Alexandra Vaillancourt
Dateline Boston — This week Husband, Teenager 2, and I are on vacation. We’re not travelers at this point in our lives, and our cats are needy, so we have decided to do what they call a staycation. Have you ever done a staycation? If not, I highly recommend it. It’s like a vacation, except you sleep at home instead of a hotel. Cheap and fun!
First, I wrote down a list of things we thought we could do during our staycation. Some of those things did include a doctor’s appointment and repairing the cat tree. Most were fun activities.
On Monday, Husband had an eye doctor appointment in the middle of the day, so we hung around the house in the morning. After the eye doctor, we traveled 30 minutes to a beachside town to go to a pizza joint I had read about on Facebook two years ago; walk up, no seating, cash only. The beach had a lot to be desired. We had to eat the pizza in the car because it was too windy outside, and the picnic tables all had pigeon poop on them. We all agreed that the pizza was nothing special. But it was an adventure!
Husband and I bought a 500-piece puzzle for us all to do together for family bonding. We set up the card table and laid out all the pieces. Teenager was worried about the cats, but I assured him that we’d be able to do the puzzle in peace. I was wrong. Bertram jumped on the table and began picking up pieces in his mouth. Elise just kept jumping up on the table. We covered the puzzle with a blanket, which Elise finds very comfortable. We haven’t made progress on the puzzle since.
Tuesday began with a trip to the hazardous materials station to drop off a TV that we had picked up off the street awhile ago. We ate breakfast at a local greasy spoon, then it was off to Newport, RI, to see one of the fancy mansions that line the streets. This time we chose Marble House—not the biggest one, but the second most opulent. It was lined with, you guessed it—marble. It was a gift from a man to his wife, who demanded it for her 39th birthday. We all got headphones and little recorders for self-guided tours. Teenager and I always seemed to be done first, and we had to wait for Husband so we could all press “play” at the same time in each room. The rooms were lavishly decorated, but the stories that went with them were sort of depressing. Let’s just say I’m glad I wasn’t the daughter of Alva Vanderbuilt.
Bathroom Decorations
After the tour, we went searching for the place where Husband and I ate the last time we had been to Newport. We found it, and had a delicious dinner, just like we remembered. The bathrooms were lined with ‘70s wallpaper in a waterfall theme, and when you turned on the light, a tacky picture of a waterfall, framed in gold, made sounds of water and birds. It made me want to redecorate our bathroom at home.
Wednesday, Teenager slept in, and Husband and I had breakfast with a friend. We did a couple of errands, including stopping at the hardware store for sisal, so we could repair the cat tree.
In the afternoon, we saw a movie at the local independent movie theater, as is our tradition on our anniversary, since we got married there. Our choices were The Lobster, which we had already seen (I’ve seen it three times!), Unlocking the Cage, a documentary about the cruelty of caging chimpanzees, Weiner, the documentary about the sex scandal of Anthony Weiner, and Love and Friendship, a period piece which had the most romantic name. We saw Love and Friendship, which turned out to be about a devious and mean woman. Things were not boding well for female role models this week! After the movie, Teenager went home, and Husband and I capped the night off with a tattoo consultation for me, and a dinner of Cuban food with friends.
As I write this, it’s Thursday, our 4th wedding anniversary. The traditional wedding gift for the 4th year is fruit and/or flowers. We won’t be giving each other flowers, because we have cats. So Husband has a banana waiting for him by his coffee cup when he wakes up. We broke from tradition yesterday, and I got a new backpack as my anniversary gift.
Today we will travel to New Hampshire, to Newfound Lake, the vacation spot of Husband when he was a little boy. Tomorrow, it’s off to Worcester, MA, to see the cat exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum. We’ll also celebrate Husband’s birthday!
We’ve checked off most of the items on our staycation list and have had a blast doing it. Try being a tourist in your own state (or neighboring state) sometime. Take pictures! Write a review! Life is meant to be lived. Live it up, while you sleep at home.
Ms. Vaillancourt may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com