ProudMary

Autumn Rant, Chapter: The Idiots

I'm dead-dog-beat.  I remember this from last fall.  You run, run, run all summer, looking towards Labor Day salvation, only the people...they keep coming.  Now we're at the start of the Fall Foilage Foliage season, and we're still hoppin!  It's a stupid thing to bitch about, I realize, "all this business."  I'm happy to have it, absolutely.  But with the business comes a lot of work, and of course, the idiots.  For example...

Lady calls a few weeks ago, taking our last available cottage for Columbus Day weekend.  It's a small one, attached on one side and really only meant for two, though it can, and has, slept up to four in a pinch.  She's got a family of four, and so I warn her, repeatedly, but she wants to go for it, and who am I to say what's good for her?  Parties of the same size have enjoyed that cottage before, many times.  So anyway, she shows up last night and the first words out of her mouth are "do you have any cancellations for a larger cottage?"  Ugh.  No, lady, we've been booked for this weekend for a month.  Believe it or not, this place is pretty popular!  Then we're apprised of their thoughts in a series of complaintative visits.  First, they didn't realize it was attached.  Then, "it's so small!"  Then they don't like that there's a dog next door. Then---get this---the stove's flames are too high.  They're worried about their baby getting hurt by it.  Now, I don't mean to point out the obvious here, but 1) babies should generally be kept away from all lit stoves, high or not.  2) does it really matter how high the flames are when we're worried about a very short human here?  and 3) use a different fucking burner, for christsake.  Maybe one on the back, where the little people can't reach?  I give up.  I don't know if it's a lack of common sense, or grasping at straws to be let out of their reservation.  Despite that I told them yesterday we'd do exactly that, let them out of it and rebook the room for the next two nights, which I'm confident we'll be able to do, no problem.  Honestly.  Assholes.

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. 

The State of Affairs

Ants!  There are suddenly so many ants in my house.  Why?  There is either a hidden picnic or at perhaps a stashed jar of jelly around here somewhere.  They are big and black and not very smart.  They seem to like my desk, and every time I'm sitting here at least one scuttles across my line of vision, and for some reason all of my typical humanist generous-to-all-small-creatures, gather-them-up-to-set-them-free instincts fly out the window and I want to crush their little bodies with a tissue and feel that horrible-yet-satisfying click.

Business-wise, we have snow.  Lots and lots of snow, and no one gives a damn.  Clearly, we are not the only ones who have given up on this Winter, the city-folk couldn't care less that we have oodles of it.  They are staying put and waiting for Spring.  So, all the digging and shoveling and paying for expensive plow-jobs is sort of squandered on our three customers this weekend, but whatever.  We're over wishing this season to be more cooperative, our eyes are just calmly trained on the magnolia buds outside, watching them plump and waiting for the glorious day that they emerge.

Poopies-wise, we have a little comedian on our hands.  He's discovered the joy of making us laugh, and will do anything, from asking for cookies for breakfast, to dramatic pratfalls, to straight-on tickling to make it happen.  He is totally hilarious, if not a bit weird, which we see as a good thing entirely.  When he's not vying for laughs, he's telling endless tales of what happened earlier in the day or week, which mostly consists of a scattering of words he knows filled in "um"s plus his typical gibberish, with adorable sighs, hand-clasps and pauses while he looks diagonally at the ceiling and thinks of the next silly bit.   He is also sleeping the whole night in his crib lately, which is sweet and kind thing for him to finally do.  I had really sort of had it with having to retrieve a 30-pound leech at 3 am every morning.

Baby-wise, I'm nearly 26 weeks along now, feeling good, feeling fine, if not a tad incapable of imagining what a little baby is going to do to our lives.  I recall feeling this way before Poopies' arrival, but this is a totally different game.  The Pooper is going to be sad.  And mad.  And I hate doing that to my favorite little person.  What really gets me is that I imagine that every bit that I dote on the baby and love her will be upsetting and resented by him.  It was so easy to love him, it was free and natural and there was no competition or bad feelings associated.  And I wish it could be the same this time around.  I know he will come around eventually, but initially he will hate it I'm sure, and he is such a loving, cuddly little boy I really hate to sully his feelings for me.

Plus, there is the sleeping situation, which I've finally accepted we will just have to feel out once the time comes.  I assume we will start with the baby in the bed, joined immediately by Poopies I'm sure, and will suffer through a few weeks or possibly months of that madness before we throw our couch out the window, moving our bed into the living room, thereby surrendering all hope of ever receiving visitors to our home, and giving up our room to "the kids."  We are still planning on starting a renovation that will add a second floor about a year from now, but the logistics of this between financing, town hall and questionable foundations is fairly defeating, I have to say.  Plus, doing all that work and still having seven-foot-ceilings on the first floor seems like an exercise in futility.

So, I've worked my way into a bit of a depressing endnote here, huh.  Well, we'll just end with a cute photo of our wooly winter boy, and call it a day:

Winter Bites

It has been the most unkind of weeks. 

