Getaway

This past weekend the family packed up the mini-van and went to the beach on the West coast of Florida. Lauren has a friend who owns a vacation home just North of Clearwater and told us we could use it whenever they were not. The offer has been out there for about year and we finally took them up on it. Since the house is only occupied every so often, when we arrived, we had get the house situated. We had to turn on the water, the hot water heater, make the beds and what not.

We enjoyed a semi-relaxing weekend. I say semi because with a 2 and 1/2 year old and a 3 month old, one can never be completely relaxed. We spent time at the local aquarium down by the docks where Max got to feed Manta Rays and pet turtles. We window-shopped in the town that is the self-proclaimed sponge capital of the world. We also enjoyed the beach.

Before we departed back to Orlando on Sunday we had to make sure that the house was exactly as it was when we arrived. During the time we were there we made sure that everything we used, was cleaned and put back in order, as we used it. We did not want to spend all of Sunday cleaning so we did as we went along. We wanted to leave the house perfect for Lauren’s friend, who would be coming down in November.

We spent Sunday morning at the beach and when we got back to the house Lauren ran the vacuum and watched the kids as I used the bathroom to pee and take a shower. Lauren then took a shower as I stripped the bedclothes from the bed and gathered the towels to do the laundry. We wanted to make it like we were never there. While I was gathering the laundry I also grabbed one of the red placemats from the table that Max had finger painted with mustard.
As I was switching the laundry from the washer to the dryer I realized that the tan colored towels looked a little, okay not a little but a lot, pink. Oh Shit. The damn red placemat bled onto the rest of the laundry. I inspected everything and realized it was only the towels that were affected. Now I had a moral dilemma. Do I hide the towels? Or do I confess to Lauren what I did? Surely I could just hide the towels in the linen closet and act like nothing ever happened. But that would not be the right thing to do. Lauren’s friend was nice enough to lend us her house, free of charge; I should just fess up and hope that Lauren and her friend would understand my stupidity. They are just towels.

I explained to Lauren what happened. She said that she would just email her friend and explain what happened and that it, hopefully, would be no problem. We finished cleaning and packed the car and did our final check of the house.

Hot water heater off? Check.
All doors locked? Check.
Laundry and dishes done? Check.
Everything back in place? Check.

We headed out the door and Lauren asked me to wait before I turned the water off. She had to use the bathroom and wanted to do a final walk through of the house. I waited in the car with the kids. When she came back out and got into the car she said, “It is a good thing that I need to use the bathroom.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because someone forgot to flush the toilet.” She said.

“Oh. I didn’t flush it because I did not want to wait for the shower temperature to change. I forgot to flush it when I got out of the shower. It is good that you went back in there.”

“I know. That would have stunk if it had been sitting there for the next month, when they finally come back down to use the house.” Lauren laughed.

“And here, I was all worried about the pink towels.”