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It's taken you a year to get your new Florida home in perfect shape.

You've had the fans, light fixtures and wallpaper hung. The tables and wall units display carefully chosen knick-knacks, the bathroom towels match the wallpaper, and the patio furniture is in place. It's time for company. So you issue a blanket invitation to everyone you've ever known up north -- "C'mon down."

And they do -- in droves. First comes Uncle Moishe, a 90-year-old recent widower from Brooklyn. He doesn't get up until 10:30 a.m. because his water pill keeps him up all night. You miss your aerobics class because you are in the kitchen cooking oatmeal, brewing decaffeinated coffee and dishing out prune juice with ice and lemon. His mealtimes drive you nuts. Lunch is at 2:30, a glezeleh tay (tea in a glass) at 4:30 and dinner at 8:30.

Used to the imaginative cooking of a doting wife, he hates your low-fat, low-sodium meals and dumps ketchup on everything in his plate. When he leaves after two weeks, you are tired and grumpy, but that passes as you prepare for other guests.

Next comes your bachelor son, currently unemployed, who arrives for an undetermined amount of time. He doesn't unpack but lives out of a knapsack and a duffel bag, the contents of which are strewn around the floor of the guest room. He takes showers three times a day. The pile of dirty towels and clothes mounts quickly. The music emanating from his boom box makes your blood curdle, and he refuses to eat anything that is not potent enough to make smoke come out of his ears.

At last, you give him some money and send him to Taco Bell for dinner so you and your husband can eat your poached salmon in peace. You can't use your computer because he is constantly writing email messages to friends around the globe. Fortunately, a job interview sends him back to New Jersey.

You clean the guest room just in time for the scheduled visit of your best friends, Holly and William from Boston. Their flight is overbooked and they get bumped, so the gourmet dinner you prepared is a waste. They arrive the next morning, angry and tired, having a battle royal because each blames the other for the lateness of their arrival at the airport the day before.

Neither thinks of apologizing to you. Their war lasts the entire week of their stay, making every meal and outing a match that you are forced to referee.

The weather is bad and they blame each other for that, too. Your longed-for reunion with old friends is a fiasco.

The holidays are approaching and the grandchildren are coming. Their parents are going to Aruba and you volunteered to keep the kids for a week. You can't wait.

When they arrive, you discover that the oldest just got hit in the face with a baseball and had surgery on his gums and lip. He can barely chew, so his diet consists of soup, mashed potatoes, and rice pudding. The youngest one eats only pizza, but gags on the cheese, stopping your heart from beating at least once a day. The middle child is a vegetarian, which makes mealtime even worse.

You drag them from Butterfly World, Sea World, Parrot Jungle, and Metro Zoo to arcades and bowling alleys. You're ready to drop. But the minute you sit down, they wail, "Grandma, I'm bored." You can't tell them, as your mother would have told you, in Yiddish, "nem dein kopp und shlog es offen vont" (take your head and bang it against the wall.) So, instead, you rent an armload of DVDs from Blockbuster and buy a load of junk food. When the parents return, tanned and starry-eyed, you're about to die of fatigue.

You feel as if you've had it with company, but how can you call off the next visitor, your sister who is recuperating from her divorce? You spend two days sleeping and staring at the ocean before she comes, regaining your strength and sanity. But two days are not quite enough. She gets off the plane with a ton of luggage and dark glasses to hide her red eyes.

You haven't even left the airport when she starts crying. She spends 10 days telling nasty stories about that "rat" she married and that "slut," the 25-year-old secretary he now lives with. In a vain attempt to comfort and distract her, you take her to fancy restaurants, shows, boat rides, and movies. It costs a small fortune and you gain four pounds, but her plans for a vendetta continue unabated until you put her back on the plane.

You look at the calendar and blissfully discover that no more guests are scheduled -- for the moment. You and your husband take a quiet hour to sit on the patio, not moving a muscle, watching the egrets as the sun sets in a glorious blaze of orange and black.

After sharing some wine, your husband says, "You know what? In the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin, guests are like fish."

"In what way?" you reply.

"After three days, they all stink."

Toby Rosenstrauch, an award-winning columnist, lives in Boynton Beach, Fla.