We maintained good spirits through: a cab driver who complained all the way to O’Hare about how there is no money to be made taking people to O’Hare; a computerized self-check-in kiosk that was broken; a gate change at the last minute; an even more last minute realization that we wouldn’t be sitting together on any of our flights; the news that the plane had to lose weight in order to fly into the hurricane; the fear that they would start asking the fat to leave and we’d be the first to go; the resultant delay while the airline actually coerced three random people to leave; the uneasiness of flying into the hurricane in the smallest plane in which either of us has ever flown (40 seats in all); and the relative disappointment in the place we rented when we first arrived. We hadn’t even sworn a blood oath ahead of time, but instead of being cranky, we just kept being nice to each other through it.
Sally—our hostess from Vermont—was absolutely honest in her description of the joint and there were lots of pictures to boot. The place looks exactly like the pics she sent so I’m not sure exactly what it was that didn’t set right with us when we walked in the door. Maybe that there wasn’t any TP in the bathroom and we had just come off of about 12 hours of travel, the last leg of which was a packed 90 minute shuttle ride, and then we had to go find a market before we could do anything else. I mean, sometimes you just want to pee first.
So maybe it was that and maybe it was the clutter: Sally has clearly been all over the world. And she’s brought back a little something from everywhere. And it’ all here. There isn’t a surface that doesn’t have something on it. I’m sitting in a room right now that is at best 12 feet by 8 feet and there are eight wall hangings, three book shelves, a king size bed, two night stands, two lamps although one is missing its light bulb, a stool, and a dried flower arrangement from—wild stab in the dark here—1978. It reminds me of the apartments I kept in my early 20s before I realized that just because you own something it doesn’t mean you have to keep owning it forever. Chris immediately started putting some of Sally’s things in the closet and his attempt to clear surfaces helped my psyche. I think, too, it is obvious someone uses this place as their personal space and as we would like to use it as our personal space it just felt weird.
Which made me think of poor nice Mike—the young man we met Tuesday, who is now house sitting for us while we are here—and how it is likely he is thinking the exact same thoughts about me that I am thinking about Sally.
In any case, when it seemed we might not be able to take the idea of staying in this place for a month, we abandoned our unpacking and went in search of food and drink. We wandered a bit, went in the first restaurant we came across and were blessed with the first truly good news of the day: it was still happy hour. Over ice-cold Coronas and a bizarre Italian dinner off of a menu written in French, we discussed some possible avenues to explore regarding our housing conundrum and Chris said we could find someplace else to stay in the next few days. I protested—we won’t get our rent back from Sally—but he showed remarkable dedication to me and to us when he said it was only money and not more important than ensuring our happiness. That guy’s awesome. We returned home for the evening and the place didn’t really seem so bad after all. It has lovely windows and nice archways and is cozy. We decided to curl up and sleep on it. We’re right at the curled up part now. I’m looking forward to tomorrow when we figure out where we are relative to what’s good.
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