Houseguests

You know the story of the Princess and the Pea? The queen wants to find a true princess for her adorable son so she puts a pea under a stack of 20 mattresses and invites all the most beautiful young ladies to come spend the night at their house—sort of like President Clinton did—but non of them discovered the pea. One cold, dark rainy night a bedraggled young woman comes to the door and begs a room and the queen, completely worn out from houseguests, says, “Oh just let here stay in the Pea Room.”

The next morning the young woman comes down to breakfast and she’s exhausted. “I tossed all night long, madam. There were boulders in that mattress!” And the queen knew that she had found the true princess and that her son would have someone who whould nag him to death after she was gone.

Is this a houseguest, or what?

In our little haven away from the world, to continue the fairy tale theme, there are two people the mommy and the daddy, better known as, respectively, the happy cheerful, loving, welcoming good fairy, and the ogre who never even wants anyone to eat with use.

But you MUST have houseguests sometime!

There are relatives, for one; adorable grandchildren who need someone to feed them sugary breakfast cereals and homemade cookies. And those interesting educational people you want your kids to see so that they won’t grow up to be pigs—people from the Folkfest and foreign exchange students are in this category. And old friends from college that you need to live with again to be reminded that you really didn’t ever have that much in common in the first place. I love to live with people for a few days—or have them over to eat—just to see what they’re like.

And there is absolutely nothing so good for a woman’s ego as a hungry college student with a pot roast and mashed potatoes on a Sunday afternoon.

HOWEVER, sometimes the ogre is right. Every now and then you get “the real princess.” They will notice the cobwebs in the corners and they will only eat five foods, which they will not tell you about until you’re putting the potato salad on the table. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? We only eat organic. Where are those potatoes from? The only potatoes we eat are from Uzbekistan.”

“Well, the only potatoes we eat are fro Ore-Ilda and you should consider yourself lucky that I’m grating cheese on top of this Hamburger Helper.”

Needless to say, these are the people your dog will barf on, the ones who will find a fair in their salad. You kids will burp, your husband will, well, you know, toot, and they will sit on “the wet spot” no matter where it is or what it is. You will remember once again that aside from your adorable personality and clever decorating schemes, you are the Scarlet O’Hara of housekeeping. “I’ll just think about that tomorrow.”

These people are guaranteed to show up every ten houseguests or so.

So what to do? Do you become a wretched recluse, slouched together in front of the TV actually laughing together at commercials? Think about that for a minute and cringe. You can’t give up now, after one little setback.

Houseguests are a great way to get out of a rut. Suddenly you see that veritable metropolis of spiders is living in your rafters and that you haven’t worn anything but sweatpants for three months. All your napkins say “Taco Bell” and you’re eating with plastic forks. Your kids can recite menus from every fast food place in town.

Houseguests make you talk to one another, even if it’s only because of the anxiety of having someone see what your bathroom looks like. “No one can use the towels until after Aunt Martha’s left!”

You take all the junk off the dining room table, in my case, photo albums I plan to do, and make new resolutions. Always a fun thing.

The best part of houseguests is that no matter how big your credit card bills are or how old the car is, no matter how scruffy the kids, or frustrating the husband, everything is always so great when they leave.