What's A Nose Anyway?

Will I cut off my nose to spite my face?  You're damn skippy I will if it's for a noble cause and the greater good.

Wanting to try a new pasta salad recipe, I cooked a pound of rotini last night so I wouldn't steam up my kitchen in the heat of the day.  I put it in a covered plastic bowl in the very back of my fridge.

When I walked into the kitchen this morning there was a suspicious looking dirty dish lurking in the sink.  Recognizing the dregs of olive oil and garlic sent me to the fridge to check on my pasta.  The bowl I'd hidden in the very back was now up front and half empty. I was not happy, but thinking I'll just have to make a smaller batch, but when the OP I live with got up and I mentioned the missing pasta, he actually said "You should have put I sign on it."  Well, something in me just snapped   "I SHOULD HAVE PUT A SIGN ON IT!!  A SIGN ON IT!  I'LL SHOW YOU A SIGN, " I said with clenched teeth as I upended the remaining pasta into the dumpster.

Your Time Or My Time

Dammit!  I missed my red hat luncheon yesterday.  You'd think that after over 8 !/2 years of living at the convergence of 2 time zones I'd have it figured out by now.  I'm surrounded by central time.  6 miles to the west and 10 miles to the north.  Eastern time only runs along the coast.  At one time, a very influential company owned a paper mill here in PSJ and wanted it on the same time schedule as their corporate offices in Atlanta.  What they wanted, they got.  The paper mill is long gone, but those of us who live here still deal with the anomaly of two time zones.

The situation does have it's advantages.  If I have a 1PM appt. with my hairdresser, I can leave here at 1:40 PM and be on time.  If I'm going to PC, I can leave here at 10 AM and arrive there after an hour's drive at 10 AM. 

This time, I guess I just had a brain fart. I won't admit that it could be age, but will consider that the ongoing  heat has burned my brain matter into charbroil. The email from the Red Hat Queen Mum did say lunch at 12 in PC and my mind just didn't compute.  I drove an hour to have lunch with friends and ended up eating Burger King by myself.  PS.  These girls don't linger, they eat and run.

Scary Kid

From my desk I  see 2 SUV's drive up to the office , each with Texas plates, 2 adults plus 2 children in each vehicle. The first one in the door is a boy around 10 yrs old, followed by a couple of adults, then the contents of the other vehicle.  The kid slams the lobby door shut on the woman following him, but she pushes in anyway. She says nothing to the kid.   I now have 4 adults and a couple of children crammed in my tiny lobby, with the 10 yr old boy right up front at the desk.  I ask how many people and how many nights.  They tell me 8 people, 1 night.  The kid looks me dead in the eyes and says in utter seriousness, "I. Own. This. Place."  The parents say nothing.   As I stare him down, I'm thinking "holy crap" and instantly go from 4 vacant rooms to one.  " Gosh folks, I'm so sorry, I only have one room left, maximum 4 people.  I can't accommodate your group, but in which direction are you going, perhaps I can suggest another motel."  I'm going to sic this scary kid and his bizarre family on another motel down the road.  The further down the road the better. 

To Profile Or Not To Profile

Guest #1:  This guy gave me the creeps right off the bat.  I despise it when men walk into public places shirtless.  This one came into the office not only shirtless, but with half a section of chain link fence hanging from his left nipple.  Body piercing is a personal choice, but along with the bare chest, I don't need to see it.  For 2 days, housekeeping couldn't get into his room because he never left it.  As much as I hated to, I agreed to give him another room for a week starting Sunday evening.  I couldn't think of a legitimate reason to refuse him.  At check out today, he wouldn't get out of the room, so I went right in and started stripping beds.  I finally shooed him out to sit in front & wait for his ride.  He had no vehicle of his own.  In his last minute packing he neglected to pick up the freshly rolled joint from the kitchen table.  It smelled like good stuff, so I wasn't about to give it back to him.   I took it in to the DH.  Thinking this would be reason enough to refuse to honor his next reservation, the DH went out and confronted him.  The guy actually said  "That doesn't belong to me...what is it?"  Again, no proof.  What clinched it was the half smoked roach we found hidden under the alarm clock.  While I have no objection to a little recreational smoke now and then, I do object to the damage caused by high, stupid guests.  They have a tendency to burn stuff and the motel is underinsured.

