A Weekend Away

Blog 3-2-09

Hi Everyone,

I was a houseguest this weekend and I loved it. Why have I always been reluctant to accept invitations? It’s like staying at a hotel for free. They made a room up for me with my own television and reading material. They let me sleep as long as I wanted. It was the end of the month and they paid the whole rent.

All I had to do was listen to a few stories about their childhood, hear about their medical conditions with a concerned face, and look at every picture on every wall and hear every story about the people in them. It’s a good thing I like stories.

My first day as a houseguest, I was afraid to ask where “the old country” was. I know the old country is Europe but where is her old country at in the old country? I couldn’t place the accent. She said she was from Lithuania, which I had always pronounced “Luthuania” because I got it mixed up with the Lutheran religion, but said she grew up in England. Honestly, she sounded Irish.

On the second day I took my kids snow boarding. I really wanted to snowboard because it looked like fun. It wasn’t that cold, sweater weather. I didn’t go because I had a cold and could barely walk a block without getting tired. It was one of those times that I thought it was important for the kids to have fun than for me to be sick. I tried to downplay the fact that my ears were plugged up and my balance was fuzzy.

We’re back home now and as always we talk about what our favorite part of the “field trip” was. My little one calls it a field trip. His favorite part was playing video. My oldest one’s was snowboarding and mine was watching them snowboard. Oh yeah, and the stories.

This has been Margaret Smith from the bottom.