Home is Where My Heart Is

How I, the biggest homebody I ever heard of, got on so many travel-related mailing lists is a major mystery to me. I get every cruise brochure printed, plus all manner of travel magazines from “girl-trips” to extreme luxury getaways. I have never requested any of this literature — printed or online — and yet I receive endless entreaties to venture out into the big, wide world.

I am not interested in the big, wide world. I like my little tiny world. I like my back porch (even if it is still only half-done after FOUR YEARS under construction by my beloved husband, The Cutest Boy in the World, thus earning it the name of “Divorce Porch,” but enough said about THAT). I like looking out at our little corner of the lake. I like drinking my own coffee, wearing my own robe, sitting on my own rocking chair, mouth-breathing my own fresh air.

One of the Top 10 commandments perennially issued by travel gurus is that We Should Not Expect Things in Foreign Countries to Be Like They Are at Home … that’s a deal-breaker for me right there. That’s one of my very favorite things in the whole big, wide world: familiarity. I looooove me some same old, same old! I can’t get enough of it actually.

A recent travel article caught my eye. It was concerning some little-known laws in foreign countries. I read it, only to further bolster my own convictions regarding Staying My Self at Home. I was shocked, to say the least, to learn that in certain regions of Italy, women of ill-repute or evil looks are forbidden to enter cheese factories. There was no information as to how these things are judged or by whom. How bad does one’s reputation have to be to get one banned? Who decides if one has an evil look about them? I can tell you, cheese is important to me, and if, by some fluke, I was somehow persuaded to go all the way to some cheese-making section of Italy (which is FAR), I would definitely want to go to the very home of the cheese, and if, upon arrival at the doorstep, I was denied entrance because my looks and/or demeanor did not suit some unidentified individual — well, I would be severely miffed; so that's one more reason to just stay safely home where hardly anybody cares what I look like, including me.

If I was of a mind to go anywhere — which I most decidedly am NOT — they would have a hard time getting me out of some of those luxurious settings if, in fact, they ever successfully lured me there.

My ultimate life goal is to lie down, and I have seen a few choice destinations where that is literally all that is required of the patrons — they all but encourage you to pretend you’re in a coma for a week or two while they do everything, but chew your food for you. I might enjoy a place like that. If it didn’t mean I’d have to leave my back porch to get there. Too much trouble … definitely too much trouble.