Some years ago, some magazine writer who wears slim-fit shirts coined the phrase "staycation," to either put a smile on his own poverty or (and this is far less likely) on the poverty of others. Staycation means you stay home on vacation, as I'm doing this week. Between my wife and I, both us only children, we have three elderly parents in various states of ill health. All our vacations are stay.

On my staycation, I've eaten breakfast in a different diner every day and continued to work my way through a biography of Stonewall Jackson.

Sounds boring, no?

It might have been. But early in the week, I received that volume of autumn erotica known as The Swiss Colony catalogue. The Swiss Colony, located way out yonder in Wisconsin, is a mail-order purveyor of cheese and sausage and baked goods and jerky.

I usually get the first catalogue of the year in late September. Once I get that first one, their catalogues arrive with great regularity throughout the Christmas season. I don't order until the beginning of December, but I always order something for Christmas — usually in the sausage and cheese family.

I take the catalogue to bed with me at night and, in those delicious, drowsing, moments before sleep, I leaf through it, making choices. I usually get some kind of candy for my wife, sausage and cheese for myself, sugar-free candy for the elders.

When I was a kid, we got those catalogues and, while we weren't poor, we couldn't afford to order decorative food through the mails. I still remember the Christmas my mother's employer, a portly dentist, gave her a huge package of sausage, cheese, ham, candy and other good things, all from The Swiss Colony.

Unfortunately, the dentist had purchased the gift months in advance and stored it in a nonrefrigerated place. By the time my mother brought it home, everything but the hard candy and the mustard had spoiled. I was 11. My mother, a minimum-wage receptionist in that dentist's office, thanked him politely for the gift she'd thrown in the trash. After that, when the catalogues arrived in our house, I took them for my own and read them in bed, pretending to order things.

My wife, it turns out, likewise fantasized about The Swiss Colony catalogue that arrived, unsolicited at her family's home when she was a child. She was particularly fond of "Chris Mouse," the made-of-chocolate mouse in a Santa hat who is the company's holiday mascot. I bought her one the first year were married.

"I musta told three guys I went out with that I wanted Chris Mouse," she said. "Back in high school. I never got one."

My staycation is going just fine. The old folks are getting the help they need. I have my catalogue and enough money to buy a couple of things after I've read through it 50 or 60 times. My childhood continues.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com Dion's latest book "Marc Dion: Volume I" is available for Nook and Kindle.