DAY HUNDRED SEVENTY FOUR - my turn for the box bedroom

Today when I went down for my morning’s muesli, Loraine asked if I could help with tidying her house today – a colossal understatement, for sure. A couple hours into that and she added, ‘I need your room as quickly as you can get out of it.’ Another move (another brother – but only staying briefly), so for me this time, a one-night stand: I am in the box bedroom – known affectionately as the bunkroom’ – as this 7 x 9 foot room is stacked practically to the ceiling 3-bunks high. (Definition- a room providing usually temporary sleeping quarters, as for workers or travelers.) Both the hotel, as well as the family quarters, are packed to the max. The last two previous nights have made up for tonight, and it’s very temporary, so whee - more adventures!

Got to be pretty good friends with Michelle, Loraine’s main cleaning lady – housekeeping  supervisor, laundress, in other words, all-around everything woman at the hotel – as we worked together to put a disheveled home into order. Loraine was gone on an errand when I first came down to get to work and Michelle said that the mistress of the house had a task for me to tackle first off, before getting to the house – to get the children up. Yeah, right! (Nice! Loraine gives me the ‘bad guy’ job. Just what I need – to make all her kids dislike me while I’ve been working like the Dickens to win over!) Thought really hard how could I do this and not create enemies. Finally alighted on a good one – get Chloe to go with me. She would open the door, go up to her sleeping aunt or uncles, give them a little shake, and say in her sweet baby-girl voice, ‘it’s time to wake up now, (Jack, Sam, Tom, Hannah, Jamie)’ – and I would chime in, in a sheepish voice from the immunity of the doorway, ‘yeah . . . time to get going!’ (Didn’t do any good, of course, these guys are wise – they’ve got their mother’s number . . . )

Just had an epiphany, in regards to that overwhelming task we’d been given – turning those shambles into a welcoming living space: I could not have done it EXCEPT for the fact I was working alongside another affable, hard-working person. We were a committee, a team – I have discovered in my life that even the most daunting of projects is doable if tackled as a group. I don’t know, by myself, there’s just something about the staggering vastness of the whole thing that results in my being incapacitated.

Worked like a drudge in the house till dark. (Happy for the affirmation that Loraine really did take me for my word when back in November I had said, ‘looks like you could use some help around the place,’ and then took me up on it. If I thought I came here to slide, I’m not fooling anyone!) It was a major tear everything apart, clean it, then put it all back together again – company was coming! (Here note that this is a household of very mismanaged adult children – where is ‘The Nanny,’ when Loraine needs her?! Of course, you know how that works? It’s the parents who need the training – not the kids, right?! {It is NO different in this family!} Because once the parents are trained, the kids fall right in line!)

We started in the dining room (you get to the rooms of the family home through a door in the kitchen), next to the lounge (aka, living room to you in the U.S.) where we took all the covers off the couches and throw pillows so they could be laundered (there were a LOT of them!), up the stairs to a couple bedrooms, then up another flight of stairs to even more bedrooms. Here Michelle and I stuffed stray clothing into bags – on their way to the laundry, threw out tons of garbage, ordering the few things that remained, changed linens, cleaned the one main toilet – a room, not an apparatus, remember. (Can’t believe there’s only one, jacuzzied bathroom in this pretty large house, where the matriarch is a project manager par excellence) and then ‘hoovered’ all this (aka, vacuumed in Americanese). It was a major overhaul – probably hadn’t been done like that for months! Years? (Of course, needing ‘the Nanny’ around here, as we do, you will not be surprised to learn that absolutely no children were ‘harmed’ in what Michelle and I performed today – meaning that not one of them joined us in the ‘fun.’)

 Met Loraine’s other brother – Bryan and his wife, Anita, with four adult children and/or friends in tow, who have now arrived to join the fray. The family banter is that this brother used to razz Loraine for having had so many children (seven), and then between re-marriages, adoptions and fostering, ended up with an even larger family than she has.

 Every day’s a new adventure at the Richmoor Hotel. I came not knowing exactly what I’d be doing – good thing I like variety because that’s what we’ve got plenty of around here. Come to see myself as just another one of the grunts – and that includes the children, because – though they may not help around their own home – they work like little worker bees when it comes to the restaurant – chefing, serving, washing up. (You see, there’s an incentive: $$ - 'course the problem with that is when they're NOT on the clock, they're absolutely useless!)

Photos_

box bedroom, aka the bunkroom (as I’ve interacted today with some of the young male staff and mentioned where I’m presently stashed, they all get a knowing look in their eye and say, ‘ah, the bunkroom,’ as if they’ve all had their turn and know EXACTLY what that entails!)

1- from the hallway, three tiers (you can see how it acts as the ‘stash everything you’re not using at the moment kind of storage room {should I take that as an insult?!}– extra pillows, duvets, fold-up beds {aka futons}, television sets, etc.)

2- from inside on the bottom bunk, can’t sit up straight, only light is that golden glow coming from a lamp  – that’s 2/3s of the room you’re looking at     (now if I were a persons who suffered from claustrophobia . . .)