The Aerie
Well, Hawai'i is out.
Last year my wife signed our family up with a home-exchange program. This website helps people find other people who are willing to trade residences for a pair of parallel trips: you go live in their home, they go live in yours.
We quickly were contacted by a family in Bavaria. They had lived in Minnesota for a year on a teacher exchange, and were looking for an opportunity to come back and visit for a month this year.
This kind of thing suits me to a T - Randomness! Unexpectedness! Out-of-the-ruttedness!
So we said "Sure!"
So we've been gearing up for our exchange. We've checked out German tapes from the library (including "Mutzi", an animated children's language series that combines "Underdog"-quality animation with quaalude-quality writing. There's a king Lion, a queen pink Hippo, and some kind of green alien wizard.
Also, the decision to lend our home to a family of strangers for a month has shamed us into long-necessary actions around the home. We have undertaken to complete our attic master bedroom (which presently has unfinshed rooms, floors, and windows), add a master bath, and to put pantry cupboards into the kitchen. The hope of course is to have this done before they arrive, so that they visit our home thinking that we're civilized people who live in dignified surroundings.
In the midst of getting this very expensive set of projects lined up, we received another e-mail: would we like to swap homes for a week with a family coming to town for a wedding... from Hawai'i.
I wanted to cry.
Now, it's not that a week in Hawai'i is the equivalent of a month in Bavaria. It's just that I have always wanted a tropical vacation. Granted I usually want this vacation, well, now, during the middle of February. Winter in Minnesota gets me completely down, and January seems like an icy iron maiden from which there is no escape. By mid February I am usually psychotic and ready to exchange my job for a padded cell as long as the padded cell is warm and the straightjacket cozy. This year is no exception.
So during November I was looking into going to Cancun in February, but was talked out of it. With remodeling and Bavaria, adding another trip was going to be too much. I was as heartbroken as Puxatawney Phil: six more weeks of winter!
So then we get this note from Hawai'i, offering us a week of free lodging in exchange for airfare, it was very tempting. Very tempting. I ran the budget numbers, and it looked like we could do it, but only by dipping into the credit cards. Still, I rationlized, it would be worth it to go to Hawai'i...
Unfortunately, I listened to "Marketplace" on my way home from some Sunday errands, and they started aggravating my stuffed-down annoyances regarding not saving enough money last year, and not getting rid of credit card debt. After ten minutes of listening to a rich woman talk about how she scrimped and saved her way from debt to wealthy, I felt too guilty to book the trip anymore. Sure, we'd go to Hawai'i... and then I'd have to work until I was 75 because I had no retirement!
Miserably, I was forced to write back and decline the offer to swap homes... in Hawai'i... >sob<
So we're still going to Bavaria, mit de lederhosen unt ze two feet of snow.
Hopefully by August the snow will have melted...
Posted by Albatross at February 14, 2006 11:34 AM | TrackBack