Almost September

I've been granted a short reprieve from my most dreaded duty.  The generous Cap'n has taken the kid to bed.  I can hear them sorting it all out in the bedroom, low murmurs punctuated with little boy whines and the occasional refreshing giggle.  I can tell he's trying to use logic on a two year old, which seems to be going about how you'd expect.  Yes, the little baby that used to live in my house turned in to a full-fledged boy, just this past week it seems, he sprouted long legs, a neck, and lost three quarters of his baby belly.  Luckily he's still totally adorable.

My purpose for this visit, actually, was to memorialize how shitty the past two weeks have been.  We coasted through the whole summer with nice, happy, easygoing and yes, even complimentary guests.  I guess we grew confident of the place, assuming that it wasn't just a lucky streak, but that all the improvements had finally reached a worthy threshold where everyone was finally happy.  Not so. 

I believe it all started with the family of five in cottage six.  Amazing how one group can break the happy silence and jinx the place for god knows how long.  They arrived at 1 pm for a 4 pm check-in (which happens all the freaking time) and were extremely pissy that their cottage wasn't ready.  Then, we were too close to the road.  Then, we weren't child-friendly, which made me want to throw rocks at their kids to show them just how unfriendly I could be.  You can imagine my outlook for their stay.  So, when they suggested that they only stay one night I said fine.  I would have been happier if they'd just left right away.  Particularly when the mother barged into our office at 9:53 pm stinking drunk, shoved the service bell off the desk (by way of ringing it, evidently), and accused me of throwing a fan on her sleeping baby.  Well, practically.  The fan fell on her kid and for some reason this was my fault.   

Then last weekend were the band of Tibetan folks who dropped off just before closing, kept us up until 2 am with their noise, and then destroyed a quilt and mashed food and dog shit into the carpet in their rooms.  I'm not even kidding!  The same weekend also marked the return of one of our favorite Floridians who gave us an intestinal plague last Christmas, and a superior vegan who lectured us about our lack of a compost pile.  Sigh.  In fact, everyone last weekend had some sort of miscellaneous problem with us, not least of which were the lovely couple form England who found their cottage to be several things, none of them nice: "basic," old-fashioned," and "uncomfortable."  What hurt was that they weren't assholes.  They just simply found our place to be unacceptable.  They were actually really nice about it.  Paid us for one night and were on their way.  It's easy to dismiss the jerks, but when totally sane and pleasant people tell us things about our place that we know to be true, well, it sticks with us for a long time.  The trick is to not take it personally, I know.  To recognize that we are not synonymous with this property.  At least until every aspect is as we would like it to be.  Until then, I guess it's our jobs to plow through the improvements and take the hits as we must, and hope that we don't get burned out before we're done.

Anyway, the happy bit is that financially August was sparkling, we've been busy and still showing growth over last year, and I suppose that in some respects that's what counts.  Now we can look forward to to the cooler and much more manageable Fall.  And!  We are going on a vacation in September.  To the beach, and we are totally not beach people, but it couldn't matter less where we're going.   For four whole days, we won't be here and that's just grand. 

Comments

[Carrster]

Wow - that sounds stressful. Hopefully September will be just what you're looking for. Have a great vacation!

[petr soyka]

really refreshing, really funny... thank you!
I'm running a motel, took over from retiring parents. I am being forced to learn way more about people than I want to.