Trading Spaces

I had a wonderful weekend. First, one of my co-workers wanted to switch hours with me so that I was working the overnight this weekend. This was great because it meant I wasn't going in at 7 a.m. on Saturday, which meant sleepover at the house! I'm house-sitting until Tuesday, and they gave me their car while they're in Mexico, too. The guys just wanted to stay at home and drink, and Beth was in Orlando on a business trip, so it was just Emily and I. We drank boxed wine and played music so loud that we set the alarm off. I spilled some wine on one of their couches, but I put Zout on it and the stain came right off. Then we painted each other's nails and watched cable, and slept in their comfy big beds. It was so nice to have a queen sized bed.

Then we wanted to get out of the city while we still had a car, so we looked in our Maryland day-trip book and this one place looked very nice. The Chesapeake and Ohio Falls Park, about 50 miles from Baltimore. The guys didn't come because they were too hung over from their "40's Friday" When we were driving there, we made a detour to see the Washington D.C. Temple We saw it driving down the Beltway and Emily asked me what it was "The City of Oz," I said offhandedly. But we wanted to find out what it was. Then there was a little park there that had exercises that we did and found out we're so out of shape. Then we got lost trying to get back to the highway and toured Chevy Chase. I don't get big houses on little pieces of land.

The Falls were beautiful, and we went on the Billy Goat trail. There were all these warnings posted before the trail, like give yourself enough time to finish it before dark and be in good physical shape. We scoffed at the sign-scoffed at it! But it was true. There were parts where we were scrambling up the side of huge rocks. I found out that Emily is scared of heights, but she sucked it up enough to do it. I slammed my leg into a rock and have a bruise the size of my fist on my thigh now.

Emily was talking about whether to go to Michigan or Cornell Law school. She said she was tired of the Midwest and would like to live in "New England". I told her Cornell is not in New England. It's 90 miles from my house in New York. "Hey, I'm living in the "South" now, and "New England" next year," she said. Just so she can say she's lived all over the country.

When we got back, Emily went upstairs before me. "What" What? What?" she kept saying. "I'm in Michelle's room." I ran upstairs and looked into our room. At first I thought that the guys had moved our beds around, and put the couch and the ironing board in our room. But where was all of our stuff that was usually lying on our floor? I thought they must have stored it all in Michelle's room, so I opened the door. That's when I realized that they had switched our rooms. Jon had even put the old pieces of tape over Em's bed, moved the old piece of string I had hung my Christmas cards over, and all the stuff under our beds. It was no mean feat to move our room perfectly when it was so messy. A great prank. And we're too lazy to switch them back. Michelle's room is slightly bigger and has more windows. I don't know why we didn't choose it in the beginning. I guess we were seduced by the thought of having a balcony, even though we haven't used it in months. It's still very jarring. The room is sort of a mirror image now, and there are tiny things the men got wrong that I notice now. We would have never moved on our own, but since the men did all the work for a prank, we're pretty happy with it.