Last Sunday, we discovered that the water main to one of the cottages had frozen, or had just generally crapped out, despite the fact that the cottage, along with every other room we had, was totally sold out for President's Week, which was rapidly approaching.  Various pipe-heating agendas were set in motion, including the purchase of $1000 worth of equipment that would thaw a frozen underground pipe, if that was indeed the problem, if only we could get a good connection to it, which was ultimately thwarted by a slightly busted shut-off valve, which I suspect may have been the culprit all along, since we started fooling with the beleaguered thing as soon as we started troubleshooting the problem. 

Sigh.  Then, in the midst of everything, Old Man Winter decided that we had been without snow for long enough and dumped two feet of it in 24 hours.  While the Cap'n toiled in the blizzard to get the water running, I unhappily juggled shoveling through mountains of snow, cleaning rooms we didn't get to last weekend for lack of a babysitter, and watching Poopies.  By the way, trying to clean a cottage while quelling every demand of an increasingly opinionated toddler, so as to avoid the constant complaining, is surprisingly exhausting and definitely enraging.  Thomas & His Friends helped out quite a bit.  And so the Cap'n and I worked and worried nonstop for four days.  Plus, I'm sort of kind of getting really pregnant, which makes everything harder, more cumbersome, achey and tiring than normal.

Ultimately, the Cap'n saved the day by running a bypass to the cottage from---unbelievably---an outdoor faucet, run directly to the cottage's main water source pipe, which was insulated to the gills, and through which we've kept the water constantly moving by purposely sabotaging the flapper in the toilet, and causing it to leak.  Ironically, the snow hides the line so that no one is the least bit the wiser.  We didn't really think it was going to work.  The test was the night before our guests arrived, when it got down to six degrees.  We laid in bed from 4:30 to 5 am, not knowing the other was awake, wondering if we would find a useless ice-filled hose when we went to look.  As the Cap'n went to check, I literally crossed every appendage, but given our luck this week, knew that he would return with pain in his face. Instead I got an exuberant thumbs up.  We were downright giddy. Hugging, laughing.  Like we'd won a prize, or something.  Insanity.  We were saved and so were the three reservations we had taken for the week, which would only just barely cover the cost of the materials.  I still can't believe the Cap'n pulled it so well out of the fire.  Bless this man, his ingenuity, and of course his plumbing skills.

Plus, we learned that our water rate has increased over 1000% to one of the highest in the country.  I cannot even get started on that, except that we use a lot of it, and that it is a most unwelcome new expense.

On the personal front, we have still not decided on a name for the wee lass, which is bothering me for some reason, even though we have months left.  We met so easily eye-to-eye on Poopie's name, it was an immediate home run.  This time around it's not so simple.  Partly because the Cap'n has a difficult last name to pair with any name ending in an "A" sound, which is a damned lot of them, and partly that despite stellar plumbing skills and good taste in practically every other regard, my husband seems to want either a poodle or a floozy for a daughter, and has come up with such winners as Trixie, Fifi and Lola.  Me, I like Renee (sort of boring, but it sounds smashing with the last name), and Eden, which I love for purely non-biblical reasons.  I have to put out there that while it's true that I hadn't heard of the latter name before coming to know about Mrs. Kennedy, and despite that I think that she is the coolest, it is not a "named after" situation.  So, tell me what you think about these, if you care, if you dare.

Skadi Can Suck It

Although I realize that my level of weather satisfaction is mostly irrelevant, particularly to the dastardly set of gods responsible for surface temperatures and icy precipitation, I've currently had it with this asinine non-winter, and don't really appreciate this past mid-week's snow-then-thaw tease that did nothing but raise our hopes and give us some frustrating cancellations to further flatten our spirits.  It is currently 52 degrees and raining.  And although I realize that most of the country is perfectly pleased with the lack of winter muck and freezing conditions, happily golfing and picnicking their lightly-jacketed-selves through January, it spells possible (definite, if it continues) financial ruin for our little ski business.  My optimism was buoyantly teetering but afloat until now, but hell, eventually you have to open your eyes and just say howdy to the end of paid mortgages.  If this is global warming, we are so totally screwed.

Ok, NOW It's Over

I know about a month ago I was flailing my hands about in terror about the sky that is our business falling.  Oh yes, I was aching and complaining about there not being enough acorns to last the long, cold winter and blaming it all on my sweet Cap'n, and his strong affinity for trees.  And, if you were paying attention (it's ok, I barely do), you might have noticed that it never did.  I will never complain about the hunters again.  December's mortgages are (barely) paid and I couldn't be happier.  We are some lucky sombitches.

But now...NOW, we are dead.  We are so dead we don't have a single reservation for two weeks.  And I honestly couldn't be happier about it.  Because after those two weeks all hell will break loose and we won't have another moment to spare until the spring thaw.  So, I'm happy that my nausea will likely be gone by then, and I'll have the stamina once again to smile pretty at the people, answer their repetitive questions and be able to do my part in keeping the wheel rolling swiftly along.

So, we'll spend the next couple of weeks making improvements, resting, laundering, and probably going out to eat too often.*  Oh yeah, that's the other place all our money goes.  Don't think I mentioned that.

