Vacay

In which I Find I am Allergic to Relaxation

For Your Amusement. Circa 2021

I typed this from my hotel room. I hadn't been in a hotel room in years.

Outside of medical care, the mail and the grocery, I'd been on hardcore COVID lockdown. Oh slightly wrong, as of a few weeks before, I’d started going back to the gym.

Which was pretty much empty whenever I went.

Anyway, before Omicron Covid hit, my family decided to give me a present for Christmas: a trip to a fancy hotel/resort for a couple of days so I could get a break and get pampered a bit.

I was not only looking forward to being out of the house, but I've always had great luck with breakthroughs in my art when I'm isolated in a hotel. I know a lot of creators who also prosper without household distractions - which is pretty much what writer's retreats are for. Also, since I wasn’t paying for it...

I...hadn't had a treat in ages. No vacation in years.

I met my immediate publisher deadlines, Omicron had not been discovered anywhere near me, and with my booster shot a few weeks old, I figured it was a good time to take this little vacay. 

I was looking forward to fancy food, a nice gym, maybe a massage, and hours of quiet isolation to work on commissions and on the A Distant Soil script tweaks.

It was all kind of a mess.

The week before I left, a client contacted me with revisions to an assignment that had not only been turned in two months ago, but they needed revisions the day I was to leave on my trip.

Gee golly, whizzer, could I drop everything and redo this art?

Seriously.

OK, the corrections weren't hard, but this is one of those gigs that has been, shall we say, file under Clusterf*CK, and I was a bit annoyed. Rather than argue, I just worked the fix art within hours. I turned in screen shots of the corrections, anxiously hoping to get it delivered early so I could leave on my trip with a clear conscience.

And then I waited. 

And waited.

And emailed.

And emailed some more.

Day upon day I emailed.

NO ANSWER.

Finally I wrote and said, "Look, I'm going out of town, get back to me now so I can have this in the can before I leave." 

Which is not exactly an unreasonable request.

It's not like it would be impossible for me to make changes while on the road. But that would mean bringing and using a tablet I hadn't even touched in over two years, and I'm not sure I even knew how to use the damned thing, and working my schedule around the needs of a client, when I think the client was being unfair. I really wanted this job in, and I have repeatedly made changes for this client, and jumped through hoops, and did extra work not covered by the original agreement, and the mission creep was starting to make me angry. 

I thought I was done MONTHS ago, and here I am not done.

So finally, the client gets back to me the day before I am supposed to leave.

Yes, it's approved. Turn it in.

No provision for how to do that in the email, so I had to go through months old documents to find the info. Many of which had been eaten in my computer meltdown months before.

But I got the job in.

Yay, go me.

Then I got to packing and the morning of my leave taking, I get yet another email from the client.

Could we have the layered file?

OK folks, this was not in the original agreement, and frankly, it is dicey for clients to ask creators for layered files. What they are doing is reserving the option for themselves to make other art out of your art, and then not pay you for it.

It's kind of...not good.

But by this point I wanted to set the job on fire.

I also had data limit issues because I live in a very rural area. Until last year, I was still on dial up speed. So I had to plan when I sent large files. And there I was having to send a file four times as large as what I thought I'd be sending.

I very politely informed the client that as I have data limits, please in future let me know file format IN ADVANCE.

Then I did as asked. AGAIN. 

Then I gritted my teeth and got my stuff together so I could go on my trip.

Which I had to do with a major migraine moving in. Bad enough that I had to take the hardcore prescription meds.

Let me just add at this point that this hotel is way WAY up in the mountains, so I had to take this crazy ass drive while  in a migraine spiral and I started to get car sick to boot.

Huzzah.

All the way up, I quaffed great quantities of Starbucks cafe latte to keep my energy up. You can't get Starbucks where I live, but I buy whenever I am in the city by the venti cup and then store in my fridge for days.

We'll revisit this decision later.

So I arrive at this freaking huge fancy pants resort with my mask on, but all the rich, well-dressed people have no masks. Also, I look kinda like the slobbiest person in the building. And by this time, I am genuinely unwell. As in whoa, I could keel over. But I'm sure I'll be able to get to my room and get some rest, and maybe in an hour or two get some fancy dinner.

I had my work in a rolling bag, the computer, tools, original art, and all the handwritten A Distant Soil manuscripts which are the only copies.

