Bad day 2: The next day

There's a line in Harry Chapin's song "Word Wizard" that I could always relate to:

Every secret he has, he's only told the world so far...
Cause he shows off his wounds before they turn to scars.

So here are the latest wounds.

I finally got to sleep around 3am and woke up at 6am to head out to my food handling course, which was about an hour away. I had lost the instruction packet they sent me, so I just looked up the address on the Internet and ran MapQuest. An hour later, I found myself in the middle of a housing project in the middle of nowhere.

It took me 10 minutes just to find a gas station to ask for directions, and they had no clue because, it turned out, MapQuest had sent me over 20 miles from my destination! I was half an hour late and they should have sent me home, but the instructor took pity and let me stay. Then he asked if I'd read the book...

In the meantime, Dawn and Bob, my brother-in-law, were handling breakfast. I'd prepared everything the night before and left them with strict instructions: Four people got french toast casserole, and the two new people got banana-blueberry waffles (because there wasn't enough french toast). For some reason, they ignored me and split the french toast into five pieces and served it.

Now if you're following the math, there were six guests and five plates. And naturally the person who didn't get the french toast had gotten waffles the day before. So not only did she have to wait while everyone else was eating, but she got same meal two days in a row!

Around that time, our septic system alarm went off. Apparently, the brand-new, 1,800-gallon-per-day system, with three pumps and a leech field bigger than a football field, wasn't working. Dawn called the company that installed it and they said they'd be right over...tomorrow morning. But they assured us that as long as we didn't use any water today, it would be fine.

(I know I promised I would never mention the septic system again, but that was when I assumed this grossly oversized system would work for 50 years without a problem, not two months!)

Then Dawn got a call from someone who wanted to change her reservation to a different weekend. Dawn is still coming up to speed on the new reservation software (which makes even the simple tasks complex) and so she told the guest she'd call her back, and she called me. (Did I mention I was in class all day?) So I stepped Dawn through it and she called the guest back to confirm, and the guest said she had changed her mind and wanted to keep the original weekend.

In the afternoon my brother-in-law had to leave, so Dawn called Ruth and asked her to house-sit while she ran to the hospital. Meanwhile I had finished the food handling course and taken the test (I'm pretty sure I aced it) and was headed home, when sleep deprivation finally overtook me. I pulled over in a rest stop and took an hour nap. With the convertible top down. Under a tree full of birds.

So I got home and changed my clothes, and talked to our guests who were staying in Bill's Room (with the full-size bed). On the web site I have that listed "for business and single travelers" because it seems couples only want a queen or king, but this couple was very happy with the room and they loved the mattress. So I'm going to change the web site -- there's no point in discouraging couples from staying there. As long as they know it's a full-size mattress, they can make their own decision.

Speaking of changes, we're also talking about cancelling the order for the pool table (which we placed last June!) and just setting up the attic as a massage room. (Dawn has two masseuses willing to come to the house to do 'couples massage' but we can't do that in the guestrooms, and I didn't want to do it downstairs.) The only reason we were getting a pool table was because Dawn's grandfather had one, and Dawn wanted to restore it to the way she remembered it. If she's willing to let the pool table go, I'm happy to save the money.

I wanted to get to the hospital but by the time I was done with chores, visiting hours were over. Fortunately my mother-in-law had stabilized and was doing much better, even though they still didn't know what was wrong. Tomorrow they are transferring her out of ICU and are running a battery of blood tests, so hopefully something will turn up.

Tomorrow, by the way, is turn-about: Dawn is going to a job interview at 8am, leaving me to handle the breakfast on my own. Since I made fun of her, I better not mess up. (Or, at least, just convince my guests not to tell her.)

Update on 9/27/06: I messed up. I made crepes, or I should say I tried to but they came out so thick they were more like pancakes. Fortunately the guests didn't realize this: Instead of putting jelly on the crepes, they just put syrup on the pancakes, and were fine.

And the 1,800-gallon-per-day septic system had been shut down by a thimble-full of dirt, which had blocked the intake filter for the main pump.