Home is Best

I love to travel.  I love to see new places, and I love to stay in nice hotels.  But no matter how much fun I’ve had, or how nice the hotel, I’m always glad to come home.  So I thought today I would list my Top Ten Reasons Home is Best.

10 - I know the channels on my TV.  I don’t watch a lot of television, but I usually watch the 10 o’clock news before I go to sleep.  For those of you who live on the coasts, that may seem strange, but yes, it comes on at 10 in the middle of the country.  Presumably we need our sleep to get up early and do the farming and ranching that keeps our coastal countrymen fed.  Anyway, I know what channel it comes on, so I don’t have to surf through 335 channels to find it.

9 - I live in a single family dwelling, so I don’t hear my neighbors through the walls.  Or their children jumping off the beds, bouncing balls at 7 a.m., or running through the hallways.

8 - I don’t have to worry about hiding valuables from the maid service.  It’s true that is because there is no maid service at home, but still.

7 - I don’t have to check my bed at home for bedbugs.  If you haven’t heard, bedbugs are making a big comeback in the USA.  The wise traveler will check for bedbugs before putting their suitcase in the room.  Otherwise you might bring home hitchhikers.  Nightmare.

6 - Tourist attractions seem to attract tourists.  Who knew?  There are always SO MANY PEOPLE at vacation destinations!  I like people.  But I like them in twos and threes more than by the bus load.  I try really hard to remember that each has wants and desires just like me.  But when I want to see those petroglyphs at the end of the trail and every 7th grader in America is along for the trip, I can get a little testy.

5- I trust my bathroom.  Although my bathroom isn’t sterile, I do know all the fannies that have been on my toilets, and I know all the feet that have been in my shower.  I know worrying about this makes me seem a little, shall we say, anal, but think what you will, there is the splash back risk, and you just can’t be too careful...

4 - Eating out three times a day can be trying.  I wasn’t blessed with the best digestive system.  I try not to complain;  we all have our cross to bear.  But if I eat out too often my system gets out of whack and number 5 above is going to be even more important.

3 - My shower at home is better than any hotel shower.  You see, my house was built in the 70s which means it has no environmental conscience.  It uses lots of water.  Ahhh, love that pressure.

2 - Everything is cheaper at home.  Vacation destinations operate on their own economy.  And I’m not talking about vacation spots outside of the country.  Everything from gasoline to potato chips is sold at a premium within a 20 mile radius of anything worth seeing in America.  

And the number one reason home is best:

That’s where my bed is.  I love my bed.  It is comfortable.  It has an ideal firmness.  I know for sure when the sheets were last washed.  I know what has and has not happened on my bedspread.  I know any hairs I find there belong to my closest family members.  My pillow has just the right amount of loft.  I love my sheets.  Few things are as soothing as sleeping in your own bed.  It’s good to be home.

Hair

This is an uncomfortable topic.  I know some men are sensitive about their baldness.  My heart goes out to women who lose their hair as they age.  On the other hand, hair isn’t in style this year.  Have you noticed that everyone is bald and men no longer have chest hair?  Well, we didn’t get that memo.  We have lots of hair at our house.  

Which is all well and good if it would stay on our heads, but it doesn’t.  

I just finished cleaning the bathrooms.  There is the normal soap scum, hard water marks, and even some dried tooth paste.  But mostly there is hair.  Long hair from my daughter’s elbow-length tresses, shorter hair from my middle-aged do, and a ton of little curly hairs from my husband’s entire body.

Let’s just say he can’t go outside without his shirt during hunting season.  He wasn’t this hirsute when I married him.  But I should have seen it coming. It runs in his family.  Now it runs in mine.

I have two sons, five years apart.  When the first one went through puberty, the fine, little boy hairs on his legs were replaced by the dark, coarser hairs of manhood.  His little brother was still a boy, and he came across this scripture and adopted it as his favorite: Genesis 27:11 My brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth man.  That just about says it all.  Except now they are both hairy men.

