Staycation All I Ever Wanted

For years coworkers were shocked when I almost always came to work on my birthday.  I never saw the point of taking the day off.  Why would I stay home?  My friends had to work.  My husband had to work.  I would be all alone trying to come up with something fun to do by myself.  That's not a way for an extrovert to celebrate her birthday. I might as well go into the office.  Then I could tell people it was my birthday and people would be nice to me and maybe even buy me a piece of cake.  Taking my birthday off seemed like a waste of a vacation day.  Why not save the day for when Kevin and I wanted to take a real vacation?

Then three things happened.

First there was the pandemic.  I don't take many real vacations anymore.  Even though there aren't many travel restrictions out there, two years later I am reluctant to book a flight anywhere given the current state of airline travel.  That leaves me with limited options.  Since the pandemic began I haven't gone anywhere but Chincoteague twice (by car) and a weekend in Boston for my nephew's wedding (by train).  I have vacation time coming to me that I'm not using the way I used to.  I might as well take my birthday off.

Second Kevin now works a job where can can set his own hours.  He doesn't have to be in the office from 9-whenever with his nose to the grindstone.  He can take his wife's birthday off without being made to feel like he's not a productive member of the company.  If I ask him to take a day off with me, he will happily join me.

Third, it's no longer a waste of a vacation day.  My company now gives me my birthday off (or an adjacent day if it falls on a weekend).

Since I'm not traveling much anymore, I am taking far more "staycation" days off.  Sometimes I use the day for more riding, but it also gives me a chance to explore the area and see the sights right outside my door.  In the past two years I have gone to The Storm King Art Center, The Whitney Museum, and Little Island for the first time, and deeper dives and revsisits to places I have not been to often enough.

So this year is the first year I have an official Birthday Day from my office.  I had to decide how to use it.  I made a list of places in the area of things I want to see from exhibits at New York City museums, to historic sites to the north.

After going through my ideas and having a discussion, Kevin and I decided to take a trip to Niantic, CT, so we could visit The Book Barn.   I could spend a day with two of my favorite things - books and cats.

Why would I travel over an hour away for a bookstore?  Well, if you haven't clicked the link yet, go do it. The Book Barn isn't merely a bookstore. It's legendary.  It is a sprawling complex of connected used book shops.  Every little shack is a different book genre or theme.

The buildings go on forever.  It is impossible to see everything within these sprawling stacks.  Some of them are organized by genre or author.  Some are not organized at all.

If you feel tired after browsing all those books, there are beautiful gardens.

Quirky stuff is everywhere.

It was also cool to see some of the stuff people left inside their books.  Some readers forget to remove their “bookmarks” when they sell their books.

I never did see any of the store's resident cats.  I saw evidence of their existence such as cat beds in the main building and a cat door on one of the smaller buildings, but I never saw a single cat.  That was the one big disappointment of the day.  I did see goats.

You can also easily sell books on the spot.  We had only a few to sell, but people come with wagonloads of them.  

The area in these photos is the main complex, but they have another store down the street and a third one in the middle of town.  Before lunch we visited the downtown shop (lots of cookbooks there).  Then we decided to see what cuisine Niantic could offer us.  We chose a restaurant called Dev's.   They had a pretty and shady front porch with a view of the water.

A delicious chicken and fruit salad for me and a burger for Kevin with lots of friendly service.

Using our store credit from selling the books, I purchased eight new books (need beach reading) for under $20.  It wasn't easy finding them though.  If you don't live in the area and want to go to The Book Barn, I wouldn't recommend going only to browse.  Go there with certain books or types of books or authors in mind.  As I said above, some of the buildings are not well organized - if they are organized at all.  If you know what you want, a staff member might be able to help you find it.  I had the strategy of making a note on my phone of anything that looked like a possibility.  My plan was to come back to any books I planned to buy once I was ready to purchase.  I couldn't always find the book I noted when I returned to where I thought it was.  It's also possible someone else bought it while I was gone.  That's the drawback of a used bookstore.  There aren't multiple copies of the same book.

I'm glad I made the trip and might do it again.  I would go with some specific books in mind and maybe spend a bit more time exploring the rest of Niantic.  I would also take the day off again to do it.  The store wasn't crowded, but there were more people there than I expected and the parking lot was nearly full (it's not large).  I imagine this place must be a madhouse on the weekends.  

Days like this are definitely worth taking my birthday off for!