Housesitting

There are rules about house sitting.

You see, house sitting is only half about feeding the fish, petting the cat and locking the doors. The other half is about exploring.

Its the initial walk-through when you arrive, surveying what has been specifically left out for you and finding what's hidden inside. Its about finally walking into that storage closet that you have been curious about the last 6 months with this family. Its about the upper cabinets in the kitchen that you wonder what could possibly be stored there ( only to find animal crackers that put a smile on your face — and like the toddlers you care for —sneaking a few out, making the lion roar and then eating the cookies swiftly).

After climbing into the comfy big bed, talking to the lonely cat along the way, you flip through their TiVo-ed shows and get an idea of who it is you've been working for all these years. You test out each pillow, now realizing why people buy contour and body pillows as you cuddle under their covers.

In the morning, once you hunt down the coffee, feed the pesky cat who woke you up too early, and open the blinds to let light glisten in their oversized windows, you begin the quest for the good books. It starts in the living room — with the books you see each time you read from memory Good Night Moon or Counting Kisses. You start a pile on their coffee table, starting with the childcare book that you think will make you a nanny, and transition into classics you've always wanted to read, poetry books that look captivating and finish with a novel that sounds bizarrely beautiful. You know you'll probably glance at the title pages, read a poem or two, and then hope you remember where you pulled them from, but nonetheless, the hunt is necessary. This is your sanity you're talking about.

These, of course, are the rules of housesitting. You feed the cat, you change the fish's water, you read good books and sip the sangria that the family oddly left for you to finish. You daydream about your own "grown-up" life, complete with nursery rhyme rocking chairs and good books you'll never have time to read. You see, housesitting is all about being some place that is not home and making it feel like home, only to realize that this is not your home, this is not your life, and at the end of the week, you gladly go back to your dingy apartment with your four roommates and ignore your own classics sitting on your bookshelf acquiring dust. You hug your roommates, you leave the mess in the closet hidden away and you thank God that you do not have a cat.