Adding to this idea: OP, perhaps your friend can spend one or two nights in a hotel, and the last night with you?
I would actually suggest the opposite; IME as the traveling person the first night is the one where I am excited to be away from home and visiting old friends. It’s always the first night where all the fun happens, where most of the catching up is done, and the subsequent nights are more relaxed and laid back.
But maybe that’s just me.
Offer to get a tv, I wager you could borrow one, come down to it. Then you’ll know if it really is the TV or not.
If it is, consider getting the cable connected (it’s not THAT hard, you don’t have to install it!), it’s easy enough to get turned off when they are gone, a simple phone call. Probably have an introductory offer you can take advantage of even! Don’t mention the upcoming cancellation, of course!
I mean you like these people a lot it seems. You have them to your house, you make them fancy breakfast and sit up giggling and having wine late into the night.
Be a small price to pay to have my friend with me, I think. It is telling you’re miffed about having less time together, when you boil it down.
Rent a room for yourself in the same hotel. Now you can join them for breakfast and sit up with them in your room drinking wine as long as you like, with or without the tv on.
Or just accept that they like visiting you but want a little personal space.
This.
In fact, one better: Book a suite at a residential-suite-type hotel for the three of you (do they have those in Vermont?). That way you can still make breakfast for them in the mornings.
It is just the three of you, right?
That is a great idea.
My friends and I don’t have parties at our own houses anymore, we rent a house somewhere (we’re in DC, we like to go out to Berkeley Springs, WV) and hang out there. Split between a few couples, it’s reasonably cheap, and you can cook, hang out late, do whatever you want really.
Eek! I hate going to someone’s house who has the TV on all the time. It’s so distracting and intrusive. If it’s on, watch it, if you don’t watch it, turn the fool thing off!
I like to have some kind of background noise on continuously, whether the television or the radio. I find quiet to be disturbing.
Same here. I literally start to get creeped out and feel as if I have no life if there is nothing going in the background.
Staying up late and then getting up early to a big breakfast could wear on a lot of people. Maybe they simply need a wee bit more rest this time around? As for “half the day being shot”, maybe they don’t want to do a big full whirlwind.
At the same time, remember that this is THEIR vacation, and sometimes, we need to make sacrifices for our guests. They’re the ones traveling up here to see you. Cut them some slack.
Maybe one of them has developed irritable bowel syndrome or some such embarrassing intestinal disorder, and they want to have their own crap shack to crap in at night without fear of how much they’re befouling the OP’s house.
maybe she has a job auditing for advertizing agencies and is making sure the commercials that are paid for are being aired.
Maybe she is about to get abducted by aliens and then build an alliance with them to conquer the Earth! No! Seriously, you could go on for pages about what the OP’s friend’s issue is, but that is not the point of this thread. It is finding solutions to the OP’s problem.
Right, well, sometimes the solution to the problem of “People don’t wanna do what I want them to do” is “Learn to deal with minor disappointments.”
I would not offer to buy a TV and a short-term cable subscription in order to test the truthfulness of their excuse. Unless one is prepared to hear, "OK, Claire, I didn’t want to have to say this, but no, the problem isn’t the lack of TV. The problem is you book us for doing so much that we are LITERALLY EXHAUSTED after our visit. And also, buying a TV and getting cable in order to test out our bullshit excuse is kind of weird and passive aggressive and offputting. 
" (Yes, they will verbalize a frowny-face emoticon if you do this.)
Look, I’m not going to overthink this whole thing. Let her do her thing, and she will remember what she is missing.
No, I am certainly not going to hook up a television for the sole purpose of indulging this spoiled woman in a silly habit.
No, I do not overplan when they come up. I live in the boonies and there is nothing to do up here. That’s the point. They like the fact that everything is so low key.
And to go to a hotel suite negates the whole idea of visiting me at my home which is the whole idea. Not to mention the fact that the peeps next door have a huge party with many fireworks.
They do not have loud sex, they do not take drugs, and hub goes to bed early bc that’s what he has always done. He and my boyfriend spend the day talking guns and Civil War crap and he is quite happy to do that.
I think if this was the way my good friend felt about me, then I’d keep my “silly” self far away on my vacation and “indulge” in other things. At least somewhere that my be open to other viewpoints and possibilities. Because, as everyone knows, no one ever develops new issues that their old friends aren’t apprised of. So, no changes in sex habits, no recent diagnosis’ of medical problems and no personal things that might interfere between couples. As it once was, so it shall always be.
It doesn’t sound like you even like her all that much.
I, uh, think I might have figured it out.
Oh, see, I was thinking it was the part right before that.
Nice find colander. Yeah, it is pretty obvious now what the issue is.