So I left last Wednesday for a four-day trip to the beach with girlfriends. With girlfriends all over the age of 50. Real dangerous, huh? Actually…well, no, wait. I promised the ladies, “What happens at the beach stays at the beach.” So I must now bite my tongue.
But I can tell you I was so exhausted from preparing my house/family’s/dogs’ lives for this “get away from it all,” I was exhausted the entire time I was at the beach. Not that this kept me, the chick who could sleep in till noon every day if I didn’t have a conscience, from waking at 5 stinking thirty every morning. At the beach. On vacation. I’m not up that early on school days!
Anyhoo, just as I learned to relax it was time to go home. I pulled in the driveway and was greeted by dead flowers in window boxes right outside of front door and strawberries rotting in pot on patio table. Both had a watering can within reach. I wanted to scream, “How hard is to water a stupid plant?” But I bit my tongue.
I stood in my kitchen unloading the cooler, left- over groceries plus requisite shell collection and looked around my typically tidy house. Across the counter, where “dude!” was written in dust, my daughter lounged on the couch with a magazine. My husband sat across the room in “the throne” with his laptop. The back door throw rug I flung over the couch when I vacuumed last week was still there (19.2 inches away from said door).
Next to the sink sat what were once roses I’d so lovingly arranged before I left. Their petals in puddles on the counter with rancid water in the vase, I wanted to scream, “How stinking hard is it to throw something away?” But I bit my tongue.
Items in the fridge were in the exact same spots as when I left, only in slightly altered life forms. Including a gallon of milk a week past its expiration date. I don’t drink milk and since those family members who do are literate teenagers and an adult, I figure it’s really not my gig. My grocery list was still taped to the garage door, starting with, “Milk.”
The dog’s water bowl remained in my master bathroom where I’d left it/her four days ago. Which means my husband walked over or around it several times a day. And Nugget didn’t have a replacement bowl in her regular bistro spot in the kitchen. At least they let her out the bathroom.
I even left a pair of my favorite shorts home so my daughter could legally “borrow” them. Yet they were still on top of my dresser. You watch: Tomorrow when I want to wear them they’ll be gone.
I wanted to scream, “What in the world have you been doing for the last four days? Living under a rock?” But I bit my tongue. And started planning my next trip.