Fortunately (thank goodness for estrogen), the women in the family don’t have this problem.  But we all have full heads of hair.  No wimpy barrettes or hair elastics for us.  We need the heavy-duty variety.  But alas, our hair is constantly falling out and growing in.  My teenage daughter has beautiful wavy hair.  She spends an inordinate amount of time ironing it, curling it, braiding it, and so on.  And a ton of it ends up on the bathroom floor and in the sink and tub.  Have you ever tried to wipe out a sink when the sponge gets bogged down with foot long strands of hair?  Nightmare.

My grandsons were both born with full heads of hair.  To qualify for the armed forces or go on a Mormon mission they would have needed haircuts at birth.  So the legacy lives on.

Then there’s the cat.  Maybe I should just leave that one alone.  My faithful readers already know how I feel about the cat.

So what to do?  This morning as I crawled around the toilet trying to gather it up, laser hair removal for everyone seemed like a viable option.  Bald is beautiful.  Can you just imagine us Christmas morning each receiving gift certificates for hair removal? Gee, Mom, thanks.

I'm a Criminal

When I told my husband what I was going to write about, he said not to do it.  He said more than my slip would be showing.  But I guess I need the catharsis.  You see, I broke the law today.  

I’m normally a very law abiding citizen.  I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.  Once I came out of Walmart and realized I hadn’t paid for a pen that had slipped beside my purse in the cart.  I went back in to pay for it. 

But today a friend and I cheated death and somehow that made the laws of man seem beneath us.  We were invincible.  Let me explain.  

My friend called me on the phone and asked if I’d go with her to look at a cooler she’d found listed in the classifieds on-line.  She didn’t want to go to a stranger’s house alone.  We arrived at this huge house and wondered why someone who owned a million dollar house was selling a used cooler on-line rather than just donating it to charity.   We joked that maybe he was a serial killer.  Do you feel the hair prickling on the back of your neck?  That, my friend, is foreshadowing. We got out and went up to the door.  The owner opened the door and told us to go around to the garage. (Cue eerie music) There were four garages to choose from, so we stood on the driveway waiting.  He yelled at us to go into the back yard.  We thought that was strange and got a little apprehensive.  If you’re trying to sell something, couldn’t you put in the effort to bring it up front?  I mean, how heavy is a cooler for a 6 foot, 200 pound guy with facial hair and squinty eyes?  OK, I made up the squinty eye part.  We were glad there were two of us.  We went around to the back yard and he asked us to come into his 5th garage.  (Cue high pitched pulsing music) Very weird.  I, of course, had my phone in my pocket and was planning to quickly call 911 if necessary.  As we stepped into the garage I scanned the area for torture devices, potential weapons, and skeletons.  I half expected the garage door to close behind us.  Nothing happened.  She paid for the cooler and we carried it around front.  Phew.  We had escaped with our lives.  We were giddy with relief.

So on this wave of euphoria we decided to go look at a house she found on-line.  It is vacant, in foreclosure, and is going for a song.  It’s the only house on its street and backs up to the mountain.  Well, naturally the doors were locked, but we looked in the windows.  We went around back and discovered a doggie door big enough for a St. Bernard.  I am smaller than a St. Bernard.  You know what’s coming.  Yes, I slipped through that doggie door and let us in.  We took a self-guided tour.  I’m sure you’ll be interested to know that the house has several large bedrooms, an unusual curved staircase leading to a balcony, a full-sized hot tub in the master bathroom, and needs an incredible amount of work.  Motion sensors beeped as we entered each room.  My friend said she didn’t have a good feeling being in the house.  She postulated that maybe someone had been murdered there and that’s why the asking price is so low.  I don’t think it was murder.  I think that creepy feeling was our own guilt from breaking and entering (although lets be honest, I didn’t break anything), and worrying that those motion sensors had alerted the authorities, and the cops were about to surround the house and order us out with our hands up! 

So there you have it.  My close call with the serial killer was the gateway to a life of crime. I feel so reckless now I may jay walk, park in a no parking zone, or water after 10 a.m.