What's for Supper?

A friend recently posted a Facebook status seeking someone who would like to rent a room from him. It was one of those everyday things that unexpectedly captures the imagination, and I've been thinking about the room ever since.

Realistically, the room is probably 8x10' with low-pile beige carpet and plastic blinds, but I prefer to envision it as a spa-like space: airy fabrics; delicious herbal teas that sell for like $36 dollars a box; soft nature-ish music with some sort of... panflute? softly tootling along with the birds. Or sometimes I see it more like Pinterest's idea of an opium den: rich brocades; moody lighting; a metric pantload of pillows. Regardless of the decor, someone is usually rubbing my feet in my imaginings of this room.

My favourite design feature, however, is that no one would ask me what's for supper in the room. I get asked about supper a lot. (Also breakfast, lunch, and multiple snacks every day - not that I'm counting.) If I had a secret room somewhere, no one could saunter into it and say, "What's for supper?" as if I was not presently working at my job and no one else in the house could possibly be capable of defrosting a pound of beef without my managerial involvement.

"What's for supper?" follows me on family vacation, too. I seem to be only person on vacation that is consistently assumed not to be on vacation - or not really, because obviously no one else in the house is capable of meal planning or preparation without my managerial involvement. They just stare at me with their mouths open all day, like hungry nestlings. "Hop to it, lady. We're not gonna feed ourselves."

I like to leverage my resentment at being the only person who has both paid for the vacation and is expected to continue to provide service to everyone else while on the vacation, into ostensible "couple's time." In fact, it accounts for several of my Top Ten Couple's Activities to Help Keep the Magic Alive During a Family Vacation:

10. Make a grocery list together. I have to use my brain on vacation? Well guess what, dear, now you bloody well do, too. Get your thinking cap on mofo, 'cause we all need to eat.

9. Go grocery shopping together. Oooh, we left the kids at home! Now it's like a real date! Isn't grocery shopping on vacation fun?

8. Cook breakfast together.

7. Cook lunch together.

6. Decide where to go out for supper together because you're both already sick of cooking while on vacation and it's only been two days.

5. Put the big one in charge of the little one out on the beach, and retreat inside to have a nice nap together.

4. Check how bad the weather is back home each morning, then enjoy the sunrise on the dock with a cup of coffee and bask in your mutual sense of having achieved excellent value-for-money.

3a. Sensually Liberally apply sunscreen to exposed areas, and you had better not miss any spots! Get under those straps! Did you rub it in?

3b. Sensually Gingerly apply Solarcaine to affected areas. (Optional: bring up how you told him he should have put on sunscreen, too.)

2. Offer to pee on your significant other's jellyfish stings. I say "offer" because apparently, it's not necessarily something your significant other will be interested in taking you up on. No, not even the one on his arm just to see if it really works, and not even for science, and definitely not the one on his face you fucking pervert what is wrong with you quit cackling like a maniac.

1. Check each other for sand infestations.