There's a lot to consider when you are going to be away from home for five weeks. If you receive and pay all of your bills on line (we do), you're good. You can hire someone to temporarily mow your lawn, you can move your plants to shady spots, and you can stop your mail. (Well, you're supposed to be able to stop your mail - more on that in a minute.)
What is harder to ignore is the pesky list of things that could happen while you're away. A tree could fall on your roof, lightening could take out your TV, some water-based-thingy could go wonky and the next thing you know you have a few inches of water in your house.
Emily, thank you.
We are very lucky, we have Emily. As soon as she knew we were coming to Ireland for an extended period, she offered to check on our house. With Emily, you know it's a serious offer, she doesn't say things just to say them. She does what she says she's going to do. I was immediately grateful.
In addition to watching our house, she endured our pre-travel "orientation" to 101 Tolers Road. She suffered the detail about the HVAC, door locks, hot water heaters, main water cut off and more. We bought her dinner after torturing her; but still, she cheerfully put up with our intensity just prior to departure.
Of course, Emily offered to do things I didn't want her to do - like water the plants on the deck. I gave her a firm no on that - and let her know we were turning off our water main. I don't have a picture but I know she hauled water to our house because she didn't like the way the plants were looking. And back to that promise from the USPS, Emily has been picking up our mail every couple of days. Despite the mail hold I placed, the second mail hold I placed, and the fill out a form if your hold isn't working action I took, mail is still coming to my house. So Emily's commitment to do four checks on our house (once a week) has turned into a lot more due to the unplanned mail duty. USPS, you need to deliver more than mail and bring your customer service up a notch. (Sorry, Dad).
I have to admit my favorite thing about Emily watching our house is not the peace of mind (although that's comforting), it's the regular text messages. To protect our reputations, I'll share just one; this text from Emily was an update on the hostas in my front yard. A little background: Because we have more deer than God intended, I fiercely protect the hostas with weekly sprays of Liquid Fence. You guessed it, she offered to do the spraying but I put my foot down on that.
About a week after I left, I got this text, letting me know that the lawn person we hired had shown up and ...
Thanks for the LOL moment, Emily. More importantly, thank you for being you. I owe you something similar, that's what friends are for.