Stay-cation

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