Sadly, I’ve discovered vacation home porn. It started innocently enough. My family wants a get together with my brother’s family this summer. Instead of being crammed into a hotel, I started looking for a vacation rental house where we could enjoy being together for a few days. A nice meeting place halfway between us on the Central Coast with rooms to be together and rooms to be apart.
The house I have my eye on is a dream – five bedrooms, four baths, huge living spaces, a pool, two hot tubs, a kiddie splash pool with a waterfall, a game room with a pool table AND a bocce ball court. Just to top it off. We would never have to leave. Unfortunately, it’s also got dream prices.
Then, over the last few days, I started to branch out. Look at rentals in other places – beach towns like Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach. San Diego. Coronado. Mini-villas in the desert to be had for a song during the blaze of July. You know how it works, you start easy, and next thing you know you’re into the harder stuff.
Last night, a light bulb went off over my head. Wouldn’t people in Europe be renting houses out as well? Turns out, they sure are. Hours escaped from me yesterday as I drooled over stone cottages in Brittany and modern lofts in Paris. I’m sure I’m doing just what the menfolk do – looking and dreaming, considering the options out there in the world, peeking at the little intimate details, escaping from my own life for a bit.
I mentioned that last week I had four deadlines? I made them all. This week I have three more. The 3000 word article that’s due tonight has turned into memoir. Something I can flow through a bit more quickly, with less research. I’ve got two more proposals to do by tomorrow night. And my daughter’s sixth grade teacher has been kind enough to throw a project on the foods of Ancient Greece into the mix, due tomorrow. So that’s ten hours this week I’ll spend at the kitchen table guiding my daughter and her friend, typing, and printing, and cutting, and gluing. Not to mention the food samples we had to go buy for the class.
When I’m under deadline, I’m the most distractible person in the world. Suddenly, everything else on my computer, even the latest Groupon, seems vitally important. Stumbling into this world of bedrooms and bathrooms, lofts and terraces, yards and ponds and pools is not doing me any favors.
Did you know that some people will even trade their house in gorgeous faraway places for my perfectly acceptable one? For FREE??
If you need me, there’s a page of ocean view flats in Cinque Terre that I’ll be scoping out…
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