Sitting on a House

First off, to my daily readers, I need to apologize. I thought that I had scheduled Part II of Copenhagen for yesterday. However, when I logged on this morning to post a very short "playing hooky" message for today, I realized nothing had posted for the first of July.

I decided to save the hooky post for the future and scheduled the already written Copenhagen post for this morning. Sorry! You may now return to your regulary scheduled post below.

The only reason that I feel free to write about the current trip that my honey and I are taking is because we have an awesome young man living at our house and taking care of it for us. Housesitting, if you will, although our roof is quite tall and dangerous, so I hope he does all his sitting inside.

It's such a ridiculous phrase, it got me curious. Turns out that housesit is a twentieth-century word that followed the word babysitting. Babysitting showed up in the United States sometime in the late forties according to several dictionaries. Not very old, but not new either.

But back to our housesitter. He is an Italian student working on his Ph.D. and is very polite. I know he is polite because he didn't say anything about our incredible mess AND he took us out to a very nice dinner. 

It's very calming to know that there is someone at your home when you're gone. Someone responsible who will collect any mail that the post office mistakenly delivers, who will pick up the free weekly newspaper that you can't unsubscribe from, who will bring inside the religious tracts, ads, and other pieces of paper that accumulate.

So thanks to those willing to live in a stranger's house, try to figure out their television set, wonder why they have three bottles of mustard in the fridge. I salute you!