Guest #2:  This was a good looking young man in his 20's.  He came in to inquire about prices and availability wearing some way cool shades and a Crocodile Dundee hat I'm sure he thought was way cool.  While discussing rates, he felt compelled to tell me that he was wrapping up a real estate deal in the pacific northwest and that would free up some funds.  He said this with a straight face.  I hid my smile, since  I heard, "I'm broke and need a cheap place to stay."

Guest #3:  Reservation # 4386 showed up wearing full african regalia.  The dashiki, the hats, the whole (equivilant of) enchilada (in swahili.)  Very refined, very well spoken couple.  This morning I get a call from the gentleman asking if he could make a long distance call from his room.  When I said no, he launched into a long unnecessary story about how he bought a prepaid cell phone & it wasn't working.  He was beginning to get frantic and begged to come to the office and pay me to make a long distance call from my phone because he had to check in with his  parole officer.

Company's Coming

I'm stressing out a tad because I love to provide at least one personally prepared meal when company comes to visit.  On Wednesday, Danny Jr,  wife Colleen and girls, Zaria and Keira will be arriving for a couple of days.  The day they leave, daughter Danielle & family arrive.  What I'm doing is planning meals for one family that will segue to the next family.  I have 5 racks of babybacks, dry rubbed and ready to put on outside to slow cook.  We can't cook in my tiny kitchen with heat like we've been experiencing and still be able to sit in there to eat.  Way too hot.

I'll bake potatos at night for my "loaded baked potato salad." Double the recipe. My segue meal will be a fajita pasta salad.  I'm elaborating on a couple of "mexican pasta salad" recipes I found with my own sliced steak addition. 

I've been perfecting my mango cream cake for a couple of months now, so if I can find some good mangoes and can turn my oven on without roasting myself as well,  I'll include it too.
If I cook one day, I feel comfortable ordering out or going out on the others.  With careful planning I can really enjoy company during this very busy time of year.

While writing this, I got a call from a frequent guest who's coming in tomorrow night.  He told me he's bringing me goodies from his garden and asked if he should include okra.  I hesitated for a moment hoping I wouldn't hurt his feelings and then suggested he leave the okra at home.  He laughed, so I guess we're still friends.

Rerant

I know I've addressed this issue before, but it happened several times today. Why do absolute (note that I didn't say "perfect" strangers) strangers start a conversation by asking how I am?  I don't want to discuss my well being with strangers, and it's none of their business anyway.  In my more perverse moments I want to reply, "well my leprosy isn't quite as contagious as it was." The weird thing is, they expect me to ask how they are back.  Trust me, unless your're a friend or a relative, I don't care. 

This morning, one male caller compounded the issue by actually  saying, "How are you, young lady."  Young lady!!!  Did I sound like I was 12 years old or was he being the insulting, condescending jerk I suspected he was.  All he wanted to know was if I had a vacancy and how much it would cost.  Jeez, that's not hard.  Just say,  "hello,  do you have a room tonight and how much is it for 2 people?"  My yankee directness and my aversion to bullshit just doesn't seem to fit in here in lower Alabama, oops the Florida panhandle.

bitchspeak

This morning a woman guest came into the office for coffee, we chatted for a moment, and then she said, "By the way, the ceiling fan in my room isn't working.  Would you get it fixed while we're out, because I'm claustrophobic and need the circulation or I can't sleep.  If not, can you move us to another room?  I'll check back with you later."  After she assured me that her air conditioning unit was working well, I said we had no other rooms available, but would look into the fan issue.  When we cleaned the room, I saw that someone had torn off the fan pull chain and that's not a quick fix, so I left her a note on my personal stationary saying, "Thank you for alerting us that a previous guest has broken the ceiling fan.  We will be replacing the fan with a standard light fixture."

Now let me translate this entire conversation into bitchspeak.  "Your rooms are so damn small, I can't breathe and if the fan isn't fixed we may want our money back for tonight."  "Oh, yeah?  well screw you."