Last week I took a stay-cation. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it is a
vacation you spend at home but you treat the time off as if you were visiting a tourist place. In essence, you are a tourist in your own
city. Be honest how many of you visit
the tourist attractions in the city in which you live; that is visit the
attractions when you are not playing tour guide for out of town guests.
Well, I had some time between the end of the summer session
and the start of the fall semester, so I decided to make it a real
vacation. I visited places around town,
got lots of take out and read and sewed simply for my enjoyment. I didn’t have papers to grade or student
emails to answer, I even took a little break from my etsy shop. And to really make it feel like a vacation, I
limited my exposure to TV and the
computer (notice I said limit, it is hard to step away entirely).
I did do some typical
things but they were fun typical things.
I started the week with my Quilt Sampler group, that is always fun and
from there went to the library to check out a new book I had on hold, and
bought myself a small pizza. My plan was
to do very little cooking.
Before the week started, I went to the grocery store and bought
muffins for breakfast, a new type of snack, a small box of assorted fancy
chocolates and a bouquet of flowers. The chocolates and flowers are something I
rarely do for myself so since I was on “vacation’ I decided to splurge. And since you are staying at home on a
stay-cation and not spending money on plane tickets or hotel rooms, you can
splurge.
As I just mentioned, I had decided to do little cooking,
so I went out to eat going places where
I knew I would have leftovers which would feed me another day. And again I went to places I don’t go often
and did a little splurging.
So back to my first day, I went to my quilt group, got a new
book from the library and bought a pizza.
I then spent the next two days lounging in my rocker reading my
book. Actually finished it in a day and
a half. I can’t even remember when the
last time was that that happened. And it
was a pleasure book, not a book need to read for my classes. I felt like I was in heaven. I stayed up late reading and blissfully slept
late the next day.
The third day I did a little shopping, again went to some
stores I don’t normally go to including a pet store where I bought some new
fish. I am allergic to most anything
with fur or feathers so I have a little table top fish tank. The fish I have had in the tank for the last
3 ½ years (which is a long time for these fishies), within a month of each
other went to the big fish tank in the sky.
So one memory I will have of my stay-cation is getting some new
roommates. They are neon tetras and both
doing fine although at the time of this writing, still unnamed.
The campus where I work has a planetarium and a dome theater
so I spent one afternoon there watching some films on space and the
ocean. They were wonderful and again
something I don’t do often enough. I
also bought a little heart shaped (you know me and hearts) rose quartz
necklace. I mean what is a vacation
without a souvenir. And then went often
to a Chinese place to get some shrimp and pea pods and an egg roll for dinner. Another
afternoon I went to see a new movie at the theater and made sure I got popcorn
and a soft drink. And once again got
take out on the way home to spend the evening reading my new book.
I spent a couple of days at home sewing some clothes I had
started at the beginning of the summer, so now I have some new clothes for the
school year. That might not be fun for
some of you but it is fun for me. I
escaped to the library once again to get a second book I had on hold (all of
these are new books. This one was just
released this month so I get to read it first.
And this one is fun because it takes place on a cruise so I can read
about traveling even if I hadn’t left my neighborhood.)
No I didn’t travel far from home on my vacation but I
treated the week like it was an away from home vacation. Visited tourist spots, relaxed with a book
(not by a poolside but by a fish tank.) enjoyed the local cuisine and treated
myself to some things I normally wouldn’t do during my hectic life. When the week ended, I had great memories, a
couple of souvenirs, some new friends (of the fin variety) and felt very
relaxed.
The next time you have some time off but can’t go anywhere
outside of your hometown, treat your home town as if you were a tourist and
have your own stay-cation. It is a great way to relax and see some familiar
sites in a new way and maybe pamper yourself a little (oh that fancy candy was
great).
©2019 Cheryl Fillion
Wonderful idea! We often overlook fascinating things close to home.
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