I hate having houseguests. I try to discourage people from visiting me. Last year I had four extra people in the house for a week…it was the longest week of the year. I don’t really mind the cooking and cleaning, I just have a hard time being pleasant for that long.
Yeah, I don’t like having house guests either. One night is plenty…any more than that and I would rather they get a hotel room (Comments from Friends.)
You know, I love these rants. It always makes me hope that at least one messy disrespectful houseguest will read it and think twice about how they behave the next time they visit someone else.

I recently had a house guest that I have known for some years. Let’s just say he was down on his luck and needed a couple of nights to get his bearings. He sat at my kitchen table the whole time on his laptop. Never offered any sort of help, and when he left on day four he stole from me. He took my car keys as well as some other items. Now mind you I am not talking about a vagrant here this man is a lawyer. This friend who also use to be a part of my life and thank God no longer is took advantage of my wanting to help out a friend in need. When he was comforted with what he had took what do you think he did? Yep he lied, was as indigent as the day is long, until I found my stuff in his car. Needless to say, I felt used, hurt and let down by someone who had shared such a big part of my life at one time.
I know he lost more than I did, he lost a friend a very good friend and while I had done the right thing by being a friend, he doesn’t know the meaning of what a friend is. I told him you know if you asked I would have given whatever is you wanted. (Except my car keys.) He took more from me then a few items that in time will be forgotten, he took my trust in someone I felt I could.
This narcissist is still in control! He never wanted what he took from me in the first place and only took it from me to punish me. He was playing mind-games with me. The narcissist is a pollutant to my emotional life. And I should have treated him as such. It’s tough, it hurts like hell, but in the end it’s the only answer. I learned an important lesson here. You can help some of the people some of the time but you cannot help some of the people all the time.

How to be a Good House Guest
Be neat and tidy
Do keep your space neat – if you’ve been given a spare bedroom, or even if not, make your bed! Keep your belongings confined to a small neat area, not lying all over the coffee or side tables in the house (on a table in your room is fine). If the room you are using is actually someone’s bedroom, it is only polite to keep the door ajar (unless you’re getting dressed) so they can access things they need from their room.
Ditto for the bathroom – clean up after yourself! Wipe down the counter and shower after use, and don’t scatter your toiletries on the vanity and leave them there. Ugh!
Do help out with the household chores. At least offer to cook meals or get takeout (instead of letting your hosts cook for you all the time); clean up the dishes, help wipe down the table or counter, vacuum, etc!
Do, please, clean up before your departure. Remove the sheets, bedding and towels provided for you and launder them if possible. Re-make up your bed for the next person, or for the regular occupant of the room. Empty the trash basket in your room. You might also ask your host for cleaning supplies so you can do the bathroom as well. Double check to make sure none of your possessions are left behind. The last thing a host wants to do is make an extra trip to the post office to send back something you left
Thank your hosts

Don’t be a slob
Don’t be a lazy slob – pitch in and do your part to keep the house neat and tidy. This goes especially for the guys, post-holiday meal or during those New Year’s bowl games. Haul that beer gut up off the couch and venture into the kitchen to help prepare food or clean up! Don’t expect the women folk to do all the dirty work while you’re busy enjoying yourself or snoring on the sofa!!!

Don’t stay too long
Don’t overstay your welcome. Repeat, don’t overstay your welcome. Three days or so is a good amount of time for a visit. For certain house guests, anything over a day might be long enough. Over a week or so may start feeling like an imposition on your host’s regular work and lifestyle. Even the closest of family members needs their space after a while. If you leave your hosts with a good feeling towards you and your visit, maybe they would like to invite you back in the future. And please whatever you do, don’t steal from someone who has opened their home to you.

Implying that at some certain age we have reached the peek of our usefulness and our lives are slowing or fast in some cases sliding down that slippery slope on our way to being helpless.

This is the picture depicted on party favors, cards, advertising and yes they even made a movie, “The Over The Hill Gang.” This starts about around age fifty, you know the jokes, the smiles and shaking of heads, the AARP cards arrive in the mail and you are given discounts at stores, restaurants . movies and perks for achieving such a great age. I do not find this in any way amusing, helpful, (except for the perks.) to be of value to anyone.

Our obsession with youth and all it’s glory is way over rated. I was unhappy, struggling, and climbing those hills and still climbing hills at age fifty seven. I used to use my body to do things that I learned along the way I could use my mind to archive in a way I never did in youth. My footing is surer and stronger than it was in my twenty’s thirty’s and yes even in my forties. I no longer keep doing the same things and expecting a different result of my actions. Nor do I see life as a point when we say all is done, all is finished, I have climbed that hill, nothing left to do but slide into old age and give it up. Why do we allow this? Some might say they find it funny, amusing and an endearment of projecting that someone over fifty is done.

This is done by our society, advertisers, movies, television and yes even we are guilty of doing it to ourselves. Why let others define who you are? Why let some silly saying give you thought that you are no longer of use to this world? Why indeed.
Because the very people that are promoting this foolishness are over fifty, not some young up and coming executive. It is the mainstream media that shows us that only young, thin, beautiful, rich people with glamorous careers are worth anything. I think in this culture, we are entirely youth-obsessed, and so we view aging as a catastrophe — that it only brings negatives. When you look in other cultures where aging looks different. The aged are sages and treated as such.
I had thought that turning 50 was going to be the big milestone. But, in retrospect, it wasn’t, I just had a another party.

Vanity has been one of the best reasons to sell anything, from healthy food, skin care, hair conditioning, gym accessories, botox, silicone and so on.
We have a “look” culture and beauty stereotypes that do not allow us to appreciate beauty of aging, and this is a fact that most of the companies in beauty business take advantage of.

Since life expectancy has increased in last decades, I think most of the people should for instance consider the conditions in which they are going to get old and not the number of wrinkles and gray hair they are going to have when becoming old people. In this point I believe the concept of healthy aging should be more important as culture, life style and attitude towards our own future life conditions than physical look.

Anyway, we all agree we cannot stop the marching onward of time nor can we turn back the clock. But we can stop buying into the notion that as people approach a certain age, they are done. We have reached the panicle of the mountain top and all that is left is the old folks home.

We do need recognizable ‘names’ to come along and start a revolution that aging is to be embraced. That those with lines and wrinkles still have a life, are still worth something. Since the majority of the USA is baby boomers, shouldn’t we start this revolution? It’s not about beauty, it’s about character and how that character is presented. There, you have your first slogan now go climb that hill.