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Thursday, January 15, 2004 Basement Files: Ask the sitter
Every few months, we ask professional house sitter Darren Sholtis to share his popular caretaking tips with Mercury readers. Today, Sholtis answers your questions about the dos and don'ts of modern house sitting.
Dear Darren, I'm starting a week-long house-sitting gig this Friday and I'm wondering about the food thing. I mean, how much of their food can I eat before I have to start replacing it? In other words, what does "make yourself at home" really mean? --Mark V.
Dear Mark, As you probably suspect, the phrase "make yourself at home" means essentially this: We wish you moderate comfort in our absence. But please remember that you are still a guest. As such, we hope that you inhabit our home with the caution and deference of an imposing visitor. And you probably will for the first day or so. But we're realists and we understand that, over time, you may come to feel very much at home here. If so, please have the good grace to hide that galling transition from our returning eyes. It's all part of the setup, Mark. They vacuumed in the hopes of spotting your footprints in the master bedroom. And you're going to vacuum to erase all signs of your trespass. They're going to hide things. You're going to find them and pretend you didn't. And yes, you're going to deplete their winter store of food. But you're going to restock the larder as if you hadn't. It's just the nature of things. Take that little bowl of candy by the computer. It's a little thing, but in that little bowl are all the rules you need to know about the rights and responsibilities of the ravenous house sitter. You're going to use that computer, even if you're not supposed to. And you're going to eat that candy. And 99 percent of the time, that's fine because it's an easily replaceable brand. But the trap here is your seasonal candy. Nothing betrays the amateur house sitter like blowing through a bowl full of special Halloween edition M&Ms and then rushing to the store to find only the traditional color scheme. Somewhere before your fourth handful, ask yourself, "Am I safely within the seasonal window?" For instance, the autumnal M&Ms, with their loamy oranges and browns, are pulled from the shelves faster than you think to make way for the Christmas M&Ms. And once they're gone, they're gone. It's already mid-January and if you think you're going to replace red-and-green Christmas M&Ms at this late date, you're sadly fucked, my friend. And if you can't find the right color, you might as well just leave the bowl empty. An empty bowl makes you look greedy and childishly weak-willed. But a bowl filled with the wrong color of M&Ms makes you look furtive and sneaky. And if the homeowners feel you've been sneaky in their absence, I can assure you the wife's lingerie drawer will be thoroughly debriefed about your visit. If you can master the candy bowl, you can handle the more difficult challenges throughout the kitchen. But the rule stays the same: Eat only what you can replace. For instance, you'll find stuff in the pantry you wouldn't dream of eating on the first day. But by midnight of day four it'll look pretty goddamn irresistible. And that's okay. Just know what you're eating. If your friends favor off-brand snacks, then you better know which of the five supermarket chains in your city sells TasteRite Potato Chips. You can't just go grab some Lay's and call it even. Did you just open a boutique hot sauce sold only at an obscure North Carolina bluegrass festival? Are you inhaling ready available Pop Tarts or the weird found-only-in-the-Pakistani-store Toastettes? The amateur house sitter will devour Cheese Nips and replace them with Cheez-Its. Who would possibly notice such a thing? Her name is wife and you would be wise not to underestimate her. So think as you eat. God is in the details. It's assumed you'll be given free access to the liquor cabinet and as long as you stick to brand-name whiskeys in non-novelty bottles you'll be fine. But by clouding your judgment, the liquor cabinet can bring with it a host of other food-related problems. Just consider the following scenario. It's 2 a.m., you're drunk, and you're making your way through your friends' "Sopranos" DVDs. At the end of disc two, you hit the freezer for snacks. Hey, look, it's a giant Costco box of frozen taquitos. Man, something greasy and salty sounds good right now. And they will be good, even though you drunkenly forget to turn them over halfway through their baking cycle. But before you preheat and dig out the cookie sheet, ask yourself, "Wait a minute...do I even have a Costco card?" It's not easy asking yourself these questions when you're buzzed, harder still to answer them honestly. And yet you must. Think about it. Where are you going to find generic taquitos? In your drunken haze, you're already thinking about buying the more expensive El Monterey taquitos at Albertson's and mixing them into the generic box. But on some level you know they'll be taller and skinnier, with a two-shades-lighter grease coloration. That's not going to work. The next time your friends spread taquitos out on the cookie sheet, it's going to look like a police lineup from 1920s Alabama. As you get more desperate, you'll consider eating all the generics and then sneaking the name-brand taquitos back into the generic box. And it'll seem like a satisfying solution. But it's not. They don't taste the same. Someone will notice. And you'll be busted.
Next week: Darren Sholtis shows you step-by-step how to re-create the solid inch of rime frost you drunkenly scraped off the year-old ice cream. |
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