Running Away From Home

I wholeheartedly endorse the notion of fully-functioning adults running away from home.

Children and teens, no - but adults, absolutely. 

This strategy represents an excellent down time/chill-lax option when your adult kids are living at home.  It is even better when your son-in-law is tearing up your back deck.   

My son-in-law has generously offered to replace my entire back deck; all I had to do was buy enough wood to raise a barn in Amish country or wipe out an entire mountain side in the Pacific Northwest, which I happily did.  Ever the optimist, he figured he would have the deck completed (don’t laugh, it’s rude) in one single day. 

And this was even before he figured out that the frame below the rotting wood was in pristine condition and would not require replacing.  This was also before he realized that the small pick-up truck my kids had would not even begin to bear the weight or accommodate he volume of wood we’d bought. 

He therefore had to track down his uncle’s massive pick-up truck. After that logistics fiasco - oh, let the DYI games begin. 

He didn’t even get started ripping up the old deck until after supper.  Around 10 p.m., my daughter says she gently told him that firing up the band saw at that late hour might not endear us to the neighbors. 

Me, on the other hand - I was freshly showered and cozy in a local (clean) hotel, glass of wine in hand, making goo-goo eyes at the visiting boyfriend. 

It was lovely. 

For someone who travels a great deal on business, hotels generally represent a means to a business end.  I check in, shower, order room service and get myself over jet lag; that’s what hotels are for.  I don’t generally think of hotels as escape mechanisms or a way to relax, but if you can afford it, by all means, hotels can make you sane again.   

My daughter and her family are moving out in just 24 days. They are actually doing the walk-through for their newly purchased home today and will get the keys in just a week.  After they paint - and you can now see why the deck had to be done prior to my son-in-law diving into the spackle-and-sheet rock world of DYI) - they will move, and I will get my home back. 

Just 24 short days from now, we all get some badly needed SPACE, but tempers are increasingly thin, and that’s because it is more than a little crowded with three adults, one baby, three seriously deluded freeloading cats and two dogs, all crammed into one small townhome. There's a turtle in there too, but Gracie tends to shy away from conflict.

To say we have been residing in close quarters the past six months would be an understatement.  We’ve all tried to get along, but sometimes we are just crowded out of our preferences for how we like to live, day-to-day. 

That would mean me, because Claudia the Baby takes precedence, always.  Even last night as I was hurriedly heading out the door to pick up the boyfriend at the airport, suitcase in hand, the baby had her first-ever major emotional meltdown.  Check that - it was a virtual baby sob-fest.  I dropped my suitcase and ended up rocking a sobbing baby, hoping the boyfriend’s bag would be the last out of baggage claim. 

Claudia simply had a bad moment there; the first, I am sure, of many.  And her sobbing, tiny self took priority over everything else.  She had used up her baffled mom and dad by the time I was ready to leave, so I offered to give it a try.  Twenty minutes later, a red-eyed and still sniffling Claudia was in the bathtub, mollified and relatively speaking, calm.  Well, at least calmer. 

I then ran away from home, secure in the knowledge that the kids had everything well in hand.  And even if they didn’t, I knew they would be completely on their own in just 24 days so I had to let them fly solo at some point.  So, I ran away from home.   

There are currently 10 living creatures residing in my small home.  In just 24 days, seven of those creatures are moving.  The cats haven’t been told yet but two of three of them are relocating, along with a turtle who causes me no grief.  They all belong to my daughter, along with the world’s most obnoxious dog, Max.  They are all leaving me - one dog and a singular cat that has repeatedly made it know that she prefers to be an only kitten - behind. 

I can already see myself on my new back deck, relaxing while MY dog, the residential non-obnoxious canine, suns herself in absolute puppy calm.  I am confident that this will happen because my daughter, sensing a long-term disaster on the immediate horizon of her life in the form of my back deck, called in some serious, heavyweight, 20-something male reserves in the form of family friends, both whom have done this sort of work before.  My kid is nothing if not pragmatic.  

Meanwhile, and until the deck is completed, I just may have to make a serious habit out of running away from home.  Not only can my kids leave the dirty dishes in the sink and I won’t stage those silent hissy fits over SOMEBODY putting my expensive cookware in the dishwasher (a total no-no), but everyone gets more breathing and living space.  This can only be good for my continued recovery.   

Oh, yes, that’s totally what I am going with.