What happens during this season to turn otherwise normal people into idiots? Folks are going hard with finalizing their shopping during the last week of Holiday shopping. Traffic was in such a snarl yesterday I thought there’d been an accident. No. The cars were backed up for two miles heading for the mall. Last night I witnessed someone come flying out from a side street across three lanes of traffic without looking. This was fifteen minutes after someone else on a cell phone went through a stop sign. Fortunately, they didn’t meet up with the other guy who ran right through a red light. This year I decided not to shop in a store during the weekend or evenings. I no longer have the patience or the energy to handle being in a crowd of frazzled shoppers.

I refuse to allow myself to get sucked into the commercialism of Christmas. I attended a great Christmas Chorale this past week. Besides the fact the symphony and choral singers were excellent, it was a very peaceful opportunity to just sit still and listen to the music as it washed away the tensions brought on by the “other” side of Christmas.
                 
Things have been pretty dead at the hotel as we get closer to Christmas except for the three days each week when we’re booked by business people. Frankly, I’m glad. Putting up with this infection has had me sacked out early, so no noise is a welcome treat. And, then…this morning someone “got it” in the shower. You could hear her grunting up and down each floor through the shower drains and vents. And, on a Sunday too. They were hardly cavorting in holy water. I’m sure.
                 
Something happened to the heat in my room last night. I about froze myself to death in bed. I had to get up at 1:30 a.m. and put on a light jacket before diving back under the covers. My nose was so cold it felt like I’d fallen asleep in a meat locker. Even my winter jammies failed to keep me warm. Maybe they’re trying to get rid of me by freezing me out. Well, fine.
                 
My cover got blown yesterday morning. I was coming out of my room when I noticed a man down the end of the hall looking at me. I couldn’t see his face clearly from the distance until I heard him say, “So, that’s where you live!” I put my finger to my lips and said, “SHHH! Don’t give it away.” He’s one of the locals I speak to on the street. They all know me as the writer living at the hotel, and he knows I prefer anonymity as to which hotel and what floor I live on. I know the neighbors across from the hotel must get a lot of entertainment from looking at guests who don’t pull the shades down in their rooms. Me? There’s never anything exciting enough going on in my room to be called entertainment. What I should do is hook up a receiver to the “loud speaker wall” in the room next door and broadcast those guests because that's where all the entertainment is happening.

                 

Somebody just put me out of my misery. I guess I spoke too soon when I assumed the end of the antibiotic ushered in the cure. The only thing it ushered in was another infection. Apparently, my body doesn’t take well to medicines because they seem to create more problems. The dizzy, nauseous, splitting headache in the back of my head has stayed with me for the past week and I have had a hard time functioning normally. It made me
downright tense, I tell you, which caused me to clench my teeth and add a headache in my temples to the mix. Then my throat closed up and I couldn’t swallow. Okay, I’m done complaining, but I usually write this blog at the end of the evening when I have time, and I can tell you it hasn’t been happening for me. I was determined to write something this morning in spite of it all, before my readers wonder what happened to my blog. 

This was a lead in to how my week started off yesterday. Sleep has become a premium for me after getting up every two hours during the night. So when the fire alarm went off at exactly 7 a.m. Monday, rousing me after I had finally fallen asleep, all I could say was, “Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t believe it. Must be the hotel’s new wake-up call. Ninety nine per cent of me knew it was a false alarm because, fortunately, that’s all they’ve ever been so far. It’s usually the dumb bar downstairs that causes the alarm to go off because they’re hooked into our fire alarm system. 

I lay there trying to ignore it, hoping somebody would just shut it off so I could go back to sleep. The loud shrill finally forced me to get up, and that’s when I noticed one of the neighbors across the street looking at the hotel from his balcony. Well, crap. I still took my time in the bathroom, threw on some clothes, grabbed my computer, coat, and purse, and walked downstairs to the lobby, which was deserted. I was only slightly concerned because I know protocol is for everyone to leave the building after they’re sure the hotel has been vacated, which it was not. After all this time I’ve lived here, and no one picked up on the fact that I wasn’t downstairs with everybody else. Well, fine. The next book I write, you’re all getting rubbed out.

I heard voices coming up the stairs from the street. It was two firemen who were surprised to see me. “It’s a false alarm again isn’t it?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yeah. It’s the bar downstairs. Someone opened a fire exit door.”

It seems the only fire in progress was the one burning in the gas fireplace in the lounge area. So, I got a cup of coffee and sat there waiting for everybody else to come back in, before I took the elevator back up. The guests caught in the shower when the alarm went off were obvious. The hotel should have offered everyone a free breakfast and sent the
bill to the restaurant downstairs.

I dragged myself through the rest of the day which went progressively downhill from there as my headache and nausea increased. To add insult to injury, someone had arranged for a jazz band to practice in the lobby last night. I love jazz, but not in this venue. With  nothing but hard surfaces all around, the decibel level sounded like the lobby was inside a jet engine warming up before take-off. It pushed me right over the edge, and I was in bed by seven.