6/3/07 – I woke up in the hotel this morning and took a shower in the bathroom across the hallway. I packed my few clothes and went to check out. I had to walk through a kitchen to the office and found that it was locked. Confused, I turned to the people in the kitchen and they explained that the owner of the hotel had run off to get everyone breakfast. I was happy about this and sat down to wait with them. It quickly became apparent that I was by far the most normal one in the room. One fellow kept shouting sentences that didn’t really make sense regarding cops showing up to the hotel last night. There was a lady there that was also saying strange things and kept saying that some of her money was missing. After a few minutes of this, the man left and I was left alone in the kitchen with this woman. I tried to make small talk with her and she kept talking about what a horrible day she had yesterday. She proceeded to tell me how she has been living in her car and this hotel for some time and some complicated mumbo-jumbo regarding an ex stealing her money. I really wanted to leave but had no place to turn in my key. She talked about how the cops showed up last night. I said something like, “I hope it wasn’t too serious.” She then told me about how everyone thinks that she’s crazy and that the cops kept trying to put her back in the mental institution. Apparently they showed up after some “crack head” showed up to her room and stole a bunch of her money. She kept going with no prompting from me and gave me an in-depth history of her mental problems. This conversation kept going on for far longer than I would have liked and culminated with her standing up, walking over to me, grasping my right hand with both of hers very tightly, looking into my eyes, and saying, “Do you think I’m crazy?” One of the housekeepers finally walked through the kitchen and I hurriedly gave him my key and left.
I spent the next couple of hours buying a few last-minute things for the boat and doing a few last minute fixes. I drove the rental car down to the office and took a cab back up to the North Palm Beach Marina. I got everything stowed and untied from the dock. I pushed off and motored over to the gas dock and tied up. I told the attendant that I just needed to fill up with water and was absolutely shocked when I was told that it would cost me fifteen dollars to fill my twenty gallon water tank. I argued with him for a minute and told him that I could fill my tank with bottled water from the store for les money. He argued that
I was a bit hungry so I got out the stove and a can of soup. I opened up the can and reached for a spoon to scoop the paste into the pot. It then dawned upon me that as well prepared as I was, there was one thing that I forgot: silverware. I reached into the can with my finger to empty its contents into the pot. As I was swirling my finger around to get all the soup off the can walls, I sliced my finger on the sharp edge of the can. I started bleeding immediately. I wiped it off with a paper towel and went to the sink to get the rest of the water to mix into the condensed soup. My sink is a hand pumped faucet that is connected directly to the water tank. Its gasket is leaky so you have to pump furiously until you get the water up the tube and into the faucet. This furious pumping aggravated my finger wound and so the leftover noodles mixed with my blood and this mixture was shot all over the inside of the cabin by the extreme hand motions. I finally got water and cleaned everything up. I stirred my soup with one of the wrenches from my tool kit and drank it out of a cup. I ate some canned fruit by hand but being very careful to keep my fingers away from the edge. I then used my fingers to eat some chocolate pudding for dessert.
1 comment:
Your experience at chocolate pudding nights has finally come in handy. Except at home, you were never allowed to use silverware or hands! Love, Mom
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