* Like at Burger King.  That's right.  I said it.  Burger King.  We stopped by last week because they have veggie burgers and ICEEs, and there is just something about a cherry ICEE that absolutely obliterates my nausea on contact.  I swear I'm asking Santa for one for Christmas.  And that veggie burger?  POSITIVELY ORGASMIC.   I'm about ready to travel the 30 miles back there for another right now.

Cheating

Cheater cheater pumpkin (pie) eater.  Post a post of nothing either.

I am eating a lot of pie.  That's the truth.

Just Another Hunting Trip

So, most of the hunters have cleared out, there were no murdered animals hanging from our trees, and for the most part they really were a nice, very low-maintenance bunch.  On the whole they weren't particularly talented with their toilet aim, so that was unfortunate, but might extrapolate to explain the lack of dead forest creatures thing, which overall I'd say was fortuitous.

One little side-story:  this past weekend, I got a call from one of the hunter's wives.  She asked that I get a note to her husband asking him to return the call.  So, not knowing if he was here or not, I wrote up a little note with the message, and trotted over to his cottage to do her bidding.  I saw his car and so decided to knock.  I wish I'd just left the damned note.  A woman in just a long shirt opened the steamy door to reveal the mulleted "husband," who was unfortunately shirtless (yick).  I told him the message, he seemed uncomfortable, and said "Ok, but she (pointing to the woman) isn't here, right?  I mean, what happens in the mountains stays in the mountains, right? (uncomfortable chuckle)"

Although I am no fan of adultery, and my proximity to the whole thing did creep me out, I honestly couldn't care less what people do in the rooms unless there's permanent damage.  In fact, the extremely obvious situation frankly hadn't even dawned on me, that's how little I care.  And I certainly recognize that it's not my place to be blowing anyone's cover.  So, I said "sure!  I didn't see anything!" and walked ever so quickly away feeling like I needed a shower.  Of course I immediately gushed the story to the Cap'n, who said that he'd seen a redhead over there the day before, a completely different, yet also fairly unattractive, portly woman.  I guess that's country hoars for you.  What a pig.  Shame it's not mulleted pig season.  His wife might like to purchase a license for that sport.

If Only We Knew Better

Yesterday morning one of our guests walked into the office, and asked if we had a compost pile because she had some apple and pear peelings that she'd like to add to it.

The Cap'n responded that although we would love to have one, it would attract bears and other critters, which is a bad idea for them and for us.  They just aren't a good idea out here in the mountains.

"But it's good for them!"  She responds.  "If you have it far enough away from your buildings it should be fine!  It's really something that you should do!"  And this is a summary.  She went on and on and on, at least four rounds with the Cap'n's impressively polite responses.

Wait a minute.  You sat in your cottage this morning, and after you peeled your solitary apple and pear you decided you'd march on over here and make a couple of compost converts out of us?  Over an apple and a pear? 

It annoys me to no end when city people (listen to me!  those goddamn city people!) arrive in the country and decide they're going to do some educating for these poor, simple, country folk.  Guess what!!! We have heard of this radical concept called "composting" and have made an educated decision about it.  Luring bears, raccoons, skunks and any number of other critters out out of their natural habitat with the smell of food, even composting food, is not recommended.  We've checked.  They should be eating their natural diet, and not learning that people equals food.  Even if you think they could honestly use the roughage.  It's not like throwing apples to the pigs at the animal sanctuary.  For christs sake there's a highway not fifty feet from us.

She responded that she'd be taking her peelings home with her to compost there.  You go girl.  I told the Cap'n that we should have told her that if composting is really that important to her, then she should eat her goddman peelings, crap them out, and then we'd be happy to compost them in our septic tank.

Arrogance coupled with ignorance equals arrogance times twelve.

Friendly Formalities

We've managed to make a single set of friends in the year that we (I) have been here, which frankly ain't bad for my typical track record.  And they're a really interesting, smart couple that runs a B&B down the road a bit, so we actually want to be friends with them, which is extra nice.

They're the friends that I always imagined having, but never really believed existed.  They're generous, asking us over or out every couple of weeks, and constantly keeping in touch with phone calls and emails.  They really like us.  And they don't seem to mind that we kind of suck at keeping up our end of the bargain, at least at their established rate.  Call me flawed and selfish, but it just doesn't occur to me to reach out and bug anyone that much.  But we like them and they like us, and we get to get out of the house and have intelligent conversations periodically, and refer to the fact that we have friends!   Which is worth a lot actually.

Incidentally, they are of the sort that "love to entertain," which I find fascinating.  It makes them tick.  They look forward to it.  I cannot comprehend how this works, unless you're filming a cooking show.  Although I like to socialize, and I like to cook, and I like to be in my house, combining all three is such a clusterbomb of things to be done that I am always a nervous wreck and I pretty nearly never have a nice time.  Sometimes I can chill out after dinner is over, but usually I'm so exhausted from the whirlwind of activity and adrenaline that I want to send them packing immediately after dessert and then collapse into bed.  Not exactly the hostess with the mostest.  I assume I'll get better with practice?