Be My Guest

I love having house guests.  Friends, family, friends of family friends---love it.

I lay in bed restlessly the night before a guest's arrival wondering if her favorite soda is still Squirt, if she will notice the spritz of lavender oil that I put on the bed sheets, wondering what we should have for breakfast the first day, hoping that Roldy won't pee on any of her baggage.

Excited to the point of delirium.

Comfort is important, so I do all of the standard pleasantries that you read about for hosting:

~ Magazines by the bed, to include a local guide, and a candle that won't fight with a lavender spritz here or there.

~ A bottle of water with an Ann Taintor coaster.

~ Photos of fun times in the past accented with a bowl of chocolates.

These are normal preparations.

I should just stop there.

But, I don't. Didn't:

~ The pile on the fluffy bathroom rugs welcomes hand brushed messages. Why not? I put a heart on the one by the toilet.

~ Thanks to Pinterest, I have been introduced to toilet paper origami. While it was more time on the toilet than I like to spend in a day, the pleated tuck is much more welcoming than a folded point. Worth it. I might just force Jill into drinking a jug of water the second she gets off the plane.

~ And I couldn't resist positioning the fake, rotating video camera with the blinky red light behind the guest bedroom curtains.  Best $4.99 at Harbor Freight I've ever spent.  It's not creepy, right?

Now I just have to wait for her to get here. 

Maybe I will start planning out the bed and breakfast that I want to have some day.  Oh goodness, no. I couldn't have it be your run of the mill B&B.  You see, what I'm going to do is wait for the reservation to come in. Then, start stalking them.  Dig up some old photos from their home town high school yearbooks to display in the room. Find their grandmom's coffee cake recipe from the old church recipe book, and serve it that first morning. Perhaps even learn some family history on ancestry.com and leave a list of people they didn't know they were related to on a notepad beside the bed.

I can see it now.

Dear Bruce & Debby, 

Just wanted to let you know that all those years that Bruce thought his dad was out of town for conferences, he was really in Phoenix starting a second family.  You have a brother, two sisters and ten nieces and nephews...and they live just down the street! 

Breakfast (Debby's grandma's bacon egg bake) will be served promptly at 8:30. I have taken the liberty of switching it to turkey bacon because of Bruce's drastically high cholesterol levels at his last physical.  Are you feeding him lard for a bedtime snack, Debby? Shiza. 

Thank you again for staying at Heidi's In Your Business B&B. 

You're welcome.
Heidi 

P.S. Bruce's new-to-him brother, Eddie, will be at breakfast along with his two teenage daughters, one of whom needs a new kidney. You might as well go ahead and donate one Bruce since you are about one flight of stairs away from a triple bypass anyway. What's the worst that could happen? You die and then stop holding Debby back from her dreams? She has been wanting to start that bakery for 15 years now, and if you can't be supportive, then maybe your life insurance check will be.  

P.P.S. I know it is hard to see, but your toilet paper origami is in the shape of a defibrillator.