It’s been a long time since Debbi and I went away on a vacation. Due to Blackjack and Newton’s conditions, we were reluctant to go away and leave them to a pet sitter for any length of time. (And, coincidentally, both of them passed away at times when we had been considering going away, so I guess that was a good call.) After Newton’s passing, we made plans to visit our families this month, and that’s what we did.
We took the JetBlue red-eye to Boston two weeks ago, arriving bleary-eyed as usual. We went down to visit Debbi’s family for part of the day, and then they drove me up to my Dad’s house. It was dreadfully hot the first day and a half, but then cooled off to just about perfect weather (with a couple of rainy days).
This is the first time I’ve actually spent vacation time with my parents since my Mom moved in to assisted living. It was very nice to not be working during the trip, since it got pretty exhausting to have to get up every morning and head over to take care of Mom’s affairs, or get her house ready for sale. Plus it got to be depressing to spend the waning hours of the day in the increasingly-empty house. Now that the house has sold, that’s no longer a concern.
Spending most of my time hanging around my Mom’s house and occasionally having dinner with Dad (or someone else) has now been changed to mostly hanging around my Dad’s house, but driving out to visit Mom every other day. I had sort of thought that we would spend afternoons sitting either in her apartment or on the complex’s back deck by the river reading (i.e., much like what we did at her house, but in a different place). Instead we mostly drove out for lunch, ran errands, did shopping, and did a few chores around her apartment. I didn’t mind doing it, but it made the trip somewhat busier than I had expected (or was used to). I’d also forgotten that driving between my parents’ homes is a bit of a trek, since the road of suburban Boston are both full of traffic and teeming with traffic lights.
I guess this will be the new normal when I go out to visit.
Balanced against that, Dad does live in a very convenient neighborhood, with a great independent bookstore, a comic book shop, and a number of very good restaurants, all within walking distance. Several of them have intriguing mixed drink menus, which I avail myself of whenever I can. And we went on a couple of shopping expeditions to comic and book stores.
Though we stayed with our respective families most of the time, Debbi and I did get together for a few days:
The first weekend I went down to visit Debbi and her family. They arranged for us to have an adventure at 5wits, where we did their espionage adventure. It’s definitely aimed at being kid- and family-friendly, but it was fun for us adults too. (It reminded me of Escape from the Mysterious Room, which a friend of mine has done.) We also watched one of the kids play a soccer game and otherwise hung around and enjoyed the nice not-quite-fall weather. Oh! And I got to meet Lucie, their 4-month-old kitten, who has their golden retrievers completely under her thumb, and is friendly and adorable to us monkeys, too.
In the middle of the week we reversed things and Debbi came up to stay at Dad’s for a couple of nights. We went to a couple of our favorite restaurants, and went out to visit Mom, where we went shopping at Frugal Fannie’s. Debbi and Mom found some stuff, while I mostly played games on my iPhone while they were shopping. I remarked that I’m much more patient with shopping expeditions that don’t interest me than I was when I was, say, 12. Unfortunately when we got back, we found that Mom had lost her apartment keys. We suspected that she dropped them when she was trying on clothes. Fortunately, Mom wanted to go back the next weekend, and we enquired at their service desk, and sure enough they had found them! So, all ended well.
Debbi’s stay at Dad’s culminated in us driving down to Cape Cod for a day. I’ve probably mentioned before that my parents have rented a cottage in Orleans, but it’s been close to 20 years since I joined them. Dad and I have driven down for day trips in the past, and I wanted to go down and show Debbi around.
We visited Orleans and Chatham, both of which are fun places to visit even in the offseason (which it was). We had lunch at Cooke’s and had some successful shopping expeditions before driving around. Then we drove up to Provincetown, which was less successful: I remember it has having many quirky stores with neat stuff to be found, but now it seems to be a collection of touristy stores, candy stores, and junk stores. Pretty disappointing. No doubt there’s still some good stuff there to find, but an hour’s walk down main street didn’t find it. (Well, with the exception of Puzzle Me This, which is an excellent casual game store, well worth a visit.)
We zipped back to Orleans to watch the sunset (which was better attended than the early afternoon beach), as it’s one of the two places on the east coast where I’ve seen the sun set over water (the other being over the Gulf of Mexico from Florida), and then went to dinner at Land Ho!, the one place we went on the trip which was wall-to-wall packed. Then I dropped Debbi off at her sister’s house and drove back to collapse into bed. It was a long day, but fun.
With all of that activity, the trip went by rather quickly. Suddenly it was time to head back.
We flew home last Sunday. Our flight was delayed an hour and a half, and we arrived an hour late. And on top of that, they lost my suitcase somehow (despite it being a direct flight). Fortunately it was just misplaced, and they delivered it the next day (6 minutes before the end of the window they gave us, amusingly enough). We took Monday off to reorient ourselves, and Tuesday it was back to work for both of us.
Since then we’ve been getting back into our routine. Debbi unfortunately has caught a cold, which I seem to have dodged (so far). The weather has been gorgeous – hard to believe it’s already fall.
