tomorrow (Saturday), so I arrive Sunday afternoon and can be at work on Monday.
I booked the flight on the SwissAir website where it had a SwissAir flight number. Imagine my delight when I learned it’s a codeshare operated by United.Report
We had cheap seats to Paris last year through United, but it was a Canada Air flight to and a Lufthansa back–good flights. It was the reverse of your situation: United flight numbers operated by the other airlines.Report