2015
borrowed houses
maura @ 9:56 pm
The past two weekends I took two short trips, somewhat unusual for this time of year for me since the semester is in full swing, though it was nice to have the time away. Both trips involved stays in rental houses, which is always sort of interesting.
The first was in Toronto — I’d never been there before but was there sans famille (except pas de francais, quel dommage!) to visit with 3 old friends. While we did do a bit of traipsing around the city, the main focus was catching up and hanging out. Our pal who lives there got us an Air B&B house and, while I’m not the biggest fan of the sharing economy (for a variety of reasons, like who gets left out?), this place was perfect for the occasion. A small house in what was described as a trendy neighborhood, it was in a quiet residential area very close to some commercial streets for easy access to food + transportation.
Apparently the folks who own the house are academics who are away, maybe for the year? But it was curious to see how much of their stuff was still there. No clothes in the closets or food in the cupboards, but it almost seemed like that’s all they’d taken. Lots and lots and lots of books, toys too. The house had 4 bedrooms and one was clearly a kids room, but there were a range of children’s books from picture books to YA, which made me wonder how many kids and what ages? Where did they go? When are they coming back? Why do they have two copies of Island of the Blue Dolphins? Is it weird for them to come back to having rented out their house to total strangers? We were very neat and unobtrusive, but it’s still a strange thing to be sitting eating dinner at someone else’s table (tasty pho from a place nearby, yum).
Next up was a long weekend in the Catskills, mostly a treat for the adults in the family who didn’t have a chance to get away in August, though the teen had a reasonably okay time too (barring some hiking-related crabbiness). We missed the cats, who of course don’t travel well, though as Jonathan said they could use some skills so maybe next time we should bring them?
We rented what was described as a woodlands cottage and indeed it was — almost every room was wood-paneled, with the exception of the kitchen. The wood theme was strong throughout with dressers, small shelves and cabinets, even the towel rods all made of wood. The house was sort of hunting lodge style with what amounted to a 1 bedroom apartment on the first floor — living room, eat in kitchen, bathroom, bedroom — and a spiral staircase upstairs to 2 small bedrooms and another bathroom, all tiny and with slanted ceilings tucked under the eaves of the roof. Thank goodness we are a small people since the potential for bumping your head on the ceiling was high.
This house was a bit more beach house-y in that it was clearly a vacation house for the owners. There were board games, a few books, videotapes (of course!), and a usable kitchen, but not a lot of personal effects. Again we speculated: why were there so many Pepsi-branded knick-knacks, did the owner work for Pepsi? Yes, the house was covered in wood paneling, but was it really necessary to have a fire extinguisher in every room? And why was the internet so bad? That last question is kind of facetious — we knew going in that there was no cell service so we assumed that there’d be satellite internet, which is notoriously slow. I’d kind of missed the part about no dishwasher, so it was back to hand-washing for me. But sitting on the back porch was delightful, looking out onto trees with turning + falling leaves while reading or drinking coffee.
We’ve occasionally had friends or family stay in our apartment while we’ve been away, but it’s never been anyone we don’t know. We don’t really ever go away for long enough for that to work, plus there are the cats, sweet but not always the best roommates (sigh, hairballs). I can’t imagine anyone we don’t know staying in our place, what would they think of us? Too many books, slightly shabby and/or Ikea furniture, one desk per person — is that a dead giveaway for an academic? Signs point to yes.
