Do you have a place where you go to hide from others in your household?
One of my favorite places to hide is the bathroom. It wasn’t always such a great place, but then I had children… and sometimes it was the only place I could be alone. (True, sometimes even that didn’t work, but they outgrew that stage pretty quickly.) By the time I had 4 little boys crawling and walking about the house, I had firmly established the bathroom (preferably my own bathroom) as a place of refuge. I would excuse myself from the noisy, messy kitchen table on the pretense of needing to use the toilet, but what I really needed was a Rest Room. Perhaps I would bring along a book or a catalog, but mostly I wanted the peace and quiet. If I was really lucky, my husband would bathe all of the children and get them into pajamas before finding me. 🙂 Not that I was fooling him; he knew what I needed by 7 o’clock in the evening — a break!
Now that the kids are older and no one needs hands-on help with evening routine, I still take the time to hide to rest. (My husband does this, too, but his rest room is down in the basement with a video game controller in hand.) I find a quiet room where I can read and not be bothered by requests, a place where I can ignore the dirty dishes in the sink and the burnt-on spills on the stove top. I’m pretty sure that the kitchen fairies are not paying a visit in my absence, but for some reason I really need the time away from the mess for just a little while.
I try to keep a stash of reading material handy for a quick getaway. Sometimes I grab the latest book I am reading for book club, sometimes I take an interesting catalog that arrived in the daily mail. Recently I have been picking up a magazine that miraculously appeared in our house, with no tell-tale signs of its origins. It’s called AFAR: where travel can take you and it has been called America’s best travel magazine. I am now dreaming of spending a week in the Lower Engadine region of Switzerland and visiting the Matakana Coast of New Zealand. I haven’t yet read the section on Tiawan, but I suspect it will be added to my wish list of places to visit and experience.
Where do you go to hide from others in your household? (Or if you don’t do that now, where did you go to hide from them… because I suspect that you’ve done it, too!)
What reading material do you keep on hand for your escape?
Kcinnova's World 
Lately I have been dreaming of New Zealand.
Yes, sometimes escape is necessary–I had a hard and fast 7 p.m. bedtime even though I didn’t go to bed until midnight or later.
I remember needing to take that walk around the pond occasionally. That was and still is my escape. I’m just not escaping from kidlets any longer.. I just plain escape.
I hide from society in general.
Basically though, I can sit down to read or surf the net or whatever and be in my own little world and ignore everyone around me without too much trouble.
Usually I walk the dogs. Looking down from the top of the hill at the rest of the world usually engenders a calmness of mind.
Since I´ve had an empty house for a few years now, there is no need to escape. That´s the good thing about the empty nest. But when the girls were little I escaped to the bathroom as well. It was the only place for some peace and quiet. It seems like a hundred years ago… 🙂
I only live with my sister and I am a alone pretty often. So I don’t have that escaping need. I guess my bedroom is where I go if I happen to need to escape from the kitchen or the living room.
I am currently reading Madame Bovery. I promised myself that that this year I’d read at least 5 classics that I have not read before. I read so much chic lit and crime mystery that I thought I should polish myself a bit.
as the teenager is growing more and more i am finding myself longing for a space to retreat to but currently in the 900 square foot apartment, there is no option…this is where i remind myself that patience is a virtue and leaving to go to the laundry mat is not all that bad…
I have a studio-office. It is rather small, but it’s on the second floor so I can get away from the sound of the television. Sometimes, I’ll just sit at the desk with my laptop open, while crocheting or reading a book. 🙂
when it’s warm, i go out on the balcony. when it’s cold, i’ll go in the bedroom! and I take my Nook with me 🙂
LOL…I think of the bathroom for only one thing to do LOL well besides shower and shave LOL Hmmm I’ve never thought of an escape place or quite place…I guess it would have to be just a long walk on the beach or rather any place close to the ocean…it a natural escape hatch for me 🙂
Amoeba and I each have our own offices. We both lived alone so long before meeting each other that we find it necessary to have our own personal quiet time. We’ve arranged to take it separately together. That works out nicely.
Like Jenn, I tend to go to bed early and stay up until Nick comes to bed reading or zoning on the tube. Like you, I often take a book to the bathroom an soak in the tub. I bought a really comfortable bath pillow that supports my neck and back so I can read comfortably. When the kids were younger, I often escaped to the library.
Soaking in the bathtub , with book in hand, had been the place for my quiet time. However, last year I began to doze regularly and after dropping too many paperbacks in the tub and then trying to pry wet pages apart in order to finish the books, I decided quiet time in the bathtub would become a fond memory. Alas, no one comments about the warped books anymore.
Ah, the joys of being single 😉 When I was a kid though and living at home, we just went to our separate rooms. As a teen, I would just go for a bike ride in the summer or to the basement in the winter.
When the kids were toddlers (back to back) I used to hide in our closet at the old house behind Hubby’s clothes with a peep place so I could watch my show on the tele in there. The kids couldn’t find me…. (Hey! I need the break from the all day long in and out and up all during the night!)
And, once I hid under the fold out couch (made into a bed, FJ didn’t sleep well and then Lil’Gal came and got smart and started using that. Anyhow, I was hiding under it watching my show and Hubby thought I was playing and picked it up and gave me away. >:-( *snort* Funny now!
The bathroom NEEEEVER worked for me. Even now with four toilet rooms in the house — someone ALWAYS finds me.
When my children were small my husband had the uncanny ability to know when I needed me time. He usually took all the kids out for the day. I spent the whole day by myself. It was heaven. The bathroom was also were I went to be alone. 🙂
I hide in the bathroom because it is one of the few rooms that LOCKS! Or I got up and hide under the bedcovers with a book.
The bathroom is where I would go when I was raising the kids. Now that I am alone, I do not have to go anywhere.
My bed is my safety place…is that wrong?
I use the bathroom often. I also have a baby that nurses to sleep, and I often remain in the dark room reading blogs on my cell phone a long time… say, until I hear that the other kids are asleep.