Yeah.

Now normally, I would never let anyone handle this bag. I never check this bag when I fly. But I was absolutely a wreck by this point, and the nice porter said I'd have the bag in minutes. So I let him take it.

I got my room key and went off to my room.

The room key did not work.

I tried and tried and tried.

No good.

Now this isn't unusual; electronic keys at hotels are an issue for me maybe 10% of the time. But man, did I need some rest and there I was...locked out. I had to go all the way back down to the lobby and tell the lady at the desk about the key.

She promptly lectured me about how I simply didn't know how to use the key. I assured her I did. Then she lectured me about how I must have deactivated the key by putting it next to something magnetic, possibly my phone.

I did not. The key never left my hand.

She simply would not believe my key did not work.

I began to get a little testy, but she finally looked me up and said, "Is your name Rachel?" And I'm all...no. I just checked in minutes ago. Then she got testier, and explained to me she sees a lot of people.

Which I'm sure she does, but in seeing a lot of people, maybe she made a mistake checking me in?

So I get another key.

And there I am, really, really not well by this point, but I get up to my room, ready to collapse, the key works this time, I open the door and...

I see the Louis Vuitton handbag, the ice bucket with the bottle of champagne, and I know there's a problem.

As in...I don't own a Louis Vuitton bag.

I wish I did, but there you go.

I back out of the room immediately, glad the maid is in the hall so I have a witness in case anything goes missing from that room,  and I tell the maid what happened. And she does not seem entirely surprised.

Back downstairs I go, and I do mean stairs because I am trying to avoid elevators and COVID, and I am genuinely exhausted at this point.

Before I reach the reception desk, the check in lady, looking a little pale, had run to find me.  She realized she'd sent me to the wrong room, and here is the correct room and key, and a couple of free drink vouchers.

Her attitude changed big time between check-in-lady-splaining to me that I don't know how to use an electronic key, and realizing she's sent me into a room with someone else's expensive luggage.

So OK, finally, I get into my room, but my luggage has yet to arrive. I'm told it will follow shortly.

It does not follow shortly.

It does not follow within an hour.

I'm starting to get nervous.

Some total stranger has my tech and my manuscripts. They've now had them for going on two hours.

This is not good.

I call the front desk.

No answer.

I call the operator repeatedly. The bags are on the way!

Still no bags.

I talk to staff in the hallway. Again, they are not surprised by this problem.

I tell my family I am getting really nervous. I do not care about my clothes; my work is in the bags, and there are NO COPIES.

WHERE IS MY STUFF?

I repeatedly ask if my luggage could have gone into that room I was wrongly sent into in the first place.

Oh, no, impossible!

And I wait. And wait. And make calls.

No luggage.

After my dad makes complaints on my behalf (because when I do it all anyone sees is a apple-faced middle-aged lady who looks like she bakes stuff, and when my dad does it all anyone sees is the face of someone who carries a gun,) eventually, a porter comes down the hall with my bags.

Sure enough, they'd been sent to that room I'd been erroneously sent to in the first place.

The porter thought EVERYTHING in that room was mine, so he picked up the champagne and Louis Vuittton bag as well as my stuff, which was just an epic mess.

That lady is really lucky I don’t do larceny.

The other lady got her bags back, I got mine, and I immediately checked my stuff to make sure my tech was secure and all my stuff was there.

It was.

I got more drink vouchers, and the scuttlebutt is the check-in-lady got into a lot of trouble.

So, an afternoon of work gone, I'm definitely not feeling well, but I got some dinner. I took a hot bath and sat down to relax, my energy so low I had trouble going up and down the stairs back to my room after my meal.

Within an hour, I was hit with epic food poisoning.

Remember those extra Starbucks cafe lattes I'd been hoarding in my fridge?

They don't keep for very long.

I was sick for over 24 hours straight.

My relaxing weekend of quiet art making and pampering turned into a complete bust. 

So to speak.

No work got done except this post.

Clearly, God does not want me leaving my house, so I went back home to my normal life, wishing the tummy issue gone while I stopped at a lot of gas stations along the way.

Also, living in the country means I often don't close my windows, so in the hotel, it was awhile before I realized I was making epic trips to the porcelain god  in full view of anyone on the front lawn of this massive hotel complex.

Hey, I can laugh about it now.