Road trip breaks stay-at-home streak
Monday morning, I texted a coworker: “Did it rain this weekend? I wouldn’t know, because we were away.”
While paying for groceries Monday afternoon, I said to the clerk, “I’m afraid I missed the sale on Raisin Bran this weekend, because we were away.”
By now, you’ve probably figured it out: I stink at small talk. Also: We were away.
It seems like a minor piece of news until you understand that we have not spent a night away from home since fall 2019. Three years.
“On the rare occasions when I am dragged from the house, I tend to enjoy myself. But I fight it.”
The streak is now broken.
You can blame it on COVID, but it’s not only that. Everyone knows I generally avoid people and have hermitlike tendencies. I just call myself a “homebody” so it sounds folksy instead of pathological.
On the rare occasions when I am dragged from the house, I tend to enjoy myself. But I fight it. This time, it took a family wedding in the Berkshires to get us to pack our bags.
With the planning I put into this 48-hour jaunt, you might have thought we were embarking on a climbing expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. (Mark made me cancel the Sherpa, but I insisted on keeping the oxygen tanks. We had room in the back seat, and you just never know.)
I made a lot of lists: things to pack, chores to do before we left, items to buy for the trip, directions for the house sitter and all the things that could go wrong. I’m kidding about that last part—I didn’t actually write down any potential catastrophes; instead, I cycled through them over and over in my head Thursday night, in lieu of sleeping.
Normally, I’m not this intense about either packing or fretting. But my going-away skills were rusty.
As soon as we hit the road, though, my mood shifted from anxious to carefree. We were taking a vacation, however brief, during which I would not need to do barn chores or cook any meals. Not having to let the dog in or out every 15 minutes in itself made me feel like a just-released inmate taking that first breath of freedom after years in the slammer.
Mark and I got to hang out during the car ride. When you’re married to someone for a lot of years and you’re busy, you don’t always have time to really talk. So being trapped together in a small space for a while can be a good opportunity.
Pro tip: If three hours of uninterrupted couple time is more than you feel is warranted or advisable, drink a lot of coffee on the way out of town so you have to stop at least once. Even a five-minute escape from the car can do wonders to reset the conversation and get your partner to quit griping about the Sherpa deposit. (What part of “nonrefundable” does he not understand?)
We arrived at our destination in convivial spirits, thanks to an abundance of coffee, which provided both a chatty caffeine high and several conversation-resetting pit stops.
And we got to spend the weekend as houseguests. That’s where you stay in someone’s home and they are obligated to keep you entertained while pretending they don’t have anything better to do. Your stay even comes with complimentary meals, and there’s no bill at the end. What a treat.
Seeing loved ones after such a long time made me forget about the worries I’d had about leaving home. What was “home,” anyway? Did we live somewhere? I tried to picture the house. Oh well, we’d find it with the GPS on Sunday.
At the wedding, we joined a crowd of well over a hundred people, eating and drinking and laughing and talking, and I wondered if any of them could tell that I hadn’t left home in literal years.
If not, I’m sure they figured it out as soon as we were introduced. Apropos of nothing, I kept telling people how having a dog is a lot like being in prison. They’d pause, tilt their heads, and give me a concerned squint that clearly said, “You need to get out more.”
Possibly. But now that I’m safely cocooned back in my house, “getting out more” sounds like a terrible idea. I think I’ll just work on my small talk instead.
