The Weekend Plans Post: Getting The House Back

We have had a houseguest. (Have I mentioned that before? I know that I have tried to go out of my way to not talk about him due to vague privacy concerns… Anyway, we’ve had a houseguest.)

For a while.

Way back in August, Maribou told me that one of her newly graduated students needed a place to crash for a couple of weeks. A few of her co-workers left the job in order to chase after new opportunities for one reason or another and her student was going to stay behind for a few weeks to help cover at work before leaving for graduate school. His doing that could turn having to hire a ton of people in a short period of time into getting to hire a ton of people over a somewhat longer period of time.

And so my attitude was “why not?”

You can put up with anything for a couple of weeks. I told the kid that he shouldn’t eat my hard-boiled eggs in the fridge but he should feel free to help himself to whatever we had in there because, hey, it was a couple of weeks. How much could a 20-something male eat?

Well, there was a crisis at her work. A co-worker of hers had his wife die (don’t worry, she came back). After CPR and the ICU and lots of sitting next to her in the hospital, she came back safe and sound and is easing into a new normal. Well, this is something that causes disruption at work. So Maribou wondered if the student could stay until October and commute to grad school.

Well, of course. This was a crisis. I liked the co-worker of hers, after all, and wanted to support how I could. What’s a couple of months? I’ll just lock myself in the basement when I need alone time.

And then, in November, another of Maribou’s co-workers needed to take a short leave to have some surgery done. So Maribou was going to cover for this co-worker while she was out and the houseguest could cover Maribou’s shift. Everybody’s schedule was topsy-turvy. So October turned into November.

And, heck, at that point, it was only a few weeks until Maribou’s school was going to close for Winter Break as well. Finish out the year, finish out strong, and then move on, right?

Well, he told us that it looked like the new semester of grad school started the first week of February and wanted to know if it would be okay if he stayed with us until the first weekend in Feb.

At this point, my eye had a persistent twitch and I was thinking “it was supposed to be two weeks…” (I mean, seriously, 20-something males eat *SO FREAKING MUCH*.)

Well, he came back a couple of days later and said “I’ve made an awful mistake… grad school doesn’t start the first week of February… it starts the first week of January!” and so I was able to reshuffle my plans a bit and figure out that I would take off from work, rent a U-Haul, and get his stuff up to his new apartment that first week in January.

And *THEN*, due to the vagaries of the holidays and going back home to visit family and schedules and all that, he realized that December 21st would probably be the best day to move out.

So. Friday. I am picking up the U-Haul at 10 and we are going to load it and drive it up there and empty it and drive back and then hammer out the logistics of getting him up there for good. (Like, a second trip in the dinky Yaris with the television wrapped in a blanket, a pillow or two, maybe a backpack with the last load of clothes still hot from the dryer.)

And then, on Saturday (or maybe Sunday): I HAVE MY HOUSE BACK.

As such, this weekend, I will walk around my house without pants. (Or, maybe only half the weekend I will do that.)

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “Naked cowboy in Times Square” by Mark Berbezier.)