This weekend we are spending some time with my family. At my boss’s house. Yes, it is a little bit weird but not quite so weird as you might think.
My boss and his wife run a bed and breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It’s outside of the main part of town by about a five or ten minute drive or perhaps a half-hour’s walk and as such is in a fairly low-traffic area. They’ve had break-ins (breaks-in?) a couple of times while they’ve been on holidays in the past and so have taken to having someone come and stay here when they’re away. We’ve done it a couple of times but our entree into the world of landowners has somewhat reduced our availability to provide this service.
My immediate family has something of a tradition of getting together one weekend a year and staying at a hotel someplace to see the touristy sights of whichever city we choose. Niagara Falls, Toronto, camping at Bon Echo, that kind of thing. This year we decided to do a bit of a cycling holiday where we planned to go to a B&B and spend our days biking around. It just so happened that my boss’s B&B is available this weekend and so we are here, at my boss’s house, with my family.
The breaks-in are not the only concern. A fair amount of livestock has accumulated. They have two cats (Spider-man and Joe), a black Lab (Blackie) and several chickens (One of whom is Butterscotch, one Caramel and I’ve forgotten the rest of their names). House-sitting is also animal sitting.
Spider-man (or, as we call him more informally, Spider) is highly affectionate, particularly at night. He has woken Amy up a couple of times by walking over her in bed. Last night he curled up between us and would not be moved. On a previous occasion, we shut the door of the bedroom to keep him from loving us quite so much. When Amy got up in the morning and opened the door, he was sitting in the same place as he had been when we went to bed with a sort of ‘don’t you love me?’ mien.
The chickens are the most recent addition to the menagerie. There are ten or twelve of them and apparently also a rooster though we can’t figure out which one he is. They are supposed to be for egg laying but they didn’t produce anything until just this week. The first two eggs are in the fridge right now with little labels attached that state the date and birth order so when my boss and his wife return, they can celebrate with these, the first fruits of their chicken endeavour.